Chefs, Growers Pair up for “Dig In”

from Edible Indy Summer 2012 | No. 5

Liquid Assets

Annual fest showcases Indiana food at its best

BY ERIN DAY • PHOTOS BY WHONSETLER PHOTOGRAPHY

It’s a date worth marking on your calendar now. Aug. 26 is the third annual Dig In, a food festival at White River State Park that connects Indiana chefs and growers with diners who like to know where their food comes from. It’s an event that is helping to both define and reflect Central Indiana’s food scene.

For the event, chefs collaborate with farmers and food producers to create dishes that highlight the farmers and producers’ ingredients, and hand out samples to the crowd. Indiana breweries and wineries also offer samples and sell by the glass. Talks by local food experts and live music from Indiana musicians round out the day.

For the $25 admission price, event goers can fill their bellies with samples from every booth. More than 25 food booths were present last year. The lineup of this year’s participating chefs and farmers and their sample dishes wasn’t set as of press time, but “It is gratifying to see how many people are interested in Indiana food,” Freeman says.

Nearly 5,000 people attended last year’s Dig In and 5,000 tickets will be available for this year’s event.

The idea for Dig In dates back to 2008, when local chefs Thom England (an Ivy Tech Culinary Arts Instructor) and Neal Brown (of Pizzology and The Libertine) were inspired to give a summer food festival a local makeover.

Aaron Butts, the executive chef of Joseph Decuis, an upscale farm-to-fork restaurant in Roanoke, says the face-to-face interaction with diners that Dig In provides is key: Restaurants and producers gain new customers, and attendees get a chance to meet the farms that supply local restaurants.

“I’ve always found that people want to support local agriculture, they just have a hard time finding it,” Butts says. “The people who attend are already familiar with the Indy restaurants, but maybe not the farmers.”

Opposite: Bottom right: Gunthorp Farms pork tacos with all the fixins’ by Chef David Tallent of Restaurant Tallent in Bloomington. Bottom left: Smoked turkey and ginger sausage with blueberry mostarda and root vegetable kraut by Chris Eley of Smoking Goose and Goose the Market in Indianapolis. the flavor of the event can be gleaned from past offerings, which include

• Grilled bison tostada with lime-pickled cantaloupe, from chef Craig Baker of The

Local Eatery and Pub and Cook’s Bison

Ranch in Wolcottville. • Duck and goat cheese dumplings with sweet and sour peach sauce, from chef

Brad Gates of Brad Gates Catering and

Maple Leaf Farms in Milford. • Bread pudding with caramel sauce, from

Keltie Sullivan Domina of Keltie’s

Restaurant & Catering in Westfield and

Big Brick House Bakery in Wabash.

The goal of the event is to educate Hoosiers about food that is grown and raised throughout the state, says Eric Freeman, director of Dig In. The samples showcase chefs’ talents and the quality of locally sourced ingredients, and also give home cooks ideas for using foods that might seem puzzling to prepare, such as bison.