Chefs who forage

BY TAMRA TESTERMAN / PHOTOS BY NATHAN BURTON

The menu offerings in the ACEQ kitchen very much embrace the spirit of boldness, and the model for getting the right ingredients can take shape in different ways — from a small herb garden to sourcing local farms and ranches. We call it urban foraging, and we’re hands on — foraging wild ingredients are about being in the right place at the right time.

We lose our connection to the cycle of nature and where food is grown when we mechanize the food supply chain. When pomegranates are available at Cid’s in the summer and avocados in the winter, it all leads to a monotonous diet. Fresh seasonal offerings that reflect this cycle are the answer. Foraging can be the genesis of an intimate relationship with the planet. When I ventured into foraging, I discovered everything was cyclical and interconnected.

Just as important as it is to forage, it is important to be creative in execution. It comes down to feeling good about what you’re using and even better about what you’re passionate about.

Chef Gabriel Farkash has been one founder of many successful restaurants — comebacks and redemption are the keys to success. He is passionate about the art form and has an insatiable culinary curiosity.

We want to create a menu that displays a high level of skill and reflects years of experimenting and innovation. To keep things interesting and shake things up with the unforeseen like martial artist Conor McGregor. You don’t know what he’s going to do next. I’m unconventional, but it opens people’s eyes to the endless exploration of cooking.

Foraging is a means of connecting to the terrain that I was born and raised on, and that my ancestors have been born and raised on for countless generations. As time goes on, it feels that we have lost much of the knowledge and culture around food, but the plants and animals remain. Foraging to me is a key to the past and, with my practice with Shed Project, also keeps the tempo of the year. It’s a practice of connectedness with Mother Earth and nurturing from her abundance. After I gather wild plants, I dry them in the sun and store them in a dark cool place where I can access them for the rest of the year. I love to make carne seca — New Mexico jerky with bison, elk or criollo beef sprinkled with southern New Mexican salt.

I cannot speak for restaurants, as Shed Project isn’t one, but on the practice of foraging for whatever use, done with intention, can aid in further abundance within the ecosystem. It brings awareness and intention for myself and those who I share with, but also, I feel that when one has a practice of foraging, it can become more of a stewardship that for longevity demands care and awareness with one’s terrain.

Like anything, in excess, foraging can become detrimental, and I like to practice leaving things better

than I found them. It’s helpful to know what the plant is, why it’s in a certain place, and how to pick it so that it may continue growing. Some plants, Cota Indian tea if picked right, perpetuate growth. By harvesting early before the flower goes to seed a couple times, you get the best out of the plant before it goes to seed late summer.

Being a perennial, the same plant will grow back each year, so if you let the flowers go to seed, the following years, there will be even more plants, or if you harvest the stems with seeds and spread them elsewhere, those flowers will grow in more places. By knowing the right time to pick, you and the plant flourish.

Your life is your medicine, and for one, I believe foraging to connect to the terrain you live with is a great practice for anyone, whether it is a small or large one. Foraging as pertaining to culinary, I muse that through the practice of such, I can share a story of this place that is Northern New Mexico, a place that has shaped me and my ancestors. It is a story of survival, of connectedness, of deliciousness, of nurturing, of the fleeting nature of time and our relationship to it.

I hope the future of foraging will bring us all a little closer to the foods (medicines) that we consume.