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Test Kitchen: Going Farm to Table on World Food Day
October 16th is World Food Day, and it’s also usually a pretty chilly day in Canada. We’re celebrating with a sneak-peek into Andrew Coppolino’s Farm to Table: Celebrating Stratford Chefs School Alumni, Recipes & Perth County Producers from Blue Moon Publishers, and warming up with an unbelievably-good, making-shopping-lists-now recipe for mac and Blyth Farm cheese from chef Devin Tabor.(We apologize in advance for posting food pictures like these before lunch.)
Introduction to Farm to Table by Andrew Coppolino
When I set out to write the individual stories – perhaps they are more like mini-biographies – that form the backbone of Farm to Tabl, I guess I thought I knew what “farm to table” meant. It seemed to me that it was a straightforward concept, unified and harmonious. There are parts of it that are shared and unified, but I learned it’s a much more complex and nuanced thing. It’s more random and disparate. It was really eye-opening to be able to talk with the chefs and farmers in the book and learn more about the realities of food and the restaurant industry. What’s happening in Perth County and the areas around Stratford is very cool and exciting if you love to eat, that’s for sure. It’s happening elsewhere too, but I think we can say that Stratford, with the Stratford Chefs School and the theatre scene, is special.
It’s hard to pick out just one example when there are so many, but a small farmer like Andrew Courtney, who operates A Still, Small Farm and focuses less on restaurants and more on the home dining table, is a producer who stood out to me. I walked through his fields and rows of vegetables one day. He described how he studies the soil on his farm and that he still has a lot to learn. Courtney told me that he believes he’s doing good for his community and that he’s carrying on a tradition of humans working in the fields for much of our history. Part of what motivates him is that it feels good doing something in the community that people need. His is a fairly typical story I heard.
I’m always in awe of people who dedicate themselves to a cause, so when I heard Pam Rogers’ story of how she’s an organic farmer and a social justice activist I thought, wow! For Rogers, the soil on Kawthoolei, her organic farm, offers her solace after her work with refugees on the Thai-Burma border. She will spend months and months helping vulnerable displaced people there, and then she returns home to her farming. “It’s therapeutic,” she told me about working the soil, “and at the same time it carries on the creativity as a way to express myself.” I think of how busy farmers are and the hard work they do and then add to that helping impoverished people in terrible and dangerous conditions—well, that’s just amazing. You can sense some frustration when the relationships don’t work perfectly, too, as TNT Farms noted. They sell a lot of blueberries in and around Stratford, but another crop, unique sea buckthorn berries, is problematic: they are tart, and Nadia Walch says, “People don’t tend to gravitate toward tart things. But everybody knows blueberries and loves them.” She laughed when saying that. I also think about Max Lass at Church Hill Farm or Erin McIntosh at McIntosh Farms—they both really, really care about their animals and what they do as farmers. That’s something I think we need more of.
On the chef and recipe side, the range in this book is pretty wide, from complex techniques for confident home cooks and professionals to basic sandwiches and dishes to make for the family—like the “Father ‘N’ Son Rainy Afternoon Blyth Farm Mac ‘N’ Cheese” from Devin Tabor. And it’s funny how the recipes mean so much more when you can visualize who the farmer is and how he or she raised the chicken or grew the radishes. I think when you hear the cliché that the food “was prepared with love,” it goes back to the basic ingredients, where they came from, and how the cook used them. There’s a deep, “loving” connection there. And isn’t that what food is supposed to do—connect us just as much as it sustains us?
I think so.
Recipe: Father n’ Son Rainy Afternoon Blyth Farm Mac n’ Cheese by Chef Devin Tabor
You can use any of the Blyth Farm cheeses to satisfy your craving for the love and comfort that is the classic mac ‘n’ cheese. You could try Blyth’s Smoked cheese for smoky mac, a spicy mac using Blyth’s Jalapeno, velvety Golden Blyth or Blyth’s Cumin. In the recipe below, you can skip the roasted garlic and use Blyth’s Garlic cheese instead. INGREDIENTS- 6 cloves garlic
- 2 1/2 cups macaroni noodles
- 85 g (3 oz) unsalted butter
- 85 g (3 oz) flour
- 4 cups milk (2%)
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1 tsp fresh ground pepper
- 1/2 tsp nutmeg
- 8 strips good quality bacon cooked, cooled and diced
- 1 package Blyth Farm Nettle cheese, rind removed, grated
- 1/2 cup panko crumbs