The International Culinary Center is a culinary educational institution with campuses in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and near Parma, Italy. Among the courses that the International Culinary Center offers at its New York Campus is a program focused on farm-to-table cooking in the Hudson Valley.
Farm-to-table cooking is about more than just eating locally produced food.The ethos of the term is the idea of building a relationship with growers. At its purest, farm-to-table food is prepared by the chef at the farm, representing the shortest possible supply line and ensuring the freshest and best quality produce. Farm to table cuisine often relies on heirloom or heritage produce, drawing on deep agricultural traditions rather than hyper-modern techniques such as hybridization. This results in a cuisine based around simpler dishes whose aim is to display the quality of the produce.
The emphasis of sustainable agriculture implicit in farm-to-table cooking requires chefs to stay in constant communication with producers. In the case of meat, chefs must pay attention to both where and how the animal is raised and where it is slaughtered as animals may travel large distances to slaughter. In the case of fish, chefs must consider fishing quotas and potential overfishing before deciding on a specific kind of fish to buy. Finally, farm-to-table requires patience and flexibility, as the world, not the chef, defines what can be served.
