WEST BEND (Wisconsin) - AS MORE travellers show an interest in local cuisines, a Milwaukee chef is taking the trend a bit further with a cooking school that travels to the food's origins.

The Braise Culinary School holds classes on farms and in forests during warm months. Most classes start with a farm tour - or recently, a walk in the woods - so students can see how food grows before they learn to prepare it.

He came up with the idea while working on a business plan for a restaurant and attached cooking school.

David Swanson, 39, worked in restaurants in the Chicago area and Milwaukee for about 20 years before opening the cooking school in 2006. Since then, he has cooked in apple orchards, wheat fields and breweries. This year's first class began with a mushroom hunt in woods near the University of Wisconsin-Washington County.

Mr Swanson partnered on the class with Britt Bunyard, a mycologist (fungus expert) and editor of Fungi magazine. Bunyard led about two dozen people through woods and clearings he had scouted the day before.

Mr Swanson also plans classes at a creamery near Madison and a wheat field on Washington Island in Lake Michigan.

On the Washington Island trip last year, he showcased the wheat with a panzanella salad made with wheat bread, cucumbers, tomatoes, red onion, olives and feta and scones made with granola from the hotel where students stayed.

It was a great adventure, hauling cooking materials into the field in an old pick up truck, Mr Swanson said. But, 'wheat is just beautiful, just looking at the wheat in the wind is nice'.

For those more interested in eating than cooking, Mr Swanson hosts a series of Sunday dinners at farms. Guests receive quick tours of greenhouses or strawberry patches before settling down to meals that may include roasted chicken, strawberry shortcake or grilled summer squash.

Dress is casual, and 'the big thing', Mr Swanson said, is 'breaking the bread, talking with the farmer about the things they are growing'. In all cases, he tries to keep the food simple so students or dinner guests can make similar meals at home. -- AP