What artichokes have to do with a Minnesota winter
A forager's stand from a market out west, chanterelles, lobster mushrooms, black trumpets, and samphire (sea beans), my all-time favorite. We are just coming into the start of this season here, and if you ask me, this haul is hard to beat.
Every February, I look forward to California artichokes.
Not because Minnesota grows them. Because nothing here is in season yet, and a kitchen that refuses to go quiet for five months has to look somewhere. The deep winter months are where technique does the work that ingredients are doing the rest of the year, longer braises, confit started well in advance, an onion turned into something that tastes like more effort went into it than it did.
Writing a menu for a specific season is part exercise, part art, part negotiation. It starts with questions that sound simple and are not: who is coming, what does this occasion call for, what is actually worth serving right now. When all of those answers are honest, the menu can become something worth remembering. When they are not, it shows.
I come at this one way. My team comes at it differently, each from their own perspective. But the standard underneath it never changes.
Logan, our chef de cuisine, thinks about it more like a game he is constantly trying to win. Each menu starts with the same questions: who, what, when, where, why. When the answers are honest, the menu gets interesting. Asparagus becomes leek. Stone fruit becomes citrus. Morel becomes porcini. Minnesota's growing season is short and demanding, and Logan will be the first to say it keeps him nimble in a way he respects.
He is also the one who taught us that the best dishes are not always planned. When a batch of house-made cheese failed, he reduced the leftover whey into a caramel and paired it with fresh melon. He still talks about Minnesota corn the way other people talk about a favorite song, insisting it cannot be better from farther away, and he is right.
David, one of our chefs, brings a quieter, more grounded view. Seasonality, to him, is about staying tethered to something real in a world where you can get blueberries any day of the year. A vegetable grown in the right soil, at the right time, harvested close to where it grew, simply tastes like more care went into it. That is not sentimental. It is just true.
The beverage program follows the same rhythm. Martina, our general manager and sommelier, builds cocktails around what is actually blooming or ripening that week, lilac in spring, harvested during its brief window for a lilac honey lemonade. By late summer, when tomatoes hit the kitchen, the bar turns to house-made tomato water for a savory martini finished with a peppery nasturtium blossom.
None of this is decoration. It is the same instinct running through the kitchen and the bar: pay attention to what the moment is actually offering, and build something worth remembering around it.
If you are planning an event and want a menu that reflects the season it lands in, now is a good time to start the conversation. Reach out. We’re here.
Ready when you are,
Philip
Founder and Executive Chef
Create Catering and the Dining Studio