Chefs Collaborative

Welcome back to the end of the week news wrap-up. Let’s start off with another shameless plug for our Facebook and Twitter feeds. We don’t repeat news items in the wrap-up so please be sure that you follow along. That being said, I’m going to go ahead and break that rule right away and cover something we posted last night. The biggest story in food nationally this week is surely the decision of the USDA to completely deregulate the planting of GE alfalfa. One of our members, Barry Estabrook, writes about it here on his Politics of the Plate blog.

What will be interesting to see following this decision is how various group react to the news, as alfalfa is the United State’s fourth largest agricultural crop, feeding, among other things, the cows that bring us milk and beef. If Grist has its facts right any action in the matter will probably start at the local level because local initiatives are on the up and up, as is the case with chickens in Washington.

While we are on the subject of local initiatives, just across the river from the Chefs Collaborative office, member Cambridge Brewing Company has entered into a collaboration of a different sort, with Victory Brewing and Stone Brewing, for what they call “Project Venus.” Let’s hope the project garners the kind of accolades that member Chef to Go Gourmet Catering recently received from WeddingWire, or that member Sonja Finn of Dinette is up for from Food and Wine.

Well, that’s another week.  If you are a member out there and have anything to add – be in touch! In the meantime, have a great weekend.

By Melissa Kogut, Executive Director, Chefs Collaborative

After several weeks of often polarized debate in the media and blogosphere, following the announcement of a ‘blacklisted fish’ dinner at Legal Sea Foods, the event finally took place on Monday evening.

I was among the more than 60 guests who filled the wine cellar of Legal Sea Foods at Park Square in Boston.  The gathering included members of the New England Culinary Guild who hosted the dinner, ocean conservationists, chefs, fishermen and food lovers curious to finally clear up confusion about sustainable seafood.  We sat at long tables in the crowded room and the mood was one of anticipation for the conversation that would take place.

The discussion around sustainable seafood can get tense because the stakes are high.  Livelihoods of fishermen are at risk, concern for the health of our oceans and fisheries is high, and information that reaches the public is often confusing and inconsistent.

I didn’t get complete information that would help me understand what about the menu offerings that evening were sustainable.  I learned that Roger Berkowtiz, the CEO of Legal Sea Foods, has a strong relationship with his suppliers (for example, the shrimp farm in Vietnam, which he visits) and is satisfied with the information he receives about their sustainability practices.  But I can’t say that the discussion at Legal Sea Foods solved any longstanding conflicts between all the different stakeholders.  I didn’t expect that.

Here’s what I was thinking as I left the dinner:

• Roger Berkowitz gets credit for starting an important conversation with all the stakeholders.
• Chefs all over the country are having the conversation about sustainable seafood with their suppliers and customers.  Transparency is important and it’s more important than ever for chefs to provide customers with information about what’s on the menu.
• At the dinner, we heard different perspectives from very knowledgeable people.  The issues around sustainable seafood are not black and white.  But Chefs Collaborative is here to help chefs navigate these issues.

I was glad to be a part of the conversation and delicious dinner last evening.  To learn more about domestic and international issues surrounding sustainability, I encourage you to check out the online seafood tutorial, Green Chefs Blue Ocean, as well as our Chefs Guide to Sourcing Sustainable Seafood.  As always, we welcome your contribution to this important discussion.  Please feel free to leave feedback below or engage with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Hello there. My name is Chris and I’m the Chefs Collaborative research and writing intern. That’s me on the home page–right there in the orange shirt–clipping around a grape vine. I’ll be doing some work on salmon in the coming months, looking at current issues and developments in wild and farmed salmon and what they mean for chefs. At the start of each week I’ll be posting something interesting I have found.

This week I looked into aquaculture, which now provides more than half of the world’s seafood. By now, we have heard about the dangers of salmon aquaculture. Salmon eat three to five pounds of wild schooling fish for every one pound they gain. Aquaculture critics cite the consequences of open-pen net farming.  Salmon farmed this way are prone to disease, like sea lice, which can potentially be transferred to wild fish. To counter disease, salmon are often given antibiotics. Waste from the salmon farms threatens marine ecosystems. There have, however, been promising developments in salmon aquaculture. Salmon may not be so well suited to fish farming. But there is hope. Because other fish are.

Here are five of them:

Barramundi. A fish dubbed the “anti-salmon,” barramundi are tailor-made for aquaculture. The fish thrive on vegetarian feed, unlike salmon, and can live in tight schools and low-oxygen waters. Barramundi is a white-fleshed fish that compares to snapper, grouper, and sole. Get barramundi from Australis Aquaculture, a farm in Massachusetts that uses (and reuses) water from the Connecticut River.

Kona Kampachi. This species of yellowtail is raised by Kona Blue in Hawaii. The fish eat a feed of 30% wild fish–notable, considering that yellowtail are traditionally carnivorous. (The other 70% is comprised of sustainably raised proteins and oils.) Kona Blue’s net pens float in 200-foot-deep water, where the fish room to swim and strong currents keep things clean. Kona Kampachi are harvested to order and shipped directly to consumers.

Arctic char. The U.S. is the fourth-largest producer of arctic char, behind Iceland, Canada, and Norway/Sweden. Arctic char are well suited to aquaculture because they can live closely together. Char are typically raised in recirculating systems, which reuse water and often simulate lakes or streams. Taste- and texture-wise, arctic char falls somewhere between salmon and trout. The downside to arctic char is that it can sometimes be expensive or harder to find on the market.

Rainbow Trout. Like arctic char, rainbow trout are farmed in simulated streams. Water is diverted from a stream, runs through the trout holdings (or “raceways”), and returns to the stream after a quick filtering. Some three-quarters of U.S. farms are in Idaho, but trout is farmed all over the country.  Sunburst Trout Company, in North Carolina, is a third-generation trout farm that doesn’t use antibiotics or growth hormones.

Cobia. Touted by many as the farmed fish of the future, cobia is still a work in progress for fish farmers. Cobia can grow to full size in just 12 months. The fish, however, require warm water and a low-salinity environment–two obstacles to raising them. Farms have been tinkering with their cobia stocks in an effort to find the best way to raise the fish. Cobia is a white-fleshed fish with a dense texture, not unlike mahi-mahi or sea bass.

Ask your purveyor about these farm-raised species.

With Georgia and Connecticut in the news last week because of legislation aimed at protecting small farmers and food producers from laws that are clearly designed with big agriculture in mind, it seems apropos to touch on the subject of small agriculture in the American food landscape.

It’s well documented that small, diversified farms were once the norm of American agriculture, and in the post World War II drive for industrialization the nation’s agribusiness moved towards the consolidated, mono-culture driven food system in place today. The many acre farms of the Salinas valley, and American corn-belt are testament to this (to name two).

With the rise of so-called “Foodie” culture in the United States, the emphasis on quality, sustainable food raises with every passing minute, and with this the emphasis on small farmers and producers, as well as other institutions within the food industry that support these ideals.

The fall 2010 issue of The Art of Eating profiles California cheese maker Soyoung Scanlan, and quotes her as saying “People are a lot less focusing on taste. Eating local, sustainability—there are so many agendas. I rarely have a conversation about the flavor of a cheese.” This draws a dangerous distinction between local, sustainable, and taste, when in fact the three are all inextricably linked. Scanlan herself making top-notch cheese in extremely limited scope and quantity from sustainably sourced milk, and she should be lauded for this.

The point is this; it was Brillat-Savarin who said “Good living is an act of intelligence, by which we choose things which have an agreeable taste rather than those which do not.” All across the country people are making the intelligent choice of taste, and turning to local, sustainable, sources to do so because this too is an intelligent choice. The action of states protecting small farmers and producers is a boon to local, sustainable, delicious.

Well, it has certainly been a storied week in food – our Facebook and Twitter posts can attest to this – but here are a few things that you may have missed: Yesterday we put up a link to Marion Nestle’s critique of Walmart’s promise for more healthy food initiatives, and promised to bring you more. With this in mind, we present an opinionated article from Grist and an at a distance glance from the Wall Street Journal.

The Wall Street Journal points out that Walmart “has been ratcheting up efforts to convert existing stores into supercenters”. Interestingly, the role of many national retailers, not classically thought of as grocers, seems to be changing. The New York Times reports “Big Retailers Fill More Aisles With Groceries.”

The food stocking these shelves and the shelves of food sources everywhere remains a hot topic in light of the fact that Californian dairy cows are being “drugged up,” children’s health foods might not be that healthy, lawmakers are mulling over the issue of genetically engineered alfalfa, and the mercury levels in fish for consumption may be much higher than previously thought. This at the outset of a large marketing campaign for canned tuna.

Briefly, that’s the week in review. Have a wonderful weekend.

The past two weeks have been heady ones in New England seafood news, with Legal Seafood’s blacklisted fish dinner at the fore. For anyone who missed it, with the announcement of this dinner, Legal’s has provoked a debate about the ways seafood gets classified as “sustainable.”

They’re serving farmed shrimp from Vietnam, Atlantic cod, and hake, which are all listed “avoid” on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch List.

As word of the dinner spread, you could practically feel the reverb from advocacy groups and bloggers. A petition has even been circulated, asking Legal’s to “stop attacking sustainable seafood.”

Was an attack on sustainable seafood the intent? In part, it depends on how you define “sustainable.” Easier said than done, right? Defining sustainability depends on your point of view—it can mean one thing to marine conservationists, another thing to chefs or fishermen, and yet another to big buyers of seafood.

While the blogosphere was erupting over the blacklisted dinner, Massachusetts fishermen were being denied a request to the Commerce Department for emergency aid. Fishermen in this state are struggling to adapt to catch shares, a new regulatory framework that was implemented last spring.

These rules have been contentious. Because the approach caps the amount of fish taken out of specific fishing grounds, as opposed to capping the number of days fishermen could spend at sea, catch shares have been promoted as a sound, quantifiable approach to managing fish populations.

And though it’s been less than a year since catch shares have been implemented, top marine scientists are projecting the end of overfishing and pointing to catch shares as part of the solution.

But despite the upsides, catch shares haven’t caught on with many fishermen—hence the request for aid. One report from the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth estimates that the new rules have cost the state’s fishing industry $40 million since they were implemented in the spring.

So if the new regulations are helping fish populations rebound, but fishermen are going out of business, where does that leave a definition of sustainability that takes ecological as well as social and economic factors into account?

Parsing sustainable seafood is tricky, as author Paul Greenberg points out in this interview with Salon. With different interpretations held by all of the different stakeholders, it will require a lot of cooperation to identify shared goals that make the pursuit of sustainability one that works at every angle.

For this month’s member spotlight, Chefs Collaborative got in touch with Chef Mary Dumont, of Harvest restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Read on to find out more about her journey toward regionality and seasonality, from studying literature at Simmons to translating stories into flavors.

Chefs Collaborative: Growing up in New Hampshire, what are some of your fondest memories associated with food? How did that influence the way you approach cooking today?

Chef Mary Dumont, Harvest restaurant

Mary Dumont: I grew up on the coast and my parents were in the hotel/restaurant business, so most of our free time was around the beach and beach activities. We had a lot of BBQs.  I also grew up in Hampton Falls, which at that time had about 1800 people in it and a beautiful apple orchard called Applecrest.  The good thing about small towns is that there are a lot of small fairs throughout the warmer months and Applecrest had and still does have weekend fairs with apple picking and hayrides.  It was a great place to grow up and it’s only 50 minutes north of Boston, so we weren’t isolated and in the sticks!

C.C.: After attending Simmons, how did you decide to make the transition from literature to cooking? Do you find that they’re related somehow?

M.D.: I lived in JP and had a great group of friends and I always seemed to be the one that ended up cooking.  Then I moved to San Francisco when I was 21 and my mind blew up with everything that was going on there.  Food wise, culture, the people… it was like an awakening when I arrived and shortly after that I started to cook professionally.  I like the story of things and how food comes together.  From the seeds and how they were passed down to the farmer who planted them to how they get to your plate.  It makes perfect sense to me in my mind.

C.C.: Have you done much traveling?

M.D.: I’ve been to Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany and all over the US and Canada.  New Zealand has been my favorite so far.

C.C.: What’s your favorite “secret” ingredient?

M.D.: I try not to keep secrets… the first time I met Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food, I was cooking for him at The Dunaway in Portsmouth, NH where I was chef at the time and he grabbed my face and said “the face of the future keeps no secrets!”  I totally believe that.  I like things to have layered flavors with a bit of acid and fresh herbs at the end… that’s how I learned and that’s how I still cook.

C.C. What is your take on the ‘big picture’ of sustainability? When (and how) did you decide to get involved?

M.D.: When I started to cook in San Francisco in 1995 it was was already full on there and it was a way of life.  You were lame if you didn’t recycle and carry your own bags to the market.  I think people need to apply sustainability as a way of life and a philosophy to live by. People can’t be lazy and expect it’s someone else’s job to save the world or save the small farms.  You have to contribute and care.  Laziness is very unattractive.

C.C.: You’re involved in the Boston-area Cochon555 competition. Why is it important for you to be involved in these kinds of events?

M.D.: #1 it’s fun and great to be competing against friends and peers.  People who love bacon and pork are crazed over it so the crowd will be fun as well.  But, it’s really important to support these heritage breeds and expose the need to keep promoting the small farmers out there and flex some muscle doing it.

C.C. Gastronomica just came out with a piece asking “Why are there no great women chefs?”.  Why do you think that is, and what can be done to address it?

M.D.: I read that… I think the biggest truth is that at some point most women want a family and have an innate desire to actually “be there” for their family.  I’m not trying to make anyone mad, but most workaholic male chefs with families can still maintain the hours without spending hardly anytime with their kids.  The glass ceiling isn’t really there anymore, the screaming kitchens have, for the most part, gone away and when you talk about about the “Great Chefs” that article was talking about chefs they are much, much older.  There are great women chefs out there right now.  Look at Barbara Lynch, Jody Adams, Judy Rogers, Anna Sophie Pic and so on…  The gender card is getting old.  If you’re a great chef you’re a great chef no matter who you are.

C.C.: Why are you involved with Chefs Collaborative, and is there anything you’d like to pass on to our members and friends?

M.D.: I love Chefs Collaborative because it has strength to bring the message of sustainability to the masses.  Every chef that joins and continues the message at their restaurants and to their cooks is leading the way to sustainability becoming a greater way of life and not just a weekend hobby.

Might as well start off point blank… hello, my name is Rob and I am the new Chefs Collaborative communications intern. I couldn’t find a good picture of my face so you get to see my hands. If you read about me on a post on Monday on Facebook, good, if you didn’t please follow Chefs Collaborative on Facebook and Twitter. It really benefits us both.

I haven’t been in Boston long. I came here to get my Masters in Gastronomy from Boston University and came by way of Germany, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Italy, and Vermont where I  cooked professionally and worked as a farm laborer. Long before that, when I was doing my undergrad at the University of Vermont, I used to keep a food blog, so I suppose in some way being here is just loose ends tying themselves up.

A good friend of mine, a co-worker in Philadelphia, and one of the best cooks I’ve ever known once told me “nothing is worth doing if you aren’t going to do it right.” Oft repeated to young cooks, and advice well worth learning. The farmers in the small town I grew up in toted similar aphorisms. I’m too young to be able to say we all want essentially the same things out of life, but I can say a growing number of us want excellent, and sustainable food that nurtures everyone on its journey from pasture to plate. I’m excited to be able to intern for an organization that is committed to this cause, and also about being able to interact with all you out there in the community. So let me know what you want to hear about.

With this in mind lets hit the ground running and delve into a few food related stories from this past week. Lester Brown the president of the Earth Policy Institute warns, “the food bubble is bursting.” This may be no surprise to some in Texas who are extolling the wonders of winter farming. Meanwhile up in Vermont, Maple Syrup is fixing to take on McDonalds for their labeling practices. Syrup, maple or otherwise, might not make it onto the menu in school lunches soon if the USDA’s new standards for school meals are adopted. They aim to limit sugar intake among other things. Though, in Los Angeles at least, a change in school lunch isn’t such an easy task as Jamie Oliver found out. These are just a few stories to mull over but I look forward to bringing you more here and on Facebook and Twitter in the coming weeks and months.

Dear Mr. Berkowitz,

Thank you for sparking a dialogue regarding possible exceptions to “blacklisted” seafood.  This is an issue that Chefs Collaborative has been working on for years.

Back in 2007 we published a Communiqué for our members, titled “Lists v. Local: The Complexities of Sourcing Sustainable Seafood.” The document introduced the concept that lists can be a good starting point but chefs need to take a broader and deeper approach, by talking with each other as well as with conservationists, fishermen, and purveyors.

In 2009 the Collaborative released an updated Seafood Solutions booklet to guide chefs through their sustainable seafood purchasing decisions.  Nowhere in this booklet will a chef find a list of “good fish” and “bad fish.”  Instead, the guide suggests that chefs get to know their sources, ask lots of questions (and explains what questions to ask), support small-scale fisheries, and never stop questioning and learning.

At both our 2009 and 2010 National Summits we had panel discussions highlighting ways for chefs to dig deeper than lists.  And finally, one of our best and most in depth resources is our interactive online sustainable seafood training program, Green Chefs Blue Ocean.  The program is intended for chefs who are interested in learning about all aspects of sustainable seafood—including how to purchase, prepare, and promote sustainable seafood in their kitchens and restaurants.  Lessons give information on the basics of sustainable seafood; farmed and wild fish and shellfish; local, regional and imported seafood; and implementing sustainable seafood purchasing and a promotion in a restaurant.

We do take our job educating the culinary community seriously.  Many credible scientists and academics are sounding the alarm about fish populations because of disturbing data, not opinion.  The Chefs Collaborative is proud of our history of encouraging chefs to think about issues, instead of merely telling them what to think.  We will continue providing our nationwide network of chefs with the information and tools necessary to make sustainable purchasing decisions and would be glad to deepen our relationship with Legal Seafood and its chefs.

With thanks,

The Chefs Collaborative