Ancient Grain, Modern Porridge
An Illinois-inspired dish at Atelier banks on locally-sourced ingredients.
photo: will blunt
To get in front of emerging culinary trends, Chef Bradyn Kawcak is taking a look back. His smoked einkorn porridge, a dish on the early spring menu at Atelier, was centered around einkorn wheat, an ancestor of many modern grains. Having researched the grain’s nutritional benefits and wheat-offsetting qualities, Kawcak “figured it was going to have a comeback, and wanted to be part of that.” Driven by the restaurant’s local sourcing philosophy, Kawcak found his whole einkorn wheat berries through an existing relationship with local farm Janie’s Mill and got to work.
He starts by cooking the berries “risotto-style, toasted in a pan until it gets a little fragrant,” before adding lemon zest, salt, water, and smoked cream. As the einkorn flavor is “more subtle than a heavy whole wheat,” Kawcak wanted “to bolster that flavor” by adding fattiness and smokiness. He covers a container of heavy cream in cheesecloth, submerges it in an ice bath to make sure the cream doesn’t break, and smokes the cream slowly over low heat. Kawcak stocks the smoker with hickory, apricot branches, and some leftover “cherry blossoms and twigs.” The porridge requires a watchful eye to ensure the einkorn is cooked “to the right texture, where it’s not too mushy or too underdone.”
To balance the hearty flavors, Kawcak adds local turnips from Werp Farms, sautéing the greens with shallots, garlic, and butter, and pickling the turnips in white wine vinegar. He pairs the braised turnip greens and pickled turnips with enoki mushrooms from Four Star Mushrooms that he preserves in-house, inspired by his extensive research on barigoule preservation. Although the process is typically used for artichokes, Kawcak soaks the mushrooms in a half-wine and half-olive oil mixture. The robust porridge acts as a canvas for the “more acidic flavors of the enoki, turnip greens, and pickle” to shine.
Finally, Kawcak adds chicken fat and crispy chicken skin from Jake’s Country Meats, making the dish 100% locally sourced. This decision, he says, is “a big pillar of not only who I am as a chef, but what this restaurant is, and a very important aspect of what we do here.” The dish is a testament to investing in local product according to Kawcak, emphasizing the importance of supporting farmers, and “building relationships [with purveyors] instead of just buying blindly.” The attention to sourcing and food history combined with his technical prowess creates a warm, comforting dish celebrating local bounty.
