How to initialize an external reference in Thymeleaf? - html

Question

If I had a Java class called for instance Buffet and one of its fields was something like:
#ManyToOne
private Chef chef
and I had to create a new Buffet object in an html form using Thymeleaf, how would I be able to refer to this chef field? At the moment my html looks like this:
<form th:action="#{/newBuffet}" method="POST" th:object="${buffet}">
<div>
<div>
<span><input type="text" th:field="*{name}" placeholder="name"/></span>
</div>
<div>
<span><input type="text" th:field="*{chef}" placeholder="chef"/></span>
</div>
<div>
<span><button type="submit">Invio<i class="material-icons">done</i></button></span>
</div>
</div>
</form>
and my controller like this:
#RequestMapping(value = "/newBuffet", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public String formBuffet (Model model) {
model.addAttribute("buffet", new Buffet());
return "newBuffet.html";
}
#RequestMapping(value = "/newBuffet", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String addBuffet (#ModelAttribute("buffet") Buffet b, Model model) {
this.buffetService.save(b);
model.addAttribute("buffets", this.buffetService.listBuffets());
return "buffets.html";
}
the error it gives is, of course, because of the way Thymeleaf's input takes only strings whilst my input is an instance of my class Chef.