Trading Dishes: A Chef’s Travels Taught Him Cooking

Chef Steven Ferneding
Chef Steven Ferneding

Chef Steven Ferneding Traveled Far and Wide for this Cookbook

The newly released Trading Dishes Cookbookir?t=gc0a7 20&l=am2&o=1&a=1542913837 is an exotic collection of healthy recipes that will take you on a culinary adventure around the world. Based on the upcoming international show Trading Dishes, Chef Steven Ferneding teaches readers new and healthy dishes.

Fresh from the Sea Grilled Prawns
Fresh from the Sea Grilled Prawns

He uses the produce available locally to them as they adapt to the inevitable effects of climate change. The cookbook also includes spotlights of locals and excerpts from the Trading Dishes team’s expedition around Southeast Asia.

There are stories of environmental change and personal travel tips from the chef. The recipes found here are a mere taste of what you’ll see on the upcoming show.

Partial proceeds from the sale of the Trading Dishes cookbook will be donated to the international non-profit Practical Action and to the United Nations World Food Programme.

Excerpt from the Book: Trading Dishes Cookbook

While driving our rickshaw through the jungles of Sri Lanka I glanced at the rice field to my left. Seconds later I hit the breaks and pulled over to the side of the road in disbelief.

51f9QMN e7L. SL250I hopped out of my seat at the site of a dead rice field; this was a serious problem as it was a week before the summer harvest.

I wondered how this was possible; could this be a result of bugs, lack of water, bad soil, bad seeds? Moments later a farmer appeared at my side.

Before I could muster up the words to ask what was happening, the young man pointed to the sky as he said “See there, the rain never stops! It will be here again in fifteen minutes. There is so much rain my crops won’t grow. I can’t feed my family.

I don’t know what to do.” If his crops didn’t show his discouraged heart, his tone of his voice and his sadden face surely did.

We continued to travel North for about 70 miles where we met another farmer who understood how climate change was affecting his farm.

He introduced new rice grains to his fields which were more resilient to the amount of rain covering Sri Lanka. His fields were flourishing.

About Chef Steven Ferneding 

Chef Steven Ferneding Cooking Demo for ABC's Afternoon Live Show-1
Combining a love of travel with a love of healthy cooking, Chef Ferneding has created a new kind of cookbook.

“My culinary journey over the last ten years has taken me on cooking adventures to over 46 countries.

My career has provided with me the opportunity to circumnavigate the world three times and truly experience the delicacies of every culture I visited.

After receiving my degree in International Business from Arizona State University, I enrolled in the culinary arts program at the Le Cordon Bleu and graduated with honors at the top of my class.

After graduating, I worked in a premier seafood restaurant in San Diego, alongside a ‘Top Chef’ contestant.

With only making $8 an hour as a line cook, I decided to leave San Diego and ventured over to the Bahamas and Caribbean to cook on the world’s most prestigious yachts and in celebrities homes.

Over the eight years at sea, I gained a reputation in the yachting industry as being a healthy, gourmet chef and was even featured in international yachting magazines and industry publications.

Trading Dishes - Cabbage Wrap Photos
Trading Dishes – Cabbage Wrap Photos

I had the desire to discover more of the flavors of the world and went in search of new and unique ingredients.

I moved to India to start my culinary education in Indian and South East Asian cuisine.

For a year and a half, I traveled throughout India and S.E. Asia and cooked traditional meals with locals in their homes.

Three of those months I spent climbing the glaciers in the Himalayan Mountains in Nepal.

As I was making my descent at 17,600 ft from the basecamp of Mt. Everest, I came up with an idea for a global culinary initiative, a project I inevitably called Trading Dishes.

From this idea, I created, produced, and hosted an international travel cooking series that was filmed over 93 days in Nepal, India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Bali.

While on location in a village in western Nepal, I learned thousand-year-old recipes; prepared vegetable omelets in a mud hut, and cooked over a wood fire for over 40 villagers.

I was fortunate enough to prepare, Palak Paneer for orphans in the slums in Jaipur, India.

I created new, healthy dishes with the locals in climate-stricken rice fields in Sri Lanka. I exchanged recipes and cooked for a village on the white sandy beaches in Thailand.

Based on the recipes I learned during the filming, I was able to co-author and publish a cookbook, Trading Dishes Cookbookir?t=gc0a7 20&l=am2&o=1&a=1542913837.

Find out more tradingdishes.com

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