Harvesting Excellence
The best chefs know that incredible meals don't start in the kitchen--they start with the farmers, butchers, and seafood merchants. Where you get your ingredients is the key to fine dining. InHarvesting Excellence, acclaimed chef Alain Ducasse, of Manhattan's Alain Ducasse at Essex House and two three-star Michelin restaurants, takes us on a journey across the United States to visit the people who supply restaurants with the highest-caliber ingredients."While each region had drawn from itsterroir--the climate, soil, and sun--to yield singular products," says Ducasse, "the flare and individuality of the multiple cultural influences in the United States have set the stage for modern American cuisine." Visit Coach Farm in upstate New York, where fromager Miles Cahn makes fresh goat cheese daily with milk from his herd of 1,000 goats. From there travel to Portland, Maine, and attend a fish auction where a prize halibut goes for $20 a pound. In Silicon Valley, a four-generation family farm produces cherries and apricots in the midst of the booming technology empire--and prays that they won't lose their lease and fertile farmland to commercial ventures. A connoisseur of beef, Ducasse thinks the Makache cattle of Arizona, tended by true cowboys, rivals Kobe beef in flavor and texture. What an animal eats affects the flavor of its meat, so when pigs are fed apples (they prefer Macintoshes) their meat "tastes almost as though caramelized and resembles an old-fashioned candied roast." On this same farm in Pennsylvania, chickens are fed cornmash mixed with milk for a lighter, moister meal with a delicate flavor.Whether visiting a farm famous for its smoked pepper or for its succulent Meyer lemons,Harvesting Excellenceis an interesting, intimate look at the people who raise and cultivate the food so artfully presented to you at our nation's best restaurants.--Dana Van Nest