Jessica Stölen
Editor
jstolen-jacobson@cherryroad.com
On Thursday, October 10th, Chef Joshua Hoff will visit Granite Falls for a unique culinary experience at Bluenose Gopher Public House.
The Fall Harvest Dinner: A Culinary Experience is made possible through a partnership between The YES! House and Bluenose Gopher Public House, and will feature a four-course meal prepared by Hoff, as well as the opportunity to hear the Chef speak about the preparation of the courses throughout the dinner.
The unique offering comes at a time when small venues such as Bluenose in rural communities are working to overcome struggles in rising product costs, and less customers visiting on a regular basis. A committee formed to ponder new ideas and craft experiences unique in rural areas. The BIG Ideas committee formation has resulted in a number of new ideas for experiences new to the local area.
For Hoff, who works as a Chef in the Twin Cities, the dinner offers the opportunity to return to the area he grew up in to share his passion for culinary arts with the community local to where he began his venture into what would become his career. Hoff decided that he wanted to be a chef at just eleven years old. “I found myself being so moved and present when I was trying something new,” Hoff says. “To learn about how vast the world of food is and not just the ingredients themselves and where they grow and when, but also how they’ve been used historically in different cultures, and then through trade, how those cultures brought different foods to different places, and it’s just been something that has been a common denominator in humanity. When you bring in the art and history, it just becomes something brand new and it’s still brand new. It’s like music to me – the different combinations and techniques and it consumes me.”
Hoff began his career with his first professional cooking job at Snook’s Cafe in Cottonwood. Hoff also cooked alongside his father, Mike, and recalls watching his father push himself up on the wheels of his wheelchair to look through the kitchen window as guests entered the cafe, starting to put together what he knew they would order for breakfast before they were even seated. “He would put down their breakfast and then by the time they got their coffee, their breakfast was done,” Hoff recalls. “That’s where I started and I never lost interest in building food, trying different combinations and giving people what they want and helping make people happy.”
Hoff has been working in culinary arts for 19 years.
“I’m really driven to produce and to innovate, as well as to enjoy, personally, and to bring other people together to enjoy. That’s one of the reasons why I chose the menu is because I really hope that people in that area will love that food. There’s a relationship between the Chef and the people that eat it. And as a chef, I want to bring them joy. In this particular case, I was lucky enough to get to do a menu where I can build it around what I believe people will like,” he says.
For the Fall Harvest meal, Hoff has created four courses centered on locally sourced ingredients. “For this meal I decided on kind of an elevated beef commercial. It will have herbs, some wine in it and a good quality beef served over local bread from Carl’s Bakery, and then instead of your classic potatoes, we’re going to go with some other vegetables that are common for this time of year – rutabagas, and carrots and potatoes – they’re not only what grows here, but they also have all of the wonderful fall colors that you see in the trees,” Hoff says. It will also be served with roasted brussel sprouts.
The salad course includes a creation made with onions, sweet and sour beets, bitter greens and a honey vinaigrette. “I thought it was a light and refreshing salad to bring some brightness. I wanted to use local ingredients in the vinaigrette also. Honey pairs really well with beets because beets have a very earthy, minerally flavor. Honey also has some floral components from the pollen that the bees bring in and so those pair together really nicely,” Hoff says.
The appetizer course of whipped cheese and bread sticks will include a handmade ricotta. “I plan to use a standard bread dough and roll that dough out very thin and bake it with salt on it so that it becomes crunchy,” he says. “The cheese will be made of milk using vinegar and lemon juice to separate the curd from the whey. Once I remove the curd I’ll whip it back together with a little bit of heavy cream and seasoning.”
For the dessert course, Hoff has planned a stone fruit and zucchini crumble parfait. “Stone fruit has many different fruits involved – apricots, peaches, cherries, raspberries, lychee, plums. And then the zucchini crumble will be homemade zucchini bread because I believe in using local ingredients, and as anyone who has planted a garden with zucchini in Minnesota knows, it’s one of the most prolific late summer vegetables. Baking it into a bread is a really great way to increase its shelf life and bring in another flavor profile. I’m going to break it down into crumbles and then toast it in brown butter so we’ll have a nice, toasty, crunchy sweet crumble that will be put in between the layers of frozen yogurt and stone fruit,” he says.
There will be two separate dinner times for the event, and tickets must be purchased in advance. The first seating on October 10th begins at 6 p.m. and goes until 7:30 p.m., with the second seating beginning at 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Guests may arrive one hour before their ticketed reservation time to enjoy drinks in a cocktail area.
The event is part of Bluenose Presents, a project of Bluenose Gopher Public House to provide meaningful and educational arts experiences to residents of Granite Falls and surrounding communities. The Culinary Artist Residency that has been created as an event series in partnership with The YES! House to focus on supporting regional culinary artists by providing them with the dedicated time and space to innovate and share their creativity with the community. Hoff is the first chef in the series. More information can be found at bluenose.coop/donate.
Tickets for the Fall Harvest dinner are available on the Bluenose Gopher Public House website at: https://www.bluenose.coop/events/fallharvest.
Hoff most hopes that the guests not only go away full, but with a new appreciation for the local ingredients. “I really like Bluenose. I like the idea of doing meals or groups, and I like that the table, and a meal, is something that has been bringing people together as a common denominator in humanity. To break bread together, to share a meal together, is really powerful,” he says.
