Chef Jayson McCarter admitted Friday would be the first time he’s seen goat in his kitchen.
“It’s a commercial product – I was happy about that,” he said.
McCarter was ready this weekend for goat meat and more cultural foods to pass through his culinary space at the New Hampshire Food Bank as dishes were prepared for the 10th annual Multicultural Festival, taking place today from 2 to 6 p.m. on the State House lawn.
McCarter, who is an instructor for the Recipe for Success’ Culinary Job Training Program, has overseen food preparation for the Multicultural Festival for several years, though Friday was the first time cooking was done in the food bank’s commercial kitchen.
All the ingredients were bought through the Multicultural Festival committee – many from Concord’s Katmandu Bazaar – and Friday was the main preparation day.
“I’ll bet you we’ll have 30 people through here by the end of the day,” McCarter said. After each dish was done, he said, he and other kitchen staff would help cool the food, and store it safely for Saturday.
“My crew will bring all the food hot and ready to go,” he said, adding that they would help with utensils and menu pricing as well. At the festival, the proceeds from food sales will go to those who made it.
As McCarter watched new Americans from Somalia and Nepal get busy chopping vegetables, hand-mixing dough and gathering their ingredients, he said it was a “no-brainer” to help with preparation for the festival.
The New Hampshire Food Bank has been looking for ways to connect with the New American community in Concord, he added, and they’re also interested in recruiting people to take the eight-week culinary job training class they offer.
“It’s kind of a perfect marriage,” McCarter said.
In return, the kitchen was a good space for the cooks, who had large metal counters, massive metal bowls and some pretty serious knives at their disposal.
As she chopped green peppers, Fartun Shegow, a teenager who was born in Somalia but starts at Concord High School next year, explained how she and her mother, Batulo, and brother, Abdi, were making Somali meat pies Friday.
“First you chop up all the vegetables and you get them in three seperate piles,” she said. On the counter were onions and potatoes waiting to be cut up, too, which would eventually be added to some cooked ground beef. Shegow said her family would then use flour to make a dough for the pies, and then the fillings would be put inside.
“Then you fold them and fry them in oil until they’re brown, and that’s how you eat them,” she said.
Shegow’s family has been making the pies for seven or eight years for the festival. When Batulo Mohamed, Shegow’s mother, was asked how people responded to tasting the pies, Mohamed said, “They like them.”
For their family, Shegow added, they “like to see if other people would like cultural foods. It’s good to try something new.”
In front of Shegow’s family, several new American women from Nepal were just getting started with cooking their dishes, which included rice curry, onion pancakes, and Sel Roti, a sweet doughnut-like bread.
Assisting them was Julianne Gadoury, who has helped coordinate the Multicultural Festival for the past two years. While the event is just one day, the aim is year-round, to help connect new Americans to the community around them.
“We try to connect people with programs like this,” said Gadoury, referring to the New Hampshire Food Bank’s culinary job training program. “The aim of this is to be able to have (new Americans) have a really positive experience interacting with the community, that the wider community really values what they’re bringing.”
She added, “What the festival is really about is trying to make Concord a welcoming community for everybody.”
Anita Dhungel, a 19-year-old who helped her mother, Narayani, make the Sel Roti on Friday, said it’s taken awhile to adjust. But seven years after her family left Nepal, it now feels good to be living in the capital.
“I feel like Concord is a friendly place,” she said.
(Elodie Reed can be reached at 369-3306, ereed@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @elodie_reed.)