grilled liberty duck breast, glazed turnips, cipollini, & wild arugula with green olive, tangerine, & almond relish.literati II, executive chef chris kidder
When I first heard about the ‘locavore’ movement, I thought, “Why would somebody restrict themselves to ingredients within a 400 mile radius?” It just seemed very inefficient and in an industry where so many restaurants rise and fall daily, I would want to maximize my reach in order to procure the best possible ingredients. But after working with a chef who based his daily menu on what was fresh at the local farmer’s market, I began to realize the benefits of ‘eating local’. If you ever take a stroll through the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmer’s Market, I guarantee you will be blown away by the abundance of produce available for everyday cooks. Every season brings in a plethora of color that many markets across this country would be jealous of. Purple potatoes, deep red strawberries, ruby red grapefruit, yellow tomatoes, and the list goes on and on. But its not the color that keeps you coming back. It’s the quality of the ingredients.
Here’s a test for those of you who doubt the superiority of local ingredients. Buy a tomato from your local grocery store: beefsteak, roma, heirloom, cherry, whatever your heart desires. Match it up with the same tomato from the farmer’s market. The taste is on another level. The difference in quality is very apparent when you cut open an heirloom tomato from the farmer’s market and an heirloom tomato at Whole Foods. The ‘local’ tomatoes are soft in texture yet firm in structure and provide a subtle sweetness that the hard, juiceless tomatoes from the market lack. Pair those heirloom tomatoes with a scoop of burrata cheese and a light vinaigrette and you have yourself a refreshing salad.
So, for a long time, I always stressed local ingredients in my cooking and my approach to food. If a restaurant provided a seasonal menu reflecting what was fresh at the local market, it immediately gained points in my book. Let me tell you, creating a menu based on what’s fresh at the market is difficult. Imagine walking through a farmer’s market and being overloaded by your visual and olfactory nerves. After coming back to your ‘senses’, you come back to your kitchen with the freshest possible ingredients. Let’s say you buy a crate of mixed berries, some leeks, a butternut squash, a box of spinach, arugula, mesclun, and frisee, and on the way out, a bag of pistachios. Now your job is to create a dinner menu highlighting those items. Of course, you have ingredients left in your kitchen so that’s not ALL you have to work with but you can see how it takes some training and imagination to come up with options for the average diner. For an untrained eye, one might not see the butternut squash waiting to be used for a hearty soup drizzled with olive oil. Appetizer? Check. Those greens? Toss them in a bacon vinaigrette and throw in a side of grilled bread. Salad? Check. The leeks? Braise them in a white wine and top with a protein. Create a sauce by deglazing the protein remnants and mix with the braising liquid to sauce the dish. Entrée? Check. Robo-coup the blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries and strain to create fresh sorbets. Plate all the flavors on a plate and top with some assorted berries. Dessert? Check. And those pistachios? Oh, how about some pistachio meringue cookies to go? Petit fours? Check.
After awhile in a kitchen, you start to see ingredients in a different light. I don’t approach the kitchen the same way as I used to six years ago. Six years ago, I would enter my kitchen and say to myself, “I want to make a steak burrito”. I would then buy the ingredients for the burrito and the rest is history. But now, I enter my kitchen and see what I have in my kitchen. What do I have available? What pairs with what? Ingredients dictate what I make and I’m gradually adapting my cooking to ensure that if my dish includes some seasonal market ingredient, I will highlight those flavors. In the same light, this enables me to think outside the box and apply different techniques to whatever I have available. It has broadened my way of cooking and has helped me appreciate what so many chefs have been doing for centuries.
But recently, my whole “eating local” machismo was shaken by what Jose Andres, former protégé to Ferran Adria, mentioned in his approach to cooking when opening his new restaurant, The Bazaar. Very good restaurant, by the way. He did not take the path of eating local. How sacrilegious! In California? In the land of the plentiful? Where all quality produce ends up at Santa Monica?? He had my attention. Chef Andres believes in obtaining the BEST ingredients. If that means getting watermelons from Mexico in the middle of winter, then so be it. If that is the best this world has to offer, then he will buy it. That turned my world upside down. What he was basically saying was, “Screw California’s breadbasket! If Uruguay has a better crop of tomatoes, that’s where I’m getting them!” And for a moment, I thought he was right. Hey, if some foreign country is offering me the best tasting beets in the world, of course I will buy them. Better tasting beets, better tasting dish, happier customers, and more return business. Its simple economics. But after some analysis, I came to the conclusion that he was missing one simple ingredient. That personal interaction. When I buy local at a farmer’s market, I’m buying somebody’s blood, sweat, and tears. The person I gave my money to probably picked what was now in my shopping bag. And that person probably beams with pride every week when thousands of home cooks and professional chefs come to buy their product. It adds another dimension to the process and I think gives it a personality. When somebody hands over their best work, it obligates the receiver to handle with care. In the kitchen, that means, don’t burn it, don’t trash it, and don’t mask its flavors. It means highlight those flavors, let those ingredients shine, and allow the person you’re feeding to find a new unrequited love for that ingredient.
