Suprising Sides

A hands-on cooking class culminating in dinner served with wine.

Move over, mashed potatoes! Join Program Director, Michelle McKenzie, as she explores some of winter's most exciting produce. These recipes are delicious on their own, and are the perfect sides for the celebratory meals of the holiday season:

Kohlrabi + persimmon salad, hazelnuts, sheep's milk cheese
Roasted kabocha, pomegranate seeds + reduction, fried shallot, sesame, mint
Celeriac galette 
Caramelized cauliflower, chicories, crispy speck
Japanese sweet potatoes with mixed alliums (fried onion, pickled shallot, fresh green), chile, herbs

Michelle McKenzie is 18 Reason’s Program Director and Chef. She has a knack for making simple food seem special and is full of amazing tips for making every meal memorable. Michelle’s food seems at once healthy and hedonistic, elegant and effortless, and always attainable. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in nutrition and a minor in biochemistry, giving her a deep understanding of food properties and their complex implications within the human body. She later graduated from The Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts, where she immersed herself in health-supportive cuisine prepared from whole, organic and seasonal foods. Since then, Michelle has worked at some of the best restaurants in the country and, most recently, spent five years directing NextCourse's Eat Ur Veggies program at Mission High School.
Her book Dandelion & Quince, a cookbook of essential wildlings will be published by Roost Books in 2016.