Chefs Collaborative

For any cooks who are interested in expanding their seafood repertoire in a responsible way, Barton Seaver’s new cookbook, For Cod and Country, will be a welcome addition to the library.

Seaver, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, first gained attention as a sustainable seafood advocate as the executive chef of Hook restaurant in DC’s Georgetown neighborhood. Hook was swanky and the food was fantastic—Seaver took care that guests never felt like they were sacrificing a great meal for a cause.

A few years later, Seaver is an at-large chef and advocate, with a cookbook, a television series, and a fellowship with National Geographic. His knack for engaging audiences shows in For Cod and Country—organized by season, the book’s narrative connects readers with the sources of the food on their plates, while luring you into the kitchen with its purchasing tips and lovely recipes (like the one below, excerpted from the book). Seaver conveys an approach to cooking and eating in a way that minimizes environmental impact but maximizes pleasure and fun. Yes, please.

For any Boston-area readers, Seaver will be in town promoting the book next week, including a stop at the New England Aquarium. Until then, you can bring For Cod and Country into your kitchen with this recipe:

Smoked Bluefish Spread with Toasted Bread and Olive Oil

This recipe is a wonderful use of smoked bluefish, which can be strongly flavored. I tend to serve it at parties or enjoy it as an afternoon snack. If you cannot find smoked bluefish, you can substitute smoked trout or hot smoked salmon. The taste won’t be the same, but it’ll still be good.

8 ounces smoked bluefish
3 tablespoons sour cream
Salt
1 loaf crusty baguette, thinly sliced
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 lemon, cut into wedges

Remove any skin from the bluefish and flake the fish into a bowl. Add the sour cream and whip with a whisk until the mixture forms a thick paste and the flakes have all broken down into a purée. Check for seasoning and adjust with a little salt if necessary. (This can be made up to a few days ahead of time; keep refrigerated until ready to serve.)

Brush the bread with olive oil and toast under the broiler (or in a toaster oven) until golden brown.

Serve the spread in a bowl with the toasted bread and lemon wedges surrounding it. Finish the spread with a heavy drizzle of olive oil, then serve.

Serves 4 as an appetizer or snack

I have this dilemma all the time: where should I shop, what should I buy, should I choose ethics over economy?  I believe that organic is better for everyone involved in the food chain and I believe that every dollar counts as a vote.  If I don’t believe that my purchases make a difference, then why bother, right?  That being said, cost is always a factor in the life of a student.  So, when I saw Barry Estabrook’s blog post about farmers’ market prices being better than grocery stores, I jumped.  Barry cites a study by Jake Claro, sponsored by the New England Organic Farmers Association, which compares prices from Farmers’ Markets, Co-ops, and Grocery Stores in Vermont.

Barry, like Claro, comes to the conclusion that buying organic produce at a farmers’ market instead of a grocery store is often cheaper.  However, the biggest issue for most consumers is switching from grocery store conventional to farmers’ market organic – the jump for a dozen eggs is from $2.50 to $4.45, nearly double, and for green peppers the jump is $1.78/lb for conventional at a grocery store to $4.22 for organic at a co-op.  Beyond that, it made me wonder what this means for chefs, who buy from wholesalers instead of grocery stores as well as from farmers and farmers markets.  My cost problem is a conventional consumer cost problem, but from a chef’s perspective it’s about running a viable and (hopefully) profitable business.

As chefs who are dedicated to sustainability and making tough calls with respect to sourcing locally, organically, sustainably, and/or seasonally, what are your experiences with these price differences?  As farmers that are dedicated to getting your produce into these chefs’ kitchens, how do you handle pricing in order to be competitive with wholesalers?  What are the challenges you’ve faced or the solutions you’ve found?  Let’s discuss this on the Facebook page.

Claro gives plenty of caveats for his study: it’s one place, one season, and certainly not a flawless study (plus, it’s hard to be unbiased when your work is sponsored by NOFA VT).  I can’t help but wonder if farmers’ market prices in Vermont are lower because of the abundance of organic farms and subsequent competition.  Claro also brings up the fact that there is very little work being done to monitor these price differences in a statistically effective way.  I think, if anything, his work shows that progress is being made and yet there’s still a long way to go.

Katie is the current Communications & Outreach Intern with the Chefs Collaborative.

That was the question on everyone’s mind as we waited for nearly the end of this year’s Sustainable Food Institute put on by Monterey Bay Aquarium.

When the hour arrived, Isabella Rossellini, dressed in a suit with tennis shoes, and Susan Young, President of the Television Critics Association (who conducted the interview) took their seats. After some introductory conversation, and a quip about whether or not Rossellini would be back to 30 Rock as Jack Donaghy’s ex-wife, we got to the meat of the conversation.

It turns out that Rossellini is fascinated by animals. Her critically acclaimed and provocative online series, GREEN PORNO, features Rossellini as she acts out the reproductive habits of marine animals and insects, both scientifically accurate yet extremely entertaining. A few in particular, GREEN PORNO Bon Appetit, are devoted to seafood sustainability. Here’s a hilarious one on shrimp.

The conference was not all levity though. Over the two days we heard from experts about the value of eco-labels (ultimately the goal is to be sure that meaningless claims do not exist), what’s new from Seafood Watch (there is way more detailed info on their website for chefs than on the wallet cards, which are just a snapshot), and about Ted Turner’s frustration that so much money is going to fund the wars and not a sustainable food system (his talk was funny but he made many serious points), and many more important topics.

I’d like to share two of the major takeaways for me:

—“Workers rights should be integral to sustainability,” was the main point made by Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, during an interview conducted by Barry Estabrook, of Politics of the Plate. (Estabrook also makes the case for workers rights in his James Beard award winning article, The Price of Tomatoes, which appeared in Gourmet in 2010, and in his book, Tomatoland.) It’s not sustainable if workers who are harvesting our food are not getting paid a livable wage, are being exploited, and are exposed to harmful pesticides.

—“Taxpayers are spending on things [in the Farm Bill] that don’t benefit the public,” said Susan Prolman, executive director of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. Thomas Dobbs, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Economics at South Dakota University, who spoke about the farm bill more clearly than I’ve ever heard, said: “The media needs to focus on bio fuels…it’s the elephant in the room.” “If everyone ate the USDA recommended amount of fruits and vegetables, we’re not growing enough,” said one of the speakers in perhaps one of the most telling comments.

—The two-day conference, attended mostly by members of the media, concluded with the Cooking for Solutions gala, featuring about 65 sustainability-minded chefs from around the country cooking for an extremely large crowd of aquarium supporters. Board members John Ash and Seth Caswell were among this esteemed group. Rick Moonen, of rm seafood in Las Vegas, was named 2011 Honored Chef of the Year. Thanks Monterey Bay Aquarium for your great work!

Chefs Collaborative has been following developments related to the farm bill and will continue to do so. I invite you to check out a recent post and give us your feedback.

—Melissa Kogut, executive director, Chefs Collaborative

Earlier this month, we asked if a garden could change the food system. The jury’s still out. In the mean time, we’ve been trying to wrap our minds around the Farm Bill, the gigantic piece of legislation up for reauthorization in 2012 that will determine the trajectory of of our food and farm policy and affect everything from the price of beef to the number of young farmers entering the field.

Among the issues within the Farm Bill is that of farm subsidies—the payments and market controls that favor large-scale agriculture and help propel overproduction of commodity crops like corn, soy, rice and cotton. Subsidies help fuel artificially low prices for livestock feed and the subsequent low cost of industrially-raised meat, and the surplus commodity crops are often funneled into the processed foods that are contributing to many of this country’s health problems.

These issues are well-documented. But as we anticipate the 2012  Farm Bill debate, we wanted to have a better understanding of how subsidies work—so we know what our food system could look like if the system gets reformed. Here’s a little roundup of readings that help make the convoluted world of farm subsidies a little more clear:

The Environmental Working Group has been working on this issue since 2004. In a recent piece, their president, Ken Cook, unravels subsidies by type—direct payments, counter-cyclical payments, crop insurance—but points out their common thread: subsidies favor the rich. “From 1995-2009 the largest and wealthiest top 10 percent of farm program recipients received 74 percent of all farm subsidies,” writes Cook. Sigh.

The Center for American Progress explains the inefficiency of direct payments, proposes phasing out their $5 billion payouts to farmland owners, and calls for reinvesting some of the savings into programs that promote clean energy and energy efficiency on the farm.

And at Grist, our pal Tom Philpott puts subsidies in perspective for us by taking a close look at U.S. corn production. So much corn, so heavily subsidized. For $56 billion in subsidies over the past ten years, what do we get in return? The answer’s not pretty.

Check back in two weeks for another look under the hood of Farm Bill politics.

Yesterday I headed up to Portsmouth, NH for the first of what we hope will become a series of meetings with Seacoast area chefs. At the helm of the meeting was chef Evan Mallett of Black Trumpet Bistro, the CC Local Leader for the Seacoast area. After a quick round of introductions we settled into establishing what CC’s role would be in their area.
The idea of developing “Locals” within the larger CC network is that every community has its own sets of successes and shortcomings and these are best addressed on a case by case basis. As we’ve reported on, in Rhode Island these issues largely surround composting and fresh meat sourcing. Portsmouth, and the Seacoast in general, have an excellent composting program, they do, however, have some issue with fresh meat sourcing. This largely revolves around the space  limits of chefs’ walk-ins and with their ability to take in whole animals. By connecting them we hope to find ways around this by splitting animals and sharing fridge space.
Another subject we broached was the ability of farmers to convey what products they would have and when. Unlike other areas of the country, the Seacoast has no real consolidated farmer direct distribution network.  Again, by uniting like minded chefs we strive to make them more approachable as a group and further develop the avenues for farmers to get their products directly into these chefs kitchens.
By far, however, the most important issue that we touched on was that of sourcing seafood. We’ve seen some great strides being made in Southern New England thanks to the efforts of Trace and Trust but, to date, nothing like this exists for the Northern coastal areas. All of the chefs expressed frustration at being able to look out the windows of their restaurants at jumping stripers and lobster pots and not being able to touch that seafood until it travelled through distribution networks that may take the fish, first, to a processing facility states away. We don’t have a clear answer to solve this but now we have a rally point to organize the local community around, one specific to this locale.
Every community is different but can equally learn from within and externally.  Chefs Collaborative is excited to help facilitate these conversations and help communities evolve to be more sustainable and more successful, we look forward to working with Evan and the chefs of the Seacoast in general for a better future for everyone.

There’s a lot happening in the news right now that I’d like to sum up for you:

With the discovery of fraudulent organic fertilizers, and misleading statistics surrounding pesticide use, the sustainable food movement can seem a little trodden or disheartened.  However, with the 2012 Farm Bill, there is the opportunity to really change policy around agriculture and, subsequently, the sustainability of our food system.  One of the major ways that politicians are looking at this is through shifting farm subsidies.  Mark Bittman makes a great case to change the way the money is distributed, rather than eliminating subsidies all together.  It may involve redefining what qualifies as a family farm or small farm, or what crops are subsidized.

While policy change may seem unapproachable for many people, there is also the USDA’s new website: “Know your farmer, Know your food.” The front page’s slogan reads “Every family needs a farmer. Do you know yours?” which (for Chefs Collaborative) could be interpreted as “Every chef needs a farmer”.  It serves as an information resource for grants and programs as well as a Farmer’s Market Locator which is particularly helpful as we work our way into Farmer’s Market Season.

It’s important to stay in the game and keep working towards a sustainable food system despite the challenges.

Katie Dolph is the Communications and Outreach Intern for the Chefs Collaborative.

A couple of weeks ago we brought you a post from Beau Vestal of New Rivers about a project he was doing to source local, heritage breed rabbits.  Well, the farmer himself seemed to like the post. I got in touch with him and asked him to share with me a few of his thoughts on the project and on food in general. Without further ado, the musings of Patrick Beck:

The opportunity to participate in the resurgent local food scene is something that inspires me daily and enables me to connect with talented, passionate, honest people like Beau  and the other cool chefs in Providence and Newport.

I got into this thing by selling grass-fed beef for Treaty Rock Farm – building restaurant relationships and a successful Farmers Market weekly booth.  I wanted to be responsible for meat raised with respect and reverence.  The look on people’s faces when they learned about pastured cattle and a little bit of food chemistry gave me a great sense of satisfaction.  I became their Meat Messenger.  I enable them to reflect on recent troubling trends in animal husbandry (moved from farms to feedlots) and encourage their kids to look dinner in the eye, accept the gift, acknowledge the life and take in a moment of presence.  Bunnies are small, cheap, lower risk, easy to raise and eat your mistakes, don’t require much land, efficient feed converters, shorter production schedule and under-represented in the market.  Surely pasture-based operation focused on an older heritage breed would be newsworthy and spiritually rewarding.  Might even work as a market leader story, supporting the beef sales even though the numbers are small.

But Patrick’s efforts don’t end with rabbits and beef:

My friend Jennifer Teichman and I are writing a book pairing the best local chefs with the best farms, fishermen and harvesters, an ode to RI Farms & Food, pretty exciting.  We’re taking a chef fishing out of Point Judith on Monday aboard a stern trawler (dragger) to pull nets and learn about the resource and the regulations and the economics and the social community surrounding food.  We are supporting the book project throughout the year with our blog exploring a wide range of local food stories building readership and awareness of our writing and graphic design abilities.

It’s people like Patrick who are helping to change the mentality around food sourcing and helping chefs move towards more locally based and delicious menus. Kudos.

First up, our director Melissa gets a whiff of farming life in The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love, by Kristin Kimball.

I will admit it, the thought of reading a quaint book about life on a farm did not excite me. As it turned out, the transformation from the author’s New York city life as a freelance writer to the farm she and her husband built – Essex Farm in the Adirondacks, is an absorbing read. Her family and friends thought this Harvard educated city girl was crazy. In fact, even farmers familiar with the work told them they would fail – that no one in that area was interested in local or organic food – and even if they were they couldn’t afford it. She describes in satisfying detail the experience of learning how to do everything (milk a cow, move pigs around, plant seeds, harvest crops) and vows that they will not fall into the rut that so many weary farmers fall into who don’t have time to cook and enjoy the food they are growing.

Equally compelling is her husband Mark’s idealistic vision for this farm: to be a “whole diet” CSA, where the farm provides everything a community needs to eat for the year – beef, pork, chicken, milk, eggs, maple syrup, grains, flours, dried beans, herbs, fruits, and forty different vegetables. Mark has a commitment to sustainable practices that goes way beyond the norm – from using horses rather than tractors to a no-waste ethic, (saving his used dental floss for some future, yet unknown use.). The farm life is not easy, and not easy on a marriage – one that she describes as the “fiery kind.” This is a terrific success story about two people with a vision that worked.

Speaking of visions, in his new book, Shadows on the Gulf, author Rowan Jacobsen uses the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as a jumping off point for talking about the broader issues in what he calls “our last great wetland.” The BP spill is seen as a symptom of a larger issue—our oil-based economy. As long as we keep searching for nonrenewable energy sources, we do so at the expense of the natural environment. What struck me as I read this book was the tension inherent in our relationship with the natural world. The Gulf of Mexico has this richness of resources that, if well managed, could not only sustain a region but be a source of wealth for our country.

Instead, writes Jacobsen, the Gulf has essentially been handed over to oil companies, whose work of extracting resources has come at great cost to the Gulf’s ecological integrity—from pipelines and canals cutting into the wetlands and accelerating their erosion, to abandoned and decrepit rigs leaking untold gallons of oil into the water. Many people living along the Gulf Coast depend on the oil companies for their jobs—if they don’t depend on the fishing industry. These two industries coexist in the same ecosystem—it remains to be seen how either will fare in the long run.

It’s hard not to get mad as hell when reading this book, but just as Jacobsen illuminates the big picture of bad news in the Gulf, he offers a vision for restoring this great ecosystem in a way that creates jobs, draws tourism to the area, and engages Americans in saving and supporting one of the most valuable places in our country.

Finally, Jen, the development and marketing associate at Chefs Collaborative, has been reading High on the Hog, by Jessica Harris. She writes:

I have many interests in the food realm, but the aspects that resonate most deeply within me are history and culture. This probably has to do with the fact that I’ve studied alot of languages in my time, and my favorite classes in high school were, without a doubt, European and World Histories.

At any rate, I like to think of myself as an amateur (aspiring!) culinary historian, which is why it was my pleasure to read Jessica Harris’ book, High on the Hog. This book frames African history in culinary terms, describing how slaves held their food traditions close to them while enduring a journey from the
continent to an unknown, faraway land. Once they arrived, they steadily began transforming the food landscape using practices they had already engaged in for years. Old cooking methods transformed American ingredients, African spices entered the scene, and now hundreds of years later, we can’t imagine what it would be like without the quintessentially “Southern” dishes that evolved during this time.

When I talk with our members, I’m always excited to learn how they take traditions learned from childhood and reinterpret those culinary memories for people who come to try their food. What history and culture formed your culinary consciousness? Leave us a comment below.

Meet Member Marjorie Taylor

Meet Member Marjorie Taylor, Chef/Owner of The Cook’s Atelier in Burgundy, France

What is your fondest food memory?

Gosh, I have so many. If I had to pick only one, I would have to say spending a morning in the garden and then stopping for casual lunch with family and friends. On the menu, an heirloom tomato salad with Roquefort and fresh basil, a platter of radishes, sprinkled with fleur de sel, and a glass of chilled rosé.

What is your favorite “secret ingredient”?

French butter

How did you get to where you are?

It’s been an evolution. I started by culinary career in pastry but have always been drawn to the relationship between the farmer and the cook. I chose the route of the self-taught cook and apprenticed with chefs that I respected and worked my way up the ranks from pastry cook to the chef proprietor of a neighborhood restaurant and cooking school in the States with a small organic kitchen garden just outside the back door.

What was your “Aha” moment with sustainable food?

I’ve always been passionate about environmental issues, so as a cook, I was naturally drawn to the importance and philosophy behind sustainable food.

Why is sustainability important to you?

Sustainability is important to me because I feel we are all connected and food should be celebrated beyond the plate. We should support our local artisan food producers who practice sustainability to ensure these culinary traditions are preserved for future generations.

in a class at The Cook's Atelier

How did you transition from the U.S. to France?

I’ve always been drawn to the relationship the French have with food and have traveled here often for the last twelve years. In 2006, I had the opportunity to work with Anne Willan, [food writer and owner of La Varenne culinary school] at her chateau in Burgundy for several months. I was so inspired by this opportunity, I returned to the states and began the work to do what was necessary to return to France full time and to create a business around my passion for sustainable agriculture and teaching others about the food and culture of France.

Do you have any thoughts you could share with us on international sustainability?

It is interesting being an American living in France who supports sustainable agriculture and artisan food producers as I feel that sometimes the French [in general] don’t realize what they have. Sure they love their food, but I think they sometimes take it for granted. I find it interesting that so many young people are losing their connection to their culinary heritage in favor of convenience and that many people don’t realize the importance of supporting the artisan producers so their food culture isn’t lost to more industrialized food production.

What is the biggest challenge to building a sustainable business?

As a small business, I simply try to incorporate my personal philosophy into every decision that I make for my business. It is important for me to stay true to myself as I build the business and I look at The Cook’s Atelier as an extension of who I am.

What tips/tricks do you have for overcoming those challenges?

I think the most important thing is to stay open to all of the possibilities but stay focused on what is important to you and work with people who share the same philosophy.

Why do feel it is important to be involved with organizations like Chef’s Collaborative?

I think it is important to be involved with organizations like Chef’s Collaborative because as a collective group, we can educate and raise awareness about the importance of supporting small farms, artisan food producers and sustainable agriculture.

What’s inspiring you these days?

Living in Burgundy, I am inspired everyday. I am inspired by the markets, the artisan producers that I work with, and cooking and sharing food with other like-minded people.

To learn more about Marjorie and The Cook’s Atelier, visit her website.

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