Chef and Farmer: Benefits of Farm-Fresh Kale Varieties
On our farm’s blog, we write about many topics, from food trends to regenerative farming techniques and other philosophies we advocate for. We also provide overviews of specific crops, their health benefits, and more.
At the very heart of everything we share, though, is the chef and farmer relationship.
In fact, everything we do—from the research we conduct to the cover crops we grow and the information we provide—is ultimately done to provide our chefs with the highest-quality, flavorful products they need for their creative dishes and menus.
This means that chef feedback is invaluable to us—and so we’re grateful how two of them have shared their insights about our kale products: Disney Chef Sahib Bhatti, who talked about why he is using our loose kale in a dish he’s creating, and The Mar-A-Logo Club Chef Bogdan Boerean who offered feedback about using our meskale in his menus.
Chef Feedback About Flavor
Chef Bogdan appreciates the sweetness of our meskale, and how well it pairs with so many dishes, specifically those with burrata, chicken, and beef. Meanwhile, Chef Sahib told us that the flavor of loose kale from The Chef’s Garden is “great” and not too bitter.
We appreciate hearing how important the flavor of our kale products is to these chefs. This reinforces what we’ve learned from numerous chefs over the years—that we can never focus enough on flavor. In fact, sometimes we say that the top three things chefs want are:
- Flavor
- More Flavor
- Even More flavor
Traditionally, of course, varieties of kale have not been associated with diner pleasure—but that’s because of how it was grown, not how the chefs used it. In the past, farmers would harvest kale when it had reached full maturity, and that’s how kale became associated with an unpleasant flavor.
Chef Feedback About Texture
Farmer Lee remembers harvesting kale at full maturity as a child. He also remembers the result being “tough and leathery” and admits he “never developed a fondness for it during childhood. Kale was something to be endured, not something to be celebrated.”
We do kale differently, though, hand harvesting center leaves for our chefs at just the right time for the ideal texture. Chef Sahib chooses our loose kale because the leaves are hearty, without being too fibrous, while Chef Bogdan appreciates the crunchiness of our meskale.
Chef Feedback About Visual Appeal
People eat with their eyes first, and Chef Bogdan likes how each leaf of our meskale isn’t identically shaped.
That would be like every brushstroke in a painting being the same. Although chefs sometimes need similarly sized leaves, differently shaped ones can add visual appeal.
And, as Farmer Lee likes to say to chefs, you’ve got the vision. We provide the paint.
Chef Feedback About Consistency
Chef Sahib appreciates the consistency of our loose kale in the dish he’s developing.
Again, we appreciate the feedback—and, in this case, it makes us realize something important. We strongly focus on product consistency—in flavor, quality, size, visual appearance, and more—but we don’t talk about this aspect of our work.
At the core of this consistency is our extreme focus on soil health. (And, no. Our use of “extreme” is not overstated. This may be an understatement). Intricately connected to this is our research and development work, where we conduct routine soil sampling to ensure the proper balance of nutrients for healthy and consistent plant growth. We also conduct antioxidant and nutritional testing of our plants.
And, then, there’s flavor.
Yes, all roads at our farm lead back to flavor. We take consistent brix (sugar content) readings to monitor how delicious a crop will be. If you’re a visual person, it may help to imagine a big circle with the word FLAVOR written clearly in the center, with a variety of roads—ones named Soil Health Street, Cover Crops Avenue, Regenerative Farming Blvd., Research and Development Drive, Soil Sampling Street, Brix Readings Road, Nutritional Value Blvd., Visual Appeal Avenue, and much more leading into this circle.
All roads at our farm lead back to flavor.
And here’s one more thing to consider. When a product—in this case, kale—is hand-harvested upon chefs’ orders, we send them our very best. That’s a key part of our promise to chefs.
More About Our Chef and Farmer Relationship
For more than 30 years, we have devoted ourselves to working in concert with extraordinary chefs worldwide, like Chef Bogdan and Chef Sahib. We collaborate with them, having plenty of conversations about what they need to continue creating the excellent menus they create.
As part of our chef and farmer relationship, we research and develop new product varieties, fulfilling chef requests for new and innovative products. We also collaborate with chefs to discover how vegetables and other crops we’re already growing can be used in new and different ways. One chef, for example, taught us the value of vegetable blooms in a unique fashion.
Our farming research and development and food safety programs ensure that our quality, freshness, taste, and service to our chefs are never compromised.
The knowledge provided by our chefs fuels us, and the work they inspire has resulted in a narrative intrinsic to the quality of the products we grow and the regenerative agricultural practices we implement. Here’s more about our chef and farmer philosophy.
If you’re a professional chef interested in becoming a customer of The Chef’s Garden, please get in touch with us online today!