Aurora Porter: Green Gate Farms is a little agricultural oasis east of Texas Highway 183 and north of 51st street in Austin, Texas. On Saturday October 24th just before sunset, 82 guests descended on the farm to attend a Slow Food Feast in the Field, where they could admire the early fall harvest and savor a thoughtful, simple menu cooked by the chefs at Ecstatic Cuisine. The feast proceeds went to benefit the Austin Discovery School, which offers, among other courses, an organic Junior Master Gardener program and a zero waste school lunch initiative.

Slow Food is an international, member-supported, non-profit organization that works to promote biodiversity in our food supply, gastronomic education in our communities, and facilitate connections between ethical and delicious food producers and co-producers.

Jesse Bloom is head chef and owner of Ecstatic Cuisine. Bloom says he has always been interested and inspired by the Slow Food movement.

Jesse Bloom: The menu was really about what was available. Slow Food is supposed to be all local and all organic, as much as possible.

Aurora Porter: On this mild late October evening, between an open field and the lettuce patch, Slow Food supporters ate a completely locally sourced meal, including butternut squash soup with goat milk crème fraiche, duck confit with Kefir pear, and Green Gate greens salad with pickled persimmons. Before the entrée, guests gathered at small tables near a Sweet Leaf Tea stand and built their own bruschetta with eggplant caviar, mushroom capanota, Cheesy Girl Chevre, and a Green Gate grilled green tomato caprese.

For the main dish, the chefs served smoked pork loin with persimmon lavender sauce, green beans amandine, sweet and spicy cabbage, a butternut squash gratin with caramelized onion, walnuts, and Veldhuizen Gruyere. Dessert was Mary Louise Butters’ Chipotle Brownies with Amy’s Mexican Vanilla ice cream.

Jesse Bloom: A couple of months before the event I was talking to the farmers trying to figure out what was going to be coming out of the ground and really the menu evolved like, up until the actual day of, because you know, no one actually knew what was going to happen, because the weather was do dry this summer and we were in such a big drought and then there was a ton of rain and so the tomato crop just never turned because there was no sun so we ended up using green tomatoes…we had planned to do a blackberry sauce and we couldn’t get local blackberries so we ended up using persimmons.

Aurora Porter: Bloom says the spontaneity and last minute fluidity of coming up with last minute menus makes the process that much more interesting for him. He said the main inspiration for the menu was all about the farm. The smoky pork loin was made from a pig that was raised on the farm and the green tomatoes in the caprese came from Green Gate tomatoes that didn’t turn in time for the event.

Jesse Bloom: We had a food blogger ask if she could have our butternut squash gratin recipe. A lot of good compliments about the food and the timing of the event.

Aurora Porter: Bloom says his company tries to do a donation charity event about once a quarter.

Jesse Bloom: We are going to be at the Zhi Tea festival in December…that’s December 5th at the Zhi tea gallery on Bolm Road. December 5th through 12th is Edible Austin Eat Local Week and we will be running all local food in the café all week long, so that’s a huge thing. We’re gonna be doing our own cured bacon. I’m definitely looking forward to that.

Aurora Porter: Ecstatic Cuisine caters weddings, business lunches, parties and food-centered events in Central Texas and also serves lunches at Region XIII five days a week. To view photos of the event check and read blog posts and news about upcoming events, go to Ecstaticcuisine.com.

Slow Food is an international, member-supported, non-profit organization that works to promote biodiversity in our food supply, gastronomic education in our communities and facilitate connections between ethical and delicious food producers and co-producers. Slow Food seeks to help people rediscover excellent food and better understand where their food comes from, who makes it and how it’s made.

The organization has chapters in every major city throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, Japan and many other countries.

Slow Food organizes fairs, markets and events locally and internationally to showcase products of excellent gastronomic quality and to offer discerning consumers the opportunity to meet producers.

The Austin Discovery School/Slow Food Feast in the Field is Saturday October 24 from 7pm – 11pm. Purchase tickets for the event or become a Slow Food member.

As far as I’m concerned, the bible of cooking is ‘The Joy of Cooking’ by Irma Rombauer. The recipes are simple and easy to follow along with while I’m cooking. If you want a recipe for sofrito, an authentic Chinese stir-fry, or an old fashioned New England slump, it’s all there.

I would recommend anything written by Michael Pollan. A good start is with ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma‘. He describes what is going on with food in this country.

‘Healing with Whole Foods’ by Paul Pitchford is a way of looking at cooking through the lens of the Chinese five elements.

‘The French Laundry Cookbook’ by Thomas Keller is amazing. He is one of the best chefs alive. He has a way of taking food from the source and transforming it into a gourmet.

All of the Beautiful cookbooks, like ‘Southwest: The Beautiful’ by Barbara Fenzel and ‘Mexico: The Beautiful’ by Susanna Palazuelos are gorgeous, authentic, and creative.

‘Creating a World Without Poverty’ by Muhammad Yunus. This book is a must read for those interested in the developing world.  Yunus created the Grameen Bank and is considered the father and creator of micro-credit lending.

‘The Starfish and the Spider’ by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom is about a decentralized organizational business structure and the power of having a leaderless organizations.

Coconut Chicken Skewers on KXAn using Zhi’s Cacoa Chai!!! Yum

I learned the essence of cooking from my Grandmother Ruth. Every weekend, family and friends would gather around a table of deliciousness where an unexpected guest was always welcome. I left the comfort of Grandma’s table looking for adventure and somehow food always seemed to be front and center. I left Alamosa, Colorado (population 10,000) and soon began delivering hoagies in Philly which naturally led to harvesting wild rainforest honeycomb in Guatemala. Shortly thereafter I began my “formal” training in the rough and tumble of upscale kitchens in Denver, while working with a local character by the name of “Tomato Rich” Carbonne, who used to be a linchpin of the D-town restaurant scene. Unknowingly, my time spent delivering slightly doctored boxes of tomatoes to North Denver Restaurants served as an initiation of sorts.

I didn’t realize it at the time but I was done for, a hopelessly hooked fish being reeled in slowly and surely into the culinary underbelly by a bald headed big-hearted beast of a sous chef named Matthew Brown at Tommy Tsunami’s Pacific Rim Diner and Tomato Rich. In these shady confines I was blindsided by my passion for the art of tickling the palate in the media of flavor, color, texture and aroma. Ever since then my life has been a holy catastrophe of following my nose and my heart from one adventures to the next. Soon, I was wrestling sailfish into a local’s rickshaw of a boat in Costa Rica, butchering freshly caught shark on the Gulf Coast. After one particularly aromotic week at the Burning Man Festival in 2000 my olfactory powers led me to jump in a car headed for Tejas with several Austinites.

I woke up in Our Fair City, determined to leave the past behind and find myself once and for all. After numerous attempts to do something more “normal” with my life like going to college or becoming a teacher, I found myself in the familiar confines of what was then the Granite Cafe (now Fino). And soon enough I was back on that gravy train that Grandma Ruth had set me on so long ago. Soon, I was at that Austin institution Mother’s Cafe letting my creative zeal loose with reckless abandon in a marvelously self-organizing kitchen. It was here that I experienced the most harrowing adventure of all, cooking for Austin’s Vegans. I ‘ve spent the last 5 years cooking and honing my culinary zeal while learning the craft of catering at Austin Catering.

As I head out into the perilous landscape of a life as a food entrepreneur I’m hoping to bring it all together in a party for your tastebuds. You name it, chances are, we can do it: Whether you are wanting Grandma’s old time comfort food, some high falutin’ Haute Cuisine made from Austin’s Local Food Scene, or the most organitastic vegan fare in the city, be assured that you that what you will get is some of the most energizing and soul satisfying grub this side of the Miss’ippi. Give us a shout, you won’t be disappointed.

- Jesse Bloom