American celebrity chef Tom Colicchio has challenged local chefs to make the effort to use as much locally grown and nurtured foods as possible when preparing dishes.
Colicchio, an award-winning chef, restaurateur and author, was speaking after a cooking demonstration today at the Sandy Lane Hotel, St James. The demonstration coincided with the Barbados Food & Wine And Rum Festival.
The chef said that wherever he travelled throughout the world, he made it a habit to encourage chefs to use locally grown or nurtured fruits, produce, provisions and other foods to prepare meals because “the faster you can get it from the ground or out of the water and on to your plate, the healthier it is”.
Colicchio, who has been the head judge on every season of the Bravo reality TV show Top Chef, said: “If you ship things (foods) in, they are not going to taste as good, especially fruits. If you are going to ship fruits, you are going to have to pick them before they are ripe; you can’t ship them when they are ripe because they will get crushed.
“I also encourage more people to grow more local ingredients. If people are not willing to put in the hard work of growing local ingredients, then we are not going to have fresh products.” (AH)
