Fresh Produce Archives | The Chef's Garden https://chefs-garden.com/tag/fresh-produce/ Sat, 06 Sep 2025 14:30:15 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://chefs-garden.com/wp-content/uploads/cropped-CG-FullColor-@4x_Registration-4-32x32.jpg Fresh Produce Archives | The Chef's Garden https://chefs-garden.com/tag/fresh-produce/ 32 32 Farmer Lee Jones shares gardening & nutrition tips https://chefs-garden.com/farmer-lee-jones-shares-gardening-nutrition-tips/ https://chefs-garden.com/farmer-lee-jones-shares-gardening-nutrition-tips/#respond Thu, 18 Jul 2024 15:12:58 +0000 https://chefs-garden.com/?p=1643320 The post Farmer Lee Jones shares gardening & nutrition tips appeared first on The Chef's Garden.

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]]> https://chefs-garden.com/farmer-lee-jones-shares-gardening-nutrition-tips/feed/ 0 Spinach Season: It’s Time to Look for Farmer Lee in the Fields https://chefs-garden.com/spinach-season-its-time-to-look-for-farmer-lee-in-the-fields/ Mon, 04 Dec 2023 15:36:42 +0000 https://chefs-garden.com/?p=9616 Farmer Lee Jones loves spinach! He adores the farm-fresh flavor, the plant’s robust texture, its amazing amounts of nutrients, and its ability to grow in cool weather—which makes spinach the […]

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]]> Farmer Lee Jones loves spinach! He adores the farm-fresh flavor, the plant’s robust texture, its amazing amounts of nutrients, and its ability to grow in cool weather—which makes spinach the perfect embodiment of one of Farmer Lee’s favorite sayings: that we’re growing vegetables slowly and gently in full accord with nature.

Just between you and us, though, Farmer Lee loves this vegetable so much that we sometimes have a bit of trouble tracking him down during the spinach season. He even talks with the spinach!

Think we’re kidding?

All joking aside, we think your diners will love our spinach, too. And, thanks to our use of cold frames, as fall transitions into winter, the sugar content of our spinach will continue to rise. Think about vintners using frozen grapes to make incredible ice wine—and that’s the same concept that we use when we grow our ice spinach.

Ice spinach freezes at night and thaws in the day, continuing to bring sugar levels up to the point that brix readings are as high as those of an apple.

As Bob Jones, Jr. explains it, spinach leaves are little solar receptors that capture sunlight through photosynthesis. This light energy is converted to chemical energy—and while we won’t get into all of the technical details here, the result is natural sugar. In fact, if you look at the root of a bunch of our ice spinach, it’s even turning pink because of the concentration of natural sugars near the soil line.

Our ice spinach is a deep, rich green in hue with leaves that are full of life and energy—and of vigor and vitality.

And, oh. Mum’s the word, but Bob explained the talking-like sound coming from the spinach that Lee is holding. It comes from the cell walls’ integrity and amount of calcium—which translates into an incredible shelf life for you and your restaurants.

Ready for farm-fresh spinach on your winter menus? Just let your product specialist know!

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]]> Chef Rachel Bindel Praises Petite Mixed Carrots and More https://chefs-garden.com/chef-rachel-bindel-praises-petite-mixed-carrots-and-more/ Fri, 17 Nov 2023 16:16:40 +0000 https://chefs-garden.com/?p=9622 Nowadays, Chef Rachel Bindel is happily busy at Gravitas in Washington, D.C. It’s no surprise, considering her childhood love for cooking and sharing food with her family. Her passion led her […]

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]]> Nowadays, Chef Rachel Bindel is happily busy at Gravitas in Washington, D.C. It’s no surprise, considering her childhood love for cooking and sharing food with her family. Her passion led her to attend the Culinary Institute of America, and she has been cooking professionally ever since. After almost two years with the 101 Hospitality Group, she was thrilled to take on the role of chef de cuisine at Gravitas.

Chatting with Chef Rachel

She’s taken time out of her schedule today to talk to us about her philosophy of creating a dish and the ingredients she loves (which includes but are definitely not limited to petite mixed carrots!).

“When creating a dish,” Chef Rachel tells us, “I usually design all the components first. I then put all the pieces in front of me and start to build the plate from there. The last step is usually deciding which microgreens and garnishes would taste and look the best.”

A Focus on Salads

When making her salads, which were inspired by Michel Bras’ Gargouillou and are ever-evolving, she considers petite mixed carrots a staple. Why? because of their “fantastic flavor” and how “the guests go nuts over how cute they are.”

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Currently, the Gravitas salad features the following amazingly mouthwatering ingredients:

Doesn’t that list make you want to take a bite—or two or ten of them—of this luscious-sounding salad?

Other Favorite Ingredients

Rachel also appreciates just about anything involving pork: “charcuterie, BBQ, roasts, sausages, bacon, chicharrones. There is so much flavor that can be derived from different cuts of pork, so it’s one of my favorite foods.” Other favorites include “dill, basil, and fennel,” with Rachel sharing how “I love how much of a punch these ingredients can add to a dish.”

Closing Comments

When asked what is currently making her feel proud and excited, she definitely knew her answer: “Working in an environment where I am constantly trying to evolve and create on the level that a 1-Michelin star restaurant ought,” Rachel says, is “exciting and challenging.”

And now, here’s a closing comment from The Chef’s Garden: Thank you so much, Rachel, for sharing your time and expertise with us!

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]]> The Unique Cucamelon: Plating Techniques https://chefs-garden.com/plating-the-beautifully-unique-cucamelon/ Tue, 12 Sep 2023 11:51:22 +0000 https://chefs-garden.com/?p=9294 The cucamelon truly is unique, an egg-shaped fruit that looks like a mini-watermelon and tastes like sweet cucumber overlaid with a slightly sour taste of pickle. Here are three ways […]

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The cucamelon truly is unique, an egg-shaped fruit that looks like a mini-watermelon and tastes like sweet cucumber overlaid with a slightly sour taste of pickle. Here are three ways to highlight this amazing fruit.

 

Bar and Bar Snack: Feta Stuffed Cucamelons

 

 

This is amazingly easy to prep behind the bar. Simply core the tiny cukes and store them in a salty pickle brine. When you’re ready to use them, pipe them full of whipped feta cheese and skewer them like olives. Voilà!

 

Fine DIning: Gazpacho

 

 

When ingredients for this dish are in season, it’s incredibly delicious. Here, we make a smooth gazpacho and garnish it with parts and pieces of its base ingredients: peppers, cucumbers, cucamelons, tomatoes, & olive oil.

 

Banquet/Country Club Dining: Melon Soup

 

 

Top the soup with a cucamelon slice and cucamelon flower. Cucamelon and cantaloupe share unexpected affinities, complementing and contrasting one another at the same time. Fortunately, they’re in season together, so this is an easy combo to use.

 

More About Cucamelon

 

Cucamelons offer up a crunchy bite because of their skin with soft and juicy flesh inside. They offer up a wonderfully fresh aroma, the essence of the summer season.

 

We hope you’ve enjoyed this installment of our Food Plating Techniques! Stay tuned for more.

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]]> Marvelous Mesclun: Plating Techniques https://chefs-garden.com/exploring-marvelous-mesclun/ Mon, 10 Jul 2023 09:13:53 +0000 https://chefs-garden.com/?p=9240 Go beyond salads with the mesclun mix from The Chef’s Garden. This flavorful blend changes throughout the year as the seasons evolve. Keeping our mesclun mix on hand inherently keeps […]

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Go beyond salads with the mesclun mix from The Chef’s Garden. This flavorful blend changes throughout the year as the seasons evolve. Keeping our mesclun mix on hand inherently keeps your menu, the dishes you serve, and their ingredients seasonably sensitive.

 

At the Bar: Spring Rolls

 

 

These spring rolls are an easy bar snack that use the farm’s gomasio, sour turnips, and smoked soy from Blis Gourmet.

 

Fine Dining: Milk-Poached Cod

 
 

This dish leans on the versatility of the mesclun blend, offering up different flavors, textures, and colors as the blend seasonally changes.

 

Country Club Dining: Enhanced Salads

 
 

Even though our mesclun mix isn’t strictly reserved for salads, it uplifts any salads you create, providing a fresh, new offering. For banquets, it’s as simple as opening up the box.

 

More About Mesclun

 

For the past thirty-five years, The Chef’s Garden has continued to add varieties of mesclun to our mix, each having unique textures and flavors. These leaves range in hue from green to red to amber to chartreuse to lime to magenta! Textures range from crispy to buttery to brittle, with flavors including ones that are slightly salty, slightly sweet, slightly bitter, and slightly sour.

 

Mesclun leaves are harvested daily with the best of the day’s harvest included in the mix. So, it’s never exactly the same, which keeps everything interesting and exciting.

 

We hope you enjoyed this installment of Food Plating Techniques!

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]]> The Perfect Pea Tendril: Plating Techniques https://chefs-garden.com/the-perfect-pea-tendril/ Wed, 28 Jun 2023 09:17:43 +0000 https://chefs-garden.com/?p=9242 Pea tendrils offer a mildly sweet, earthy flavor reminiscent of fresh, raw peas. You can keep the tendrils whole or pull them apart from the leaves, enjoying the incredibly tender […]

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Pea tendrils offer a mildly sweet, earthy flavor reminiscent of fresh, raw peas. You can keep the tendrils whole or pull them apart from the leaves, enjoying the incredibly tender and buttery texture and their eye-catching appearance. Here, Chef Jamie Simpson shares three ways to use them in a glass or plate.

 

At the Bar: Cocktail With Pea Tendril Syrup

 
 

This recipe comes from The Chef’s Garden book by way of Charlotte Voisey at William Grant & Sons. We start with a syrup made with a pea tendril and finish with a cocktail we can’t get enough of.

 

Fine Dining: Sugar Snap Pea Custard

 
 

When peas are out of season, don’t buy them; make them! This is a sugar snap pea cast from Chicago Mold School with a custard of pea tendril, onion, and chive.

 

Country Club Dining:

 
 

Functionally, for banquets, pea tendrils serve as a perfect indicator to the guests, the servers, and the cooks at large events. We use the vegetable as the garnish to indicate the soup offered.

 

More About Pea Tendrils

 

Envisioning how you can use fresh pea tendrils in your own creative masterpieces? Varieties include the following:

 

  • Pea Tendrils: mildly sweet and earthy flavor; green hue

  • Gold Pea Tendrils: another option, one with an attractive gold appearance

  • Calvin Pea Tendrils: incredibly sweet with a silky texture

 

We hope you enjoyed this installment of Food Plating Techniques!

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]]> Emerald Crystal Lettuce: Plating Techniques https://chefs-garden.com/jewel-in-the-lettuce-crown-emerald-crystal/ Mon, 12 Jun 2023 09:21:03 +0000 https://chefs-garden.com/?p=9244 This lovely lettuce offers fresh green flavor along with a tender, succulent texture while also providing a nice crunch. The leaves are fleshy and creamy-edged green. In the summer, there’s […]

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This lovely lettuce offers fresh green flavor along with a tender, succulent texture while also providing a nice crunch. The leaves are fleshy and creamy-edged green. In the summer, there’s also a bonus: rose-colored edible flowers.

 

Here are three ways that Chef Jamie Simpson enjoys putting emerald crystal lettuce on a pedestal.

 

At the Bar: Brilliant in Cocktails

 

 

Emerald crystal lettuce plays in the same sandbox as saltbush, sedums, and oyster leaves.

 

Fine Dining: Royal Presentation without Escargot

 
 

We wanted to explore escargot and emerald crystal lettuce together as a garnish for a simple yet elegant presentation. However, our escargot dreams fell through. When this happens, don’t force it. Be flexible. Here, we’ve taken Maître D butter and cooked it with fregola di Sarda, olive oil-packed artichokes, and lupini beans with caciocavallo—served with a few slices of ciabatta. The emerald crystal lettuce stands up to hot, buttery, oily, or cheesy food. It’s the Swiss army knife of halophytes!

 

Country Club Dining: Soft Boiled Eggs and Crispy Salty Nests

 
 

We’ve played on this concept in The Chef’s Garden book and at a few dinners in the past, and this one should live forever. They’re easy to make, easy to serve, and easy to love. Use Feuille de brick, brown butter, eggs, and anything else you want.

 

More About Emerald Crystal Lettuce

 

Interested in using emerald crystal lettuce in your own culinary treasures? Just let your product specialist know.

 

We hope you enjoyed this installment of Food Plating Techniques!

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]]> Stunning Snow Peas: Fresh Pea Flavor https://chefs-garden.com/stunning-snow-peas-fresh-pea-flavor/ Wed, 09 Nov 2022 11:11:38 +0000 https://chefs-garden.com/?p=9849 From green to purple to hues of gold, snow peas add visual appeal to dishes while offering fresh pea flavor and a crisp yet tender texture. The delectable snow pea’s […]

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]]> From green to purple to hues of gold, snow peas add visual appeal to dishes while offering fresh pea flavor and a crisp yet tender texture. The delectable snow pea’s possibilities are limited only by your imagination, with our creative chefs having endless supplies of innovation and artistry.

Here are how three of them use our farm-fresh snow peas.

Chef Austin Adler

At Maple and Ash, chefs began incorporating snow peas from The Chef’s Garden into dishes in spring 2022. “They’re beautiful,” Chef Austin says, “and I love the petite size. They’re so sweet that we serve them raw. They’re so tender that we don’t even need to blanch them!”

Austin slices the snow peas in half and adds them to a plate containing grape bomb radishes, cut longwise with the stem still on. Add a few dots of Meyer lemon gelee and a habanero fish sauce that includes flavors ranging from white soy to orange—and touches of pineapple mint and micro petite basil. Voila! Hamachi crudo.

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“As soon as snow peas come into season, we offer this dish,” Austin says, “and it’s one of our best sellers. The snow peas are so fresh and vibrant with the dish having a wonderful combination of spicy radish, sweet peas, and tart lemon—and, of course, the flavor of the fish.”

Chef Rogelio Garcia

“Petite snow peas,” Chef Rogelio says, “are absolutely amazing.”

He uses them in his dried fish recipe. Called “madai,” this fish is a variety of red sea bream and is considered a premiere ingredient in Japanese cuisine. “The fish dries for seven days,” Rogelio explains, “and the skin gets super crispy. I then include a high-end type of Japanese rice along with broth made from the fish bones—a Japanese bonito broth.”

Next, he plates the dish with beautiful snow peas and pea blooms—and pickled peas. “This is the perfect spring and early summer dish,” Rogelio adds, “with touches of Japan.”

As a chef, Rogelio focuses on culinary artisanship, “one small burst of flavor at a time.” This dish is a perfect example as it uses multiple forms of the pea plant to add perfect layers of flavor to a Japanese classic.

He notes the following. “Any meal starts way before you enter the kitchen, in the fields, on farms, at markets, and in gardens.”

Chef Joseph Madzia IV

While Chef Joseph was growing up, his family planted a garden—and his favorite crop? Peas! “I would fill my pockets,” he says, “with little green peas and then snack on them like candy.”

When Edwin Hotel decided to revamp its menu, the restaurant ordered the farm’s best-of-the-season box to see which crops were in peak season. “It contained beautiful little snow peas,” Joseph says. The other chefs at the hotel had never seen product from The Chef’s Garden before, and they were amazed at the smallest versions of vegetables—how they looked and their sweetness.”

At the restaurant, snow peas are used on a crab cake dish tossed with ouzo olive oil and salt. “It’s a seared crab cake with a fresh lemon confit sauce,” he explains. The dish contains a base of spiced English pea puree, a touch of horseradish, golden pea tendrils—and, of course, tiny snow peas. Flavors come together in a way that guests love, and they appreciate how we highlight each ingredient’s natural flavors.”

Snow Peas

Please contact your product specialist to order snow peas for your unique dishes. New to The Chef’s Garden? Welcome! Get started here.

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]]> Celebrating Wonderful Watercress: Plating Techniques https://chefs-garden.com/celebrating-wonderful-watercress/ Tue, 05 Apr 2022 13:44:07 +0000 https://chefs-garden.com/?p=9450 The Chef’s Garden harvests farm-fresh watercress as a microgreen and in petite and ultra sizes—plus with its deliciously edible white blooms. This makes watercress a marvelously versatile choice in our […]

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The Chef’s Garden harvests farm-fresh watercress as a microgreen and in petite and ultra sizes—plus with its deliciously edible white blooms. This makes watercress a marvelously versatile choice in our “Plating Techniques” series.

 

Bar Snack: Anchovy Watercress Sandwich

 
 

The bocadillo is a typical Spanish-style sandwich popularized by its low cost and decent margins. If you can find or make a demi-baguette, bring these onto your menus and sell them all day. From ham and cheese to fried sardines, watercress is an excellent addition to this bar snack. We love this plant for its extremely long shelf life, given the right conditions.

 

Fine Dining: Watercress. Olive Oil. Egg. Nasturtium. Turnip.

 
 

Watercress is a beautiful complement to rich, fatty foods, and here, we’ve brought the cousins together for a family reunion around the egg. Turnip, watercress, and nasturtium balance well with soft-boiled eggs and olive oil.

 

Banquets: Lamb and Watercress with Reduced Farm Stock

 
 

Simply put, for banquets, less is more. Faster turnaround time equals better food and less time (or no time) holding in boxes. We often lean toward more courses with fewer components than those with more components. Three-course menus are not allowed here. We have too many stories to tell, and our guests have come a long way to experience this place and all it has to offer. This dish is a perfect example of that.

 

Watercress Plant

 

The watercress plant offers a unique flavor profile, one found at the intersection of salty, spicy, and slightly bitter. Texture? Delicately thin—and ideal to use to paint your plates.

 

We hope you’ve enjoyed this installment of our “Plating Techniques” series. We’ve got plenty more planned!

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]]> Farm-Fresh Vegetables with Bowtie Service https://chefs-garden.com/farm-fresh-vegetables-harvested-packed-shipped-bowtie-service/ Mon, 27 Jul 2020 05:22:28 +0000 https://chefs-garden.com/?p=10066 We’ve maintained an outstanding reputation for our noteworthy customer service with a red bowtie on each box we ship, symbolizing our quality commitment to you. Farm-Fresh Vegetables Harvested, Packed and […]

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]]> We’ve maintained an outstanding reputation for our noteworthy customer service with a red bowtie on each box we ship, symbolizing our quality commitment to you.

Farm-Fresh Vegetables Harvested, Packed and Shipped with Bowtie Service

Whether we’re shipping our regeneratively farmed vegetables to chefs around the country and world or to home cooks who appreciate the ability to provide their families with the maximum flavor and nutrition, one thing remains the same: our top-quality bowtie service.

For more than 30 years, we’ve developed and maintained an outstanding reputation for our noteworthy customer service—with a sticker of a red bowtie on each box of fresh produce that we ship to signify our commitment to you.

You matter, and we care.

Now, here’s the background behind the name of “bowtie service.”

Farmer Lee Jones Shares the Story Behind the Story

Going back in time, when Farmer Lee was in high school (and, no, he isn’t willing to say what years those were), he found a way to write book reports without actually reading the books: Cliff Notes. “We thought,” he admits, “that we were pretty smart, the first group to ever figure this out.”

Then . . . a teacher assigned Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Farmer Lee found himself so engaged in the story of families as they desperately tried to hold onto their farms during the Great Depression that he pushed the Cliff Notes to the side to read the entire book. When their last-ditch attempts to hold onto their farms failed, “I could picture them,” he said, “piling all of their belongings—along with Gram and Gramps and the family dog—in one old jalopy.”

It was poignant and heartbreaking. Although Grapes of Wrath is fictional, it captured an era when farmers who wanted to work and earn money to feed their families really did lose their farms. So, it represented a time in our history that was unfortunately quite real.

After they’d lost their farms, these farmers would look for day work at ranches, perhaps getting paid 50 cents a day—and then needing to pay half of it to stay in a camp, with the rest going for food and water for showers. “In fact,” Farmer Lee says, “they’d almost owe the rancher money after putting in a full day of work.”

Now, here’s where the bowtie comes in. In the film that was made about Grapes of Wrath, Farmer Lee especially remembers the scene when those exhausted workers nevertheless got together for a square dance, with the men wearing clean overalls, clean white shirts, and clean bowties. “Their outfits might have been worn and torn,” he says, “but their clothing was clean. These outfits, including the bowties, represented their pride in their work and dignity.”

A Symbol of Our Promise to You

Every day, Farmer Lee wears an outfit that honors the hard-working farmers of the Great Depression, including the red bowtie that appears on each box of the farm-fresh vegetables, herbs, and other items that we ship to our treasured customers.

This bowtie reminds us of the importance of focusing on each step we take and every step we make when providing customer service.

Bowtie Service.

Each day, we hand-harvest products on order and ship them to you overnight so you can count on the freshest, most vibrant, and flavorful produce available. Everything we grow is regeneratively farmed in harmony with Mother Nature in ways that are environmentally friendly, socially responsible, and economically viable.
Finally, we take great pride in our cutting-edge food safety program, and you can find more information about the extraordinary food safety steps we take. We continually receive superior ratings from numerous key food quality and safety certifiers.

Farmer’s Market Products Delivered Directly to You

Let us be your personal farmer—and your personal shopper! You can choose from a variety of home delivery boxes full of high-quality fresh vegetables, the same produce that world-class chefs use daily in their kitchens.

Options include (some seasonal):

Plus, you can select our farm-fresh subscription box.

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