Lucky Chow

- [Announcer] Funding for Lucky Chow has been provided by.

(dramatic music) (soothing music) - [Danielle] In America, it seems like you can be a locavore just about anywhere these days.

We take for granted how accessible farm to table dining has become.

- This is a Chinese broccoli.

And this is almost like a broccoli rod but much sweeter.

So you're welcome to take a bite of that.

- In other parts of the world, locally sourcing a delicious and healthy diversity of food isn't always so easy.

But China, with its vast culinary heritage, is one country that's catching up to the trend.

I visited chefs and farmers on both sides of the Pacific to see how locavore principles are being translated.

(inspiring music) (soothing music) To learn more about how the locavore movement has taken root in China, there was one person I knew I had to see, Dai Jianjun, creator and owner of Dragon's Well Manor in Hangzhou.

A Dai's restaurant only serves food that was grown organically within a few hours drive of the restaurant.

Bringing local to even deeper level, A Dai serves dishes that aren't typically seen in restaurants, real home-cooked specialties based on local ingredients.

A Dai is spearheading the farm to table movement in China, bringing what he learned from his travels in Europe back to his home country.

(speaks foreign language) As China becomes more urban, and there's less farming, how are you keeping that tradition alive here?

(speaks foreign language) Every ingredient served at Dragon's Well Manor, from cabbage to eel, is purchased directly from a shrinking pool of local farmers.

One of A Dai's missions is to fight against the total industrialization of Chinese agriculture, the abandonment of the small farming culture, which is greatly affecting the quality of food urban Chinese are consuming.

He's done this by forging personal relationships with the more than 15,000 farmers he's worked with since his restaurant opened.

And once he buys their products, the process doesn't end there.

He keeps meticulous records of everything that comes to the restaurant.

Now, this is a document of everything that we're eating today, from the vegetables to the lotus roots, to the fish, the eels.

(speaks foreign language) The radishes that we're eating today.

The vegetables, the amaranth that we're eating today.

(speaks foreign language) From the exact boat to the provenance of every dish.

From fish, to duck, to eggs.

(speaks foreign language) (soothing music) How did you develop these relationships with the farmers?

(speaks foreign language) With the seismic shift of China's population to its citie, naturally raised produce and livestock are becoming increasingly hard to find.

A Dai's influence on farmers is as important as his influence in the kitchen.

He holds them to a higher standard that's in danger of disappearing.

(speaks foreign language) After hearing A Dai describe his culinary inspirations, and his devotion to ingredients, I had to try some of this clean, local, and truly organic food for myself.

(soothing music) (speaks foreign language) You know, how do you share this wisdom with the next generation?

(speaks foreign language) (soothing music) One way to demonstrate the value of clean and local food is to bring people back to the farms where it's grown.

Sun Commune in western Hangzhou seeks to bring urbanized Chinese back to the land, to teach them about rural life, and show them what sustainable farming is all about.

(speaks foreign language) Sun Commune encompasses the beautiful Tai Yang Valley, including all of the farms in the area.

Not only is the produce grown organically, but the pigs listen to classical music and get daily playtime.

The commune is not only a place to grow and consume these things, but also to learn about them.

(speaks foreign language) (singing in foreign language) Over the last 50 years, the number of Chinese who have moved away from rural areas and gotten into cities is greater than the population of the entire United States.

Zhang says it's gotten to a point where children in cities don't even know where their food comes from.

Like so many city kids in the West, they don't have an education about nature and farming.

They just know food is something they get at the supermarket.

(speaks foreign language) (soothing music) (uplifting music) Just a few hours outside of New York City, a Chinese-American family has been supplying high-quality Asian produce to the Eastern United States for more than 60 years.

Sang Lee Farms is now in the forefront of a new era of organic, community-based agriculture.

With a CSA program, a farm stand, a home delivery service, and educational workshops on cooking and plant medicine.

But its local roots are deep.

- Sang Lee Farms was started somewhere in the early '40s.

My uncle John had the idea, well, there's a market in Chinatown, and they're looking for more vegetables and fresh greens.

And then my father joined him and my other uncle joined him.

And then they started farming, and growing Chinese cabbage for primarily the New York City Chinatown market.

- And are you still growing those Chinese vegetables?

- A few, probably about a dozen varieties of Chinese vegetables now.

In addition to perhaps 100 other different varieties of vegetables.

- [Danielle] And so you grew up on a farm.

- So growing up, in the summertime we worked pulling weeds, harvesting vegetables.

Every aspect of farm work I learned from a really young age.

- I've never been on a farm where there is so much variety.

So the baby bok choy, I also see it on your shirt.

Is that sort of your signature vegetable?

- That was our primary crop for many decades.

We were one of the largest bok choy growers on the East Coast.

- Are those ready to be harvested?

- They're a little bit young, but they can be harvested for ultra-baby bok choy size.

And we can cut one if you'd like.

(uplifting music) - What does it mean for you to keep this tradition growing?

- It's kind of cool, it has been very rewarding.

And it's nice to see the younger generation interested in keeping the farm alive.

And my son, William, wants to continue farming.

And that's, that's nice.

- So since you're growing based on what people are eating today, do you see more of a demand for Asian vegetables?

- I think there is more interest in Asian vegetables.

People are more informed with different varieties.

A lot of restaurants are trying different vegetables.

- That's great, because there's a lot more to vegetables than broccoli and carrots, right?

- [Fred] Sure.

- [Danielle] Fred first met his wife Karen while they were both in grad school.

Karen had never dreamed of life on a farm.

But she took to it with gusto.

Years later, they've built a booming business on the farm his uncle started, including a farm kitchen that sells dressings, dips and soups, all from recipes she developed.

- Hi, nice to meet you.

- So nice to meet you.

Now I know you guys do so much more than just grow amazing vegetables.

- Our original mission statement was to provide food for the community.

But that has sort of expanded to help people reach their higher level of health, whatever that might be.

And providing the food is just one component.

The secondary parts of it require educating, teaching in whatever way that requires.

(uplifting music) This is a Chinese broccoli.

So, this is the bud, it turns to little white flowers.

And this is almost like a broccoli rod, but much sweeter.

So you're welcome to take a bite of that.

It's like a sweet broccoli.

- It's so delicious.

I think it's wonderful that Asian vegetables like bok choy have entered into the mainstream culinary palette.

And do you see other varieties, like the dou miao, the pea sprouts?

- [Karen] The Korean radish.

It's just become so popular.

I cannot keep it on the shelf.

People love it.

- [Danielle] What kinds of educational programs do you offer?

- So we have introductory herb classes.

We have our herb intensive, which is a seven week herb class.

We offer hands-on cooking classes, where they're a little bit different, because we actually take people out to the field to see the vegetables, pick the vegetables, and then we come back and we talk about the vegetables before we cook them.

- Well, I see that you sell a lot of ready to go products.

- I do.

- Are they all your own recipes that you've developed?

- Yes, yes.

I have no idea how I come up with these ideas.

Because I have no culinary background.

I just have a good palette.

And I'm very inspired by what I grow.

- Sure, of course.

- That's really what it is.

- When you're surrounded by all of this.

(upbeat music) So this is your store.

- This is my store.

You can see we have beautiful scallions.

We do red and green.

This baby bok choy is now something all of my customers know.

It's just, their go-to.

- I think everybody's culinary palette has sort of expanded.

- Interesting, I'm seeing that.

The gai lan that I showed you in the greenhouse, I could not really get people to buy it.

I sold every ounce of Chinese broccoli this year out of my greenhouse.

- Amazing.

- No problem.

(uplifting music) - Well, what do you have set up here?

- I have a little cooking demonstration for you with the Shanghai, the baby bok choy.

So I'm gonna add a little oil.

Pair the ginger with the garlic.

Onions.

The baby bok choy, cut up here.

Leaves and stems.

Carrots in little slivers.

This is what I'm using, it's my stir-fry sauce.

It's garlic and ginger, soy sauce and sesame oil, that's it.

- You make everything here?

- I make everything here.

And then you can garnish with a little bit of cilantro.

- That looks and smells beautiful.

- There you go.

Tell me what you think.

- It's so good.

Well, thank you for showing this to me.

- You're welcome, you're very w. Thank you.

(uplifting music) - [Danielle] I may not work as many acres as Sang Lee, but I have my own farm on the roof of my New York City apartment.

And I can vouch that food really does taste better when you know where it came from.

(soothing music) Da Dong has become China's most famous chef, because of his upscale version of Peking duck, a staple of American Chinatowns.

Now he's brought his signature dish to the United States, with a New York outpost of his namesake restaurant chain.

While the table-side carving experience at Da Dong may be nudging duck into the culinary mainstream, more than half the duck sold in America still go to Asian restaurants and markets.

To see where those ducks are coming from, I went to Pennsylvania to visit one of the country's biggest suppliers of fresh duck.

(upbeat country-rock music) Well, it's exciting to be here.

- Yes, thank you for visiting our farm here.

Kind of the history of our farm was my great-grandfather was one of the original Long Island duck farmers in the early 1900s.

And Long Island used to be the duck farming capital of the United States.

All the ducks came from there.

And my dad is a veterinarian.

So he graduated from Cornell.

And after he graduated, he's like I want to be my own boss, I want to start my own company.

And he was like, the only thing I know is ducks.

So he came and started a duck farm with my grandfather, my grandmother and my mother here in Pennsylvania.

- I love how your father just sort of fell into this business because he saw a void in the market that needed to be filled.

- Literally, it was him going, walking down all of Chinatown, just knocking on barbecue shops.

This guy doesn't speak English, he doesn't speak Chinese.

And so, somehow it worked on it.

And eventually, his end product, the duck, was, it spoke for us.

(country-rock music) Danielle, this is James, our hatchery manager.

He's the number one duck guy in the US.

- Thank you there, Joey.

What we're doing here.

The truck goes out to the farm seven days a week.

And we bring in the eggs from the farm, so we can bring them into the hatchery, so we can prepare them and sort them, and get them ready to hatch.

They'll lay about 30,000 eggs a day.

So we'll bring in and sort 30,000 eggs everyday, seven days a week.

- And the cool part, every one is picked up by hand.

Every day.

- really.

- Every egg is picked by hand.

- Let me help you.

- Yes.

(country-rock music) There, we can put them right down right here.

- So when I'm in Chinatown, and I walk down the street, what percentage of the ducks hanging are from this farm?

- I'd say almost all of them.

It's really neat to walk down Chinatown, just visit the different barbece shops and see everything.

You know, it's something that we made, we created.

- I walk by those duck houses everyday, but I never thought that James was responsible for hatching all of them.

- They all started with him.

- That's good to know.

When you see them hanging in the window, that that started.

- I'll think of you.

- [James] There's a lot of work that goes on to get the bird to that point.

- Yes, let's go see the ducks.

- Yeah, let's go to the hatcher.

(country-rock music) - So we're at week four now.

- [Joe] We are in luck.

(ducklings peeping) - As we see, we have one starting to come out.

I cannot help him out at this point.

He will hatch out over the next 12 hours.

- But look at these ducklings here.

They are literally hours old.

- [James] Hours old.

- Incredible.

Wow.

- The baby duckling would have literally hatched hours ago.

You can see, his head is still a little damp.

- Yes.

Look at how much this duckling has learned.

He can stand on his own two feet already.

In just a couple of hours.

- So, how about next we'll go to, up to our breeder barns, and see kind of where these eggs came from.

(country-rock music) Danielle, so welcome to our duck breeding house.

So all these ducks are the ones that lay the eggs, that eventually go down to the hatchery.

So, we have Dr. Zack here.

- Hi Dr. Zack.

- He's our in-house geneticist.

- This is fascinating.

How did you choose these ducks to be the breeders?

- So we selected several traits.

Efficiency in growing, and the rate that they grow.

So in their total lifespan, they lay about 200 eggs.

- And then where do they go?

- [Zack] They're sold as a mature duck.

- So that's actually really popular with the Chinese market as well, for soups, right?

- [Zack] Oh yeah, definitely, and that's from a lot of our cut up birds, after you cut their breasts and legs off, the carcass on it is used for a lot of stocks.

- Do you have a lot of chefs or restaurants that you work with who come to check out the farm?

- Yes, we have a lot.

There's always a lot of curious chefs on it.

And it's so much fun to bring them to the farm, and really show them what they do.

And I think, also, what an awesome chef too, that is curious enough to come see where their products are.

(country-rock music) All right, Danielle, right here is our, these are our duck nest boxes.

So, each duck will come at sometime during the day, mostly at nighttime on it, and lay their eggs.

- And so when you pick eggs up, you want the big end up, and the little end down.

- Okay.

The big end up, little end down.

- [Zack] They like to hide them, so you actually have to dig down.

- Really?

- Let's see if you can find them all.

- Wow.

- That was your egg, duck egg experience.

- [Danielle] That was a lot more fun than any Easter egg hunt.

The business must be doing so well, to have survived for all these generations.

- Oh definitely.

And probably 80% of our business right now is to the Asian market, and specifically Chinatowns in the Northeast United States.

As they grow, we grow.

So they just keep bringing in their different cuisines, culinary tastes, and we're able to offer them, and cater them, and be like the tastemakers for an authentic Peking duck.

- And the majority of your ducks here are used for Peking duck, the dish?

- Yes, for Peking duck, the dish.

Non-Asian chefs, through the Asian fusion movement, are starting to pick up these new cooking techniques.

And are able to do that.

They kind of got over that fear of how can I cook a duck, or is it too complicated, is it gonna take too long, is it too expensive?

The chef is now a rockstar, watch Food Network on it, even NBC news, there are chefs all the time on.

With the demand of consumers seeing this and tasting it, they want it.

So that's really helped.

And is part of our growth also.

- The global fusion market, I love that.

- Exactly, yeah.

- Anywhere in the world, a farm is a magical place to be.

It was truly inspiring to see farms in such different places, in cultures all focused on making agriculture sustainable, and back to food in its purest form.

It's not just a way of life, or a way of eating.

It's something we all need to survive.

(uplifting music) - [Announcer] Funding for Lucky Chow has been provided by.

(dramatic music) To learn more about Lucky Chow, visit luckyrice.com.

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