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Well-Farmed Chefs
At a culinary school in Colorado, students are learning about food at the source — down on the farm.
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From the posh Blue Hill Restaurant in New York to La Provence in Los Angeles, consumers are willingly continue to pay a premium for farm-fresh, seasonal fare. A recent consumer poll by Zogby International found 85 percent of consumers in the U.S. believe it is important to know where their food comes from. Gourmet magazine devoted its 2007 nationwide dining guide to a farm-to-table theme, and universities, through their agricultural or hospitality departments, have long sponsored a variety of programs to connect farmers with restaurant industry up-and-comers. Now, at least one culinary school is jumping on board the local food movement train.
Next July, the first students in the Culinary School of the Rockies’ new six-month Farm to Table Culinary Arts Program will head to Colorado’s farms. School founder Joan Brett believes the program will be the first of its kind in the U.S., though she noted the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Cork, Ireland, has been immersing its students in the fieldwork for more than two decades. By contrast, many U.S. culinary schools sponsor outings to farms, Brett says, but none require a full five weeks among the herbs, vegetables, and animals that eventually will end up on dinner plates.
The program begins with eight days in Colorado’s North Fork Valley where students will toil from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on five farms in the Valley Organic Growers Association: two vineyards, one fruit orchard, a potato farm, and an elk and buffalo ranch. Afternoons will be spent in discussions and working with a chef to use the products from the farms in the evening meal. After the North Fork Valley, students will travel to Sustainable Settings, a 200-acre, non-profit farm in Carbondale, Colorado, near Aspen. In addition to picking fresh produce and learning about sustainable farming practices, the chefs-to-be will slaughter a lamb. “We won’t force anyone to do it, but we’ll certainly encourage everyone to participate,” Brett says. Then it’s off to Boulder County to work with a cheesemaker and three other farmers, as well as caterers using only local products. “The important thing was not just to have them farming but to use those ingredients directly in their food,” Brett says. “This ultimately is a cooking school, not a farming school.”
Farmers were quick to embrace the idea of the school. After all, working directly with chefs makes good business sense. It allows them to tailor crops to restaurant industry needs, expand their marketing channels, and reap more value from their crops. “It takes out the middleman,” says Daphne Yannakakis of Zephyros Farms and Garden in Paonia, Colorado. “You’re getting the full value of your product.” Or as Steve Ela of Ela Family Farms, a 99-acre organic fruit orchard in Hotchkiss, Colorado, put it, “It helps farms survive.”
Such partnerships also make sense for chefs. “You can try as hard as you can to make food taste great, but it’s never as good as when it’s straight from the farm,” Yannakakis says. “Food loses flavor the longer it sits in a truck. Once you’ve eaten fresh cut greens from your greenhouse, you don’t want to go back to buying them from a store.” Culinary students who visit farms learn how to source the best ingredients, even down to how soil composition influences flavors.
Brett knew such skills could make her students more marketable — even if local food is a trend, high-quality ingredients are not — and interest in the program is blossoming. Brett says four of the program’s 16 slots are already filled. “Everybody has become much more conscious of global warming, the use of fossil fuels, and the need to be healthier. Those don’t sound like trends to me,” she says. “It’s much broader than just a food trend. It’s vital to the sustainability of food and the planet.”
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