Sustainable Design: The Earth-Friendly Kitchen

Here’s how rustic accents add a warm feeling to a sleek, eco-minded space. Andrew Kotchen and Matthew Berman’s sustainable designs are warm and rustic.

Many eco-conscious architects today favor minimalist design. But Andrew Kotchen and Matthew Berman of the environmentally minded New York City firm Workshop/APD have made a name for themselves by mixing modern with traditional style, especially in places like Nantucket, Massachusetts. “We call it contextual modernism,” says Kotchen. Vintage-inspired accents, like panels with the look of bead board (an iconic Nantucket look) and wire-mesh-fronted cabinets add warmth to the latest earth-friendly building materials. “We really try and add as many sustainable features as possible into every home we design,” Kotchen says. “We scrutinize and evaluate every material, based on how it is made and what it is made of.” workshopapd.com.

To give this Nantucket kitchen a grand feel, Kotchen and Berman used Douglas fir beams (certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, or FSC) on the 18-foot-high ceiling. fsc.org.

“They’re a longer, rustic take on subway tile,” says Kotchen of the hand-glazed Grove Brickworks pieces on the walls. From $18 per sq ft; waterworks.com.

Caesarstone, made with recycled materials, is “very durable and very green,” says Kotchen. From $65 per sq ft; caesarstoneus.com.

The grooved design resembles bead board, a Nantucket signature. The Benjamin Moore paint in Decorators White is low in VOCs (volatile organic compounds).

Special settings for preheating, cooking and self- cleaning on Bosch’s wall oven save energy. From $2,900; bosch-home.com.

Workshop/APD spent three years designing a line of modular cabinets and kitchen islands called Timeline with Italian kitchen company Aster Cucine. The new collection uses FSC-certified lumber and recycled wood, plus aged elements like oxidized metal. The kitchens are available at Aster Cucine showrooms. astercucineusa.com.

“The trend is to over-appliance,” says Kotchen. “We explain to clients that having a warming drawer, double oven, convection oven and eight-burner range is probably unnecessary—especially when most people don’t even have eight pots that they use. Getting people to break those habits is one of the hardest things.”

“We install very few upper cabinets in our kitchens,” says Kotchen. “People don’t like reaching up that high, and we think it’s far more comfortable to keep your plates and glasses in lower cabinets. There are so many interesting dividers and racks now available that you can store almost anything in deep drawers.”

Kotchen says, “We think the idea of the work triangle is a crock! It’s an archaic approach to kitchen design. There are some appliances that you try to put near one another, but it’s not always practical. Creating a functional kitchen is easy; the hard part is creating a space that feels inviting.”

Kotchen likes induction cooktops, like the GE Monogram model here, for their energy efficiency and low profile, which blends into the island top. $2,800; monogram.com.

For a modern take on vertical tongue-and-groove paneling, the architects went horizontal on the custom cabinets. Savoy ceramic tiles from Ann Sacks, made with recycled materials, echo that pattern. From $12 per sq ft; annsacks.com.

Sustainable bamboo mimics the look of traditional maple butcher block on the island. The cabinets are recessed, creating the illusion that the countertop is floating.

To achieve the look of “fumed” wood floors, stained with a technique that involves harsh chemicals, Workshop/APD used a VOC-free stain and vegetable oil on white-oak planks.

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Sustainable Seafood

Trying to sort out the world of sustainable seafood is trickier than figuring out the tax code. To make it easy, we offer simple advice, encouraging news and eco-friendly recipes.

A type of sea snail, whelks are making their way onto restaurant menus.

Like abalone, whelks are gastropods. There are more gastropod species (over 60,000) than bird and fish types combined.

Fishermen used to catch whelks by accident in lobster traps, but the rising demand means that fisheries have begun seeking them out.

As wild seafood stocks dwindle, fishermen and chefs are looking to diversify. Whelks are both abundant and easy to harvest.

Whelks are briny and a bit chewy, like clams; they’re good in chowder or simply steamed on their own. You can find them in Asian markets.

Tony Maws, the sustainability-minded chef at Craigie On Main in Cambridge, Massachusetts, serves whelks with striped bass and a daikon broth. Ben Pollinger of New York City’s Oceana makes whelk chowder with apple and pumpkin.

This 27,000-acre fishery produces seafood that meets the exacting standards of chefs like Thomas Keller. More similar to a nature preserve than a fish farm, Veta la Palma is a holistic ecosystem: The fish and shrimp eat naturally occurring plankton and algae instead of industrial feed. A hit with Spanish chefs, Veta la Palma’s sea bass and mullet are now imported to the US by Browne Trading, which sells to restaurants and home cooks. brownetrading.com.

“One of the best ways to fight overfishing is diversity: People must be willing to cook and eat species besides the most familiar ones, like cod, tuna and salmon. There are great alternatives out there, and they are often more affordable, like wild red drum fish and snook in the South, and arctic char, which is farmed in pens and is a great salmon alternative. Chefs can prime the pump by serving lesser-known species, but people have to be willing to order them. Try cobia on Monday, arctic char on Tuesday, branzino on Wednesday. Mix it up!” —Chef Rick Moonen of RM Seafood in Las Vegas

Paul Greenberg explains how the overfished red snapper is returning from the brink.

The first and only time I caught a red snapper, I was on my last leg—and, actually, so was the snapper. In the winter of 2001, I tore my Achilles tendon and moved to my grandfather’s retirement community in Palm Beach, Florida, to recuperate. After a month of physical therapy, I fled to the Gulf Coast for a fishing trip. I felt a savage strike on my bait and reeled in a gorgeous red snapper. The mate glumly released it. “Out of season and overfished,” he said. Over the last 50 years, fishing has depleted Gulf red snapper populations by 98 percent. And when they got scarce, all kinds of imposter fish ended up on menus in their place.

But red snapper may be on the mend. Beginning in 2007, the National Marine Fisheries Service instituted a “catch share” program in which commercial fishermen are preassigned a quantity of snapper they can land, ending the free-for-all frenzy of the past. Now, red snapper numbers have more than doubled. And a new program, “GulfWild,” guarantees authenticity by allowing consumers to trace an individual fish back to the boat that caught it. True, the recovery is ongoing, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch still gives the fish an “Avoid” tag. But someday, red snapper may just swim its way out of the ER, and I might be able in good conscience to catch—and keep—another one.

Paul Greenberg is the author of Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food.

Over 36 million copies of the aquarium’s Seafood Watch pocket guides are in circulation. The free app has been downloaded around 500,000 times. Six regional editions are updated every six months and include alternative picks for each species. There is also a version designed for people going to sushi restaurants and a glossary of fishing terms, like ”trolling“ and ”longlining.“ montereybayaquarium.org.

The MSC stamp on fresh or packaged seafood (which you’ll see at Whole Foods, Target and Costco) means that the contents come from a sustainable fishery that has passed the Council’s rigorous, often year-long assessment. msc.org.

Free of scientific jargon and full of recipe ideas, the institute’s guide (available via iPhone or text message, the Web and a PDF) is a smart pick for home cooks. blueocean.org.

Weber’s delicately wired new model has compact handles that fit inside a covered grill. From $25; weber.com.

A fishing boat is optional with Thomas Paul’s Anchor Napkin. $16 each; velocityartanddesign.com.

Proceeds from designer Thomas Mann’s silver and pearl earrings go to Gulf of Mexico relief efforts. $130; thomasmann.com.

Caskata’s platter has a shimmering school of fish, accented in gold and platinum. $138; michaelcfina.com.

An oversize spatula with a sharp serrated edge is perfect for large fish. $8; josephjoseph.com.

Courtesy of Casa E. Di Mirafiore

A tannic red works well with smoky roasted fish. Eric Larkee of Michael’s Genuine in Miami often serves the 2009 Casa E. di Mirafiore Langhe Nebbiolo with whole fish dishes that have been cooked in the restaurant’s wood-burning oven.

A buttery white is a natural for New England classics like lobster rolls. Tom Schlesinger-Guidelli of Boston’s Island Creek Oyster Bar likes the 2008 Nino Negri Vendemmia Ca’Brione Terrazze Retiche di Sondrio, a white blend from Lombardy.

“My go-to is the 2010 Dr. F. Weins Prüm Estate Riesling,” says Chuck Furuya of Hawaii’s D.K. Restaurant group. “It’s like biting into a cold slice of pineapple; it counters salt and spice and cools the palate.”

In the kitchen, we respect fish the same way we respect pig, by using the whole thing. For instance, we make fish headcheese, because there’s so much natural gelatin in fish heads. Sometimes our charcuterie board is entirely fish; we’ll put out a bluefish pâté, dogfish pastrami and bass headcheese. And if you deep-fry monkfish skin, it’s just like pork cracklings.” —Chef Richard Garcia of 606 Congress in Boston

A guide to the complex world of sustainable seafood. Photo © Kate Mathis.

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