Farm-to-table cookbook lively odyssey joining chefs with local growers

When Michael Pollan initially said no to Jeff Crump's request that he write a foreword, or introduction, to his first cookbook, the tenacious Canadian chef persevered until the author of "In Defense of Food" agreed.

Crump, 37, doesn't take no for an answer. From gently badgering his staff to appreciate fresh local ingredients in the meals they serve to restaurant customers, to wooing area farmers and artisans to join him in his quest for the best produce they can provide, he refuses to back down.

For the past six years as executive chef at the Ancaster Old Mill, west of Hamilton, Ont., he has nurtured his belief in the slow food movement while focusing on buying and cooking with local ingredients.

Now Crump's message has been transformed to "Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm" (Random House Canada, $45). It is co-written by the Old Mill's pastry chef Bettina Schormann as a testament to the current movement to change the way we shop, cook and eat our food.

Besides an array of mouth-watering recipes, most of which are served at the Old Mill through the seasons, the book is a tale of how he, his co-author and the staff became involved in an odyssey none of them will ever forget.

Crump begins with meeting Chris Krucker, a local organic farmer, owner of ManoRun Organic Farm in rural Copetown, Ont., near Ancaster.

"It was everything industrial mono-culture is not," he writes in the introduction, describing how he gazed at farm animals actually wandering freely about the property.

"And the fields were a riot of growth. Towering stands of flowering Jerusalem artichokes. Carpets of various lettuces; sprawling nests of pumpkin and squash vines," Crump continues. "Of course, there were also weeds growing stubbornly amidst all this food."

Yet, he writes, he preferred an abundance of life rather "than a weed-free expanse from which all but a single species has been chemically exterminated."

The book's title, "From Earth to Table," is apt in that the restaurant's chefs also got hands-on experience working the land at Krucker's farm.

Crump lauds the feistiness of farmers who take risks that other business people do not, saying "farmers are custodians of an important heritage that they should not be called upon to subsidize out of their own pockets."

He tells readers about a working month he spent in 2007 at the three-star Michelin restaurant the Fat Duck in England, which is owned by Heston Blumenthal, whom Crump calls one of the "the most dynamic chefs in the world."

And although the Fat Duck is not known for its earth-to-table credentials, Crump writes, "Heston is quietly very committed to local food."

For her contribution to the cookbook, Schormann, 34, writes about making bread from Red Fife wheat. Although the exact origin is unknown, it flourished for many decades across Ontario and into the American Midwest until it almost became extinct.

Since 1988, the Heritage Wheat Program began to reintroduce Red Fife and she was able to get some sacks of the flour and seed. The latter was planted at Krucker's farm.

Crump tells of meeting famous chefs like Thomas Keller, founder of The French Laundry Restaurant in Napa Valley, and Michael Schwartz of Michael's Genuine Food & Drink in Miami. They and others eschew the same beliefs about "fresh, simple, pure" food.