The Menu

Today is April 1 – the official beginning of our kitchen test month. I have to reign myself in and settle on a menu. I believe we have enough recipes to select from, but with a plan of thirty people and only a budget of $75, can we really make this happen?

Chris , a fellow eco-artist, has offered to help us with food donations. He is a produce manager in a specialist organic food shop and we are profoundly grateful for his generosity.

Paul, my partner in this project, and Jessica, another eco-artist, will be preparing the fare. Paul is a professional gardener and we know he will be our source for good wholesome and nutritious eggs, colorful too. I suspect he has a few other things, like herbs in his garden as well.

Over the weekend I took a list of ingredients to the Berkeley farmers market to get a sense of cost, availability, and locality. With that information I then revisited our candidate recipes and determined which were the most suitable given our constraints. I eliminated some recipes due to expense and/or ingredient access and drew up the following menu proposal. Note, however, that as we kitchen test this menu may again change due to things like the "sog" factor (i.e. how well do each of these hold up over an evening?), complexity (are there too many dishes to prepare with only 2 chefs in the kithcen? is any recipe simply too time consuming?), and convenience (can certain dishes be prepared in advance?).

Savory

Caramelized Onion Tart

Greek Spinach Rice Balls

Garlic Toasts with Fava Bean Puree

Asparagus Leek Fritata

Thai Starter OR Crispy Lettuce Rolls

Baby Vegetables with Orange Dressing
OR Shaved Raw Asparagus with Lemony Vinaigrette


Sweet

Strawberries and Oranges

Liquid

Water infusion with orange and lemon slices

And of course, I’ve added yet another new recipe into the mix found only last night -- the shaved raw asparagus with lemony vinaigrette (pg. 23, asparagus, lemon juice, olive oil, salt/pepper, parmigiano-reggiano cheese) from The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market Cookbook, a comprehensive guide to impeccable produce plus 130 seasonal recipes. How had I missed this one? It looks like it has been around for a few years with a copyright of 2006. My pile of cookbooks is getting out of hand, but it does make a nice addition. It is conveniently organized by season and ingredient. For example, the Spring chapter includes apricots, asparagus, blueberries, cherries, dandelion, fava beans, fennel, green garlic, lamb, peas, potatoes, rhubarb, sorrel, stinging nettles, and our favorite strawberries. And it is filled with advice on choosing, storing, and preparing these ingredients with a handful of delicious looking recipes. But I did say I had to reign myself in, so I perused only the Spring chapter for finger foods and found that it complimented my previous recipe selections. That is, I found a few recipes for asparagus with vinaigrettes and also a fava bean crostini recipe.

Bon appetitio! We'll see you soon on the test kitchen front.