Vol. 7 | No. 1 | Spring 2008
As local, seasonal, and organic foods earn top billing at more restaurants, UCS highlights chefs and farmers who are partnering to provide delivious dishes with less environmental impact.
By Karen Perry Stillerman
If you’ve been out to eat recently, chances are you’ve seen something labeled “local” or “organic” on the menu. More and more restaurants across the country are showcasing dishes made with Earth-friendly foods as chefs rediscover the diversity and high quality of ingredients produced by local food systems. This encouraging trend is the subject of Green Cuisine, a new online feature on the UCS website (www.ucsusa.org/greencuisine). Through photo slide shows, Green Cuisine tells the stories of chefs and farmers working together to put healthy, seasonal, and environmentally friendly foods on tables from coast to coast.
A Career-long Commitment to the Environment
Our first issue of Green Cuisine highlighted the efforts of chef (and organic-food pioneer) Nora Pouillon. Pouillon owns and operates Restaurant Nora in Washington, DC, which in 1999 became the first certified organic restaurant in the country. She began buying organic produce and meats from local farmers in the 1970s when the market for such products was very small.
Today, organic food is widely available through national distributors, but Pouillon continues to partner with local producers such as Jim and Moie Crawford of New Morning Farm in southeastern Pennsylvania, and other vendors at her local farmers market. She prefers the freshness and quality of organic produce picked and cooked at its peak, along with the reduced dependence on fossil fuels compared with foods transported long distances. She also likes the connection to farmers in her community. “I like to meet and talk with the farmers at the farmers market,” she says. “When you know the farmers and their practices, you can buy confidently.”
Pouillon is not alone in this view; in 1993, a handful of like-minded chefs came together to found the Chefs Collaborative, a Boston-based nonprofit organization that helps restaurants make purchasing decisions that “embrace seasonality, preserve diversity and traditional practices, and support local economies.” The group now boasts more than 1,000 members—mostly professional chefs—who cook with high-quality local and organic ingredients and, in turn, educate customers about the environmental and health benefits of these foods. (A list of member restaurants is available online at www.chefscollaborative.org.)
A Recipe for Change
Many chefs have become as famous for their ecological values as for their culinary styles, and have been a powerful force in shaping food policy decisions. In the late 1990s, for example, more than 500 chefs nationwide joined the “Give Swordfish a Break” campaign, which sought to reverse the decline of north Atlantic swordfish populations after decades of overfishing. The campaign removed swordfish from many restaurant menus and successfully mobilized public support for new fishery policies, resulting in a 94 percent recovery of swordfish populations by 2002.
By exposing customers to environmentally friendly foods in their restaurants, chefs may also help drive demand for these foods at the retail level. A growing number of supermarkets are carrying local and organic produce as well as sustainably harvested fish, grass-fed and antibiotic-free meat, and dairy products from cows untreated with synthetic growth hormones. Consumers are also increasingly able to buy food directly from farms, both through farmers markets and community supported agriculture (CSA) arrangements, in which customers pay in advance for weekly “shares” of a farm’s harvest. Increased demand from consumers and chefs has helped small farms thrive, and according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of small farms is growing at a rate of two percent per year.
Leadership on a Larger Scale
Gourmet establishments like Restaurant Nora are not the only ones getting in on the local food act. In another Green Cuisine feature, UCS profiled the chefs of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME, who have partnered with nearby farmers and utilized an on-campus garden to feed the school’s 2,000 students. The menu receives such high marks among students that the college consistently ranks at or near the top of the Princeton Review’s “best college food” list.
Multimillion-dollar corporations are also recognizing the need to provide food that is healthy for their customers and the environment. Bon Appétit Management Company, a food service company that serves more than 80 million meals each year, supplies local and sustainable foods for its clients, which include Cisco Systems, Target, the Art Institute of Chicago, AT&T Park (home to baseball’s San Francisco Giants), and a number of colleges and universities. And Kaiser-Permanente, the largest U.S. health care provider, hosts farmers markets at some of its facilities and works with local growers to put fresh produce on inpatient meal trays at 19 of its California hospitals.
With all this activity, it is not surprising that the New Oxford American Dictionary selected “locavore”—a person who endeavors to eat locally produced food—as its 2007 word of the year. Seeking locally grown food—and supporting the chefs, farmers, and companies that provide it—can help ensure that our agriculture system will be healthy and productive for generations to come. ■
Pasta with Ten Kinds of TomatoesFrom the first installment of our online Green Cuisine series, Nora Pouillon offers this recipe that will make any tomato lover yearn for the coming summer harvest.
Ingredients
Balsamic Vinaigrette:
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
½ teaspoon garlic, chopped
Sea salt and freshly ground black
pepper, to taste
Pasta and Tomato Mixture:
1 pound pasta, fresh or dried,
such as fettucine or penne
10 ripe tomatoes (equaling 1–
1 ¼ pounds), preferably a local
and organic assortment
such as:
1 red tomato
1 yellow tomato
1 red cherry tomato
1 yellow cherry tomato
1 red pear tomato
1 yellow pear tomato
1 red currant tomato
1 yellow currant tomato
1 orange or yellow
sunburst tomato
1 green grape tomato
1 cup fresh basil leaves, julienned
½ small red onion, chopped
1 teaspoon olive oil
Basil leaves for garnish (optional)
Preparation
1) Combine vinegar, salt, and garlic in a small bowl. Slowly whisk in the olive oil. Taste and adjust for seasoning as needed.
2) Chop the large tomatoes, quarter the medium tomatoes,
and halve the small tomatoes. Leave the currant tomatoes
whole. Toss with the balsamic vinaigrette, onion, and julienned
basil leaves.
3) Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until al dente (three to four minutes for fresh pasta, longer for dried). Drain and toss with 1 teaspoon of olive oil to prevent sticking.
4) Pour the pasta into a bowl, toss with the tomato mixture, and distribute among four large, warmed dinner plates. Or, distribute the pasta among the plates and arrange several spoonfuls of the tomato mixture on top. Garnish with basil leaves.
Serves four.
Karen Perry Stillerman is a senior analyst in the Food and Environment Program.
