Lee Jones shares his inspiring story in ‘The Chef’s Garden’
NEW YORK: Despite thousands of years of humans working the soil, there are still things to learn. Just ask Farmer Lee Jones about the beet leaves. The Ohio-based farmer had planted too many beets and the surplus was dumped in a pile in a cooler. He returned later to find that when he dug below the first layer, to where the beets got no light exposure, beautiful leaves were growing out of the vegetable in the dark. “It’s a yellow leaf with red veins. And it’s one of the sexiest things that you can imagine,” he says. “We’re like, ‘Holy smokes, this is nicer than anything we grew on purpose!’” You might not find plants particularly sexy until you speak to Jones and catch his infectious enthusiasm for farming. He’s a relentless experimenter, willing to try new techniques, new ideas and new flavours. “There are literally thousands of plants and vegetables to be explored,” he says. “We have a saying that we try and work in harmony with Mother Nature rather than trying to outsmart her.”
Jones’ deep knowledge about vegetables and growing them is soon available via “The Chef’s Garden: A Modern Guide to Common and Unusual Vegetables — with Recipes.” The 640-page handsome book is equal parts vegetable reference bible, family memoir and recipe collection. It comes out April 27. “We try in the book to really look for different ways to be able to utilize plants in America. We kind of think one-dimensionally,” he says. “We do bone marrow. Why can’t we do vegetable marrow?”
Jones is the face of The Chef’s Garden, a sustainable, 350-acre family farm in Huron that provides Chefs worldwide with seasonal specialty vegetables, microgreens, herbs and edible flowers.
Name a starry Chef and there’s a good chance they’ve done business with The Chef’s Garden: José Andrés, Alain Ducasse, Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller and Ferran Adrià, among them. With his welcoming air and signature denim bib overalls and red bow tie, Jones has become something of a celebrity, too. The Chef’s Garden grows 700 kinds of vegetables, with 150 to 200 more in trials. There’s a lab where scientists analyze the soil and seeds, and there’s also the Culinary Vegetable Institute, which atracts 600 visiting Chefs a year to share their knowledge and cook together. Readers of the book will find new ways to prepare vegetables, from celery root to cauliflower, and learn about more unusual ingredients like carrot seeds, knotweed and radish seed pods.
“For several thousand years, we always ate only the top of the carrot plant. It’s only been in the last few hundred years that we started eating the botom of the carrot. Now nobody eats the top,” Jones says. Jones’ farm is surrounded by 5,000-acre commercial farms, and he does things differently: Instead of chemicals, he uses 15 species of cover crop to replenish the soil. He argues that American farmers have lost their way regarding food and health. “I don’t knock the other farmers. They’re following the model that exists and that’s to keep the costs as low as possible and the tons per acre as high as possible. It’s not about the integrity of the plant. It’s about the tons per acre,” he says. “We’re a bunch of odd ducks out here, for sure.” Above all, Jones emphasizes taste and minimizing waste. He looks to Europeans, who learned over centuries of struggle with food insecurity to use every part of their animals.
Take oxtail, a peasant food for years. “They figured out great ways to make good dishes with the flavor of the oxtail. And then Thomas Keller comes over here and puts an oxtail on a plate and it’s 90 bucks.” Jones wants to showcase vegetables, and the book offers atractive and tasty options, from Buter-poached Squash with Hemp Seed and Coriander to Potato Pierogi with Caramelised Onion Chips. The book has a forward writen by Andres and is co-writen with Kristin Donnelly, with recipes by Jamie Simpson. Lucia Watson, the book’s editor for Avery, says it is timely. “Vegetables are the centre of our plate more and more. And it is kind of where all of the exciting cooking is coming from — experimenting with vegetables,” she says.