Growing their own: every summer, Maria Helm Sinskey finds herself in the midst of an eggplant crisis

Art Culinaire, Summer, 2005

"When I'm deciding what to put in, I always say, just one more, just one more," she says of the extensive garden she maintains at Robert Sinskey Vineyards in Napa, California. "Then suddenly you have eight varieties of eggplant, and it all starts to come in at once, and you've got way too much. I mean, how many batches of baba ghanoush and eggplant terrines can you make?"

The threat of overabundance is a legitimate, if enviable, concern for chefs who grow their own vegetables, herbs and fruits, but it's a risk that more and more of them seem willing to take, if it means they'll reap the rewards of becoming their own favorite produce purveyors. From Sinskey's wine country garden to Arrows restaurant in Ogunquit, Maine, American chefs are emulating their European counterparts, tending kitchen gardens to ensure that their produce is being sustainably (and often organically) grown. Drawn together under the auspices of Chef's Collaborative, a 1,000 member-strong network of food professionals concerned with sustainability, these chefs trade seeds, share advice and create a national forum for discussion and education. According to the Chefs Collaborative mission statement, "If chefs' habits change, consumers' habits will change, too."

"People are in love with the fact that we can say 'all of the vegetables and herbs used in this dish were grown right outside that door," says Sinskey, the chef for special events at the vineyard, which is certified organic. "It reattaches them emotionally to the earth."

CLAIRE CRISCUOLO, OWNER OF CLAIRE'S CORNER COPIA and Basta Trattoria in New Haven, Connecticut, adds, "The benefits of growing are enormous to both your physical and mental health. We've always loved the 'surprises' that arrive each day and have had a garden to help support our restaurants since 1980. I consider my time in the garden an act of love." Criscuolo says that hand-weeding her crops is great, efficient exercise, and points out the obvious health benefits of consuming produce that hasn't been treated with pesticides, herbicides or fungicides.

Growing one's own produce can positively impact on a chef's food cost, although it is far from a given. "I wish I could say that there is a huge cost savings, but we have not experienced this," says Criscuolo, adding, however, that she takes the small amount of money she saves by growing her own produce and uses it to buy what items she doesn't grow herself, thereby supporting sustainable farming in her area. "We're not in southern California, Texas or Florida, so we do what we can to keep our farmers in business."

Chef Ryan Hardy of The Coach House at the Harbor View Hotel, on Martha's Vineyard, says that finding more uses for a particular item creates cost-effectiveness, whether growing your own or buying from local farmers.

"I'm in a unique situation, being in a hotel, so I can take in large quantities of something and not worry that I won't sell it," he says. "Local farmers will call me and say 'I've got 150 pounds of green beans, can you use them?' And we'll pickle them, we'll can them, work them into a salad. We'll have a party for 150 to 200 people, and there's 40 pounds of beans right there. Pound for pound, we get them for pennies. We're helping the local economy, and it's something that might rot otherwise." Hardy mentions that herbs can be particularly cost-effective, as they take a relatively small amount of a chef's growing space, and if purchased can cost more per pound than most meats or fish.

"Everyone uses parsley or chives, right? So if you plant 20 or 25 chive plants, then you never have to buy chives again. That's $20 or $30 a week that you're saving, and when you multiply that by the number of different herbs you use, it adds up," explains Hardy, who also happens to have a degree in accounting.

Melissa Kelly grows enough produce that her restaurant, Primo, is nearly self-sustaining during the summer months. In addition to a plot that yields hundreds of pounds of garlic, shallots, peppers, squashes, berries, greens and more, she harvests from an on-premises tea garden, an herb garden, and two greenhouses, one of them solar-powered. Kelly, whose restaurant is based in Rockland, Maine, says that being a chef/gardener means that she has a more dynamic opportunity to educate her staff, and that her kitchen garden functions as great marketing tool, a sentiment echoed by many green-thumbed chefs.

"Being growers really sets us apart," says Stu Stein, culinary director of King Estate Winery in Eugene, Oregon. "Our customers know that we're going to have produce that tastes better, because it was grown correctly, and locally, on land used as a sustainable resource." Stein cautions that, having realized the marketing power of homegrown produce, some restaurants make misleading claims about their products and philosophies. "I hate it when chefs on the West Coast say they use only sustainable, local products, and then they'll put Maine lobster on their menus," says Stein, who is also the co-author, with Mary Hinds and Judith H. Dern, of The Sustainable Kitchen (New Society Publishers, 2004). He takes a hard line on local products, completely eschewing the soft shelled crabs he loved as a chef in Maryland because, as he says, "They don't belong in Oregon. By the time they get to me, they're leathery."