Wisconsin Foodie

– Announcer: This week on Wisconsin Foodie: - The Island is really becoming known as a food hub, a food place.

It's not just a place to drive around and maybe go through to get to Rock Island if you're a tourist.

The word is starting to get out.

You can go to Washington Island and get some great food and then go to Rock Island.

So maybe stay for a night, eat at Hotel Washington.

– Matt Poole: The history of food on this island has changed so dramatically over the years.

We're more interested in trying to find ways of kind of putting, putting down roots and putting resources back into the community.

– Announcer: Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters: [energetic music, cash register rings] [gift card rustling] [pouring a beverage] [mystical swirling] [heart beats "lub-dub"] [bell chimes as door opens] - The dairy farmers of Wisconsin are proud to underwrite Wisconsin Foodie , and remind you that in Wisconsin we dream in cheese.

[crowd cheering] Just look for our badge.

It's on everything we make.

- At Organic Valley, our cows make milk [cheerful whistling] with just a few simple ingredients.

Sun, soil, rain, and grass.

[bubbles popping] And grass, and grass.

– Cow: Yee-haw!

[angelic choir music] - Organic Valley Grassmilk, organic milk from 100% grass-fed cows.

[banjo music] - Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends only in Wisconsin since 1993.

Just a short drive from Madison, come visit "Swissconsin," and see where your beer's made.

[upbeat music] - Wisconsin's great outdoors has something for everyone.

Come for the adventure, stay for the memories.

Go wild in Wisconsin.

To build your adventure, visit d-n-r dot w-i dot g-o-v. - From production to processing, right down to our plates, there are over 15,000 employers in Wisconsin with career opportunities to fulfill your dreams and feed the world.

Hungry for more?

Shape your career with these companies and others at fabwisconsin.com.

- With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore.

From local animal sourcing to on-site high-quality butchering and packaging.

The Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically raised, grass-fed, and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers.

The Conscious Carnivore, know your farmer, love your butcher.

- Additional support coming from the Viroqua Food Co-op, Central Wisconsin Craft Collective, Something Special from Wisconsin, Crossroads Collective, La Crosse Distilling Company, as well as the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

[clapping along to energetic music] - Announcer: We are a collection of the finest farmers, food producers, and chefs on the planet.

We're a merging of cultures and ideas shaped by this land.

We are a gathering of the waters, and together, we shape a new identity to carry us into the future.

[clinking glasses] [scraping knife] We are storytellers.

We are Wisconsin Foodie .

[paper rustling] [dramatic electronic music] - So we're gonna go and we're gonna harvest some herbs from our back porch here.

I'm Matt Poole.

And I'm the chef of the Hotel Washington on Washington Island in Wisconsin.

Well, the hotel was built in 1904.

It's a very historic building.

It was a place where ship captains who came to bring Whitefish back to Chicago or to bring tourists or bring supplies to the island would stay.

The history of food on this island has changed so dramatically over the years.

The first white settlers who came to the island came here for fish.

And fish, there was huge, huge, huge amounts of trout and Whitefish.

The populations just aren't quite there as much.

And as much as this is still a place the people think fish, I think that's changing somewhat.

I really love the things that just grow here without any intervention.

Mushrooms, spruce tips.

We started doing some things with spruce tips last year that were really, really delicious.

Ramps, like all these really beautiful things that just want to grow here.

I think of those things is more of the flavor of the place.

[soft music] My first visit to the island was in January of 2018.

And I got on the ferry-- It's a icebreaker ferry during the winter.

Got on the ferry.

It crunched its way through the packed ice.

I got off the ferry and it was very quiet here.

During the winter, there's only a few hundred people who live here.

I was living in Michigan for a long time.

I started cooking in Michigan, but after a little bit, I realized that I wanted to try, while I could-- I got a late start as a cook.

And so, I wanted to try to jumpstart things and go to a place that had maybe a few more opportunities and some more developed kind of food economy.

And so, I decided to move to California, specifically, to the Bay Area.

And I had a great opportunity to work at 'Chez Panisse' which was obviously a great opportunity there.

My connection to the island is that I went to college with Russell, who started Hoot Blossom Farm with his wife, Alessandra.

And they came here because of Jeannie Kokes.

Jeannie had a vision for the island, had a vision for the hotel after she bought it, that it would be a place where younger people could come and they could build their dreams.

[upbeat music] - I'm Alessandra.

And this is Russell, and this is Hoot Blossom Farm.

– Russell Rollfs: We tried to be the island's kinda' kitchen garden.

So we grow a little bit of everything.

It's a small market here so we have to diversify.

The island is really becoming known as a food hub, a food place.

It's not just a place to like drive around and maybe go through to get to Rock Island if you're a tourist.

The word is starting to get out.

You can go to Washington Island and get some great food and then go to Rock Island.

[Alessandra laughs] So, maybe stay for a night and eat at Hotel Washington.

So we were living in Milwaukee and we met Jeannie Kokes.

She started Hotel Washington the year before.

She bought this farm.

And she's like, if I buy it, maybe farmers will come.

I was a teacher.

Alessandra was in a graduate program in Milwaukee.

So we both had the summer free and we were like, "Okay, let's go to Washington Island "and grow some vegetables for this hotel restaurant and have a fun summer."

And we stuck around.

Jeannie Kokes is a remarkable person.

I mean, she's really responsible for this whole network of farms and the hotel.

She's been instrumental in getting all of it started.

Her passion is food as well and sustainable agriculture.

– Alessandra: And she's also very passionate about the island community and making the island a thriving place.

And so, I think that's probably a lot of the reasons behind her help in starting all these things is because she loves the island.

- The Hotel Washington, it's kind of the center, kind of the hub of a wheel of a bunch of other businesses that have been put here by Jeannie.

Because we can-- We're kind of the place a lot of this produce is being sold, but it's really, it's just that one component of this larger community, a food economy that's kind of cropping up around the hotel.

It's a bunch of people who all have some ideas.

We're all trying to hash out what those might look like but ultimately, we want this to be... We want it to be a business that can sustain itself, but also be sustaining the people that are part of it, can be sustaining the land.

My name is Casey Dahl and we're at Folk Tree Farm on Washington Island.

Folk Tree Farm is myself and my partner Sean's farm.

It's 21 acres.

We raised about an acre and a half of vegetables.

We're establishing an orchard.

We have a small personal dairy goat herd.

And we're also looking to do a lot of tree and wildlife plantings throughout the farm.

We're really looking to produce food for people but doing it in a way that we feel is the most ecologically responsible.

- We're interested in trying to find ways of kind of putting down roots and putting resources back into the community.

Selling stuff that's from the island, selling produce from the island, selling beef from the island, selling the honey and the maple syrup.

I mean, we're trying to buy everything from as close to home as possible to try to keep money in our economy, to try to keep money in our neighbor's pockets.

To me, that's what a community is.

It's people who are taking care of each other.

So, the hotel is part of that community.

– Amanda Ebenhoeh: My name is Amanda.

I'm the pastry chef at Hotel Washington.

I don't really know what my style is right now.

I think I just base my style off of curiosity.

[upbeat music] It's an ice cream base.

The overall goal, chamomile ice cream.

I did this one other time, a couple of weeks ago when I had fresh chamomile flowers from Folk Tree Farm.

I kind of just adapt and make menus off of what's available, which is like that's the funnest part of being up here.

All the challenges.

Food is just something I've always had a curiosity about.

I love going to restaurants.

I love reading menus, love collecting menus.

I love reading specifically bar menus like the weird, funky cocktail-like concoctions, I feel like are really good ideas for desserts.

Just things that are a little outside the box.

And you wouldn't think that you could be eating it with a fork or a spoon.

You think you would be drinking it or something or smelling it in the air.

Last year, I made a custard with chamomile and just used dried tea.

And this year, the chamomile from the farm, and it...

I think it's like, [sniffs] creamy and sweet.

I'm gonna put these into the milk to steep for a while.

I used honey in this because I think the floral from the honey, which is island honey, just kind of brings out the floral notes in the chamomile.

We try to get as many things from the island.

And I think that's definitely our goal moving forward is like, as "on island" as possible.

And then, we kind of, like, this year, we extended it to the county and Wisconsin, try to keep that our barrier.

Little taste test here.

I'm gonna add more chamomile.

Maybe I'll just add all of it.

Now we're talking!

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

I'm gonna leave that for a bit.

[upbeat music] - The first time I met Jeannie, she was just like sparkling with potential.

And you could just see her scheming all these things in her brain, like, so excited about all of these possibilities.

We just connected right away.

And it was really special.

I'm a crier, so excuse me.

I just remember, she left me a voicemail as soon as I accepted my job and it made me cry like this.

So just to feel supported and have someone genuinely excited about you and just totally willing to like, support your creativity.

She can name drop, like, anybody on this island.

She just like knows everyone and their story.

- Hello, Mr. O'Connell, are you keeping yourself safe?

- Very safe.

- Great.

He, he took our old dishwasher and made it into a smoker and smokes his salmon.

And he gave us, what was it, two years ago, your morels?

You told me you were gonna do it again, but you haven't.

[Jeannie laughing] Good seeing you.

So, every loaf is different.

I'm making a sourdough / whole wheat / rye bread.

I've been really making bread ever since I've been coming up to the island full-time.

I like the process.

I like the creativity of it.

I enjoy eating it with butter or peanut butter and I love giving it away.

Making bread does connect me back to other generations.

It really helps me feel the continuity of people who came before me, my grandmothers, my aunts, and then, friends, and then being able to continue this so I can pass it on to anyone who wants to know it.

And there are a lot of good bakers on the island.

There are a lot of, mostly women.

– Luke Zahm: How do you find bread as like a metaphor for what you're doing here?

- Well, you need a little spark, you need a little yeast.

And then, you just need the elements to come together.

And they're all working together.

I mean, this is working right now.

This is feeding on itself to get bigger.

And there's also a timing to it.

It can get just to the right size, and then, you need to bake it.

You need to make it stop growing so it can become what it is.

And I think that's true here.

We're not into making something big and huge.

We're into making what is the best possible combination of the farms and gathering ground and the hotel.

What's the best combination that can come out of these elements?

And I think that's really like bread.

And then just to enjoy yourself.

Sometimes, it's hard when you're trying to get a dream going to remember to enjoy yourself at the same time.

So here, we're bringing the elements together and we're having a good time seeing what we can create.

- Well, I don't know truly how many people really understand the impact of what she has planned or what she's doing and the things that, like, are important to her.

Like, do people know that she's the one that like helped curate bringing all this agriculture to the island?

Like, do they know that she has all of these ideas on how to keep this island going after she's not even here?

Caring about this soil and what grows here and, like, how can this island be more sustainable by itself?

It's pretty incredible.

– Jeannie: Come on, come to me!

[happy laughter] Ready?

– Luke Zahm: Today, I have the honor and privilege of actually sitting down with owner and philosopher and overall pretty amazing human, Jeannie Kokes.

And Jeannie, thank you so much for the hospitality and the warm welcome to the island.

This is incredible.

I've been to some islands in my day, and I don't think any of them have been quite as unique as Washington Island.

So tell me a little bit about the hotel.

- She was built in 1904 by two young men.

The woman, Effie, said to her husband, Ben, "Let's build a hotel."

And so, you can imagine the feat this was on an island in the early 1900s.

- It seems that you could do this project anywhere.

- No, I could only do it here.

- Why?

- My grandparents, in the early 1930s, came up to the island because their daughter said, "You have to come and see this place."

And they came from Chicago, Riverside, Illinois, and ever since then, that was the only vacation they took.

Two weeks every year in July.

And they stayed at this hotel the first night, my grandparents.

And my dad told me that long before I was thinking of buying the hotel, long before it was even up for sale.

- So there's a restaurant that's associated with this, this beautiful hotel.

Tell me a little bit about the philosophy behind that and the chef?

Because I think that that's worth leaning into.

- My philosophy is bring good people and then let them do what they can do.

And Matt has a deep commitment to healthy eating and food grown locally.

So he started all these relationships with people on Door-- in the peninsula.

We even have a farm where we get their flour from south of Green Bay.

And he cooks in a way that you know he cares about what he's preparing and it's good food for the soul.

- If you had a magic wand, and you could imprint everyone who set foot on the island with a message, what's that message for you?

- Slow down.

Look around.

Notice.

Pay attention to all the things, all the energy that you are swirling with in your day to day.

And then, be grateful.

And then, take care of it.

[slow, gentle music] - Luke: Oh, man, that smells good already.

– Matt: Hey, Luke, how's it going?

– Luke: What do we have here?

- Oh, I've got chanterelles.

Wild chanterelles from the island, brought to us by some friends.

- I would assume, given your style of cuisine, that you have a kind of a master network of foragers here.

- We have a few people who are bringing us some stuff.

The word's getting out though that we buy all the weird stuff you find in the woods.

So, hopefully, we'll see more people coming up with bags of mushrooms and ramps and all the good stuff.

- So, kind of on that same line, like, I would have to imagine this is the driving force of influence in your cuisine.

Is that correct?

- Yeah, it's just like, there's so many beautiful things that just, they grow in the woods or just grow really well here.

We wanna just highlight all of the things that the ground and the environment wants to grow.

So, whether that be vegetables from our farms or stuff from the woods.

- The chanterelle's grilling up.

I got to ask, man, what are we eating tonight?

- We got a lot of really cool stuff coming out of the gardens right now.

So we're going to grill up some broccolini, which is one of my favorite veggies.

It's like a thin, tender-skinned broccoli with beautiful leaves that get nice and crispy on the grill.

We also have something that I've been playing around with and we're gonna give it a shot on the grill.

It's actually kind of like almost bolted lettuce so the center is kind of a, almost like asparagus but the whole thing has the bitterness of like a chicory.

And then, the sauce is gonna be a sorrel, salsa verde.

So, it's sorrel and parsley.

There's a little bit of mint, a little bit of tulsi basil, some macerated scallions.

And this oil that we use, pretty much our house oil is sunflower oil that's made in Pulaski, Wisconsin.

So, that's gonna be kind of like underneath, and then, all those things are gonna be stacked on top and roasty and delicious.

- That sounds amazing.

[fusion music] Tonight, we invited some of our friends over, our farmers, our owner, Jeannie.

And we're gonna eat on the beautiful lawn here.

- Good food, good community.

- Yeah.

- I think that that's a really exciting chapter in Washington Island.

This is great.

[happy conversations in background] - Try that?

- No.

- Island Orchard Cider!

- Cider.

- Yeah, cider.

- Take a bite.

- That's too big of bite.

- The vegetable is just from lettuce instead of broccoli.

Oh, it smells so good, like, the char on it.

[relaxing instrumental] - Luke: Food!

[all laughing] It's what's for dinner?

- Yeah, that's right.

Well, thanks so much for coming out to the island.

- This has truly been a pleasure.

And, I don't know, since this is my first time on the island actually, if there's any way to top it coming back again, I guess we're gonna have to... - You have to come back here.

- Find a way.

- That's right.

- Absolutely.

[Luke laughs] - You will back.

- Well, here's to you and your hospitality!

Thank you so much.

Cheers.

[glasses clink] - All: Cheers.

- All right, dig again.

- Those Chanterelles, like, being of kinda' kissed with the smoke a little bit, they take all that in and the sorrel sauce, the acidity in there, it balances everything out.

It kind of gives a counterpoint to the wood smoke.

And then, the earthiness of all the broccoli.

It's delicious.

- Oh, thanks so much, man.

- Of course.

- Yeah.

- Do you need a piece, bud?

You want a piece of pizza?

Cool, here you go, ma'am.

- Yeah.

- Is this one okay?

– Luke: There it is.

Oh, my gosh, that's adorable!

[all laughing] - You got pizza?

- Nice job, buddy!

- Good job asking.

- So we're sitting in front of this beautiful hotel and we're eating this delicious food from right here.

How does this make you feel?

[Jeannie laughing] - I'm almost in bliss.

I mean, I look over at Casey and I see he grew these greens.

I look at Matt and I know he put this combination together.

I know Amanda has ice cream for us waiting.

So, it's like the perfect story in a very uncomfortable world.

- You found a way to make a very uncomfortable world feel very comfortable and familiar.

And I gotta say, if there was ever a community in Wisconsin to come and fall in love in, to come and fall in love with, to see the connection between the farmer and the forger and the chef and the baker and the hotel and the entire community, this is it.

[gentle weaving instrumental] How are my eyebrows?

The Hotel Washington Island or the Hotel... Washington Island Hotel and Studio.

The owner of Hotel Washington Island.

No, I messed that up.

One more time, oh, my God.

There are many islands.

There are many hotels, but today, we are sitting down with the owner of Hotel Washington and Studio.

– Crew member: [indistinct] - But that was great.

I liked that.

Yeah!

- All right.

- That was the best opening.

- Okay, here we go.

– Announcer: Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters: [energetic music, cash register rings] [gift card rustling] [pouring a beverage] [mystical swirling] [wind whooshes] [heart beats "lub-dub"] [bell chimes as door opens] - The dairy farmers of Wisconsin are proud to underwrite Wisconsin Foodie , and remind you that, in Wisconsin we dream in cheese.

[crowd cheering] Just look for our badge.

It's on everything we make.

- At Organic Valley, our cows make milk [cheerful whistling] with just a few simple ingredients.

Sun, soil, rain, and grass.

[bubble popping] And grass, and grass.

– Cow: Yee-haw!

[angelic choir music] - Organic Valley Grassmilk, organic milk from 100% grass-fed cows.

[banjo music] - Employee-owned New Glarus Brewing Company has been brewing and bottling beer for their friends only in Wisconsin since 1993.

Just a short drive from Madison, come visit Swissconsin, and see where your beer's made.

[upbeat music] - Wisconsin's great outdoors has something for everyone.

Come for the adventure, stay for the memories.

Go wild in Wisconsin.

To build your adventure, visit d-n-r dot w-i dot g-o-v. - From production to processing, right down to our plates, there are over 15,000 employers in Wisconsin with career opportunities to fulfill your dreams and feed the world.

Hungry for more?

Shape your career with these companies and others at fabwisconsin.com.

- With additional support coming from The Conscious Carnivore.

From local animal sourcing to on-site high-quality butchering and packaging.

The Conscious Carnivore can ensure organically raised, grass-fed and healthy meats through its small group of local farmers.

The Conscious Carnivore, know your farmer, love your butcher.

- Additional support coming from the Viroqua Food Co-op, Central Wisconsin Craft Collective, Something Special from Wisconsin, Crossroads Collective, La Crosse Distilling Company, as well as the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

- Are you hungry for more?

Check us out on YouTube.