Culinard News

A chef and students from Culinard, the Culinary Institute of Virginia College in Birmingham, were featured experts on a recent Saturday morning at Pepper Place Market, a Birmingham farmer's market. Chef Jared Danks led the Culinard team in the Toyota Farm To Table Tour, a celebration of regional cuisine promoting and supporting local markets, farmers, and restaurants.

Created in 2009, the event travels to 11 farmers markets around the country to showcase the connection between chefs and the farmers that produce and sell locally grown ingredients. Each one-day event pairs 9-12 chefs with local farmers to produce fresh and delicious food that market attendees are able to sample.

Chef Danks and the student chefs prepared a Hazelnut Financier cake with warm (Lasseter Farms) blueberry compote and an Opal Basil (Jones Valley Urban Farms) Ice Cream. Yum!

The idea behind the event was to pair up local farmers with a chef who would create a food item with their produce. During the week, Chef Danks and Chef Osborne took students De'Aquanita Cook and Anita Simpson to an organic blueberry farm to pick the berries for the compote.