“Home Cooking from Around the World” is focus of UMass World Chef Culinary Conference

June 2—The theme for the 16th annual World Chef Culinary Conference, which will be held June 6-11 at 26,000-student University of Massachusetts in Amherst, is “Home Cooking from Around the World.”

The conference will focus on home cooking and comfort foods from several regions of the U.S. as well as regions of Asia, the Mediterranean and Latin America. More than two dozen chefs and food experts will present, including Suvir Saran and Neela Paniz on Indian, Bruno Wehren on Swiss cuisine, Chai Siriyan on Thai, Hiroko Shimbo on Japanese, Matthew Jaffe on Peruvian, Alexandra Ong on Malaysian and Jet Tila on Pan Asian cuisine.

“It is hard to beat home cooking,” Ken Toong, executive director of Dining Services at UMass Amherst and organizer of the conference, said in a press release. “Home cooking is often simple to prepare, with the use of authentic, natural and local ingredients—just the thing that our customers are looking for. It is part of the rustic movement. Our customers want to know where their food comes from and they want to eat closer to the earth—wholesome food similar to what their grandparents and parents ate. It goes without saying that our Taste of Home theme special at UMass is always one of our most popular.”

For more information about the conference visit umass.edu/chefconference.