One Big Table Now & Here
Friday Evening, January 27
The last two years, the Oregon Truffle Festival has strived to demonstrate the prowess of its title ingredient in the company of its notoriously respected counterparts from Italy and France. We’ve witnessed the Oregon truffle swaying minds and courting appetites, taking one glorious meal after another from sheer delicious to sensory delight. Now entering year seven, the festival brings its title crop back to the soil from which it came, in a celebration of Oregon and the tastes America.
Our festival weekend is inspired by the book One Big Table: A Portrait of American Cooking, and our opening act on Friday evening will be hosted by its creator Molly O’Neill, James Beard award winning author and former New York Times food writer.
One Big Table is the nation’s community cookbook, the result of Molly O'Neill's journey of more than 500,000 miles across the U.S.—during which she conducted over 5,000 oral history–style interviews and consumed untold calories—to discover why we eat what we eat.
“Like any cuisine, American cooking is about place and weather, people and history, tradition and fashion, economics and ethnicity, religion, culture, and class. But unlike any other cuisine that I know of, American cooking is also about the persistence of hope.…”
As part of the ongoing effort to gather and preserve American recipes and food stories, Molly with her friends and colleagues, are building One Big Table Across America, a series of large and small events that celebrate American home cooking, support local agriculture, and prove that community begins when people gather around a table to eat, drink, talk, laugh, think, and dream.
“Food, for me, is inseparable from sharing. There is no great meal unless it is shared with family or friends.” ~Master Chef Jacques Pépin.
Molly brings her amazing One Big Table story to Oregon this year for the festival, and will host our Friday evening One Big Table meal, with guest chefs Jack and Chris Czarnecki, 3rd and 4th generation chefs whose appreciation of and talent with Oregon's wild harvested and foraged mushrooms and truffles is unparalleled.
Christopher Czarnecki, Chef
The Joel Palmer House Restaurant, Dayton OR
 Christopher Czarnecki's commitment to fine dining was imprinted on him early, literally from the age of 9, when he was allowed to fill the water glasses as his parents' restaurant, Joe’s in Reading, PA. The world of his childhood was a world of fresh local ingredients, fine wines, busy kitchens, and grateful, happy diners – a world he knew he would inhabit as an adult.
Czarnecki stepped out of that world for three years, when he joined the Army, working in food service, including a year of service in Iraq. During the time when Christopher was “cooking in combat boots” he learned the art of precision, and of course, following the rules. Christopher’s covert attempt at spicing up a dish with herbs and butter at one dinner only earned him 20 pushups, rather than the certain gratitude of his comrades. Chris regards his time in Army dining facilities as a learning opportunity, and was happy to return to a region where his creativity is fed and supported by the abundance of the area.
Beginning in 2006, Christopher made his way back to The Joel Palmer House kitchen, taking over the reins from his father, Jack Czarnecki, as chef in 2007. His parents retired in 2008.
Czarnecki revels in the bounty of the restaurant's location in Dayton, in the heart of Oregon's Pinot noir country. His father is recognized as a wild mushroom “guru” and Czarnecki continues that tradition, building his menu around whatever local mushrooms his foragers bring to the back door of the kitchen, along with other seasonal specialties. Czarnecki and his wife, Mary, are building their own vegetable gardens in order to provide “hyper-local” produce to the restaurant. On the wine side, the cellar at The Joel Palmer House reflects Czarnecki's passion for the best local wines. With more than 500 Oregon Pinot noir wines on the list, and a 2010 Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence, Christopher often spends time in the cellar with a glass of Pinot noir reflecting on the life he’s built in The Joel Palmer House. The good life.
|
