~ Terrior and the identity of local flavor ~

Locally Grown Carrots

Once again I re-visit the tantalizing topic of local food.

What does our valley, our soil, taste like?  How does it create a unique local food flavor?

The local terrior - the local soil and environment - interact together to play a role in the genetic expression of plants and when all come together create a unique food expression.  So peaches grown in Conejo Valley will actually taste different - and should btw taste different - than peaches grown in Ojai.

How do we embrace our uniqueness?  How do we even begin to discover what that uniqueness is and learn how to identify it and distinguish it from other flavors?  Very simply - start visiting and shopping at farmer's markets and grow a garden.

I remember my first visits to this valley.  My family was planning to move from Santa Monica and we often spread our picnic in orange groves and as a child I remember I played in farm fields and hid in ditches or oak trees when farmers rode by on horseback.  Basque sheep herders came down each year from northern California to graze their sheep.  It was a very different valley than the one we see today.  The farm fields pretty much disappeared decades ago.

With the food producing land all but vanished - what resources do we have to begin to explore and build a local cuisine, a local food culture?  I like to focus on the positive.  What we DO have is the most amazing climate that grows just about everything.  What we DO have is a whole network of backyards.  Backyards that could be converted to permaculture and create a kind of food redundancy and food security that would benefit the entire community.  Each backyard connected like little points of light - a whole wonderful interconnected food web.

I would get very excited to learn that someone in the community became very passionate about growing heirloom beans.  There are so many interesting varieties and beans grow very well here which I happen to know from my own garden experiments.  I would be very excited to learn that someone in the community became passionate about growing squash.  I can't tell you how many delicious beautiful varieties of squash ARE  NOT grown commercially.   Or how about someone getting so interested in baking real artisanal bread that they go off to study with Chad Robertson in northern California or travel to Europe to study traditional bread baking.  What about artisanal cheese?  What about locally raised backyard eggs from chickens who lead lives that chickens are meant to lead?

Once we start getting excited about local food and food culture the possibilities are endless and things really start to get interesting.

Those of you who attend my classes know that they are all about local food and that at each class participants can expect to experience a whole plethora of new local flavor sensations.  Each bite becomes an education to the palate and is an important first step to discovering, recognizing and cultivating local food and local food identity.