Gridiron gourmets

PULLMAN – Game day appetites may belong to tailgaters and their bratwursts, pulled pork and keg beer.

Game eve, however, belongs to the hospitality students of Washington State University who recently served football fans a feast of lamb encrusted with pistachios, glazed beets draped with gingered carrot jus and a selection of excellent wines.

The pairing of football and four-course fine dining is called Feast of the Arts, a talent showcasing local foods harvested from WSU’s organic farm and the kitchen savvy of WSU’s School of Hospitality Business Management. It is led by chef Jamie Callison and culinary educator Jim Harbour.

These Feasts of the Arts are also a chance for Cougar-connected winemakers to present a handful of selections, as Rick Small of Woodward Canyon did the night before WSU thumped the Bruins of UCLA. Each dinner begins with a champagne and hors d’oeuvres reception at WSU’s Museum of Art while guests listen to musical performances from the School of Music and Theatre Arts and the Cougar Marching Band.

The dinners are held every Friday night before the Cougars’ home football games and they are sold out for the rest of the season.

“I give students the concept and then let them run with it,” says Callison, who oversees the menu and a team of students and catering employees, “it’s just amazing what they do.”

The gourmet dinners are valuable on-the-job training for everyone. Some 80 students graduate from the School of Hospitality Business Management each year, bound for jobs in hotel kitchens, restaurants, catering and event planning.

For some, it’s the fanciest dinner they’ll prepare. Hospitality students and catering staff put together everything from box lunches to dinner for 300. “This is 100 percent their event,” says Harbour, emcee and comic relief on Feast nights.

He also works with students and catering staff on service sequence and other front-of-the-house duties. During the dinner, students introduce each course and share a bit about themselves and where they’ll be heading after graduation.

Menus for the Feast of the Arts begin as a rough concept. Callison draws ideas from regional cuisine, and he tweaks the menu depending on the harvest from the WSU organic garden.

Coug opponents may serve as menu inspiration. The final dish is sometimes changed depending on the flavors in the wines that are featured at the feast.

“It’s developing sometimes that day, too,” Callison says. “We’re adding that little component here or there.”

Callison and students took a chance at an earlier Feast by putting baby back ribs on the menu – more tailgating fare than fancy dinner dish. It was the addition of a cabbage and fennel slaw with candied jalapeno peppers that really brought the dish together, he says. Callison served sweet potato salad and chipotle-spiced smoked baby back ribs with the slaw and a 2006 Gordon Brothers Chardonnay.

For sous chef Kevin Linde, who will be graduating from WSU in December, that’s the fun. He helped Callison develop the ribs idea, which drew on his experience working on Barbacoa, a Tex-Mex restaurant in Seattle. “He really wants us to take ownership in it, and he really encourages us to come up with ideas, bounce ideas off of each other, look in books and get a feel for a seasonal or local theme,” Linde says. “It’s kind of a culmination of all of our ideas together … It makes you want to work that much harder.”

Feast of the Arts is one of the high end events that students will work on, and it really challenges students to think of every detail: Making sure the entrée plates are warm, the dessert plates are chilled and accurately counted, Linde says.

And they learn that there are times when you just have to punt. Linde recalls a dinner where they had to swipe an entrée prepared for the staff (before it had been touched, of course) because someone who’d ordered a vegetarian dinner changed their mind at the last minute.

The feast is accompanied by the wines through the Wine by Cougars program. Among those from Woodward Canyon at the Oct. 26 dinner was the 2003 Walla Walla Valley Estate Red, awarded 93 points by Wine Advocate. Small, a second-generation WSU graduate, humbly describes the wine as being made from fruit he planted on family land that was too poor for growing wheat.

He also offered heirloom russet potatoes and tomatoes from his garden for the meal which featured the roasted loin of lamb encrusted with pistachios, lamb tagine, potatoes roasted with rosemary and garlic, caramelized onions and glazed beets. Here are a few recipes that have been featured at past Feast in the Arts:

Puree of Roasted Squash Soup

From Chef Jamie Callison. You can garnish the soup with reduced heavy cream or crème fraîche. Serving this soup with savory biscotti, such as the Chanterelle Tarragon Biscotti, below is a nice addition.

1 1/4 pounds sugar pumpkins or squash, peeled and diced into 1-inch cubes

1 tablespoon clarified butter (see note)

Kosher salt

Fresh ground white pepper

1 cup leeks, white part only

1/4 cup shallots, diced fine

1 1/4 cups carrots, peeled and diced

6 cups chicken stock

1 habanero pepper, slit sides and place in cheesecloth and tie

1 spice sachet (see note)

1 1/4 cups heavy cream

1/4 cup roasted pepitas (hulled pumpkin seeds)

Peel, clean and cut pumpkin or squash into approximately 1-inch dice pieces.

Toss diced squash with enough clarified butter to coat and then sprinkle with kosher salt and fresh ground white pepper.

Roast pumpkin on a sheet pan in a 375-degree oven until squash is golden brown and starting to soften.

Sauté leeks, shallots and carrots in clarified butter without browning until translucent.

Add stock, habanero pepper in cheesecloth, spice sachet and roasted squash. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to simmer.

Check constantly the spiciness of the soup. When it reaches your desired heat level remove the habanero, without squeezing and discard.

Simmer soup until the vegetables are tender, and then discard sachet bag and habanero, if you haven’t done so already.

Puree until smooth.

Return soup to heat and mix in cream which has been heated.

Reheat to 160 degrees and season to taste.

Garnish with roasted pepitas.

Notes: To make clarified butter, follow these instructions from Gourmet magazine: Cut butter into 1-inch pieces and melt in a heavy saucepan over low heat. Remove from heat and let stand 3 minutes. Skim froth with a spoon and slowly pour butter into a measuring cup, leaving milky solids in bottom of pan. Discard milky solids. One stick (1/2 cup) of butter will yield 5 to 6 tablespoons of clarified butter.

For the spice sachet, tie 1 anise star, 2 whole cloves, 1 cinnamon stick and 3 slices peeled, fresh ginger (cut 1/8 inch thick and 1/2 inch long) into a cheesecloth bag.

Yield: 10 cups

Nutrition per serving: 184 calories, 16 grams fat (79 percent fat calories), 2 grams protein, 8 grams carbohydrate, 55 milligrams cholesterol, 2 grams dietary fiber, 1,904 milligrams sodium.

Chanterelle Tarragon Biscotti

From Chef Jamie Callison

1 1/4 ounces bread flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1/2 cup Panko bread crumbs

1 ounce chanterelle mushrooms, cleaned, chopped and sautéed in clarified butter

1 tablespoon pepitas (hulled pumpkin seed), roasted

1 teaspoon cognac

1 teaspoon mushroom stock, optional

1 egg

1 teaspoon fresh garlic, minced fine

2 teaspoons fresh tarragon, chopped fine

1 teaspoon fresh thyme, chopped fine

1 pinch white pepper, to taste

Kosher salt, to taste

In a medium mixing bowl sift flour and baking powder together.

Add sugar and bread crumbs into flour mixture. Then using a dough hook, add the chanterelles and pepitas and mix on the low speed until ingredients are incorporated. Don’t over mix.

Combine cognac, mushroom stock and egg and gradually add to the dry ingredients.

Add garlic, tarragon, thyme and season to taste and mix for 1 minute until firm.

Form into desired shape, egg wash and sprinkle with kosher salt.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes at 350 degrees until firm to the touch.

Cool for about 5 minutes and slice.

Reheat just prior to serving.

Yield: 12 pieces

Nutrition per serving: 77 calories, 1 gram fat (13 percent fat calories) 3 grams protein, 14 grams carbohydrate, 35 milligrams cholesterol, 1 gram dietary fiber, 47 milligrams sodium.

Huckleberry-Orange Scones

From Chef Jamie Callison

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

5/8 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup unsalted butter

1 cup sour cream

1 cup half and half

1 tablespoon orange zest, minced fine

2 cups frozen huckleberries, or other desired berry

Sift all dry ingredients together and cut in the butter using food processor with blade attachment, pulsing about 15 times until the mix resembles coarse bread crumbs.

Mix sour cream, half-and-half and orange together. Mix with dry ingredients. Fold in huckleberries.

Spoon onto parchment paper and sprinkle with granulated sugar.

Bake at 325 degrees until golden.

Yield: 8 scones

Approximate nutrition per serving: 495 calories, 26 grams fat (17 grams saturated, 49 percent fat calories), 7 grams protein, 56 grams carbohydrate, 74 milligrams cholesterol, 2 grams dietary fiber, 511 milligrams sodium.