by Jane Herman

When 35 of Ontario’s most celebrated chefs convene for a picnic in the sun-drenched fields of late summer, you might expect something more than hamburgers to come off the grill. At the fifth annual Feast of Fields, a multi-course gastronomic extravaganza and the flagship event of Knives and Forks – an association of chefs, organic growers and other proponents of organic agriculture – 500 gourmet grazers sipped and savored their way through an afternoon of food and drink sensations that would have dazzled the likes of Escoffier himself. It all happened on Sunday, September 19 at Ignatius College Farm just outside Guelph, Ontario. ;

The feasting began with Gary Hoyer’s seductive Amuse Gueule: a grilled shiitake mushroom cap, topped with a bit of sweet and sour plum confit, sandwiched inside a warm corn and sage biscuit. Washing it down with a luscious Cremant de Bourgogne (organic, of course), I felt my insides begin to tingle as it all trickled down to my empty stomach. Appetite thus delightfully whetted, I promptly boarded a hay-covered wagon for a ride through newly mown fields to where the 3-km tour of food heaven officially began.

In all, some 35 establishments were represented, from such prestigious Toronto restaurants as Scaramouche and Winston’s to some of the most innovative solo interpreters of local, seasonal organic ingredients in Ontario, like Lawrence Bangay of The Chef’s Table, a caterer in Barrie. His offering – grilled smoked salmon on a freshly baked corn blini, topped with buckwheat sprouts, summer squash relish and chipotle chili cream – tantalized as it dripped all over my notebook and camera.

Just up ahead, a couple of chefs from Byzantium were grilling herbed marinated pieces of organically farmed lamb over a cinnamon-scented charcoal fire rising from a freshly-dug pit. On a table beautifully laden with pears and plums, they garnished each delectable morsel with a spoonful of grilled tomato and cape gooseberry chutney.

Along the way there were soups heady with the flavor of freshly picked tomatoes and butternut squash, thick stews of romano beans and lentils, great bowls of marinated golden beets, blue potatoes, and a savory eggplant caviar topped with marinated mussels and fennel, a sublime concoction from Anne Yarymowich of Mildred Pierce Restaurant. Kudos to the 13 Ontario wineries and breweries who were thankfully on hand to periodically douse the flames of thirst that continually re-ignited.

One also had the opportunity to sample such exotica as bannock (a traditional Native bread) directly from baking pans over an open fire, a treat from the pastry chef at the O’Keefe Centre; organic cheese produced "underground" by a farmer who urged us all to lobby the provincial government (by law, all milk produced in Ontario must be sold to the Milk Marketing Board); pizzas both rustico and crispy; pizzelle and punukas; red wattle pork and alligator gumbo. Melva Buell of the Rosedale Golf Club, at a strategic bend in the course, displayed her brilliant knack of sourcing out unusual ingredients: her rich black soybeans, one of numerous colorful varieties of dried beans grown by McSmith’s Farm Produce in St. Thomas, resounded in a spicy, smoked tomato salsa.

This year’s feast triumphed over the previous four thanks to the superb organization of Organic Farm Services, a.k.a. Tomás Nimmo. The expanded presence of producers at this year’s event dramatically illustrated the interdependence between those who grow our food and those who consume it. Key organic suppliers, such as Picton’s Roth Farms, Filsinger’s Apple Orchard, and Cookstown Greens, were stationed alongside the respective interpreters of their products to clarify questions about production methods, distribution and availability.

The elaborate banquet concluded with a profusion of seasonal fruits, lovingly and artistically embellished. Andrea Damon Gibson’s (pastry chef at Splendido) luscious maple roasted pears with mascarpone set in a buckwheat almond pizzelle instantly springs to mind. Catherine Wise of Black Cat Catering and staunch environmentalist and current Knives and Forks president Lorene Sauro of Cakes and Ayle united their efforts in a glorious duet: wild peach and black raspberry filled maple-almond tartelettes, topped with organic ice cream. Knives and Forks co-founder Michael Stadtlander, recently returned to Ontario, and now steward of his own organic farm, dazzled the crowd with 40 wild apple, grape, elderberry and black raspberry pies. Jamie Kennedy, the other co-founder, partied along with everyone else as his brigade of talented sous chefs dipped brandy-macerated sour cherries into hot maple taffy, then presented them on delectable almond cookies. And, thanks to Kelly and Rod Buchanan of Buchanan Chocolate Co., chocolate lovers and anyone with any room left at all could indulge in their signature handmade giant truffles.

Despite noble efforts by the organic industry and organizations such as Knives and Forks, organic food is still widely perceived as an expensive luxury that one must go out of one’s way to obtain. What organics really is about is quality in our food today. Since World War II, food production has become increasingly technologized, concentrated in the hands of a few giant companies that control its every aspect from planting to distribution. Scientists have tampered with the genetic code of plants to develop produce that is uniform in appearance, cosmetically perfect, and easy to transport. As a result, thousands of species of fruits and vegetables have vanished, as they cannot be produced on a large scale.

Never has food looked better to us but tasted worse. At the same time, the public has somehow lost its ability to recognise what tastes good. "Freshness has become unfamiliar to people," says Eleanor Kane, owner of The Old Prune Restaurant in Stratford, Ontario, and co-director (with James Morris of Rundles Restaurant) of the Stratford Chef’s School. "No wonder we are satisfied with frozen, chemically altered and processed food." Today, appearance rather than flavor has become the primary factor that determines what foods we will buy.