Set Your Raffle Strategy for the Food Is Love event TODAY

November 7, 2013

Come join us in celebrating the incredible work of Boston Medical Center’s Preventative Food Pantry and Demonstration Kitchen and their efforts to fight hunger in our community.

We’ll be serving up a complementary sampling of some of Boston finest ales with a narrated Tap Talk by one of Harpoon’s beer connoisseurs . As well as little raffle with some amazing foodie prizes.

Bring your friends!!! (More Info)

Thursday, November 7th 7-9 pm

Harpoon Beer Hall Tasting Room
306 Northern Ave
Boston, MA
(Next to the Bank Boston Pavilion)

$25 Gift Certificate to Chef Joanne Chang’s Flour Bakery

 

Joanne Chang, Pastry Chef/Owner

An honors graduate of Harvard College with a degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics, Joanne left a career as a management consultant to enter the world of professional cooking.

She started as garde-manger cook at Boston’s renowned Biba restaurant, then worked as a pastry cook at Bentonwood Bakery in Newton, and in 1995 was hired as Pastry Chef at Rialto restaurant in Cambridge.

Joanne moved to New York City in 1997 to work in the cake department of the critically acclaimed Payard Patisserie and Bistro. Returning to Boston a year later with dreams of opening up her own pastry shop, she brought her French and American training to Mistral where she was the Pastry Chef until summer of 2000.

In 2000, she opened Flour, a bakery and café, in Boston’s South End. Flour features breakfast pastries, breads, cakes, cookies, and tarts as well as sandwiches, soups, and salads. In 2007 she opened a second branch of Flour in the Fort Point Channel area, in 2010 a third branch in Cambridge near MIT and Central Square, and in 2013 a fourth branch in the Back Bay.

Flour has been featured in Gourmet, Food&Wine, Bon Appetit, the New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, Lucky Magazine, Inc. Magazine, and Boston Magazine and has received numerous Best of Boston awards. Flour was also featured on Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network in which Joanne’s sticky buns won over Chef Flay’s.

Joanne’s energetic commitment to excellence extends beyond the kitchen. She writes pastry articles and reviews cookbooks for Fine Cooking magazine. She teaches classes and advises pastry cooks both within the bakery and at area cooking schools. She opened a Chinese restaurant called Myers + Chang with her husband Christopher Myers in the South End neighborhood in the fall of 2007. An avid runner, she competed in every Boston Marathon from 1991 – 2006. She is the author two cookbooks: Flour, Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery+Cafe and Flour Too, Indispensible Recipes for the Cafe’s Most Loved Sweets and Savories.

Favorite Dish: cinnamon cream brioche

 

$50 Gift Certificate to The Gallows, South End

In June 2010 owner Rebecca Roth, along with Seth Morrison and Seth Yaffe opened The Gallows to rave reviews. The trio met years ago in the kitchen of another South End Star- Perdix. After polishing their approach at the Biltmore in Newton, they strove to open a place that they, themselves, would go to. A menu that reflects the best of the moment and a staff that loves what they do.

Rebecca, the Seths and the entire Gallows family approach each day as yet another day to improve, have fun and create a welcoming spot in the neighborhood.

Best Poutine in the City. It’s not what you think. Sinner.

Favorite Dish: Toss up Scotch Egg vs. Cider Braised Short Rib w chanterelle mushrooms, horseradish celery root slaw

Chef and Owner Ana Sortun Signed Cookbook

With a degree from La Varenne Ecole de Cuisine in Paris, the Seattle-born Ana Sortun opened Moncef Medeb’s Aigo Bistro in Concord, Massachusetts, in the early 1990s. Stints at 8 Holyoke and Casablanca in Harvard Square, Cambridge soon followed.

This was all in the beginning of her career, when Sortun was still cooking what most people think of as typical Mediterranean food from Spain, southern France and Italy. People loved it. While at Casablanca, a friend of the owner invited Sortun to study in Turkey.

Not knowing anything about Turkish food or culture but eager to learn, she accepted. (“I imagined flying carpets and genies,” she says wryly.) But when she arrived in southeastern Turkey, Sortun’s host and her friends presented a potluck of sorts. “I tasted 30 amazing dishes from these women’s family repertoires,” Sortun remembers. “I was stunned at how rich and interesting yet light everything was.”

That trip was when she learned that in the Mediterranean, spice is used to create richness, depth and flavor without heaviness. She also experienced the mezze style of eating, which is to have many tastes of mostly vegetable-based dishes before reaching a protein course. “Chefs always focus on flavor and appearance,” says Sortun, “but few think about how one feels after eating a long meal.”

Upon her return to Boston, she wanted to fuse her newfound love of Eastern Mediterranean spices with her passion for using only the best ingredients. The result of this union was Oleana, which opened in Cambridge in 2001. A mere four years later, Sortun won a coveted and prestigious James Beard Award.

Sortun’s commitment to locally grown food took a turn for the personal when a farmer selling spinach turned up at the back door of Oleana one day. “I knew then that I would marry him,” Sortun says. Since 2006, Siena Farms has been providing the restaurant with most of its fresh, organic produce. It is owned and farmed by the chef’s husband, Chris Kurth, and named after the couple’s daughter.

Wanted to launch a more casual venue, three years of brainstorming later, in August of 2008, Sofra was born in Cambridge, Mass. This Middle Eastern bakery, café and retail shop offers flatbread sandwiches, mezzes, prepared foods and baked goods. It has received both local and national press; Food & Wine, Metropolitan Home and Gourmet have all featured it as a place not to miss.

Favorite Dish: Flattened Lemon Chicken with Zatar and Turkish Cheese Pancake. Featured on “Best Thing I Ever Ate”.

Brunch for Two at Coppa South End