A confit pork belly served on yeast cornbread with gooseberry jam, an osso buco style pork shank, and a meatball that has ground bacon and ground pork tossed in a ramen demi sauce. Sounds like the menu from a swanky restaurant, right?
Those were just a few of the dishes from professional chefs at Tuesday night’s Taste of Elegance at the Indiana Roof Ballroom. Each year, the Taste of Elegance program brings talented chefs together to compete in the prestigious event created to encourage chefs to use pork more frequently in creative, non-traditional ways. The event attracts over 400 pork farmers, lawmakers, ag industry leaders and dignitaries to downtown Indianapolis for an evening of elegance and celebration.
This year’s winner was Dean Sample, Executive Chef at FoxGardin Kitchen & Ale in Fortville.
He described his dish to Hoosier Ag Today as, “a pork tenderloin wellington, with a pickle duxelle which is traditionally with mushrooms. I did a mustard aioli. I did a root beer glazed pork belly. I also made pork rinds with the skin that I crumbled over top. I made a little bacon vinaigrette with a frisée salad, and I made some bacon-fat fried potatoes, kind of like French fries.”
Sample is originally from Paragon, Indiana where he grew up on his family’s corn and soybean farm. That’s where he learned how important the hard work farmers put in truly is.
“Literally, I’m the first person in my family not to be a farmer. So, yeah, I get it.”
He says it was his grandmother’s delicious home cooking on the farm that inspired him to be a chef. Sample really enjoys cooking with pork.
“One thing I love about pork is how versatile it is. So, if you have a cut like a pork chop versus ham or a ham hock to accent some green beans or a pot of beans versus the mainstays of a pork chop or pork belly or pork cheeks when you get into more obscure cuts. I mean, there’s not really any other animal that has that many different kinds of textures and flavors within one animal.”
Sample won a cash prize of $1,000 for his win and will work with Indiana Pork on continued cooking opportunities.
If you’re trying to figure out what to put on your table tonight, visit forkmorepork.com for recipes.
