Cathy Katin-Grazzini is a sustainable chef and author of the newly published “Love the Foods that Love the Planet, Recipes to Cool the Climate and Excite the Senses.” She sat down with The Packer to discuss sustainability from a chef’s perspective.
(Editor's note: The following has been edited for length and clarity.)
The Packer: Are you noticing any particular fresh produce items that there’s more interest in?
Katin-Grazzini: What my new cookbook is designed to do is to make the consumer, the home cook, more aware of where things are heading and to reduce the disconnect between consumers and our food source.
I'm looking at the food systems in the book and trying to educate people about what we're producing, how we're sourcing it, how we're cooking it and how we can waste less of it. I’m trying to introduce the American home cook to more sustainable, resilient crops that maybe aren’t front and center yet.
Mine is a rallying cry to begin to eat for the planet so that we can really lower our greenhouse gas emissions, first and foremost by beginning to introduce more and more plants and fungi to our tables to lessen animal agriculture products on our plates, because they're so demanding of our resources.
What are you hearing about consumers’ attitudes toward plastics and fresh produce?
We want to reduce our waste stream. Half my garbage is plastic, and I eat almost all vegetables. I know there's already mycelium and hemp cartons, but whatever we can do to replace the plastic in our stream — if it were edible or something that can be compostable, easily and repurposed in the garden or something that's biodegradable ... or that people can can re-compost themselves — [that] would be such a big selling point for whatever is put in it.
There’s a good portion of consumers who are eco-conscious and want to do the right thing. They will pay an extra bump for sustainable, but they need to be made to understand this is the reason why they're paying it.
What kind of questions does the consumer have surrounding sustainably grown fresh produce?
People don't know what sustainability means. Regenerative agriculture, sustainability — what exactly does that mean? What does it mean in terms of greenhouse gas emissions?
Part of it is educational. That's a lot to put on the fresh produce industry, but it might benefit them as well, because an informed consumer makes smarter choices and is willing to put their money where their mouth is if it matters to them.
I think people sometimes think that local produce is the most important thing possible. I try to educate them that we want to support our local farmers. But transportation, when it comes to the food sector, is not the big driver of emissions. The biggest drivers are land use, farming practices, and loss and waste. And it's maybe well worth it to import from a different country or a different part of the country, you know, certain commodities that are really beneficial in terms of their health benefits or their environmental benefits, water usage [and] land use.
If they're not a conscious consumer that's concerned about these sorts of issues, then they're just looking at price and convenience.
What types of sustainable produce do you hope to see go mainstream?
I'm not certain of their climate footprints in every market where they are cultivated or what they'd be if they're grown here, but they'd all be stellar from the nutritional perspective, and if they are resilient or enrich soil health, they'd help farmers diversify their fields and lower their risks of crop failures and falling yields of other crops.
A grocer could have signage introducing new varieties, listing their nutritional and environmental benefits, include photos of dishes or offer a recipe or two, and display them alongside familiar items. That would go a long way to gaining consumer acceptance.
Leafy greens
- Asian vegetables like choy sum, gai choy, gai lan, ong choy, lotus root, naigamo.
- Cresses like watercress, garden cress, Persian cress.
- Turnip leaves; beet leaves; radish leaves; very young, small dandelion greens; leaves from young cauliflower and broccoli, if they're small and tender.
- Red and green Thai chilies, green Indian chilies.
- Fresh herbs.
- Curry leaves.
- Fresh fenugreek.
- Spring onions, red and white
- Sweet garleek
- Garlic scapes
- There are over 4,000 varieties of potatoes from South America. It would be brilliant to see more of them offered here.
- With more than 6,000 varieties of sweetpotatoes around the world, surely we can offer more than the handful we do.
- African, Chinese, Indian and Japanese yams.
- Okra varieties like red okra and ribbed okra.
- Italian ribbed zucchini.
- Zucchini and other edible squash and other flowers, if they aren't too perishable.
- Fresh shell beans, like young favas, chickpeas, cranberry beans, lima beans.
- Chinese cauliflower (san hua).
- More radish varieties like purple daikon, watermelon radishes, etc.
- Hedgehog mushrooms, black trumpet mushrooms and maitakes are only available in specialty shops, on occasion. If they can be cultivated indoors, it would be wonderful for them to become more commonly used.