Linh Cat
2024 | Trade - Chef
“Becoming a scholar is a significant leap towards making an impact and shaping a better future for our planet.”
My goal in the trade industry as an upcoming pastry chef is to practice, create and teach sustainable eating, cooking and thinking. The experience and knowledge I hope to gain from this scholarship spans from learning how our produce started out as seedlings and to creating explosive sensations on the taste buds.
That includes learning from and talking to our farmers, understanding their history, passion and drive for their land and produce and seeing the different kinds of regenerative and sustainable farming techniques that are applied to cut waste in water, land, emissions and overall improve biodiversity.
It includes working with some of the leading chefs who are currently at the top of their game in creating haute cuisine whilst having sustainability and land preservation in mind.
Having this well rounded hands-on learning experience will provide much benefit for what I want to achieve in the future. My Global Footprints Scholarship will allow me to travel to my dream locations, work with these professionals and grow my awareness of what the world has to offer for my generation.
I hope this experience will enable me to map out the possibilities of improvement that we can implement as soon as possible to create a better difference for our environment.
With the people I get to learn from I want to share the connection we have with our craft,, and to build courage as well as care first in ourselves then the rest of the world one by one.
My end goal is to have a global impact and be able to make a difference in how people understand, purchase, eat and handle food.
I can only start doing that if I understand which of our habits and mentality we need to change. One of my main inspirations is my own family’s way of food consumption. We have gone a full 180 from eating mainly meat to now mainly eating plant based products. From our experience the benefits are not only environmental but also physical.
As we made the change I conducted a month-long experiment comparing the impact of us witching from our omnivore to herbivore diets. The results are fascinating in how we reduced up to 56% of our overall carbon footprint emissions.
This is just a small impact in the scheme of things but I can imagine the shift in practices if everyone on earth understood these facts and applied better habits to their everyday life no matter how small.
The planet's health has direct correlation to the health of it’s inhabitants, and I want to have a population who nourishes its land, water and skies so that we get looked after in return.
Learning how to take care of our planet is the foremost important step required for my grand plan and requires learning from the best globally. I want to set on that task and shape a better future for us all.
A Global Footprints Scholarship is your opportunity to do more of what you love. What have you done at work that you are proud of or passionate about?
What I am most proud of at work are the lessons that I get to learn every day. They can range from cooking techniques to team work and communication and more. To have these skills added to my catalog and being able to look back on how far I have grown from when I first started apprenticeship 1.5 years ago till now is always something I am proud of.
It is the daily evolving that I seek to achieve to become better in my craft, and I always try my best to go lengths to achieve it, like asking an extra question or raising my hand to do a new job. These little things are what makes me the happiest to be able to learn every day.
Something that I am passionate about is creating dishes that follow the weather, season and availability, instead of going against it. It is amazing to be able to work in an environment where everyone shares the philosophy of sustainable cooking and highlighting the freshness and magic of the seasons produce in our cooking.
We do this by changing our menus seasonally and having close connections with our farmers and producers to communicate what there is in abundance to be able to put it on our menu. This constant change brings forth a lot of space for creativity and ideating which is a process that I really enjoy. It feeds my curiosity and allows me to learn new techniques and skills.
A Global Footprints Scholarship is for you if you are passionate about creating a sustainable future. Describe something you have done at work or are working on, that helps the environment. Why is it important to you?
The UN Sustainable Development Goals are something that I work towards. These goals include Goal 2 - Zero hunger, Goal 12 - Responsible consumption and production, Goal 13 - Climate action, Goal 14 - Life below water and Goal 15 - Life on land.
All 5 of these goals have direct correlation to the future that I want to build and passion for my craft. At the moment I am only applying these goals to myself and immediate family but with the aid of the Global footprints Scholarship I want to be able to do more.
To practice these goals, what I have been involved in growing a community garden including a compost patch to promotes biodynamic practices. I find that the community garden is a space for young and old to be able to connect with the land and learn to care and tend the growing plants.
I have learnt much appreciation for the foods that I have eaten by growing them myself, resulting in less wastage in my cooking.
Furthermore I have switched from going to the big supermarkets to my weekend organic markets where I enjoy talking to the farmers and learning their ethos on farming that conserves and renews natural resources, prohibited GMOs and pesticides, etc.
Going to these markets increases the sense of community and supports food equity. As a chef, eating these nutrient dense meals that I get to create provides great happiness.
This practice of farm to table food is something that I am passionate about providing in the future to a wider audience so they can understand and appreciate how the food that they are eating came to be.
I have been opening a unique dining experience in my home offering guests a set menu. This menu is be inspired and created with the fresh produce from markets to support our Australian farmers and other parts from my foraging of the bush land around me.
Something that I am very fond of is visiting the farms that produce the products that I get to use at work, to learn the whole process on how they grow and tend their produce. During these trips I get to learn different techniques they use and technological advancements they employ to reduce the wastage of natural resources. For example when I went to Greenspace, I learnt that they are reducing their sunlight to 8 hours from 12 hours, which other farmers are doing, so that their micro herbs can grow at a natural pace and have the time to develop their nutrients.
It is this understanding that allows me to make informed choices on whom to purchase my produce from, since I know that they are environmentally conscious and are making decisions that support a greener future. It is all these practices that together create a more sustainable world in the hospitality sector.
I know that I would need to work on all these parts and more to support a sustainable world, but these are the building blocks that are important to my values.
As a BBM Scholar you can choose to go anywhere in the world. Where will you travel with your Scholarship and why?
Across the world there are so many choices of chefs who specialise in different cuisines with different styles and so the choice is never easy but there are four restaurants that I have always dreamt of.
These include;
Room for Dessert by Will Golfarb - Bali Indonesia
The French Laundry by Thomas Keller - California USA
Noma by Rene Redzepi - Denmark
Le Maison by Alain Ducasse - Paris France
What I want to learn from each of these restaurants are the techniques that makes their establishment so unique and highly regarded. The process of growing, gathering, seasoning and cooking perfectly is an art that all of these chefs have mastered to deliver in their restaurants.
To be in these environments would not only be inspirational but also transcending with the knowledge and experience I can gather. All of these restaurants are pioneering food today and all of them are in the deep state of creating, ideating, experimenting and expressing.
During my research I learned that they all have gardens, closely working with their producers and prioritising the practise of sustainable gastronomy. For example Chef Will Golfarb is able to make his chocolate from bean to bar, a practice rare in any restaurant and he does so with many of the other ingredients that are very commonly store bought. He also has a garden growing native tropical produce that the chefs at Room for Dessert get to tend to with the in house gardeners.
What I want to learn from all the chefs is how to be sustainable whilst being creative and creating crazy new experiences for my diners.
Another aspect is being away from home in an alien environment that will surely be a transformative experience of self growth and understanding that I am excited to experience.
Having this new understanding and invaluable knowledge I hope to build a community where I can share my knowledge and experience on innovative sustainable gastronomy, and assist a new generation of young chefs who are educated, passionate and driven for a sustainable world.
“Linh’s responses demonstrate a strong ethos and passion for her profession. […] Linh knows what she wants from this opportunity, and this scholarship can possibly be a defining factor in what she can achieve. Her application had so much information and was a joy to read.”
– Global Footprints Assessor Panel