Becoming a Community Chef (Post 3)

The Great Performances Kitchen.

Last week, Just Food Community Chefs visited Great Performances in Lower Manhattan for a cooking demonstration.

Great Performances was founded in 1979 by photographer Liz Neumark. Originally known as Great Performances: Artists as Waitresses, the company offered a way for women in the arts to supplement their meager incomes with work in the developing catering industry. Today, Great Performances is the largest off premise catering company in New York City and the fourth-largest independent catering firm in the country. The company—recognizing women and men equally—remains committed to its mission in the arts while working to elevate hospitality to an art form in itself. Their clients include BAM Café, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Sotheby’s, Asia Society and Wave Hill.

A salad prepared by Chris Harkness of Great Performances.

Executive Chef Chris Harkness lead the demonstration, showing us how to prepare a Green Jacket salad with heirloom tomatoes, grilled asparagus, baby radishes and pea tendrils, lightly dressed in a citrus vinaigrette. (Great Performances has its own 6o-acre organic farm in upstate New York that yields a large portion of the produce used in their kitchen.) While the session provided the group with some very helpful cooking tips, it also extended our discussion about the benefits of local (and seasonal) eating. For instance, the shorter distance that fruits and vegetables travel to reach our plates, the greater their nutrients and flavor; less shipping and packaging mean fewer damaging effects to the environment; and a food system develops that supports local farmers. However cost, lack of accessibility and/or absence of food education prevent many Americans from eating this way. Not to mention that local eating can sometimes sound like another fancy diet trend.

Veggies beforehand.

The local food movement is often called “the new organic," which does little to earn converts; the number one argument against organic food is that only the wealthy can afford it. According to 100-Mile dieters, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon (who define "local" as food grown or made within a 100-mile radius of where you live), "There’s an assumption that going local is only for people with time and money to spare. Somehow we’ve forgotten that cooking your own meals and putting away food for winter used to be considered thrifty things to do." Indeed. But eating locally today certainly has it challenges; much has changed in matters of production and access since the good ol' days of food. Writer Debbie Elkind says, "The fact that [local eating is] the latest trend in ethical eating is somewhat ironic, when you consider that it’s merely eating the way our ancestors once did."

Speaking of ancestors, I don't know about yours, but mine ate dessert (with white sugar and real butter) in addition to their fresh fruits and vegetables. I started to wonder: Has the new rhetoric for eating local been tweaked to fit within our current culture of deprivation (in the name of health), and our negative thinking about sweets, or will the pleasures of cooking and eating dessert that our ancestors actually embraced remain? In a 2002 Times of London article, titled Let Them Eat Sweets, Tim Richardson wrote:

Cookies and brownies headed to Wave Hill.

[The] demonising of sweets is relatively new—for some 3,000 years sugar was considered almost universally to be a valuable, health-giving energy food with an extremely pleasant taste...Public health bodies [today] believe (correctly) that people often choose sugary foods and drinks over alternatives that might be fresher, or richer in vitamins and minerals, and (incorrectly) that scaring people about the evils of sugar will make them change their ways and start consuming these healthier foods instead.

It follows that reductionist thinking about food as either "good" or "bad" has given Americans (and the British too) the wrong ideas about how to eat, and has made us an unhealthy society. (This is key in Michael Pollan's book, In Defense of Food.) But, from what I glean, today's local food movement truly advocates pleasure alongside health in eating; I have found plenty of locavores on the web that offer fabulous dessert recipes and welcome new ones. As Chef Harkness talked about green markets and local produce, I was pleased to look around the Great Performances kitchen and see berry tarts with crumble topping, small frosted cakes, and other confections in the works. In this kitchen dessert is definitely still on the menu.

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A recipe from Great Performances:

Rhubarb Cobbler with Roasted Strawberries

Filling
1 Lb. Rhubarb stalks, wash, trim ends and discard leaves as they are poisonous
2/3 cup Sugar
1 Tbsp All-Purpose Flour
1 tsp Cinnamon powder
1/2 tsp Orange Zest
1/8 tsp Ground Ginger

Topping
8 oz Light Brown Sugar
8 oz Granulated Sugar
1 1/4 oz Honey
1/8 oz Vanilla Extract
7 1/2 oz Butter
4 oz Vegetable Shortening
1 Lb All-Purpose Flour
1/4 oz Salt
5 oz Quick Cooking Oats

Roasted Strawberries
15 large Strawberries, stems removed
1/2 Tbsp Melted Butter
3 Tbsp Sugar

Go to The Dish for instructions.