Students will no longer accept the same food they were given five years ago, says Chef Mike Clyne of Michigan State University’s (MSU) hospitality group. They want fresh food and they want to know where it came from.
And it's an awareness not limited to students. More than 200 people turned out in September for the first Hoop House Gala on the grounds of the university’s organic farm featuring local and sustainably produced food. The event raised $16,470 for organic farm scholarships.
Chef Clyne is also senior executive chef at the Kellogg Center. The menu at the Hoop House Gala could have been served at the center’s State Room, which he also oversees.
At $100 a plate, the farm’s soiree featured Michigan wines and a six-course dinner served on white linen under a huge tent surrounded by the 10-acre farm.
The fete began with appetizer stations featuring items such as spicy cilantro shrimp with chilies and tomatoes — the shrimp came from the seafood farm in Okemos.
Greens for the salad were grown on the student organic farm. The meal ended with autumn napoleons, laced with roasted pears and apples from Pear Tree Farm in Haslett, dried Michigan cherries layered between crisp puff pastry and drizzled with pumpkin-caramel sauce.
The farm’s hoop house, an unheated passive solar greenhouse, is dedicated to the production and sale of produce for on-campus residential dining services through the program.
But the MSU Student Organic Farm produces more than greens and root vegetables.
Throughout November, the State Room will feature pork dishes made from the farm’s pasture-raised pigs.
Source: Mike Clyne, MSU
Gretchen Cochran, Innovation & Jobs editor, may be reached here.
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