Local production for local consumption

I just came from an annual holiday with family and was pleasantly surprised to hear a lot of good comments about organic and all-natural food from my family. I overheard stories of “farm to table,” sourcing local ingredients and more good news from a meat-eating, wine-tasting family.

We found not a few restaurants sourcing and preparing local fare, but with a chef’s twist away from just meat and potatoes. Even for meals when I did not dine with them, they told me wonderful accounts of locavore restaurants in Eastern Europe.

We had the privilege of eating at a hilltop restaurant in faraway Croatia and was served a menu of locally-sourced food. The meats were from the area’s local cows, ducks and hogs. The cheese was fresh and unpasteurized – and the breads were baked in house. In fact, the squacking ducks are your first greeters along with some sheep and horses (for work, not for meat).

This restaurant also made their own wines. We were taken to the wine cellar where bottles of red, white and sparkling wines were waiting in casks and bottles. What else can you ask for? All the bread was made in house and sausages and meats came from their farm and from the neighbors’ farms in the village.

More and more we find ourselves appreciating local food – made from ingredients that have not traveled far. And this is something we must again give attention to. We can do this in Manila and around the country, as long as we remember local production for local consumption.

Responsible consumption and production of food simply means thinking local and trying our best not to make food travel long distances.

Think about tomatoes. Farmers are forced to pick them unripe and green – so that they can still travel and they ripen when they have already arrived in your kitchen. That does not deliver its freshest flavor to your plates. Our palates then adjust and now we have changed our sensory appreciation of tomatoes. Before you know it, you may not anymore know the taste of a real sun-ripened sweet tomato. This is why I try to eat as much fresh tomatoes when I travel to places where I know tomatoes are still sourced locally.

Then let us think about meats and how they are preserved to be able to travel long distances.

Give yourself some pleasure and order meat sourced from local farms. You may just be able to tell the difference. We tried a fast food place in faraway Mauthausen, Austria where the beef patties tasted “not mass produced” but like freshly-ground meat cooked to a perfect doneness.

In a fast food joint? Yes it is possible.

How about fish? How fresh is the fish we get from the markets? I just watched a documentary “You Are What You Eat” on Netflix and it touched on one of my favorite foods, fish. I was appalled to know how salmon is farmed and even dyed or colored to turn a beautiful salmon color. And that it is not as healthy to eat as I always thought. It will probably be best to eat fish near fishing communities and not from just anywhere.

I am happy for local rice farmers who can grow what they need for a whole year. And just like in Croatia, many people own vineyards to get 150 liters of wine annually – enough for their family’s needs for a year. What rice is to our IPs, wine is to Croatian farmers. Grow enough for your annual consumption.

Before leaving Zagreb, we ate at a locavore-centric restaurant to cap our holidays. Here they proudly served Croatian wine, along with locally-sourced meats and vegetables. There is a fall or winter menu, as everything is served with seasonality in mind. This way, even if you ate out of the house, you get to taste the season’s best produce as created by chefs.

In nearby Slovenia, we also chanced upon a locavore restaurant which proudly served aged Slovenian beef, local fish like sea bream and sea bass, and we tried all these without specifying that we be taken to a “farm to table” choice. It just comes naturally to these Slavic cities to respect local food, as they have been used to growing and eating local. It also helps that they are located close to Italy, making the recipes a mélange of Austro-Hungarian with Italian undertones.

On my way to the airport the van driver shared his talk on a ride with a local chef. He asked what menu she had at her restaurant, to which she quickly replied: “There is no fixed menu. We go by what is in season!” How wonderful to be able to hear such a remark from our own local chefs. It is my hope to sometimes find an item missing in a menu just because it is NOT in season, and that is OK. I think we try too hard to replicate Continental dishes when we do not have continental ingredients that are freshly- sourced – unless they are flown in and would have cost thousands in miles, in pesos and actual miles traveled.

The way to go is to demand more local ingredients that chefs can play with, to come up with new creations from old local ingredients. I had that experience in Manila with a meal prepared by a young chef, Don Baldosano, who forages and uses local vegetables with an explosion of interesting flavors and mouthfeel. Even his drinks are from fermented local fruits like banana and jackfruit. And he can name the farm and source of almost all his ingredients.

That is our ideal scenario. Growing your own food or simply knowing where your food comes from is a step in the right direction. So let us push again for locavorism. The closer we are to our supply, the fresher the food will be. Be a locavore.