Before pony-tailed crusader Michel Nischan started a farmers market voucher program that's changing how healthily poor people can eat, before he was a two-time James Beard Award winner, before he teamed with Paul Newman to help revolutionize farm-fresh food in New England restaurants, he was a young blond butcher.
"I couldn't do the fancy French reductions or techniques at first," he says. "But if there was an animal to carve up, they'd say, 'Give it to the blond kid.'"
The inspiring story of how he took his mom's butchering and gardening ethos and leveraged it into a decorated career as a chef and now a healthy-foods advocate wasn't without its obstacles, including the fact no local farms near his first restaurant did anything besides wheat and corn. But that story led him to a pinnacle last weekend, when he was named Cooking for Solutions Chef of the Year.
(It also landed him in a starring role of our cover story in advance of Cooking for Solutions, a piece called "Food Versus Oil Spills, Obesity and Apathy.")
Here's an exclusive ear in on his speech, ideal listening while, say, gardening in the yard. It's inspiring stuff, and should be required content for culinary schools, farmers and shoppers alike:
~RECORDING: Michel Nischan's Chef of the Year Acceptance Speech at Cooking for Solutions 2012~
(0) comments
Welcome to the discussion.
Log In
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.