Perche Regional Natural Park offers training agents and chefs to facilitate the introduction of local legumes in the canteens and communal restaurants of the territory. Over two days last week, Caroline Daly, Samuel Mony and Thierry Marion, PNRP legume chef trainers and members of the Nourishing Kitchens movement, provided this training to fifteen professionals from collective restaurants in the area, in the Magnifying glass school canteen .
“The aim is to encourage the use of legumes: green lentils, lentils, beluga, chickpeas, split peas… They are grown in Perche! And the supply of local, organic and quality produce is there, but you have to know how to cook it to eat it! More and more Percherons are consuming legumes and are looking for ideas to eat them other than the traditional salted lentil,” explains Marie Fetivo, project manager for the legume agroecology sector.
The chosen ones were pleasantly surprised
He coordinates this training offered as part of the Perche Territory Food (PAT) project and the Perche Legumes project, which complements the chair pilot project led by MIL Perche in partnership with the Perche Regional Nature Park. For the occasion, the chefs of the collective and social meals (central kitchen of Nogent-le-Rotrou, hospital of Bellême, Marpa d’Arcisses, elementary school of La Loupe, Nocé, Préaux, Val-au-Perche, etc.) presented and made the chosen employees of La Loupe to try a variety of delicious dishes prepared that morning as part of the training.
The latter were pleasantly surprised by the variety of vegetable recipes with pulses: turnip and white bean soup, pea fat, sardine, bechamel sauce, gratin, Bolognese with meat and lentils, shepherd’s pie with meat and red beans, cold sauce, egg cream…
For Baptiste Grain, head chef at the La Loupe school canteen since January 2021, and Katia Lloret, his kitchen employee, who are involved in this training, “it means finding different sources of protein and new food intakes with new meal formats means introducing new recipes and working with vegetables’.
A different approach
It also means “being in an approach, an organization of work, completely different from the kitchen”, according to Arnaud Souzot, chef in the central kitchen of Nogent-le-Rotrou, who cooks for nurseries and primary schools, nurseries, porter meals on wheels in the city. “A realization that creates a shock among older generations of chefs who have to rethink their practices in the face of these new eating habits,” he adds.
Being in a virtuous circle is also an opportunity for this professional to reflect on and identify obstacles to these prospects for change in food systems. According to him, “it is desirable to have a vegetable factory in the territory that can centralize all the Perche vegetable productions so as to promote and transform the product upstream, in particular to reduce costs related to cooking time, as it takes 1 hour and 30 minutes for dried beans”.
Practice. The regional nature park “Perche” organizes 4 e edition of the forum Le Perche au menu, which will bring together catering and food professionals in Perche on the theme of legumes, Wednesday, November 9, from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Margon (Arcisses) market.