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Cooking Days in the Eastern Rhodopes – 2
On 5 and 6 October 2012, New Thracian Gold project organises a second edition of the organic culinary events "Cooking Days with organic and local agricultural produce and food from the Eastern Rhodopes"-2 . In June, the first Culinary Days were very successful.
Now, the major demonstration event will occur on 5 October in the village of Gorno Pole, Madzharovo Municipality, at the ‘’Wild farm’’ (11 am). The Dutch culinary expert Carolina Verhoven assisted by Betty Vassilieva from the "Wild farm" will demonstrate preservation/conservation cooking with traditional local products, conservation of food, using culinary heritage, etc. The rich autumn harvest in the Eastern Rhodopes offers a splendid opportunity for such culinary event. It will be interesting to see how the Dutch culinary expert prepares a vegetarian chutney from pumpkin, carrots, apples, onions, nuts, spices ...
Carolina Verhoeven is a culinary ethnologist and owner of Academy Culinary History. She is the director and a leading expert on cooking of organic and healthy food. She is interested in everything that concerns the preparation of food. Carolina has almost 40 years of experience in processing and preserving of sausages, canned meat, fruit and vegetables and instant soups. She is an expert in the area of bottling, use of glass jars, freezing and canning food. Carolina has followed the trends in fruit and vegetable processing and has developed many recipes for fruit and vegetable preserves such as jam, chutneys, instant soups, etc. She gives courses/presentations in cooking, especially traditional local products, conservation of food, food history and culinary heritage. She has experience in international projects. Days before her trip to Bulgaria Carolina was busy with the opening of her new Museum of culinary heritage.
During the event, Dirk-Hein Montagne, quality and standards expert will give recommendations on EU standards on local/home processing of agricultural produce and food.
The two Dutch experts will be joint by Martien Lankester, the executive director of the Dutch Avalon foundation that has been working at the cutting edge of nature conservation and organic farming since 1990. Martien was trained as a medical doctor and devoted his life to promoting organic food and farming methods; during his studies in Amsterdam he set up one of the first organic restaurants.
The second Culinary event offers an excellent opportunity for introducing the concept and practices of preservation in cooking with organic ingredients, good hygiene conditions/requirements and the EU standards in the region of the Eastern Rhodopes, where NTG project is actively working. The target groups of the event such as local organic producers, guest-house and restaurant owners/managers/chefs, small-size processors, local municipality members, media, etc. will learn about above-specified EU and BG standards during a seminar in Kardzhali on 6th of October (Ustra hotel, 10 am)
The Culinary Guidebook of the Eastern Rhodopes will be again presented to the audience of the two day event. The book is made within the NTG project.
