By Kathleen Furore
Ask Chef Gonzalo Guzman what Cal-Mex cuisine means to him and his answer takes you on a journey from his childhood home in the small coastal village of El Aguila in Veracruz, Mexico, to his arrival in America some 22 years ago.
“I was born in Mexico and raised in a small town of only 500 people. We only had access to locally produced ingredients, including sugar cane and coffee. There was no access to stores, to meats...we grew our own food,” recalls Guzman, the chef/owner of San Francisco’s Nopalito.
“When I came to America, I had a hard time finding the same quality of products, so for 10 years I partnered with farming families who were doing farm-to-table cuisine, then turned that inspiration into Mexican food and opened Nopalito in 2009. Cal-Mex cuisine means different things to different chefs, but to me it means making traditional dishes in traditional ways using the fresh, high-quality and sustainable ingredients California has to offer.”
Sustainability’s Role
When Guzman is creating his signature Cal-Mex cuisine, he looks to California for their high-quality and sustainable dairy products.
“Sustainability is definitely important to me because that is the way I was raised,” he says.
“In my quesadillas, I use a variety of California Hispanic-style cheeses including Oaxaca and Cotija. And we make our queso fresco ourselves using milk from California dairy farms,” Guzman explains. Guzman’s Entomada dish is also a menu favorite that features tortillas filled with fresh California cheese, chiles and nopalitos, topped with a flavorful tomato sauce.
Working with California dairy families assures Guzman that what he sources from the state’s dairy farms is produced with sustainability in mind. It’s the environmental stewardship and responsible animal care that contribute to the high-quality California dairy products he relies on. In fact, California – the nation’s largest dairy producer – is at the forefront of sustainable farming practices, delivering planet-smart dairy products with a greener future in mind.
The facts speak for themselves:
- More than 150 California dairy farms generate solar energy, reducing their use of fossil fuel-based energy and producing more than 190 million kWh of energy annually, enough to meet the electricity needs of 32,000 homes.
- About 40% of a CA dairy cow’s diet consists of byproducts from food and fiber production, like almond hulls and grape pomace, keeping these byproducts out of landfills. Even better, this diet reduces the amount of water needed to grow feed by around 1.3 trillion gallons per year.
- The California dairy industry’s carbon footprint has shrunk 45 percent over the past 5 decades – among the smallest per gallon of milk produced in the world.
- California dairy farmers are more than halfway to a statewide goal of 40 percent less manure methane emissions by 2030.
- The amount of water needed to produce a gallon of milk has decreased more than 88 percent over the past 50+ years. Water is used and reused on a dairy up to four times.
Those details, of course, are important to Guzman. But what matters to him most is just knowing the ingredients he uses come from farming families who value a more sustainable future and deliver the quality products that show it.
“Using local ingredients and helping farmers,” he concludes, “is like going back to my home.”
Want to learn more? Visit Real California Milk at https://www.realcaliforniamilk.com/sustainability
Want recipes? Enjoy these:
Pumpkin Blossom "Reverse Quesadilla"
SIDEBAR:
A conversation with California Dairy Farmer Tony Louters
Tony Louters, a dairy farmer in Merced, California, ships his milk to a cooperative that provides milk for quality California Hispanic-style cheeses and dairy products. Here, in an exclusive interview with el Restaurante, Louters explains why sustainability is an important component of making the cheeses that end up in Mexican and Latin restaurant kitchens.
el Restaurante: How important is sustainability to you as a farmer who produces Hispanic-style cheese?
Tony Louters: Sustainability is important to all farmers, regardless of where their milk goes. It’s essential to maximize the use of precious resources to minimize cost as well as mitigating the impact on the land, air and water. We live and work on the land and look to pass it along to the next generation. We can only do this by being mindful that what we do today will have repercussions on how our children are able to farm tomorrow.
el Restaurante: When and why did you decide to focus on making sure you operated a farm that focuses on the long-term sustainability of California’s dairy production through environmental stewardship, responsible animal care and community building?
Louters: As farmers, we hold a long-time role in the fabric of our local communities. While more and more consumers have gotten away from understanding where their food comes from, they are still very dependent upon the people who bring it to the table (at least three times a day!). We take that role seriously. We are not only producing one of nature’s most perfect foods, it’s a food that we also feed to our own families. It’s in our best interest to be good stewards of the land and the animals. That will pay us back in quality milk production.
The role of the farmer – and this is really the entire team from the owner of the farm to every employee and partner with we work with from milking cows to managing crops – is to bring food to the table in the most efficient way possible and to protect the land and cows in our care. We want to be able to pass this legacy on to the next generation.
el Restaurante: What are some of the ways you are helping the industry meet its sustainability goals?
Louters: On our farm, each drop of water is used up to four times and doesn’t leave the farm – Over the part 50-plus years, California dairy farms like mine have reduced the environmental footprint of each glass of milk – we’re producing 45% fewer Green House Gas emissions, we’re using 89% less land and 88% less water, as well as fewer pesticides, less fossil fuels and less energy.
el Restaurante: Have you found that chefs who use Hispanic-style cheeses want product that comes from sustainably run farms? Any examples?
Louters: Chefs want quality ingredients that are sustainably sourced. You’d be hard pressed to find a chef who is not as interested in the way a product – from cheese to milk – is produced as much as how it tastes and performs in their dishes. Sustainability is more than a catch phrase for both farmers and chefs, we are so close to the ingredients, and we are also focused on nourishing people with the delicious dairy products we produce.