America--Farm to Table: Simple, Delicious Recipes Celebrating Local Farmers

466 Pages·2014·95.95 MB·English

by  Batali

Begin Reading
Table of Contents
Newsletters
Copyright Page
In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of
this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual
property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission
must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the
author’s rights.

To my wife and farmer, Susi Cahn,
and our two boys, Benno and Leo,
who love time on any farm
And to everyone who farms or gardens for their pleasure, nourishment, or mental
calm

FARMERS ARE THE REAL ROCK STARS
In the last decade, the concept of “farm-to-
table” has become an obsession in the media,
in restaurants, in foodie magazines, and in
television programming.
Although slogans are among my least favorite ways to communicate, I believe
that the fundamental truth of supporting local small farming may in fact be a
panacea for many of our twenty-first-century problems in both nutrition and
regional economic development. But it is also crucial in our hedonistic search for
the delicious and the delightful in cooking at home.
I grew up in Washington state in the sixties and seventies, when rural small
farms supported and were supported by small communities on both sides of the
Cascades. Before it was considered special or sacred, and long before the Food
Network and Iron Chef, and even before Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower,
families in our community went shopping in the lower valley farmers’ markets—
right there on the actual farms in the lower valley itself—for vegetables and fruits
to pickle, preserve, marinate, can, jar, turn into pies and jams, and just plain eat
—cooked or raw—in simple tribute to true seasonality and the magnificence of
inexpensive freshness. It was not considered a luxury to drive an hour or two to
get six cases of tomatoes, fragrant with the sticky-sweet, piney, acrid, dusty,
chalky, sharp, sensational, “geranium high on margaritas” scent of the tomato
vines I associate with the ecstasy of childhood. In our family, it was simply what
we did.
Since the mid-1960s, the United States’ obsession with processed foods has
increased from just a hobby or a special-occasion treat to a daily first choice for
many of our meals, which in itself can explain a lot about our decline in national
health. Type 2 diabetes diagnoses have quickly ascended to alarming and
potentially catastrophic numbers, putting an even higher priority on the dietary
habits and health of children. The reduction of actual dietary fiber in processing
leaves all of us capable of consuming much more food than we need, and the lack
of plant-based fiber is most certainly a major culprit in heart disease and
diabetes.
Not all of the decline in vigor and health is based on where we live or what
we eat, but certainly nutrition is a big part of our health problems and, to me,
seems the area easiest to improve upon. What yields the most delicious, healthful
results is, in fact, the simplest: cooking at home.
In the last twenty years or so, professional cooks and chefs have ascended the
social ladder from the outcasts and bottom rung-ers wearing grungy T-shirts and
dirty aprons catching a smoke by the alley Dumpster to a near rock-star status.
This phenomenon is due in part to the increased realization of the importance of
food as fuel for health, but also in part to the entertainment component of
watching chefs on TV and the pleasure of going out to a restaurant for dinner. It
used to be that a group of friends would head to the game and get a bite, or go to
the theater and catch a bite after. In short, the “bite” part, in my mom and dad’s
time, was usually perceived as an adjunct to the main event. In the 1980s, chefs
emerged from the back of the house and became entertainers themselves, and
have remained on center stage ever since. I believe this change is related to the
fact that the meal in itself—the traditions, the provocation, the innovation, and the
execution—have now become as appreciated as a fine performance on a
theatrical stage, or even an excellent game on a sporting field. Chefs became the
rock stars, the lead players, or the quarterbacks of the increasingly significant
nightly performances onstage at great restaurants around the world.
Cooking shows have thrived and given rise to hundreds of offshoots and
derivatives. And, although I am not a big fan of competition reality programming,
excellent cooking advice and lifestyle shows are constantly upping the ante,
introducing the next food-porn star. Many home cooks in the country live
vicariously through such food television, and may never intend to replicate the
Iron Chef dishes at home. But there is also a huge contingent of viewers, fans,
and followers intent on improving their own cooking at home, wanting to create
restaurant-style food in their own kitchens. They buy sous-vide technology,
immerse themselves in cookbooks by renowned and justly celebrated technicians
such as Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz, and lust for every delicious tip,
whispering each trade secret conspiratorially, sotto voce, in anticipation of
cracking the code to create the perfect dish. The good news is that the specialty
equipment we use in our professional kitchens can now be purchased by
consumers on the open market. The bad news is that we have incredible human
resources in our talented chefs and cooks in numbers that the home kitchen could
never support.
The single most important trick to elevating the home cook’s potential to
create quality, restaurant-level food is much simpler: It is the sourcing of quality
ingredients. Such ingredients yield better results than buying the oven or
immersion circulator I use. Instead, buy the same tiny waxy golden potatoes, or
the rainbow chard, or the real farm-fresh eggs, or the exact baby arugula borne of
seeds carried by hand from the shadow of Vesuvius and grown by a farmer I
know and love.
The real story here is that the farmers from whom chefs buy produce and meat
are capable of changing the food you eat at home much more significantly than
equipment or cookbooks or tips or TV shows you watch. This creates the new
paradigm: Where chefs once ruled the waves, local small farmers are the new
rock stars.
I would like to introduce you to an old pal of mine, and the coauthor of this book,
Jim Webster. Jim is a journalist by training and was working at the St.
Petersburg Times when I met him, but he now works at the Washington Post as a
multiplatform editor (huh?). In any case, Jim and I share similar passions about
food, and we both have particular interest in where it comes from. We hatched
the idea that the real story in the twenty-first century is the tale of where and how
the raw ingredients are born; and the real action surrounds the artist or farmer
who makes the food happen. Jim and I identified fourteen of my favorite chefs
around the country and asked each of them to identify a farmer/forager/producer
he or she strongly believed in. That was the easy part.
Jim traveled the country to meet both the chefs and the farmers, and
discovered that both groups are incredibly busy, and although they had agreed on
paper to participate in this book idea, they had very little real time to hang out
with Jim and chitchat… They are, in fact, always working hard at weaving the
fabric of deliciousness that makes them interesting. But Jim persevered, and the
results of that dedication are the fascinating stories of the farmers and their farms
and the products they curate, as well as the eventual delivery of those quality
products to a plate on the table.
After hearing about and tasting the great products of these farmers, I was
inspired to create recipes that featured them in all their glory, and that is what