This month, Duke Dining is having fun with fungus.
In celebration of National Mushroom Month, a Duke Dining discussion series gave students the opportunity to sample a variety of flavored mushrooms and chat with the chefs who prepared the dishes. The discussion series, dubbed Chef’s Chatter, takes place once a month, each time with a specific topic, said Kirsten Marinko, marketing research specialist of Duke Dining Services.
“We started the series as a way to engage students in an educational process with food while meeting our chefs and operations staff,” Marinko wrote in an email on Monday.
Joseph Dawe, director of retail and executive chef for Duke Dining, said that he likes working with mushrooms because they have both nutritional value and a rich, savory taste.
“When people talk about food, mushrooms are one of those things that they call umami,” Dawe said. “It’s a really Asian term, and it’s a buzzword that has run forever in the past 10 years or so. You can’t really describe the umami flavor, but it makes your mouth feel wonderful about the mix of flavors that you taste.”
Mushroom tasting was held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesday at the Penn Pavilion, and from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Marketplace. The sampling table featured three distinct dishes: portobello mushrooms with hummus and feta cheese, mushroom risotto with peas and grilled chicken with mushroom vinaigrette.
Dawe said that he has enjoyed the process of preparing for this event and that he appreciates events such as this where he can interact with students.
Some students at the Pavilion said they enjoyed the opportunity to sample the delicacies.
“I’m not that big a fan of mushrooms, but these are actually quite good,” sophomore Sarah Wall said.
Sophomore Lily Zheng also said she liked the mushroom dishes and that her personal favorite was the risotto.
Duke Dining annually hosts a large number of themed events. Dawe said that he looks forward to the upcoming Oktoberfest, which will feature a selection of food items such as apples and sausages.
“Over the past year we have delivered over 60 special events from small range ‘National Grilled Cheese Day’ to large-scale events such as our upcoming Fall Festival on Sept. 26 where we bring the State Fair to Duke,” Marinko said.
These dining-related special events may not be well known within the student population. Wall and Zheng both said they did not hear about the mushroom tasting in advance, but happened to be in the Pavilion at the same time. They also both said they were not aware of similar events that had occurred before.
“It was definitely a pleasant surprise,” Wall remarked.
Marinko said that Duke Dining strives to enhance the community aspect of dining by engaging students with their peers. Marinko said the new West Union will contain a teaching kitchen with cooking pods where students can have a hands-on culinary learning experience. The teaching kitchen will also have a live feed to provide access to viewers from home.
“The series will help teach students the fundamentals of cooking and the basics of culinary arts,” Marinko said.
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