A Chef In The wild

You can't find many chefs in the wild. Maybe in a controlled grove or two hunting down truffles but never fully in a forest. Yet that's where chef Iliana Regan could be, somewhere in  northern Michigan. Is this usual?  For this unusual chef yes.

Kin Severson went to this beautifully wild area for an interview with chef Regan for today's New York Times Food section. This is an area located on Michigan's Upper peninsula in Hiawatha National Forest. It's not an area associated with fancy or trendy eateries and innovative chefs. Yet it 's a calming force in the chef's sometimes wild life and a quiet escape from her bad girl past. It's also a place where she can forage, something she's been doing since a child on her parents farm in Merrillville , Indiana, a farm region directly south of Gary Indiana, and Chicago. Both foraging and cooking could have been influenced by her parents, her father a steelworker who loved planting vegetables and her mother, a Gourmet magazine fan who made her own pasta. After a strange incident that involved a tornado, her father teaching to hunt for chanterelles and a child molester uncle Chef Regan  was introduced to cooking.She was saved from the uncle by a family friend while the mushrooms remained unharmed. Her father brought her into the kitchen sat her down on a stool and taught her to cook the chanterelles with red wine and butter. That was the deciding point that she go into cooking. She has no formal training. She worked in small town restaurants. Chef Regan did go to college, studying chemistry at Indiana University , Bloomfield but then found it wasn't for her.

Chef Regan wanted to write. She received a creative writing degree from Columbia College in Chicago. She also worked at restaurants between classes, eventually landing at job at Trio for famed Chicago chef, Grant Achatz. In 2008 she began selling food she made , including her butter infused beet pierogies which won her acclaim from Chicago Magazine. Two years later she started an underground restaurant and also in her apartment. Fans urged her to open a legit one, Elizabeth named for a beloved sister that died during a night in jail. Elizabeth is an expensive eatery with themed menus inspired by such shows as "Stranger Things" and "Game Of Thrones" . The last she pored through all five books , highlighting every food reference. She also opened up and then quickly closed Bunny The Micro Bakery and Kitsune, a mash up of Japanese cuisine and the American Midwest. Now there is Milkweed a B&B Chef Regan operates with her wife , Anna. It's limited lodging with only three rooms however visitors can also rent the tiny Airstream trailer that the couple took around the country in 2018 to cook pop up dinners. There's also a platform tent guests can rent too. Of course all food is foraged and cooked by Chef Regan and she was already cooking wall eyed trout at .

Chef Regan is a new kind of chef, incorporating foraging into her cooking. It's an ancient way of connecting the kitchen and land. The result is interesting and fresh dishes in a delicious and innovative way.