heart of a chef

The end event for the American Heart Association "Heart of a Chef" charity was an auditorium of wine tastings, demonstrations, farmer's market, food tastings, and a television reality chef cook-off competition.  Chef K and I were there to do a demo/lecture titled "Chef's Gone Green."  Although we are not 'green,' we used to forum to advocate doing anything possible... our point being that "at what point do you become green."  There is no line in the sand that by changing that one light bulb to an energy saver or by purchasing that sack of carrots from the farmer down south instead of getting it shipped from Carrot Land, USA you will finally achieve green-ness.  It's not easy being green.  There are many shades of green.  Be a greenish tint of whatever other color you are.  It's the blessing and the curse.  Everyone's focused on it because the customer is beginning to demand it, but because the customer is demanding it... the label is bound to be mis-used.  Be as green as you can, and strive to be greener.

It was a good topic, and one that we were not fully prepared for after the previous days' events.  We learned how to approach it, pulled it off, and will do it 10 times better next time and a 100 times better the time after that.  Here are a couple of pictures from that day.

Our boy, Ralph Pagano.  He was in competition against Howie Kleinberg from Top Chef, but unfortunately lost.  The competitions were pretty well organized and were set up with Whole Foods mystery bags.  Each chef had an hour to create 1 dish.  The final competition featured tofu as a main ingredient which proved to be interesting... but wasn't.

Sean Bernal of Oceanaire with his enlightening demo on purchasing sustainable fish... the how's, why's, and where's.

Ralph is a hell of a personality onstage.  Give Bertha our prayers, Ralph.