Cooking for CISA
CISA, the Community Involed in Sustaining Agriculture, is a Pioneer Valley organization that works to promote the local agriculture. Its Local Hero campaign, trumpeting local farms and restaurants and markets that sell their produce is one of their more well-known projects.
Several months ago, they asked me to guest chef a party they were giving in July. I was supposed to work with another writer, but she had conflicts so they paired me with Pat Shannon, chef-owner of the Side Street Cafe in Florence. Great, I remember thinking, take a home cook whose chops are not at their peak and team up with a chef. My misgivings grew since there was as much a potential downside to my participation as an upside. As with most of my cooking misgivings, it turned out fine. Pat is a good guy–easy to work with and not egotistical–and the dinner went off pretty smoothly.
CISA got a lot of the local farms to dontate vegetables, beef, lamb, cheese, and honey. Bart’s contributed some sorbet and People’s Pint some beer.
The day of the party, I went to the restaurant and helped prep. Pat did the heavy lifting–marinating the beef and lamb, reducing the marinate, baking off the pattypan squash we intended to stuff with goat cheese, arugula and roast red peppers, deep-frying the wonton triangles for the smoked salmon apps. I did a lot of chopping and prepping, though I made some mint chutney and a blue-cheese dip he liked. During the event, he put things together while I grilled, and we teamed up on the creme brulees and baked goat cheese drizzled with reduced port wine and honey.
It was a great party and since we had food for twice the number of guests, we made up gift bags of cruditees, (separate bags of) cooked and uncooked meat, and cheese for those who lingered. It pretty much cured me of the desire to be a restaurant cook, given that it was a more or less average day for Pat.