Farmer Lee Jones is best known for his association with The Chef’s Garden in Huron, started by his family more than three decades ago. It supplies high-quality specialty vegetables, herbs, microgreens and edible flowers to restaurants across the country, using regenerative farming practices to maximize taste and nutrition and respect the environment. More recently, they’ve also made them available to the general public.
Farmer Jones himself has been a tireless evangelist for healthy growing and eating practices, including launching a program to take planters, dirt and seeds to classrooms to show kids where food comes from. “All life begins in the soil,” says The Chef’s Garden blog. “When we build up healthy soil, we can then grow healthy crops that are bursting with flavor, nutrient dense for healthy people.”
Farmer Jones has now released a book called The Chef’s Garden: A Modern Guide to Common and Unusual Vegetables — with Recipes. In it, he shares his vast knowledge of vegetables beyond the handful most people eat over and over. It includes more than 500 entries covering those familiar veggie selections and some you’ve never heard of, describing how to choose and use them, and how to enhance them with flavorful herbs and edible blossoms. If you’ve ever been stymied by a vegetable in your CSA box (what to do with a rutabaga?), this book will help you out. If you’ve seen something intriguing-looking at the farmers market but were afraid to take the plunge, this book will tell you what to expect. Farmer Jones’ own expertise is enhanced by 100 recipes developed by the head chef at The Chef’s Garden Culinary Vegetable Institute.
The Chef’s Garden/Culinary Vegetable Institute started as family farm, but like many it produced the commodity crops that occupy most of our farmland — soy beans and corn. A recession caused the family to rethink their model, give up much of their land and sell vegetables at markets. When a chef approached him about a specialty item he wanted, Farmer Jones offered to grow them.
The Chef’s Garden now has 33 pages of vegetables, herbs, microgreens and edible flowers on its site, offering information on each, a veritable wish list for aspiring chefs. It sells to famous (and not-so-famous) chefs across the country, including Thomas Keller, Ruth Reichl and José Andrés. Keller says, “Farmer Lee Jones’ delightful new cookbook is a testament not only to his love of land and soil, but also to his deeply generous spirit. Poring over its pages, you’ll appreciate the author’s reverence for alliums and share his everlasting fondness for Mr. Frye’s rhubarb.”
To learn more and order the book, go to chefs-garden.com/book. Read more about The Chef’s Garden here.