Happy Girl Kitchen Co. co-founder Jordan Champagne with a few pickled goodies
Happy Girl Kitchen Co. has started doing pop-up dinners to simultaneously develop community and spotlight Central Coast farms, and this month’s event – on March 16 – highlights Mariquita Farm. Also, you can choose to buy a special fundraising ticket for the dinner where $20 of the cost benefits Big Sur Land Trust (BSLT). Ticketsare $55 for a regular ticket, or $75 for a BSLT benefit ticket. More details are below. There are actually two dinners, one on March 16 and another on March 17, but the March 17 one has sold out.
Happy Girl Kitchen’s husband and wife co-founders, Todd and Jordan Champagne, have created quite a wonderful and successful business. They lead workshops in topics like cheesemaking and tomato-preserving, and sell delicious jars of organic goodies like pickled vegetables, jams, and heirloom tomatoes online and at a kiosk in the San Francisco Ferry Building. Workshops are held at locations including Live Earth Farm in Watsonville.
Happy Girl also runs a Pacific Grove café and shop and sells products at select stores (including Food Bin in Santa Cruz) and Farmers’ Markets (Saturday at Ferry Building, Sunday in Palo Alto).
More dinner details: the chef is John Madriaga, current sous chef at renowned SF restaurant Spruce. Madriaga’s illustrious career includes stints at world-famous noma in Copenhagen and local award-winning Manresa in Los Gatos (two Michelin stars for five consecutive years). Wine pairings from Carmel Valley’s Heller Estates will be available for an additional $18 (payable at dinner, not ahead of time with the ticket). Dinner starts at 6pm at the Happy Girl Kitchen Co. café and shop (173 Central Avenue, Pacific Grove).
Purchase your ticket here.
Interested in the beneficiary organization? According to its web site, the Big Sur Land Trust is “…committed to pursuing land and water conservation work that strengthens our communities and inspires a stewardship ethic so that Monterey County can maintain its unique and special place in the world. The goal…is to pursue resource conservation that supports the well-being of land and people and sustains our region’s unique quality of life for us all.”
Here is the dinner menu from February to get a sense of what type of dinner Happy Girl is cooking up for its pop-up events:
Sample menu
– pickles, local cheeses, olives and fresh bread
– pan-fried brussels sprouts with cider and big sur honey
– salt roasted beets with seaweed
– kale chips
the middle:
– yellow finn potato gnocchi with foraged chanterelles and greens
– turnips, stewed pippin, fuji and gala apples with shaved cabbage and seeds
– pan-seared brussels sprouts and fennel over an apple+meyer lemon puree
– romanesco and broccolini with olive oil and meyer lemon
– good mother stollard heirloom beans with preserved tomato and pea tendrils
– fresh heirloom lettuces with herbs
the end:
– blue bottle coffee
– local cheeses
– blood orange marmalade tart with star anise and chocolate
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