Baja Chefs Come Together For Conservation

MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: This is KPBS Midday Edition, I am Maureen Cavanaugh. The health of the world's oceans is a big topic this week. US State Department has been conducting an Our Ocean Conference to find ways to protect the ocean environment. And President Obama has announced his intentions to create the world's largest marine sanctuary off the coast submit it to the mid-Pacific Islands controlled by the US. Here in San Diego, or how California's best-known chefs will join with environmentalists with an effort to reserve our coastline and ocean. The Baja Bash will also showcase the food that is giving Baja Mediterranean cuisine in international reputation. Joining me to talk about the Baja Bash, Fay Crevoshay is Communications and Policy Director with the environmental groups Wild Coast, and chef Flor Franco is owner of Indulge Contemporary Catering based here in San Diego. Fay, what would you say is the state of our coastline in the San Diego Baja region? FAY CREVOSHAY: Well, as you know, we're all here because of our coast and everything is relative, the state of the coast is pretty healthy. We have a lot of groups working on it, and we're pretty conscious of it. We have for two years had protected areas from the Oregon border to the Mexico border, in a network that was based on science, and we will bring back all of the overfished species, we're not protecting one species. We're protecting the entire ecosystem, and that was what was needed to have the whole ocean come back to 100% health. We take care of what comes into the ocean, a lot of groups monitor the quality of the water, and we do the same thing in Baja California. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: We share the coastline. FAY CREVOSHAY: And the coastline has no borders, and we have other regions, the Gulf of California, which you call Sea of Cortez, it is very rich with coral. It was called the aquarium of the world by Jacques Cousteau, and it is really amazing. You want to take care of all of that, the gray whales born in Mexico that go through, for all the way to Alaska. We share in the amazing wealth, and for the planet, we have to take care of it because we live here. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: For a group like Wildcoast, why do you sponsor the Baja Bash? What does coastal conservation have to do with the great food? FAY CREVOSHAY: We're talking about sustainable food, fish, local farm food, organic as much as we can, we need everybody to join in conservation. What we are doing in the Baja Bash is celebrating conservation and inviting all of the communities that live near this coastal ocean to help us conserve it. We have community watches for the protected areas in Southern California, you are for the community, we need everybody to help us preserve the coastal oceans healthy, clean, with good quality water because we are using. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Chef Franco, do you find that more customers are concerned about where their food is coming from, and the sustainability of the food they're eating? FLOR FRANCO: Absolutely. I think in the past, probably ten years, I have been doing this about twenty. I see more and more people coming to us sending emails, when they require menus, it is amazing to see everybody being so conscious about it. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: The big feature Baja Bash is focused on Baja Mediterranean cuisine. For people unfamiliar with that kind of cuisine, could you describe it for us? FLOR FRANCO: It is like Mediterranean food, that we cook with local ingredients, since the weather that we have in Baja, we are in the thirty-two parallel, we have olives, olive oil, wine, a lot of the same produce in cooking and some other Mexican sauces and ingredients. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Do we see old recipes done in new ways, with this kind of emphasis on local sustainable ingredients? FLOR FRANCO: That is a good question, chefs are due to make new cookbooks, I think the world needs new cookbooks from Baja. That is probably coming out very soon. I hope Javier is listening. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: You talk about Javier Plascencia, we hoped he would join us today, he had a conflict and could not be here. He is of course, a famous Baja chef, and he will be participating in the Baja Bash. What has he brought to Baja cuisine? FAY CREVOSHAY: Chef Plascencia, we give him a prize last year because he was really one of the starters of this movement. When all of the violence and the borders became closed, and Tijuana was lonely, these are very creative people, they re-create themselves. They have created a new Baja, and it really became the silver lining and it is fantastic because Baja has become an international center for food. These chefs are very creative, they take what we have here, and they really create new types of food and makes us. That has brought back towards them, and Tijuana is no more dangerous, it has come down completely. Now people come from different reasons, not only the younger people just to dance, people come to eat at the restaurants, and taste the food of these chefs. And the wines, the organic produce that they are growing there. That is totally related with the ocean, the wine and the ocean goes together. We have the wine country in California, is there because of a good reason, because of the ocean, the interaction between inland and the ocean. This is all a big treasure and they have been able to put the border in the international map of food and conservation. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What part would you say that food has played in the rejuvenation that is going on in Baja and Tijuana? FLOR FRANCO: Going back to the first question, Javier is a role model for everybody in Baja. The intense hours that he has been working going outside of Tijuana and bringing food, it is amazing. He is the one that took leadership, and we are all bringing more business to Baja. What we are doing right now with food, we are creating a new concept. If you read back in history of food in Mexico, the places that you see there, Oaxaca, Veracruz, Puebla, those three are probably the main states where you read historically about food. What we Baja chefs are doing, we're pretty much bringing all of those recipes alive, cooking with our local products. That is a new way to cook nowadays. I guess it took many years to find out that our produce and seafood and animals are just probably better than any brother place. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: They are local and fresh. FLOR FRANCO: They're all fresh, you can cook a lot of the beautiful foods that we are cooking in Baja in any part of the world and it will never taste the same, because the freshness of our product. It is a minimum effort to bring amazing food. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Before we talk specifically about what people will enjoy at the Baja Bash, I do want to talk to you about this Saturday, a week before the Baja Bash, Wildcoast will announce news of a new surfing reserve in Baja, tell us about that. FAY CREVOSHAY: It is a very exciting international surfing reserve. Really, there are six in the world, this is going to be the sixth, and Australia, other parts of the world, this is a group Save the Waves, and other locals and internationals that have decided that waves are important to be conserved and protected. This is a reserve in the entrance of Ensenada. This is a reserve that has been growing ways that people have known about since the 1960s. It has attracted more and more surfers, more and more international surfers. I live around the survey community, my boss is a server, and a lot of people who work with us, they are the natural conservationists because they go in the water everyday. The water is dirty, there is rain in a recent spill of sewage, they cannot go in and for them it is a crisis. They take care that the quality of the water is good, clean, and the other big threat in Baja California is the big development and access to the beach. The problem is, we want to conserve in those areas access, the beach of San Miguel, we don't want take the things and developments there, that's what the reserves are. We want to conserve that place open for the people, we would like the Mexican government to promote them, because surfers are no longer the shabby and poor. The PhD's, business entrepreneurs, rich people who surf, it is a different way, we have to change the mentality in Mexico a little. Developing ecotourism, it is a natural eco-tourist area. We will have a party on Saturday, we will have a plaque and a party, and this will be the sixth international reserve. It is at the entrance of Ensenada, the beach of San Miguel, surfers were never aware of this. There is an urban market there on the beach, inside they will have party, food, drink and music to dance, and we rejoice to save another little piece of the ocean in its pristine, wild way that is conserved now, we want to keep it that where for the children and grandchildren. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Moving forward to June 28, the Baja Bash in Coronado, Flor, if you can you can make us hungry, what will be part of that? FLOR FRANCO: Make you hungry, it is too early. Or too late, for breakfast. What is going on, you will see chef Drew Deckman, he is also providing a lot of seafood himself with the new organization. FAY CREVOSHAY: It is called Intelligent Fish. FLOR FRANCO: They are providing a lot of the seafood we are cooking, shrimp, and Javier, not sure what he is cooking, but I know fish, shrimp, a lot of oysters, from Ensenada. I will have my smoking barrel, that is fabulous. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What is that? FLOR FRANCO: It is a vintage barrel designed by a local artist, Gustaf Anderson from San Diego. Jeff Javier and myself were the first to buy those smokers, and the smoke is pretty fast, within 20 to 35 minutes we create amazing food. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: I will have to stop you, you are making us too hungry. I hear of local breweries, wineries, music, tequila, lots and lots of food, it is the third annual Baja Bash, next Saturday, not this coming one, it is June 28 at the Coronado Keys Yacht Club. Thank you both very much. FAY CREVOSHAY: Thank you, we hope to see you all there, including you, Maureen. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Thank you.