Last week we got together with an awesome community non-profit 18 Reasons to serve dinner and share upcycling lore. 18 Reasons was started by Bi-Rite Market out of their desire to create a space where people could deepen their relationships with food and with each other. 18 Reasons holds community events, cooking education, and dinners as a way to support the good food movement. All proceeds from the event went to benefit their remarkable mission.
As lovers of good food and eager storytellers, we jumped at the opportunity to host a dinner event at their beautiful kitchen and communal dining space. Chef Phil and Chief Grainmaster Jordan went to work preparing a menu that offered big taste with zero waste spins on classic dishes. Each course was based around an example of “Powered by ReGrained” applications, and accompanied by other upcycled and sustainable food storylines.
The meal kicked off with a beet tatare dish (not a mis-spelling!). Char-roasted beets were dressed with their smoky skins as a vinaigrette and paired with a vadouvan almond-milk ricotta, served with ReGrained crackers.
We stepped things up a bit in the second course with a fritter of roasted eggplant and shitake mushroom stems, bound together and breaded with ReGrained flour. Cozy on the plate with the fritters were some beautiful and fresh mandolined radishes, dandelion greens, a carrot top pistou (ever need to use carrot greens, try this!), and a sunflower tahini that incorporated all our radish ends and dandelion green stems.
For the main course we were proud to showcase our newly released collaboration product with our friends from The Pasta Shop, a ReGrained Spaghetti. We took this hearty and toasty spaghetti and presented a riff on Bolognese. The ground pork used was a plant-based blended from The Better Meat Co.. The pasta was topped with roasted delicata squash and bottarga (for an authentic Italian touch).
To finish it off, we served a butternut squash cake made with ReGrained flour and aquafaba (made from chickpea water), crumbled and rebaked soaked in a pain perdu custard and bruleed to finish. On the plate with it was a sage-caramel (unreal), Italian merengue, and bitter-sweet chocolate swirls. A mouthful to describe? Yes, but we’re still dreaming about this dessert.
All in all, we showcased what our amazing ingredient can do, told an awesome upcycling story with SuperGrain+and beyond, plus had a great time with our community. It feels great to do things that give immediate impact and “leave no trace” beyond lasting smiles.