The Capitol Center for the Arts’ two commercial kitchens have remained dormant throughout the pandemic, but that is about to change in January when it launches a new culinary artist-in-residence program that will allow New Americans an opportunity to launch their own culinary businesses.
Being an arts center, Executive Director Sal Prizio says developing a program focused on the culinary arts made sense. Developing such a program has been a long-time goal of Jessica Livingston, who joined the Capitol Centers for the Arts (CCA) as community outreach coordinator in March and has been the director of the Concord Multicultural Festival for the past nine years.
Livingston says she has been trying to secure a commercial kitchen to help New Americans launch food businesses. “We wanted to provide a low-risk opportunity [for them] to get started,” she says. “We were missing the infrastructure piece.” That is until she joined the CCA and presented her idea to Prizio.
After six months developing the program and doing outreach, CCA is launching the program next month with its first culinary artist-in-residence, Batulo Mahamed, who will be using CCA’s kitchen facilities for the next year to make Somali meat pies (chicken, beef and veggie sambuusa) and selling them as Batulo’s Kitchen through delivery services like Grub Hub and Door Dash as well as at CCA’s concessions stands on show nights.
Batulo Mahamed, CCA’s first culinary artist-in-residence. (Courtesy of CCA)
Mahamed relocated to NH from Somalia in 2004 as a refugee. “She has been building a life here,” Livingston says. “She has become an attraction at the [multicultural] festival, and people ask where they can get these [pies] throughout the year.”
Mahamed, a housekeeping supervisor at a local hotel, had goals of buying a home for her family and starting a business. She has bought her home and now is embarking on the second part of her dream, Livingston says. “She is so dedicated and works so hard,” she says. “Her ultimate goal is to purchase a food truck.”
Prizio says CCA and Mahamed have conducted some test runs with the pies at a couple of CCA’s events and they were a hit. The food will be cooked in the kitchen at CCA’s main building, and patrons will be able to pick up their orders at the Bank of NH stage. Once Mahamed’s residency is completed in a year, CCA will select another culinary artist in residence.
Mahamed making Somali meat pies in one of the commercial kitchens at CCA. (Courtesy of CCA)
“In 12 months, we hope she will be ready for [her own restaurant] or food truck. We want to provide the infrastructure to allow these amazing culinary artists to get their product out to a wider audience,” Prizio says. “I want this to become a mainstay of what we do at the Capitol Center for the Arts. Every 12 months, a new culinary experience will be available to our patrons and the community.” For more information, visit ccanh.com.