Later this month, more than a half-dozen Northwest Arkansas chefs will leave their kitchens to prepare food in the Ozark heat, and they'll be cooking over open fire. It's for a fundraising event appropriately titled Chefs and Fire. One of the seven chefs, Jeremy Gawthrop from Wood Stone Craft Pizza, says he's imagined what it's going to sound like on Sunday, June 14.
This is a fundraiser at and for Apple Seeds Teaching Farm in Fayetteville. Other participating chef teams include Brooks and Ali Cameron from Bloom Cheese Collective, Darwin Beyer of Meiji and Chuo Izakaya, Matt Cooper from Conifer and Wren, and Elliot Hunt of Atlas, Sam Walker representing Gaskins on Emma, and from Handshake, Hope Ray, Jameson Hall and Lindsey Carrel. Crisis Brewing will provide beer, and host Apple Seeds will offer a wine bar.
Gawthrop : Unlike typical — or a version of — tasting events in Northwest Arkansas, we have tents and tables and chefs putting things out. And yes, they'll bring some cooking apparatuses, but we want to center a little bit more of like a backyard barbecue on steroids because you're being brought to these seven chef teams.
Ultimate backyard where it's very elevated food and all of the apparatuses are wood and fire powered. So this is a little different in that respect. Everything's being cooked on site. So there's a lot of sounds and a lot of smells and a lot of smoke and a lot of fire happening. But ultimately, there's nothing that cooks and makes food taste this way than it does with just the raw power of wood and fire. It's primal and it's delicious. And the flavors that are brought about, you just can't really duplicate.
Kellams: Kate MacNaughton, Apple Seeds. Of course, it makes sense that you're having an event connected to food because you like to connect young people to food.
Kate MacNaughton: Yeah. Apple Seeds' mission is to ignite a lifelong love of fresh foods. And this event is the perfect way to do this. It really mirrors the way that we work with the kids in our program where it's all about getting them excited, showing them foods in novel ways, showing them where things are growing. So focusing this event in the garden around all the fresh growing produce, getting fresh produce from the farm — it's very much like the way that we're engaging the kids in getting produce, getting excited about food, cooking it, getting to taste new things and exciting things, and then being inspired to take that back home and repeat it.
Kellams: When you don't have Chefs and Fire or one of your event dinners there, when you're working with the students, the young people, what can happen? There's a kitchen there. There's a garden.
MacNaughton: Apple Seeds is a magical place. It's absolutely beautiful. And Apple Seeds is designed — it's a teaching farm, but the teaching farm is just the vehicle to get kids to eat vegetables. The farm is the way we go from flipping turned-up noses into smiles and excitement and seconds and third requests for vegetables. So when kids come to the farm, they're getting to be farmers. It's an immersive experience for the kids. They get to come in, get their hands literally dirty, harvesting produce, planting seeds, just being among the growing things and getting to connect — seeing things in full flowering mode, just getting to understand and place where food comes from instead of just showing up on their plate at the grocery store. This is how food comes to us.
So that's the very first part — just getting kids excited. And that's what the farm is about. So once they harvest that produce, they then go into our commercial teaching kitchen, which will be part of this event. But the commercial teaching kitchen is just another tool to get kids the experiences, the confidence in the kitchen. We teach them age-appropriate cooking skills so that they can have this experience and develop this confidence in the kitchen, so that whenever they leave Apple Seeds, they've got things in their toolbox so that they know how to chop, they know how to pickle, they know how to roast veggies, and they can repeat that at home. And that's what the teaching farm is for.
We also go into schools and do programs with kids in their classrooms, so they understand that fresh food doesn't just exist on the farm. Fresh food can be made anywhere, including in your own classroom or at your house. So helping the kids just to expand their conception of what healthy food looks like and what it tastes like and what they think about it. And that's what the farm is for.
Kellams: And the money raised at Chefs and Fire will help support that.
MacNaughton: Oh, absolutely. We've got big plans for this upcoming year. We're planning to serve over 20,000 kids here in Northwest Arkansas and central Arkansas. It's a lot. It's a lot of kids.
Kellams: Central Arkansas.
MacNaughton: Yes. So we opened a new farm location in Little Rock in 2023. And so far since then, we've already served 10,000 kids. And when I say served, those are kids coming to the farm, those are kids doing these immersive nutrition education and cooking programs. And we're about to launch an expansion there and we will now begin doing our food donation program as well to students in central Arkansas.
Kellams: There is food raised at Apple Seeds that you then donate.
MacNaughton: The majority of the food that we grow at Apple Seeds is harvested and donated directly to students or directly into the schools. We donated just over 21,000 pounds of produce last year. And that either went directly into what we call these take-home bags — so when we go into the classrooms to teach the kids, we bring a bag for every single student for them to take home, all the veggies, the recipe in English and Spanish, so that they have it. There's no convincing a parent to take them to the store and gamble their own money on something that they may not be confident in. But when you've got your kid coming home full of excitement, full of joy and confidence, ready to cook, it sure makes it easy when you've got the produce to match it. So excitement without access is lost potential, and access without education is potential wasted. When we work all those together, that's really when that cycle perpetuates itself into building healthy, positive relationships with food and eating healthier.
Kellams: You mentioned that there's no cooking quite like this with the open fire. What's something a chef has to think about maybe a little bit differently?
Gawthrop: It is tuning into a different frequency, especially outdoors without your refrigeration, without all your tools and toys, without the comfort of all the things in your dish pit and all the things you have in your commercial kitchen — which we do have one and we'll all be sharing this kitchen. But ultimately, I think prep is a big, big thing, timing, keeping the fire, because you're not just turning on a stovetop to a certain setting or an oven to 350 or whatever you might be — you are really tending to the flames, and it can get too big and too small really quick. So it's a living thing and you have to very much work in sync with the fire. And this isn't something that all these chefs haven't done, but this isn't on the regular, and that ends up being a fun challenge. I think that's what everyone's most excited about. A love of Apple Seeds, yes. The opportunity to do something different — big time.
I did fail to mention that each station will also have their bar or drink program serving some drink that's in pairing with their main dish that's coming off the fire, or dishes. We plan on serving multiple things coming off the fire. So that's also fun to have that incorporation, as well as cocktails and mocktails coming out of your station in conjunction with the food.
Kellams: So I'm visualizing you've got this open flame fire that you've built. What are some of the different cooking apparatuses?
Gawthrop: Part of the challenge is having a different, fire-driven cooking apparatus for each person. So we will have some Lux Grills. We'll have a dome with fruits and vegetables and proteins hanging from it, fire-driven grills and planchas, smoker devices, fire tables, a wood-fired oven. So there's all these different forms of somewhat primitive and primal cooking apparatuses, and then the chefs are bringing in very elevated food and nice sauces. But to finish it and prepare and plate it there in a different model — it's not exactly just like slinging plates out of a tent like we have at events. It's very engaging.
The engagement part is something I've been trying to coach with the chefs. We want the guests to walk up and talk with you, and you're getting a first-hand experience. You're seeing it, you're watching it, you're smelling it, you're tasting it, you get a plate, you can come back for seconds. But that engagement level is like you're in the kitchen. And that's a very sought-after chef's table vibe.
Some things will be laid in the coals. So there'll be items that are directly being roasted in a pile of coals. There'll be cast iron skillets moving into the coals. And then you have grills, and you work your fire to have cold zones and hot zones. So you're putting proteins in, and there's resting zones. So there's definitely this art form with it, which again, the chefs are excited about. It's like, yes, let me get out of my kitchen and come to this fundraising event and flex in a different way, without some of those creature comforts. But the engagement level is just really the heartbeat of it. And the guests coming to chefs not wearing the chef coats is a little bit more hats backwards and tomfoolery, and then also incredibly elevated food that's going to blow your mind.
Kellams: You mentioned a plancha. What's a plancha?
Gawthrop: It's essentially a flat top, a griddle — a piece of steel that is sitting on just a ripping fire.
Kellams: You mentioned a Lux Grill.
Gawthrop: A Lux Grill — it is a nice grill, but it is locally made from our friends here at Damian Lux. I have some, and I think a lot of these chefs do as well, because Damian's been just a great partner locally. He has also donated one to Apple Seeds for this event.
MacNaughton: We're going to raffle off a Lux Grill. He and his family have been fantastic supporters for a very long time — coming to dinners since their kids were little and supporting our programs. And he was really excited. It's not a fire event at Apple Seeds without a Lux Grill. It is a central component of the cooking, and the chefs that come in to cook at Apple Seeds love it. They ask to use it. It's a fun thing. Not a lot of people get the opportunity to purchase one of these, so we're really excited about raffling this off. We'll have other raffle items too, but he's throwing in a ton of accoutrements to go along with it — fancy tongs and gloves and things like that — to really create that chef-level tool and provide that to the community. You won't be able to get a Lux Grill for the price of these raffle tickets. It's a great opportunity to bring this to a whole new group of folks.
Kellams: What do you say to a chef before an event? It's not "break a leg." Is there a good wishing that you would give a chef?
Gawthrop: Don't burn a leg.
Kellams: There you go. Maybe you and your fellow chefs that night can come up with a new one.
MacNaughton: No branding at this event.
Kellams: Thank you both for coming in.
MacNaughton: Thanks, Kyle.
Kate MacNaughton is development director for Apple Seeds Teaching Farm in Fayetteville. Jerrmy Gawthrop is owner and chef at Wood Stone Craft Pizza. Tickets remain for Sunday, June 14 Chefs and Fire, taking place at Apple Seeds. More information can be found on the events page at appleseedsar.org.
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