MEarth kicks off Sustainable Chef Dinner Series at the Hilton Bialek Habitat.

 Last Thursday, MEarth kicked off its Sustainable Chef Dinner Series, welcoming The Poke Lab’s James Anderson for a six-course meal in the local environmental education nonprofit’s Hilton Bialek Habitat at Carmel Middle School.

MEarth’s mission is to educate and inspire youth towards environmental stewardship through immersive programming that highlights community and sustainability. “There’s a natural progression to education or change, from awareness to understanding to appreciation to concern to action. MEarth is about wanting to help people from anywhere in that spectrum to take action to live a more sustainable life in their homes and communities,” explains Executive Director Tom Skeele.

Much of that work happens at MEarth’s 10-acre campus at the mouth of Carmel Valley. Here, a sprawling organic garden provides a hands-on opportunity for children to learn about the environment and sustainable living. Often this comes as a complementary component to more traditional classroom experiences in the neighboring middle school.

As part of the rebooted Sustainable Chef Dinner Series, a team of volunteers converts MEarth’s environmental education center into an intimate 30-person dining room for one night a month. “We’re happy to partner with like-minded chefs and restaurants for these dinners to serve local food—food that comes from the [MEarth] garden and farmers market, and sustainable, local seafood,” says Katie Reeves, MEarth’s communications coordinator. Proceeds from these dinners benefit MEarth’s work in the community.

It’s fitting that the first guest chef for the Sustainable Chef Dinner Series is a veteran from past dinners and an early supporter of MEarth’s culinary education programs. James Anderson used his meal to showcase The Poke Lab’s relationships with local and sustainable purveyors, “Our goal is to get really great food to anyone who wants to eat it. We want it to be sustainable and delicious.”

Anderson’s dinner began with snacks passed around the communal dining table: a platter of pickled vegetables and a passed tray of dried dino kale and beet chips tossed in Japanese furikake. Next came a spring pea soup: spring peas, both blended and whole, alongside chard sofrito in small bowls, finished with seaweed-bonito dashi broth Anderson pours tableside. Diners passed around big bowls of foraged salad featuring mixed greens and Monterey ogo seaweed tossed in a peppery nasturtium vinaigrette then garnished with vibrant yellow and orange foraged nasturtium blossoms.

Not surprisingly, the star of the menu was seafood.

First, a “lox”—in this case salmon smoked in brown sugar and mezcal— paired with pea puree, nori seaweed “mud,” two spears of asparagus, and einkorn wheat biscuits. Anderson notes this may possibly be a controversial dish, “It’s not local salmon. The drought killed off most of the [local, wild salmon] population we can use commercially.” He explains that Verlasso’s farmed salmon was the first approved by Seafood Watch and a better alternative to local wild salmon these days. He emphasizes how all parts of the salmon get used, “It’s bad to waste any of it. We save the bellies, we save the collars. They’re cured and smoked and available in the shop on Thursdays.” True to his word, the salmon arrived garnished with crispy twice-baked salmon skin “chicharrones.”

Rockfish, sourced out of San Francisco by Real Good Fish, baked, then slathered in an arugula pesto made with greens harvested from the MEarth garden, arrived next, paired with pappardelle pasta made just hours earlier from an egg dough peppered with foraged herbs from the garden. Anderson again highlights a partnership with sustainable suppliers, “Real Good Fish is trying to get sustainable fish into the hands of anyone who wants to it.”

A frothy matcha sabayon provided a sweet finish for dinner. It was delivered to diners in small bowls garnished with burnt honey candy from Monterey’s Revival Ice Cream. Anderson passed around big bowls of Princess Anne strawberries tossed with first-of-the-season apricots to place atop the sabayon.

Miss last week’s sustainable supper? MEarth’s next Sustainable Chef Dinner on Thursday, June 7 features Christophe Bony from Carmel Private Chef catering and a veteran of La Bicyclette, Casanova, Rocky Point, and Bistro Moulin. The dinner series will take a break during July while the habitat hosts summer camp and return in August with Diego Felix from the Colectivo Felix supper club series cooking on Thursday, August 9. Tickets are $75 and available at mearthcarmel.org.

MEarth 4380 Carmel Valley Road., adjacent to Carmel Middle School, Carmel, 624-1032, mearthcarmel.org.