The chef de cuisine at the Amway Grand Plaza hotel in Grand Rapids did his apprenticeship in Austria and cooked in several European ski resorts before he came to Mackinac Island’s Grand Hotel in northern Michigan. He cheffed at Gasthof Gramshammer in Vail, Colo., and at the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Hyatt before joining Cygnus 27 at the Amway in August of 2003. He’s been paving the way to green gourmet ever since.
Werner Absenger wants you to think twice about what you put in your mouth. The 41-year-old chef has made it his mission to educate his customers – and anyone else who’ll listen – about the benefits of eating local and sustainable/organic foods. Not just because the typical American diet is laden with poor fuel, laced with hormones and pesticides, mind you, but also because fresh, local food tastes so fabulous.
Sitting on a stool across from the light-oozing marbleized Plexiglas bar at Cygnus 27, Absenger hands over a four-page dissertation on his philosophy about the local organic/sustainable food movement.
He believes humans are hardwired as hunters and gatherers whose digestive systems have not evolved much from the earliest days of feast and famine – acquiring game and seasonal foods that needed to be consumed on the spot. Citing the principles of Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine, he explains the energy and harmonious relationship between food, body and mind, all of which are lost on factory farm goods.
But that balance is achieved with the practices surrounding local foods. “It’s healthy for consumers and animals, doesn’t harm the environment, is humane for workers, respects animals, provides a fair wage to the farmer and supports and enhances rural communities,” says the chef.
And what thrills him is that the movement has gone mainstream. “The trend among chefs is to use local, fresh and when possible, organic,” he says. “It’s through necessity—the customer asks for it.”
His informed patrons now demand such high-quality ingredients, and even the food-service biggies like Gordon’s and Sysco are carrying locally-harvested goods.
“Once the corporations get into the local stuff, you know it’s not just a fad,” says Absenger, whose intense blue eyes light up at the very thought.
For this lanky Austrian, clearly a man who is passionate about his craft, that news couldn’t be more exciting. Not content to merely parrot the tenets of the local movement, he has been on a quest to explain why people need to eat and live this way: In his spare time, he earned a bachelor’s degree in alternative medicine from Everglades University in Florida and is working on his master’s in nutrition from Bridgeport University in Connecticut, both online.Growing up along the Danube in Melk, Lower Austria, Absenger couldn’t conceive of factory foods. “The only food we ate was the food that my mom carried home from the market that day.” So he has teamed up with the community, engaging local farmers and purveyors, getting them into the organic-sustainable groove with free-range chickens, eggs and hormone-free meats.
“Meats are the biggest problem because with small local farmers, there’s no way they can produce as many filets as we need – anywhere from 25 to 300 a week, depending on the season. But what we have success with is free-range local chickens and free-range beef from Creswick Farms in Ravenna (Mich.).” Sobie Meats in Walker, Mich., supplies hormone-free pork and other meats.
There’s also a rich, untapped local resource that the chef is currently cultivating: people just waiting with open plots. “We just started a program this year with the Greater Grand Rapids Food System Council where they help us recruit local community gardeners – a couple in Grand Rapids and a lot in Muskegon (Mich.). They’re growing strawberries, herbs and cucumbers to our specifications. That’s very exciting – it’s urban agriculture.”
Tomato Tips: Pick the Best, Keep It Fresh
Tomatoes are one of Chef Werner Absenger’s favorite crops to cook with. Look for these popular specialty varieties:
Azoychka – Slightly tart, pale yellow to dark golden, excellent for juicing and slicing.
Black Krim – Dark, thin-skinned, juicy with a lightly smoky saltiness ideal for salads.
Brandywine – Amish variety from 1885. Reddish-pink, large and thin-skinned. Ideal for slices, salads and sandwiches.
Cherokee Purple – Dusky rose/purple with brick-red interior, pleasantly sweet and rich, thin-skinned and soft (doesn’t store well).
Garden Peach – Small with fuzzy red skin blushed with pink. Juicy, great keeping quality, can ripen slowly for months after picked.
Sungold – Intense flavor, yellow with red blush cherry tomato.
Striped German –Yellow with a red center, may weigh over a pound. Fantastic flavor and few seeds.
Zapotec – Mexican ancestor of all beefsteak varieties. Large pink, hollow, sweet fruits are ruffled. Excellent for stuffing and baking. –P.L.S.
-“Tomato Tips” courtesy of cornell.edu.
Eat Local – Save Global
With soaring fuel prices, global warming, ozone depletion and the ever-shrinking rainforests, our food supplies are in obvious peril. But by supporting local farmers and opting out of food that has been jetted in, we can turn things around, says Cygnus 27’s Werner Absenger, who has already made an impact at his restaurant and collectively with other chefs.
“We chefs come together and say, ‘Wait a minute, we have an immense power to change things.’ We can say we’re not going to buy something unless it conforms to sustainable principles. Every company we deal with has some sort of certification.” No longer does he order an ingredient at any cost. He instead takes out-of-season dishes off his menu, such as his top-selling blanched, steamed asparagus during winter, and uses a better local substitute. Here are Absenger’s tips to help you do your part:
1. Look for organic or local foods that have been grown and harvested in a sustainable manner (read more at sustainabletable.org, SlowFoodUSA.org and NRDC.org).
2. Choose fish such as cod, salmon and scallops that are harvested according to Marine Stewardship Council certification guidelines (msc.org). They’re caught, filleted and flash-frozen on the spot, and because of modern freezing techniques, there’s no sacrifice in texture or flavor.
3. Frozen, out-of-season fruits and vegetables are better-tasting and more nutritious than canned. Canned products lose the most in their preservation, though they might be necessary in the dead of winter. “I don’t use any frozen – in the winter it has to be flown in, but that’s going to become passé,” says Absenger.
4. Eat fresh and seasonally, when foods are at their peak flavor. That means supporting local farmers’ markets and subscribing to local CSA (community-supported agriculture) farms for a weekly basket of produce. (Find local CSA farms at localharvest.org/csa.)
5. Food should be stored in bags, preferably vacuum-packed, to minimize the breakdown of nutrients. Most foods also need to be kept dry.
6. Remember Chef Absenger’s credo: “Every living thing has energy, and so does food. Your food becomes part of you, so you need to consume the best energy possible.”
In other words, you are what you eat – bon appétit! –P.L.S.
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