Left to right: Chefs Julia Baynor, Ryan Toll, and Mariah Ragland.
Simmer, our chef pop-up dinner series, is meant to bring people together over good food and good conversation. With the generous support of our community, on Friday night, local vegan chefs Ryan Toll, chef-owner of Season and formerly of the beloved vegetarian restaurant The Wild Cow, and Mariah Ragland, chef-owner of Radical Rabbit, did just that.
It’s rare, but possible, to find vegan-only digs here in Nashville, and Season and Radical Rabbit both have a unique focus on providing options for Nashvillians to enjoy vegan food at home. It’s a different and special experience altogether, though, to get multiple vegan chefs in the same kitchen and watch the magic happen as they share stories, trade tips and tricks, and work together to bring a magical, plant-based dinner to life.
Chefs Ryan and Mariah work together to plate the salad course.
The “Tropical Charlie”
The night began with a cocktail hour that included both non-alcoholic options and a specialty cocktail that paired cold-pressed pineapple, pear, strawberry and lime juices with Tito’s Vodka, topped with a splash of Walker Brothers kombucha. We lovingly named it the “Tropical Charlie” after our newest meals coordinator, who designed the beverage with his love for tiki drinks top of mind.
As cocktail hour wound down, the food started flowing. Chef Mariah kicked us off with a taste of her signature vegan soul food — a roasted yam base layered with black eyed peas, pesto blended from seasonal turnip and collard greens, a generous scoop of tofu ricotta, and pieces of pickled watermelon, plated atop a drizzle of watermelon barbecue sauce to tie it all together. The flavors were divine, and she created a special moment as guests were receiving her course when she emerged from the kitchen to share the story behind the dish, revealing that she had actually served as the volunteer coordinator at the Food Project from 2016-2018.
Appetizer: yam toast with black eyed peas, pesto, ricotta, and pickled watermelon.
“I fell in love with fresh foods while I worked at The Nashville Food Project … there, I saw how plants were steamed, sauteed and rubbed in oils to create beautiful Buddha bowls, I saw nettles dried to create tea straight from the garden, potatoes pinched to make gnocchi, and flour rolled to make fresh bread, and then taken into communities to feed and nourish people.”
“Today’s meal was inspired by those times growing, cooking and sharing, and also by my ancestors — I take them into the kitchen any time I’m working. The food on your dish represents foods that sustained them.”
Mariah and her appetizer.
Next up came colorful farmhouse salads decorated with seasonal veggies like radishes, cucumbers, carrots and cherry tomatoes, tempeh gorgonzola, crunchy chickpeas, and house-made vegan ranch. Chef Ryan helped serve when it was time for the course to come out and gave guests the rundown on each fresh, seasonal component as they took their first bites. He shared about the sustainability of plant-based food and the creativity he gets to exercise while preparing it.
Salad course
Main course
Ryan also put together the main course of the evening: creamy polenta with garlic confit cherry tomatoes, a dollop of sunflower goat cheese, and sage-roasted mushrooms, which were a highlight of the evening. The mushrooms were a blend of blue oysters, shiitakes, pioppinos, and king trumpets, generously donated from Hedgehog Foods. Kevin and Harrison, members of the Hedgehog team, were there at the event and shared with fellow guests about why mushrooms are so important to them and how even mushrooms can be a way to expand food access and build community.
Harrison and Kevin of Hedgehog Foods give a brief overview to guests.
As Harrison told guests, Hedgehog Foods uses innovative techniques to grow mushrooms at a large scale closer to how they’re found in nature. These growing methods, coupled with their sustainable approach to packaging, means that they often have large quantities that can appear seemingly overnight which need to be used quickly. Enter: The Nashville Food Project.
Since February of this year, Hedgehog has donated 30-40 pounds of specialty mushrooms per week to our community meals program. Our chef team has had a blast coming up with creative ways to cook with them, and their mushrooms have been stewed into stroganoff, roasted in veggie medleys, baked into pastas and chopped into salads. More importantly, though, we’re grateful for the opportunity to partner with a values-aligned business focused on sustainability.
Meals Coordinator Bilal made a mushroom chicken alfredo earlier this year using Hedgehog mushrooms.
We wrapped things up with a vegan baked alaska, from the mind of our very own director of meals and pastry chef extraordinaire, Julia Baynor. This dessert was essentially an embodiment of the Food Project’s values of sustainability and interdependence: each ingredient told a story and was gleaned with waste reduction and local sourcing in mind. As Julia told guests, the mangoes in the sorbet were leftovers from a mango-banana smoothie served to partner sites earlier in the week; the vegan carrot cake base included leftover veggie scraps; the Swiss meringue was crafted from a whipped aquafaba, saved from cans of chickpeas used in a white bean chili the day before; the cardamom glaze utilized peaches donated by a local farmer.
Director of Meals, Julia, and her vegan baked alaska.
“At the Food Project, it’s our job to be good stewards of what we receive and to do that, we have to be creative,” explained Julia. “We have saved hundreds of thousands of pounds of produce through our procurement program, and even the things we can’t use are being composted — which means that 30,000 pounds of food scraps per year are being turned into a nutrient-rich soil amendment for use in our garden programming.”
“It’s all about going full circle, and by being here tonight, you help us to continue our work,” she praised the guests. “By supporting Mariah, Ryan and Harrison, you are making a commitment to living a more sustainable way. I wanted to thank you again for making our work possible.”
There will be one more Simmer this year. Stay tuned for details and to snag your seat!