EUROCHEF II: A CHEF AT THE RURAL

Published by xavier on 10 September 202410 September 2024

Project n°33

INTRODUCTION

The final objective of the Project to achive a sustainable development by enhancing the local products and the territories on the basis of the gastronomy, the heritage and the culture. With this aim the project will promote the value of local gastronomic products in the territories and to foster their consumption and quality offer, by increasing the added value and new elaborations a well as their inclusion into restaurants offer, as well as the fusion between the diverse gastronomic traditions of the territories and a joint strategy to access to other markets with tourism products based on the local product across borders.

Promoted sustainable tourism and the creation of tourism products based on the heritage, culture, environment and resources of each of the territories will be promoted and the exchange of experiences and knowledge between different European countries will be encouraged.

PRESENTATION OF THE PROJECT

The EUROCHEF project will allow territories from different European regions to collaborate and exchange best practices and bring their diverse cultures and heritage into contact with each other. This transnational cooperation project allows the exchange of information on working methodology between the participating groups in their pursuit of similar objectives such as promoting the sustainable development of their territories and enhancing their heritage resources.

It allows for joint efforts and the joint use of certain resources such as dissemination and dissemination on social networks, the methodology of the training plan on packaging and product presentation or the design of a joint brand that is linked to local resources and that favours a transnational projection of the territories. This transnational dimension also allows for greater visibility of the project and its activities, within the framework of sector events such as the specialised fairs that the project intends to attend, with the presence of producers and products, as well as local show cookings and the generation of audiovisual content and the recipe guide in languages that will allow for accessible and transnational dissemination.

The project also serves as a network to promote exchange and mutual knowledge between the territories and their inhabitants, as well as to serve as a launching pad for international strategies for their economic agents. In this sense, local food and wine products, as well as their culinary preparations, will be made known in markets in other regions, and crossbreeding and innovation will be encouraged, favouring a richer, more modern and varied gastronomic offer. Professionals from the sector will be directly involved, such as chefs, with their direct participation in local events and in the exchange experiences between territories.

This transnational project brings added value to the development strategies of local companies, as it allows them to establish contacts and direct relations with other markets beyond the local and regional sphere, which would otherwise probably be inaccessible to local micro and small companies, as well as to the generation of tourism products promoted from our network.

It will also be a very useful tool for the dissemination of the new figures of the law of land reclamation in Galicia, since having 4 transnational partners, we can in this edition make known in other countries of the European Union this law that is being applied in Galicia, and therefore be an example for another country regarding the recovery of abandoned land and the prevention of forest fires, in similar territories. Through the project we can export the Galician Land Reclamation Law to other countries, being a direct example of how to apply and implement this law in another territory outside Galicia.

PRINCIPAL OBJECTIVES

The overall objective of the project is to achieve sustainable economic development by enhancing the value of local products and territories based on gastronomy, heritage and culture. To this end, the project will enhance the value of local gastronomic products in the territories in order to promote their consumption and quality offer, with added value and new elaborations, as well as promoting the fusion between diverse gastronomic traditions in the territories and a joint strategy to access tourist markets beyond our borders.

The specific objectives are as follows:

– Improve the economic profitability of tourism-related businesses.

– To improve the economic profitability of companies producing and processing local products and indirectly to improve the profitability of local trading companies.

– Encourage the transfer of knowledge and gastronomic traditions.

– To create new dishes made with local products through fusions with cuisines from other European countries.

– To increase the level of knowledge of the local population’s training linked to gastronomy.

– To disseminate a healthy diet among the population linked to the consumption of local products.

– Create links with new tourist source markets.

– Integrate gastronomy into the new tourism products and the enhancement of the cultural and heritage resources of our territories.

– Facilitate the participation of our production companies in forums and fairs that favour the dissemination of their products and which, due to the size of the companies, would not be able to access or attend these events if it were not for this project.

– Enhance rural territories through the strengthening of gastronomy and tourism, including their integration in strategies linked to tourism products in the territories.

– Incorporate the experience of gastronomy professionals from each territory into the cooperation project.

– Improve the product packaging of small producers through training. –

Improve product presentation among catering companies in our territories through training.

– Improve the presentation of the gastronomic offer in the accommodation in our territories through training and networking days that help to generate new tourist products in which the accommodation is allied with the catering industry, creating new tourist products in the market.

– To help create new tourism products that combine accommodation and gastronomy, and to promote and facilitate their sale through local, national and international tour operators.

– Use new technologies to put agents, clients and consumers in contact with participating producers and companies in each of the territories.

– Collaborate with the Regional Ministry of the Rural Environment in the dissemination of the new figures of the law of land reclamation, facilitating that the new figures that are being projected in the RDGs of Galicia (Concello de Tomiño and Concello de Oia), are consolidated and that the resulting products and producers are incorporated into the Eurochef project for their promotion and dissemination in the territories and that the producers of the figures already created in the territory of RDG 10 are directly incorporated into the project for their promotion and dissemination as productions generated in the Model Villages.

– Create the project’s own brand that identifies participating companies, both producers and companies in the tourism sector, with special emphasis on the products resulting from the new figures of the land reclamation law.

– Generate a structure beyond the project that consolidates the network and the durability of the tools generated with the project and that capitalises on the knowledge and experience of the project.

– Export experience and knowledge of the Agricultural Land Reclamation Law to other European countries such as Bulgaria, Romania and Latvia.

ADDED VALUE OF THE PROJECT

The joint work of the 6 cooperation groups, as well as the exchange of experiences between the territories, which included visits to different agro-food projects, as well as to the tourist heritage to be valued, resulted in the creation of a final event that we call “The Essence of Origin”.

This result is what we want to transfer to a new cooperation project for the next period, focusing the objectives of Eurochef III on the creation of high-level events in rural territories, in which we take nearby cities to relevant spaces of our countryside, to value the products, explain how they are produced, how they are transformed, how they are sold, and thus recognize the work of all those people who decided to bet on staying in the rural area, to keep it alive, and who make it possible for us to consume traditional, local and high-quality products in urban environments.

In the near future we hope to have a series of events that can be developed with a certain temporality in the territories of the partner groups, which help to highlight the rural area and what is produced there, as well as create an event that is a driving force for the development of the territories, a festival that generates economy and puts the spotlight on the small villages that work to stay alive.

Thus the first edition of the essence of origin was developed in a small village named Pitelos (Verea) to highlight rural areas, local products and haute cuisine, to demontrate that a small place with less than 10 inhabitants can become, with desire and enthusiasm, a true attraction for the visitors. The presentation of the project ‘A essence of the origin’ packed this small municipality and transformed a warehouse into a novel space.

The day began at 12:00 p.m. with a vermouth session with a tasting of avant-garde cuisine with local products prepared on site by Iván Méndez, head chef at Tabalú Food&Tech, and Álex Iglesias, from The Dos Líneas restaurants, in Arzúa. The chefs conquered the public with their demonstration of how different products can be transformed at their origin through haute cuisine. Mussel empanada, vegetables from the O Rosal garden; torrixa from O Porriño bread; Galician potato, pumpkin and shiitake gnocchi; papanduxas tribute to Álvaro Cunqueiro; candied and puffed bacon with turnip top cream and Galician potatoes; filloa and cottage cheese milfollas with apple shavings from A Estrada; or Galician reddish tataki with Limia risolada potatoes, were some of the dishes that the families who attended the event were able to taste. Meanwhile, the children participated in different workshops through which they discovered many countryside activities in a playful way and in which they also tasted mini cachena burgers, bica de Verea, roscón de Copena from Gondomar and organic apple juice.

The activity also had the collaboration of companies from the territory, such as Viveros Río Tollo, Adega Pateira, Altos de Torona, Adega Valmiñor, Adega Mimbre, Pazo de Valdomiño, Beraki, Copena and Zumiño. In addition, the eventb also featured pieces by artisans from territory, such as Las Flores de Grieta, Redeiras de A Guarda, Atalaia, Aitor Martínez, Luckys Bake Ceramic or Álvaro Leiro and Julia de La Cal, both recently nominated for the 2023 National Crafts Awards.

The event continued in the afternoon with a visit to the Nogueira Livestock Farm, which currently has more than 300 cattle. During the visit, the commitment that this family made to rural areas and ranching as a way of life was highlighted: “This is a tribute to all those people who work for and in rural areas, a tribute to the family of Marcos Nogueiras, who opted to produce and live in rural areas.

Like them, there are many people in Galicia who are committed to dedicating themselves to the fundamental pillars of rural development such as agriculture and livestock farming.”

The day ended with the presentation of this project before different authorities.

All the participating groups understood, thanks to the previous steps we developed in the project, that it is important to promote our territories, our products, our landscapes, our people, since the essence is in the origin, but so that they are really taken into account and we can develop actions that have an impact on these territories, the essence is to bring the urban population to our towns, and offer them an immersive experience, which shows them how people live in the countryside, how they produce, process, create… and the importance for these small villages of the simple act of changing your consumption habits and thinking about helping the rural population.

EUROCHEF II: A CHEF AT THE RURAL

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