Sustainability is probably the biggest buzzword on the planet, and especially as it relates to food, as you know if you’ve looked at the National Restaurant Association’s 2014 What’s Hot chef survey results. At NRA in Chicago this week, Andrew Zimmern of The Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods show shared some surprisingly insightful thoughts on the topic as he was demonstrating a cheese soufflé and a bitter melon dish.
Of all the vegetables, why did he choose bitter melon? He used the vined plant that’s popular in Asian cuisine to make a sustainability point. He rebuked Americans for eating among too narrow of a group of choices. Take fish for example. We select such a small range of the fish available that we are overfishing the oceans to get them. “We have plenty of fish. Use different fish. If you’re not eating fish with a head on it at least once a month, you’re not a sustainable eater,” he said.
Soap box please. At his World Culinary Showcase presentation on Sunday, May 18, at the NRA Restaurant, Hotel-Motel Show, he continued by warning the packed, enthusiastic crowd not to point a finger at farmers when harping on sustainability. “Don’t look at what other people are doing. Make some decisions for yourself. Say, ‘I am going to be a sustainable eater.’”
About that bitter melon that he cut in half, blanched and mixed with sugar, fermented black beans, shallots, leeks, garlic and duck egg yolk. “For every time we eat one less head of broccoli and eat something like this, we are doing something good for our planet,” he said, referring to supporting less-used vegetables.
Of course he didn’t want us to think that one person serving bitter melon for dinner would save the planet. “What’s necessary to correct our food lives is a social change movement sufficient enough to recover from the problem we have.” Repeat. …
Then there was that soufflé. He tricked us with the eggs. While preparing the dish, he pretended he was using real beaten eggs. He even brought up some “egg producers” to talk about their eggs. Only they weren’t real eggs, and that was probably the funnest part of the whole presentation for our buddy Andrew Zimmern, who was busting at the seams to let us in on his secret. The guys were from Hampton Creek Foods out of San Francisco, and they are in R&D on what Zimmern dubbed the world’s first plant-based egg. It’s the company’s scramble project with a product made of yellow split peas. It emulsifies in mayonnaise, so the company has already developed the mayo product. Now it is perfecting the liquid “beaten egg” to be used in food preparation like an egg. It worked with Zimmern’s soufflé, which turned out marvelously. So Chris Jones, Hampton Creek Foods’ director of culinary innovation, explained that the “eggs” have more protein than conventional eggs, no cholesterol, use less energy to produce, are safer for humans and safer to transport (with no egg shells). On cue, helpers brought out some chocolate chip cookies made with the eggless egg product for us to sample. Zimmern and Jones both emphasized that it scrambles well. But for now, it’s still in R&D and is not available to the trade. When it is available, it likely will be as an ingredient in a food product, so consumers will never know. Zimmern ascribed Nobel-prize-winning importance to the product, which the company thinks will be available on a large scale to manufacturers by the end of the year.
By the way, Zimmern used potato chips as the soufflé binder. After all, let’s have some balance on the whole topic of sustainability.
Tell me what you think.
Jody Shee
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