The Wharton Palate: Dining In

EATG 711: Dining In. This course will explore achieving the double bottom line returns of tasty food and networking at Wharton. Detailed analysis of how managers make decisions that will optimize output through a relationship-building structure and menu strategy will be conducted. Prerequisite: a huge appetite.

Syllabus. I’ve always been obsessed with food, but this summer, I was particularly immersed; my internship was at a soup kitchen in San Francisco (required reading: Michael Pollan’s 2006 Omnivore’s Dilemma), where I was surrounded by the Slow Food Movement (http://www.slowfood.com/) and slapped upside the head by the muse. I gave myself an assignment, requiring much research and several final presentations: make pasta sauce from scratch. Included in my syllabus were the following ground rules: 1) whenever possible, use only ingredients found in nature (i.e. no canned tomatoes!), 2) whenever possible, use organic/free-range ingredients, and 3) other Wharton grad students must be involved.

This is how I came to be carrying 7.5 lbs of organic, vine ripened tomatoes, 1 lb of bones from free-range chickens, a 3.5-lb whole, organic, free-range chicken, a bottle of pinot grigio, and other sundry items, through all of Hurricane Hanna’s vicious glory last weekend.

Midterm Exam. The roast chicken dinner was my problem set. I decided that inviting only one WG ’09 (my husband) to pontificate on the chicken-y-ness of free-range chicken wouldn’t be enough and therefore emailed a certain WGA President to come over. Two bottles of wine later and with absolutely no leftovers making its way back to my refrigerator, the three of us found ourselves content and heading over to Ten Stone to watch fights break out and to ask even more people about what they did this summer. (OMG, really?! That’s so cool! Are you going back? Are you going to recruit again? Blah, blah…)

Midterm Presentation. Did the free-range chicken taste more like chicken? Though tasty, the overwhelming consensus was no, not really. Was it juicier? Yes, even the white meat portions were more tender than that of my prior roast chickens... but, I guess that without a control chicken, we’ll never really know. Was the 100% premium and trip to Reading Terminal Market on a crowded Saturday afternoon in the rain worth it? No.

The chicken, however, was only the midterm in an iterative course. All the leftover bones, plus carrots, celery, and the pound of extra bones that I picked up, were drunkenly thrown into a slow cooker when I got back from Ten Stone and set on low heat for 8 hours. When I woke up with a mild hangover, voila, I had chicken stock, which was part of my final assignment.

Final Exam. I haven’t purchased canned pasta sauce in over two years. No Ragu. No Prego. No Classico, Buitoni, or even Newman’s Own. I’ve been making my own in the slow cooker using a 1:1 ratio of canned whole San Marzano tomatoes and canned tomato paste. To recreate the whole tomatoes, I stewed peeled tomatoes in chicken stock and white wine (extra credit for alcoholic ingredients!). For the paste, I saw Ina Garten roast plum tomato halves in the oven with just a sprinkling of kosher salt, pepper, and olive oil—which I did, only for a lot longer, at lower temperature, and then pulverized into a paste in the food processor.

Final Presentation. I accidentally threw in too much hot pepper flakes into the sauce as it was reducing (yes, I was again a bit tipsy after “catching up” with a fellow WGA ’09 Community Service DVP), so I guess it became an arrabbiata. The final presentation dinner was penne con melanzane (penne with eggplant… Wharton Italians, please do not kill me for making the American bastard son of this dish). My husband was at a corporate sell dinner (Really? Already?), so I had another WG’09 come over in between Fashion Show and BizWorld meetings.

Seven pounds of tomatoes, purchased for about $15, reduced to something like one normal, 25-oz jar of pasta sauce, which one can find for around $2.50 in a grocery store ($5 for an organic version). We agreed that, though the sauce tasted better than jarred versions, $20 for raw materials plus about 8 hours of direct labor were not a cash flow positive investment. No economies realized, that’s for sure.

Debrief & Take-Aways. Though networks were built through meaningful conversations over yummy, though impractically made meals, I will go back to making pasta sauce with canned tomatoes. I can, however, say that I tried and if ever in a consulting interview someone asks me how many tomatoes one needs to make a 25-oz jar of pasta sauce, I will know. And so will you. You’re welcome.

Next Time: The Wharton Palette goes on a double date to the new Stephen Starr mega-bistro, Parc, on 18th and Locust Streets. Will this Balthazar wannabe hold a fork to Keith McNally’s 11-year, New York City hotspot?