Making Produce the Star of the Show

Early in my career at the Culinary Institute of America, I innocently asked a chef why he didn’t put more fresh fruit on his dessert menu. He simply said, “Because it does not sell. Diners expect chefs to create something special for them, not cut up fruit and put it on a plate.”

I was embarrassed and saddened by his answer, but in a business designed to make money and celebrate the culinary talents of chefs, it made sense. Or does it? If chefs do too much to produce, does it lessen its value and allow other ingredients to be the stars of the show?

A few months after this humbling experience, while attending what was then known as the PMA Foodservice Conference, colleagues and I had dinner at Passionfish in Pacific Grove, CA. I was thrilled to see Raspberries in Dark Chocolate on the dessert menu, and the name of the dish was the dish.

Very large, perfectly ripe raspberries had been placed open-side down in a shallow pool of dark chocolate sauce on large round plates. To eat this dessert, we simply picked up the raspberries with our fingers, dragged them through the chocolate sauce, and savored every moment of this delightful, playful dessert.

The pastry chef chose to exercise restraint and use her talent in ingredient selection to pair the best possible quality raspberries and dark chocolate to create a memorable produce experience that’s been with me for more than 15 years.

If we want to increase produce consumption and sales, we must hold ourselves accountable for flavor, quality and the eating experience.

Fast forward to a meal I enjoyed in Napa Valley while attending the Culinary Institute of America’s 2024 Worlds of Flavor International Conference and Festival in early November.

The executive chef at Farmstead in St. Helena offered sweet potatoes as a side dish during a private dinner for 16, served family style. The sweet potatoes had been twice baked, but when stuffed, only half of each shell had been filled. The side that was not filled was very crispy.

We had fun enjoying the creaminess of the filling and the crispiness of the shell that, admittedly, had been enhanced with a wee bit of butter. Everyone in our group was talking about how they rarely eat or appreciate a sweet potato shell, but because the chef took a different approach, designed to play up different textures in a single dish, we took notice.

And we ate everything. The portion size was perfect, and the flavors and textures were memorable.

The next day, I was on a farm tour with a group of chefs from Northern California where we were greeted by the farm manager holding a basket of vegetables he had harvested moments before our bus arrived at the farm. He offered baby turnips, bright orange chile peppers (with mild, fruity flavor), and carrots to munch on while we walked the farm. In the greenhouse, he urged us to try a variety of microgreens. And in the fields, he encouraged us to try Romanesco and kale. I passed on the kale tasting.

The chefs were all raving over the flavors of the vegetables. No one fussed over the fact that they hadn’t been washed, trimmed, or prepared in any other manner other than harvested. Again, a simple approach allowed the produce to shine.

Aleksander Baron, a leading figure in the Polish culinary scene, did a culinary demonstration at Worlds of Flavor where he used mostly produce to make a dish he says is consistently one of the best-selling dishes at his vegetarian restaurant in Warsaw.

The ingredients for Potato Dumplings with Carrot Sauce include potatoes, celeriac, carrots, garlic, porcini mushrooms, oyster mushrooms and dill. Some butter adds richness to the carrot sauce, and yogurt is used to garnish the plate. The potato dumplings themselves are simply cooked potatoes, cooked celeriac, and potato starch, formed into balls, indented with a thumbprint, and blanched in salted water until they float. So simple, so elegant, so delicious!

As an audience member at Worlds of Flavor, I often cringe at things speakers say, including a CIA faculty member who inaccurately stated, “Plant breeders do not breed for flavor; they breed to yield,” during a session on climate change. He doesn’t realize that plant breeders in the vegetable industry are focused on flavor, as well as marketable yield, drought tolerance, disease resistance, post-harvest quality and other factors.

Statements like that can make chefs and other cooks think they need to fuss more with the flavor of produce-centric dishes. But those of us in the produce industry know we can produce exceptional flavor and quality — if we choose to do so.

Is your business choosing to focus on flavor and quality, or are you still focused on price? Are you describing your products for the foodservice industry based on sensory traits, or are you forcing your customers to spec produce based on units per box? What can you do to shift conversations with your customers that motivate them to think more critically about produce quality, or is that a conversation you want to avoid?

If we want to increase produce consumption and sales, we must hold ourselves accountable for flavor, quality and the eating experience. Remember those raspberries from Passionfish, the very large, perfectly ripe ones in the pool of dark chocolate? Wouldn’t it be great if your produce items were recalled with that much intensity 5, 10, 15 or 20 years after they were enjoyed in a restaurant?

Amy Myrdal Miller, MS, RDN, FAND is a farmer’s daughter from North Dakota, award-winning dietitian, culinary nutrition expert, and founder and president of Farmer’s Daughter Consulting Inc., based in Carmichael, CA. This is her final Produce on the Menu column, which she began writing in November 2015.