The Culinary Garden at SAIT

This fall will see the first harvest from a 4,200-square-foot plot of land just south of the John Ware Building at SAIT Polytechnic. Over the spring and summer, it was transformed into an edible garden — a living classroom planted with the intention to teach Culinary Arts students in a real, hands-on way where their food comes from, how it’s produced and the effort that goes into growing a high-quality crop.

The field-to-plate concept has been flourishing for the past few decades, picking up steam in recent years due, in part, to the efforts of famed food activist Michael Pollan, a myriad of political food movies including Fast Food Nation and Supersize Me and the public efforts of Jamie Oliver to steer the U.S. food system away from highly processed, low-nutrient foods and toward fresh whole foods.

At the same time, the relatively new concept of the celebrity chef has undoubtedly contributed to an increase in interest in the Professional Cooking program at SAIT; in April, 40 students graduated from the year-and-a-half-long program (out of the 80 who began), but in the fall of 2009, 179 students enrolled, and the same number will begin the new two-year program this month, selected from around 400 applicants. The curriculum has been revamped and revitalized, with the new gardening element aimed at connecting future chefs with the source of their ingredients and broadening their perspectives on food production. Like the rest of us, these students know where food comes from in a cerebral sense — but they aren’t connected to it, and don’t viscerally know what it takes to “make” food in the larger sense.

The SAIT culinary garden is the brainchild of chef instructor Andrew Hewson, who aims to meld culinary arts with agriculture and issues of food security, scarcity and sustainability. He calls this concept  “culinary-agro literacy.” He looked at culinary programs across Canada and was surprised to find no other school had a garden of this magnitude; some are members of community gardens or have flower bed-sized plots, but none were doing what he envisioned for SAIT.

“I didn’t want to have a token herb box with chives and basil,” he says. “As a chef, it’s all about connecting with ingredients. We were seeing students [coming into the program] who couldn’t recognize herbs. These are going to be our future professionals! It’s scary!

“By providing them with this experience, we’ll be sending more well-rounded and aware chefs into the industry.”

This past spring, Hewson was awarded SAIT’s Cadmus Trades Foundation Teaching Chair award — the only award of its kind at a North American polytechnic. The award allows a trades instructor to pursue an applied research project that will help promote the trades as a viable career.

Hewson will use the time and financialresources provided by the award to create a program to teach students about sustainability in the food industry.

“The new culinary garden will be the focal point [of this program], connecting future chefs and hospitality leaders to the raw materials of our trade — food,” Hewson recently told the Slow Food Calgary steering committee.

Hewson still daydreams about enlisting students in other departments to construct a wood-burning oven alongside the garden, but, for now, his focus is on the garden itself and its value as a resource to aspiring chefs.

And it won’t only be culinary students who benefit from this initiative; hospitality students will learn from a wine affinity garden included in this project, similar to those found at many wineries, including the Mission Hill Estate Winery in the Okanagan. Two-tiered beds grow herbs, fruits and vegetables that pair well with red and white wines, helping demonstrate how affinities between them can facilitate favourable pairings.

Hewson started his project this past summer and will spend the fall semester on sabbatical, creating curriculum around the field-to-plate concept and introducing ideas about sustainable food practices. The hope is this model will be used for other culinary schools, and possibly the Calgary Board of Education. The Cadmus funding will also provide an opportunity for Hewson to attend a number of conferences, including Terra Madre in Turin, Italy, this October — the fourth bi-annual Slow Food gathering about sustainable and ethical food production.

While the award itself paid for Hewson’s time and research, the garden was paid for through fundraising efforts and private donations, including a $100,000 donation from Willow Park Wines and Spirits, along with plant and construction donations from Spruce It Up Garden Centre.

Hewson’s goal was to create the ultimate edible garden with as much variety as Calgary’s growing conditions allow. The garden includes fruit trees — cherries, apples and plums — berries, currants, rhubarb, tomatoes, peppers, beans, peas, carrots, beets, radishes, onions, potatoes, greens and herbs, all of which will be used in SAIT’s teaching kitchens and showcased in the Highwood Dining Room.

Over the summer, a graduate student from Olds College was hired to maintain the garden, but the culinary program students will work the garden themselves during the school year. This fall, they’ll have their chance when instructors bring their classes outside to show them how produce grows and how to select, harvest and store it for optimum flavour.

Chef Paul Rogalski, who along with Oliver Reynaud owns Rouge in Inglewood, recognizes the importance of a working knowledge of where food comes from for anyone with aspirations of a career in the kitchen.

“I think the garden is one of the most important elements of a cook’s training,” he says as we stroll through Rouge’s well-known backyard garden. “It’s essential for them to understand what it takes to create, manage and maintain a garden so they have a furthered understanding of what our growers are dealing with — that Mother Nature really does control all, and that sometimes she’s a bitch!”

Having seen a slow start to the growing season this year, Rogalski knows first-hand how much fresh, local ingredients on the menu depend largely on growing conditions.

A working knowledge of how to protect, tend and harvest produce is a definite asset for a new chef. This year, other Calgary restaurants have begun to follow in Rouge’s footsteps, planting kitchen gardens in whatever space they have access to.

“The timing is beyond perfect,” Rogalski says. “Our society is becoming increasingly savvy about the source of our nourishment. And fresh, sustainable and local food concepts are not a trend — they are the future. SAIT is preparing our up-and-coming chefs for the future — this might be the biggest advantage for them over other schools.”

Rogalski knows what it takes to run a consistently exceptional kitchen — this spring, Rouge was the first in Western Canada to be named to San Pellegrino’s prestigious World’s Best Restaurants list. “At the end of the philosophy train is the hope that these young culinarians have a heightened respect for the ingredients they work with on a daily basis, and celebrate the quality, individuality and uniqueness of each component,” he says.

After all, it’s all about the food. Whether it’s in the kitchen, or in the dirt.