Chefs Collaborative

If 2008 had proof of a summer,  it was Bruce Sherman’s anise-hyssop sorbet. Served after the James Beard Foundation Awards, the sorbet shared the table with the potted herb that gave it its flavor and its name.

Visit Sherman’s Chicago restaurant North Pond in the winter, and dessert will perfectly suit that time, too. A self-defined “seasonal cook,” Sherman links his dishes–both savory and sweet–with the year’s cycle, and that dedication shows throughout his menus.

Sometimes, working seasonally means looking in a different field. “For me, talking about farm to menu, it doesn’t mean exclusively local,” Sherman says. “In the wintertime, we use citrus, and we use a farm in California. That’s not local at all, but it’s seasonal; that’s what we do.”

“I think there’s a misunderstanding about what people who support local are about. I’m a seasonal cook first and a local cook second. Local is not the be-all-and-end-all for me. Seasonal is. In the late spring and summer and early fall, it’s great because the two work together.”

Sherman balances imagination with practicality. His aim is “to work seasonally and offer a creative, diverse menu that satisfies the diner, the cook, and the cash register.” It’s a balancing act. There’s always something chocolate on the menu–but the seasons have their say.

Sometimes, that’s about planning ahead. In cold months, Sherman works with fresh fruit from California, Florida, or Texas, but he also makes use  of stored things, such as dried fruits and preserves. Listening to him describe a cool weather dessert (a nougat glace on pain d’ epice sponge served with house-made cherry jam), it’s easy to long for winter.

Sherman revels in the changing challenges of the year. “Each season has its own pleasures in that it’s new again every year. My analogy is snow, because we live in Chicago. People look forward to the first snowfall of the year, and it’s always a magical thing. It last a couple of months, until it becomes a burden to shovel and navigate around. By the end of the season, people are glad it’s not going to snow again and bitter about how much precipitation there is.”

“And it’s no different with–plug in a fruit or plug in a vegetable: leeks, apricots–people may be tired of using them or eating them by the end of their season, but when they become available again, people really look forward to them. For me, it’s a real shortcoming of living in a place where there are no seasons, when things are available all year. Some of the magic is gone.”

As this year cools and darkens, Sherman is working with squash and Jerusalem artichokes and chestnuts. “We just started getting these awesome apples,” he says, his tone of voice sounding as if autumn fruits were the definition of luxury.

A little something stored, a little something from the farm, and a whole lot of inspiration from the season…Bruce Sheman is making sustainability sweet indeed.

–Seanan Forbes, www.creativedichotomies.com

It’s been a month since I spent 36 hours on a shrimp boat on Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans, sorting  twitching white shrimp by size, fighting with crabs, and trying to toss baby croaker back overboard before they died. I went right before Chefs Collaborative presented a panel on the shrimp industry for the Women Chefs and Restaurateurs conference.

Why has it taken me so long to write about this trip? Well, in part, fall is a busy time of year here at Chefs Collaborative–we’re stacked with fundraising events, harvest festivals, speaking engagements, and piles of regular old desk work.

That’s my excuse. But the real reason might be that the trip was humbling. We got caught in a big storm–seasickness ensued–and I spent two nights in a tiny bunk under a scratchy blanket without my toothbrush. I peed in a bucket.

When Ray Brandhurst, the boat captain, called me into the wheelhouse to tell me he didn’t intend to bring me out on the boat to do actual work,  I told him it was fine-fun, even-because I didn’t have to do it again tomorrow.

But he did. He’s still out there, pulling 16, 22, 36-hour stints on the water, trying to haul in as much shrimp as he can before it gets too cold and the shimp migrate offshore. Sometimes his deckhands disappear, so Ray works alone, driving the boat, searching for shrimp, hauling nets, sorting the stuff, cleaning up, and starting over.

If he sells his shrimp to processors, he can barely get $2 per pound for it. Operating this way causes shrimpers like Ray to lose money. Meanwhile, fixed costs for commercial fishermen keep rising, as does everyone’s cost of living, and we continue to import over 90% of our shrimp supply from shrimp farms in developing countries like Thailand, India, and China–flooding the market and driving down domestic prices.

Between the low prices at the dock, the rising operating costs, and the competition from cheap farm-raised imports, the odds are stacked against someone trying to make a living this way.

That’s why Ray and his wife Kay have taken on a second job–marketing, sales, promotion and shipping of their shrimp. They target restaurants and chefs in markets that are less saturated with fresh head-on shell-on shrimp than their own. Places like San Francisco, Boston, and New York are prime markets for this great domestic product, and when you can get it delivered to your door less than 48 hours out of the water, you can’t argue with the quality. By going directly to the end user, the Brandhursts get a better return on their investment of equipment, time, and labor.

And the benefit goes both ways. Chefs pay a little less than they would for a premium product that goes through traditional supply channels, and diners get an experience: the sweet-briny taste of the shrimp and the story behind it.

Until the FDA steps up their efforts to ban shrimp imports of questionable quality, domestic shrimpers will continue to get obscenely low prices at the dock. It’s an unfair situation with at least one relatively straightforward solution.

Whether they’re buying direct from a shrimper like Ray, or going through their purveyors to get spot prawns, Maine pinks, and other shrimp harvested in a sustainable manner, chefs and consumers can choose to support this domestic industry. It’s one way we can help change the game.

I already had a soft spot for Tom Stearns, president of High Mowing Seeds, a participant in the Renewing America’s Food Traditions project–he has infectious energy and great ideas for revitalizing local agriculture. And sometimes, Pete’s Greens show up in a market here in Boston–grower Pete Johnson’s season-extending skills mean we can have Vermont greens in Boston in December. Oh, and Bayley Hazen blue cheese from nearby  Jasper Hill Farm…in terms of building functional, thriving local food systems, Vermont’s got it going on.

And, as reported by the New York Times, they’re organized, too!