State-Journal.com - Veggies go from ground to grill

Chef Ouita Michel, in ribboned hat at right, and her staff work the grill line at the Happy Jack Pumpkin Farm during last year’s harvest dinner in August. (Photo submitted by Kara Keeton)

Chef Ouita Michel stands by the summer harvest menu at Happy Jack Pumpkin Farm. (Photo submitted)

Chef Ouita Michel is such a fan of Happy Jack Pumpkin Farm that she’s shutting down Holly Hill Inn Saturday night and taking her entire staff to host the fourth annual summer harvest dinner at the farm.

She and Happy Jack owners Richard and Lee Ann Jones have teamed up to take fresh-from-the-garden vegetables to a new level.

The dishes served Saturday will travel straight from the ground to the grill.

“What I really like is to be outdoors and cooking,” Michel said. “I think it’s really, really fun. And I enjoy meeting everyone who comes and having them watch us. It’s a neat way to really involve people.”

Recently praised by Southern Living for her “bountiful artistry,” Michel will serve up hors d’oeuvres including squash-blossom fritters, goat cheese baked in tomato basil coulis, gazpacho and eggplant caviar.

The main course includes sweet-corn salad, lime-scented melon salad, slow-cooked green beans and tomatoes, sweet-and-sour onions and fruit crisp with whipped cream.

The main dish (grilled bluegrass chicken slathered in herbs, extra virgin olive oil and preserved lemon) comes from Hickory Run Farm in Junction City, Ky.

The meal’s not complete without a tasty helping of Richard’s fire-roasted potatoes with bacon and onion. Happy Jack’s grows more than 20 different varieties of potatoes, and only Richard’s best go into this dish.

Chef Michel, the Joneses, four cooks and eight servers, prepare the outdoor feast for more than 100 guests from Frankfort, Louisville, Lexington and Cincinnati. The most they can accommodate is 130, which is likely to be reached Saturday night.

“Now’s the time when it really starts booking up, a lot of people are repeats,” Lee Ann Jones said Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s a real friendly family atmosphere,” she said. “We serve the food at community tables, so you may be sitting with other people. It’s a picnic-type setting. Everybody gets up and moves around.”

Guests also get the chance to watch Chef Michel in action.

“You can stand there and talk to her about how she’s preparing it and everything,” Lee Ann Jones said.

Michel loves to talk tastes of summer.

“Kentucky summer is sweet corn, tomatoes, and then a lot of everything that goes with that, green beans, potatoes, squash and peppers, a little toward the end,” Michel said.

Traditional vegetables dominate her menu at Holly Hill Inn in Midway, the restaurant she and her husband, Chris, bought in 2000. She and her husband, with family members, also own Wallace Station Deli and Bakery near Midway and Cleveland’s at the Woodford Inn in Versailles.

Michel explains her style as “traditional Southern fare with a twist, marrying classic cooking techniques with traditional Kentucky foods.”

She looks for ways to reinvent old favorites.

“I like to go back and read recipes from books that were written before 1900, and between 1900 and 1940, and think about how to bring that forward in time.”

Dedicated to cooking with local products, Michel says she started using Happy Jack’s produce four years ago. The farm is also a favorite with her 5-year-old daughter, Willa.

“I feel really inspired by Richard and Lee Ann,” Michel says. “Everything they do on the farm, they do themselves.”

In turn, the Joneses say they’re encouraged by the way Michel supports local farmers.

“She really has been one of the best promoters of preparing local foods,” Lee Ann Jones said.

The summer feast at Happy Jack’s is one of her favorite events, Michel said, because it connects cooking and agriculture directly.

Guests begin to realize that farmers with livelihoods are behind the foods they eat, she said.

“When I’m out there, I feel like I’m grateful to be in Kentucky,” she said. “This is Kentucky to me in an idyllic way.”

Harvest Dinner

Saturday at 7 p.m. at Happy Jack Pumpkin Farm, 966 Hickman Hill Road. Cost is $35 plus tax and gratuity. Wine, beer and spirits will be available. For reservations, call (859) 846-4732.