Wisconsin Foodie

– Announcer: This week on Wisconsin Foodie : [instrumental music] - Immy Kaggwa: I'm from Uganda/Kenya.

Most of the cooking I learned from my mother.

Today, I'm preparing the smoked jerk chicken.

The way I do mine is a stew.

I guess the feedback we get is, "You must put in a lot of love in your food."

I say, "Of course."

– Jeremy Solin: I grew up in a logging family, so that land's been in our family for 100 years, and maple syrup is one of the things that allows us to continue to take care of our land and keep it in our family.

Yeah, so the recipe that we recommend with this is a Tom Collins.

So thanks for having... - Here's to keeping you and your family on your farm.

Much appreciated.

– Jeremy: Thank you very much.

[instrumental music] - Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

[upbeat music] - 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 with just a few simple ingredients: sun, soil, rain, and grass.

And grass, and grass.

- Yee-haw!

Organic Valley Grassmilk: organic milk from 100% grass-fed cows.

- 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.

- 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 dnr.wi.gov.

- 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.

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

[upbeat music] - Luke: We are a collection of the finest farmers, food producers, and chefs on the planet.

We are merging of cultures and ideas, shaped by this land.

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

[upbeat music] We are storytellers.

We are Wisconsin Foodie .

[groovy music] - Woman: You like that one, too?

- My name is Immaculate Kaggwa.

In short, I go by Immy.

We are at the Shorewood Farmers Market.

Sundays, we do this event every Sunday from 9:30 to 1:00 PM.

The farmers market is actually amazing.

This is my first time doing a farmers market.

We pretty much wake up at 4: 00 in the morning, go to the commercial kitchen to get everything going.

Right now, we just warming up the smoked jerk chicken.

So it has flavors with Caribbean spices with a twist of the African spices.

Yes, people do inquire.

Of course, they are curious, African cuisine.

What part of Africa?

Then we have to tell them it's East Africa, which is mainly Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania.

We have similar cookings.

[groovy music] Warming up some chickpeas mixed with black beans and other vegetables for the vegan people or people who like beans.

It's delicious, it's my favorite dish.

The chickpeas and black beans.

Farmers markets and festivals usually don't have a lot of vegan or vegetarian options.

So people do really appreciate that they find something that they can eat.

Oh, we put the vegetables last because we have the goat curry here.

So we wouldn't want the goat stew to come into the vegetables.

My nephew, Peter Paul, he's at the cash register.

Then Santos does the serving food, and then Frank is in the back, warming up and deep frying.

I'm kind of in the middle, wherever I'm needed.

Either serving or making smoothies or in the back.

[groovy music] You know what?

As a first customer with two little kids, you get a bonus of another smoothie.

– Man: Oh, we're lucky.

– Immy: The customers are very friendly and they are very appreciative to have something different, something new.

People are always looking forward, coming back every Sunday.

[people chatting] We have rice that we serve over the different stews.

We have the smoked jerk chicken, we have chicken curry mixed with spinach, we have goat curry, and then the beans, chickpeas with black beans.

It's a stew over rice.

Appetizers, we have the sambusas, the vegetarian option and the meat option.

Vegetarian is lentils, the meat is ground turkey.

And the bhajias, those are potatoes dipped in chickpea flour with spices.

They are all delicious.

When I first started doing this, the going on festivals, I would sell the sambusas with no sauce, and of course, Americans love to dip.

"Where's the sauce?"

So I had to create a sauce because buying sauce from the store would be expensive.

So the sauce is all vegetables.

I just mix everything, blend them together with hot peppers, cayenne pepper and all that.

Blend it and serve it.

You feel the pride, and then to feel like people really do appreciate you here.

They'll finish eating, come back, say, "Thank you, the food was amazing."

So that gives you more fulfillment and wanting to do your work more just to feed people out there.

You can tell when somebody is really happy and excited.

When you put passion into the food, that makes a big difference because you want people to be satisfied.

You take your time to cook, not just, "Okay, I just have to do it for the sake of selling food," but you have to be patient and do a great job.

- Have a lovely day.

- You too.

[groovy music] - All right, today I'm preparing the smoked jerk chicken.

It's already smoked and it's ready to be cooked.

The way I do mine is a stew-type jerk chicken.

Not exactly like the Caribbean one.

Mine has a twist of the East African spices and the Caribbean spices, and I use the jerk chicken seasoning and other spices that I normally use.

So I'll put in my onions, then my peppers.

I'll mix up everything together, my cayenne pepper, the fresh ones.

All right, then I'm putting in my cilantro, it gives it a more flavorful taste.

Then I'll mix up everything together.

I'm from Uganda/Kenya.

My dad is Ugandan, my mother is Kenyan.

And also, most of the cooking, I learned from my mother.

In Kenya, they cook because... We were introduced like the curries and other spices by the Indians.

So we have that Indian kind of cooking because of the immigration from the Indians to the East Africa, way back in the 1700s.

So we adopted that.

So you'll find the East Africans using a lot of curries and other Indian spices.

I love cooking because I have my family.

I have four children, a husband, and I've always cooked.

Africans, typically we cook every day, and it's like there is no choice but to cook when you have a family.

I don't eat out much, so my thing is we eat...

I cook every day for the family, and that's how we grew up.

Growing up, you start early on cooking, because we have...

I'm the oldest, and when you're the oldest, you take care of the young ones.

So you learn to cook at a young age.

So cooking is not... Then it becomes a natural thing, whereby you have no choice but to cook, but at the same time, it's a good experience to learn.

Once you do everything fresh, the taste is really amazing.

So once you put in your time and patience, it's a lot of work, 'cause there is a lot of cutting, chopping, but in the end, it's worth it to have a good product in the end where people can really appreciate and enjoy.

[groovy music] - Maybe it's standing next to the pot of curry or like, all the description of the food that you're serving, but my mouth is watering.

So, nice work.

[laughs] A question about some of your first food memories.

Y'know, growing up in Africa, what were your memories like?

Is this a representation of the food you grew up eating?

– Immy: Growing up as an African, we have villages, my grandparents.

So when school closed, I would go to the village, which was very exciting for a city kid.

You go to the village, there is a lot of fun stuff, of course.

And there is a lot of work on the farm, but there are a lot of fruits, climbing trees, different things, and of course, fetching water on the well.

You name it, I did it.

Walking long distances, which was, as a kid it was normal, it was okay.

Now, when you come here, when you see kids here and I try to tell, educate my own kids, never take things for granted 'cause of the experience that I grew up with, I try to instill in them.

And so my kids are really...

So they don't take things for granted.

We don't have something, they'll wait until we are able to provide.

- With all that being said, is there a common storyline or a thread that you want people to feel and experience when they eat your food?

- I guess I want them to experience the authentic cooking, everything made from, you name it, cutting up the chicken, fresh, everything is fresh.

The time that we put in making everything, it adds value to that.

And I guess the feedback we get is, "You must put in a lot of love in your food."

I say, "Of course, you have to be patient with what you do "and make sure everything is done right, "otherwise those people not keep coming back."

Yes, I'll make you a plate.

- Okay, thank you.

- Sure.

So be like an African tradition, having a visitor in the home the first time, you have to feed them something.

Even if you don't have water, at least... Food, at least you give them some water to drink.

– Luke: Okay.

- So this time we're going to... Luckily, we have food.

– Luke: Yes.

– Immy: So we serve you food.

– Luke: Thank you.

– Immy: So this is rice.

So these greens here, I have three different kinds of greens.

– Luke: Okay.

– Immy: I have the kale, the collard greens, and the mustard greens.

I always like to mix up my greens.

– Luke: Do you get these locally?

- Yes, yes I do.

- Yeah.

Do you find like, when you're going to the farmers market, you're finding a lot of the same ingredients that you would normally use in your cuisine?

- Yeah, like the greens I have where you live in Tosa, there is a farmer that I always buy the vegetables from.

– Luke: Sure.

- So every week, I go and buy the peppers, the zucchinis, the carrots, and so forth.

So I have a local farmer that I go to.

- That's amazing.

- To buy the stuff from.

So I'll dip in with a jerk chicken.

– Luke: Yeah!

- Then normally, we put it on top of the rice.

[dreamy music] In order to get all the vegetables.

– Luke: That looks and smells delicious.

I don't know how people would ever leave your house if this is like, the first impression that you get to make.

[laughs] This is great!

– Immy: And then of course, we have the sambusas.

– Luke: Yeah!

– Immy: So they're ground turkey.

And then you can... - Luke: Ground turkey?

- Yes.

- Okay!

- Ground turkey filled with cabbage, carrots, onions, cilantro, ginger, garlic.

– Luke: This is a common thread that goes through so many cultures.

The utilization of fresh, local ingredients and putting them together in a way that's reflective of all of us.

Is that all you're going... Like, literally that's... [laughs] - I cook all the time, so I always like... - Exactly, you... - Inhale it, so... - Oh man, that is so good.

I forgot that it was like, smoked.

So you get that really beautiful, rich essence of smoke in the chicken.

It's juicy, obviously it's been stewed.

So it's taking in all those aromatics, all those spices.

It's got a little bit of kick in it, but this isn't like, showstopping, like I have to have something right away to wash that down.

It's warm, it makes your whole body feel warm.

- Yeah, and the reason to that is I want everybody to have an experience.

There are some people who don't eat... who don't like like, the really hot, spicy stuff.

So, gives them a chance to try.

- Sure.

- Yes, so it's not like, overwhelming.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- If you were in Uganda or Kenya and this dish was served, would it be much hotter?

- Yes, some people prefer hotter.

- Are there people at the farmers markets that you really enjoy serving food to, seeing like... Getting to the actual experience of trying your cuisine?

- I guess the most rewarding is when somebody buys food or people, when they buy food and they are finished eating, they come back to you, "Thank you, that was amazing."

That's the most rewarding one, yeah.

Taking the time to come back.

- What do you miss most about Africa?

- I miss home, relatives, the foods, the fruits, fresh.

You just wake up, the jackfruit, wake up in the morning, okay, the tree is filled with mangoes.

[Luke laughs] Yeah, so I miss that.

So I have two homes now, here and there, and we have great things here, there are great things over there, too.

So it's both ways.

– Luke: That's amazing.

- Yes.

- Well, if you should ever be so lucky to be at the farmers market where Immy is selling food, or to be a guest in one of her two homes, this is truly a beautiful and enriching experience, and I for one, am so honored to be able to be in here.

I'm so honored to meet you, and this is delicious.

- Thank you.

[groovy music] - Jeremy Solin: There's lots of aspects to maple syrup, for sure.

Glazes on meats and vegetables.

I love it in coffee, pretty much every day.

[groovy music] We are in the Farmshed kitchen.

So it's a community-use kitchen of the nonprofit local food organization Farmshed.

We do a lot of small batches in here.

It allows me to control flavor really well, produce things basically on demand for our customers.

Our website is tappedmaplesyrup.com.

So we have an online store, and then we work with about 70 partners throughout the state.

So you can find it on menus in bars and in restaurants.

So this is 5 gallons of syrup, weighs 55 pounds.

To get to this is a lot of work, like 175 to 200 gallons of sap from the trees.

So we're still kinda, at the core, making maple syrup how it's always been made.

When I started tapping, we were using a brace and a bit to put a hole in the tree.

So now we're out there with an electric drill.

They pop a hole in in two seconds.

It's just about getting sap out of the trees and cooking the water off.

– Luke: What are we working with today?

– Jeremy: Yeah, so this makes an amazing syrup.

This is the mash from Bittercube making cherry bark vanilla bitters.

So all kinds of amazing ingredients in there.

The aroma of it is amazing.

- I mean, it's so aromatic.

– Jeremy: Yeah.

- It's so aromatic.

- Right.

- And it smells like a cocktail already.

- Right, cocktail is the right way to be thinking about this.

There's cherry bark, there's oak chips, there's vanilla beans, there's star anise, there's cassia.

- Are we at the point where we can add this to the syrup?

- Yeah!

I think we're ready to go.

– Luke: Fantastic.

– Jeremy: So put the mash into the maple syrup.

With this one, we do about three cups of mash per gallon of syrup.

And that's a recipe I've played with for quite a while to get that kind of right flavor combination.

So just dump it in.

– Luke: In it goes.

- With the infusion process, the other thing is about trying to extract the flavors that you want and not the ones that you don't want.

So often at higher temperatures, you start getting more, kind of bitter.

So you're trying to control that just at the right temperature.

So... - Luke: Sure.

That it's really, really endearing that you're finding new ways to kind of strengthen that community and give yourself some specialization that sets this syrup apart and makes it unique.

[acoustic music] - Jeremy: I grew up in logging family.

So that land's been in our family for 100 years, and maple syrup is one of the things that allows us to continue to take care of our land and keep it in our family.

We work with about six, seven other producers.

So really, we're pulling syrup in from probably about 100 acres, 150 acres of trees.

– Luke: Wow.

- Producing about 1,000 gallons of maple syrup off that land.

- And so you basically, through this process, you're finding a way to market and sell 1,000 gallons of maple syrup not only from your family's property, but from the adjacent properties of maple farmers that have been doing this assumably for generations as well.

– Jeremy: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You know, from the time we make it to the time it gets to someone using it is generally less than a month.

Yeah.

– Luke: Wow.

– Jeremy: So at the oldest, a lot of this stuff will be gone tomorrow.

– Luke: That's incredible.

– Jeremy: Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, we're ready to bottle here.

[acoustic music] - Luke: Oh my gosh, that's so satisfying.

Do you ever find yourself just like wanting to chug one of those things?

- Yeah, especially this syrup right now, man.

It's a good thing it's hot, otherwise it would be really tempting, right?

[acoustic music] Now you got a full one.

– Luke: Oh, look at that.

I just want everybody at home to appreciate that beautiful meniscus there.

– Jeremy: That's right.

You formed a nice meniscus.

– Luke: Oh my gosh!

– Jeremy: There you go.

– Luke: Now it's just everywhere.

– Jeremy: That's all right.

We've got rags for that, that's what bleach water is for.

[both laughing] - Are there any other local businesses in the community that you work with closely?

- Yeah, a big part of kind of our approach to business is collaboration.

So you've spent some time with the Main Grain and with Father Fats, both great partners of ours.

So Father Fats and Main Grain both use our syrup in their cooking.

We really approach kind of all the folks that we work with.

What a lot of people call customers, we think of them as partners, and really look to collaboration.

[dreamy music] Yeah, so the recipe that we recommend with this is a Tom Collins, so let's do it.

So we're using Great Northern gin.

We do a lot of work with Great Northern.

So we use their whiskey barrels in our whiskey barrel-aged maple syrup.

This is syrup we just made.

This bottle, this one's nice and warm.

So you get the full effect of it.

It's a little warm, and somehow it's a little sticky on the outside of the bottle.

[Luke laughing] I'm not exactly sure how that happened, but...

There we go.

I'll make enough for two drinks here.

I don't want you to drink alone.

– Luke: Oh, thanks.

– Jeremy: All right, cheers.

- Cheers brother, thank you.

- Yeah, yeah.

[dreamy music] That's a good, refreshing drink.

- Yeah it is, totally.

I mean, the idea of maple in a cocktail at first, I just automatically go to like cold seasonal, like, "Oh, I want that brown, brown liquor!"

But something that's as light and aromatic as gin, it really plays well, and you get those notes of cherry and that vanilla.

It's subtle, it's there.

- Citrus and maple syrup are kinda surprisingly compatible.

– Luke: Sure!

- I love it, cool.

- Cheers to that, man.

- Yeah, awesome.

- Here's to keeping you and your family on your farm.

Much appreciated.

- Thank you very much.

[dreamy music] So, this is... Cardamom is one of my favorites.

Really adds some depth and interest to fruit desserts, things like... - Sure.

- Rhubarb and... [laughs] Flavors tables nicely.

[upbeat music] - Man: After this one, do you guys wanna get-- - Luke: Son of a B... [Jeremy laughing] [both laughing] Gah!

– Jeremy: That one got your hands.

[laughs] - Luke: It's okay, chef hands.

– Jeremy: That's right.

[laughs] [upbeat music] - Wisconsin Foodie would like to thank the following underwriters.

[upbeat music] - 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 with just a few simple ingredients: sun, soil, rain and grass.

And grass, and grass.

- Yee-haw!

– Organic Valley Grassmilk: organic milk from 100% grass-fed cows.

- 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.

- 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 dnr.wi.gov.

- 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 onsite, 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, the La Crosse Distilling Company, as well as the Friends of PBS Wisconsin.

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