Curiously Seeking Québec: Gastronomy Students Learn Food Outside the Classroom – part 2
This is the second in a two-part series on the fall 2012 course, Culture & Cuisine: Québec. Read part 1 here.
by Brad Jones
In the course of the trip we did get the opportunity to experience a great variety of more formal sites of education. But thinking back on it we never once attended a “legitimate” museum—the type so frequently associated with a study abroad experience. Instead, we saw exhibits like the sensory rich display at the Wendake reservation or the virtual exhibit on Quebecois food culture. We toured econo-museums, exhibits disassociated with state or religious institutions, which depict the rich history of production on the property of the cheese maker or the eel fisherman themselves. We took tours of vineyards and barns and orchards. We sat in on lively discussions. We tasted things right from the hands of those who grew, hunted, or foraged them. We learned from each and every one of these experiences in ways that the art museum or the antiquated cathedral could never offer.
Though the question mark remains, I think the best answer to the question of how one might define Quebecois cuisine was offered by food scholar David Santo. It is a cuisine defined by its emergence he claimed. Emergence suggests a state of transition, a trajectory of becoming. It is antithetical to structural or static approaches. Santo saw emergence nestled between the daikon and the baguette of the banh mi sandwich. I would claim it can be found scribbled in chalk on restaurant walls. Is there a better form to capture a spirit of constant flux than the chalk board which can be erased with the wave of a hand? Norman Laprise of Toque said they update their chalk board menu up to three times a day depending upon what ingredients they have at their disposal. To steward a flexible approach of this kind is to celebrate diversity. It is to allow producers like Patrice (of La Societe des Plantes) to be economically viable as they grow small quantities of heirloom vegetables. It is to keep cooks engaged as they are freed from the monotony of a repetitive menu. It is to eliminate waste and to appreciate the marginalized, the ugly, and the out-of-place.
Perhaps the most rewarding part of the trip was the opportunity to travel the full length of the food chain. We saw eels harvested in the morning. We touched their slimy skin as they still wriggled with life. In the afternoon we felt the chilly vines of an emerging tradition of wine making. And we consumed them side by side around the dinner table in the evening. In so doing, we set ourselves apart from the average tourist who goes to consume but rarely, if ever, to produce. Indeed, while the opportunity to experience Quebecois cuisine prepared for us in its various manifestations was a delicious and rare treat, to speak with those who create the foods we ate and whose blood, sweat, and tears were tied into the products of which they were so proud, was truly invaluable. It bridged the pervasive gap of anonymity and made us truly appreciative. Moreover, that we were there for reasons not of sport and spectacle, but from legitimate and concerned interest, I hope that these producers in turn appreciated us. I think that they did.
Brad Jones is a current Gastronomy student and Cheesemonger at Formaggio Kitchen. View more photos of the Gastronomy trip to Quebec on out Flickr page.
Curiously Seeking Québec: Gastronomy Students Learn Food Outside the Classroom – part 1
This is the first in a two-part series on the fall 2012 course, Culture & Cuisine: Québec.
by Brad Jones
Sitting around the long supper table of Pastaga, Alex Cruz from the Societe Orignal suggested that “to end a sentence in a question mark is the ultimate sign of intelligence.” I must say that I agree. A few days before, armed with but a few simple questions, we had turned to Quebec to seek out answers. Curiosity drove Alex forward (“I am motivated by curiosity”), much as it did acclaimed sommelier Francois Chartier (“I’m a curious man, I’m looking for the perfect model!”). So too, did curiosity drive my fellow students and I. In the end, though our trip remains punctuated with question marks of various sorts, there is no doubt that we are all the wiser for having experienced it.
The trip offered a rewarding glimpse into various approaches towards pedagogy. In the Concordia University rooftop garden, we learned that people tend to be afraid of plants, fearful that they may kill them if they do something wrong. This to me is unsurprising. From a young age we are taught in our schools that there are right and wrong answers; that there are passing and failing grades. We learn through lecture, passively, with the teacher speaking to us and rarely with us. But the learning that takes place in the rooftop garden is one of experience. It is an active engagement free from judgment or critique. Indeed, one learns to take care of a plant by having their hands covered in soil and regardless of how much attention is paid to it, there remains the possibility that the plant will die. To have this happen however, is not so much a failure, as a pedagogical success. Is there a better way to learn than through experience and failure? To accept failure, to appreciate it, is to engender resilience and creativity while to create the fear of failure is to harbor passivity, orthodoxy, and doubt. The growing of a plant, then, becomes an important way to wisdom.
Laura Stine, our greenhouse garden panel organizer, and scholar of the senses David Howes spoke of the importance of learning and socializing in a sensory rich environment. For Laura’s part, their organization attempts to bridge generational gaps by bringing the elderly in communion with the young over the shared task of caring for herbs. This is a form of knowledge transfer that is both unstructured and informal. It has the possibility of conveying information that simply cannot be contained in a book—that is, information acquired from a lifetime of experience. Moreover, to partake in this project builds human to human relationships and facilitates interaction amongst individuals. One learns to care, to love, to listen, to learn, and at times, perhaps to mourn. These are human faculties that one does not acquire from the classroom or the textbook. They derive from individuals sharing sensations with one another.
We who partook in the course were no exception. We learned and socialized, taught and created friendships, in the same way as the Quebecois from which we sought to study. Engaged with each other in a sensory rich environment we learned to know one another in a way the classroom could never afford. Indeed, I found it quite amusing that our group forged a whole new sense of what it means to “share” food together. At each and every meal plates were passed around and beverages, touched by the lips of many, went full circle. The cultural partitions that teach us to refrain from behavior of this sort were razed to the ground and in doing so we built relationships unique to true conviviality. In this course we experienced long trips, bitter cold, smelly barns, slippery eels, and clanging city bells. In the end, the pedagogical components of an immersion trip, the sites and spaces of learning, are hard to pen fully to paper. They flow fluidly from the act of experiencing and, undoubtedly, from experiencing together.
Brad Jones is a current Gastronomy student and Cheesemonger at Formaggio Kitchen. Read "Curiously Seeking Quebec: Gastronomy Students Learn Food Outside the Classroom - part 2" in this Wednesday's post.
A Recipe for Research
by Lucia Austria
photo by Lucia Austria
Barbara Rotger knows that there is more you can learn from a recipe than just how to cook a Thanksgiving turkey, or the best pecan pie. Cookbooks have been a focus of research for cultural studies scholars, picking apart recipes to understand the diet of a particular society. In her November 6th talk sponsored by the Culinary Historians of Boston held at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute Schlesinger Library, Rotger suggested the limitations of studying cookbooks. She argued that recipe boxes have the potential to reveal true ideas of what types of food past societies prepared and ate. She reminded us that cookbooks are prescriptive literature—“If cookbooks are saying, ‘this is who you should be,’ and community cookbooks say, ‘this is who we would like you to think we are,’ then recipe boxes get you closer to ‘this is who I am.’”
Rotger’s talk was not only a journey through a random recipe box she acquired from eBay, but through a research process inspired by her own grandmother’s recipe box that turned into her BU Gastronomy Master’s thesis project. She recognized a dearth in recipe box related research, and therefore, a lack of methodology. According to food writer Sandra Oliver, scholars are “put off” by the thought of using recipe boxes as a subject of study. Indeed, they would be a history student’s nightmare, as there are no page numbers, no indexes, are difficult to date, and often fragile. Rotger knew these boxes had untapped potential for understanding history and set out to develop a methodology.
photo by Barbara Rotger
Using her acquired eBay recipe box that came from an estate sale in Iowa, Rotger described how she was able to mine the box for information in efforts to establish location, time period, and identity of the owner in order to put the box into context. Rotger used a material culture approach through inductive research by observing and coding information and recognizing patterns before coming up with a tentative hypothesis and developing a theory. She categorized cards into type of dish (dessert, side dishes, salads, soups, meats, etc.), recipe format (handwritten, clipped from newspapers or clipped from products), and recipe date, if any. What aided Rotger in establishing a date and location for the recipe box were the non-recipe items included, such as addressed envelopes, calling cards, and a graduation program. With this information, Rotger pulled census data and was able to identify that the box belonged to Mrs. Edna Abens who lived with her husband and son Pocahontas County, Iowa during the 1930s.
This discovery allowed Rotger to ask the question, “How did women in 1930s rural Iowa live?” By comparing her findings against current historic research on the lives of early 20th century American women in the domestic realm, Rotger concluded that Edna was an independent woman who “provisioned her family in a manner that required knowledge, skill, and planning.” Edna did not fit the bill as the “dainty” housewife who fussed over gelatin-molded salads, an image promoted by popular home economists at the time. For Rotger, “Edna’s recipe box reflects a different kind of cuisine than that described by scholars using other kinds of sources.”
Rotger’s thesis project demonstrates that the fields of food studies and material culture studies have plenty room for new inquiries. Breakthrough research can come from your own personal questions about culture, even from your grandmother’s kitchen.
Lucia is a Gastronomy student and Fall 2012 Editor of gastronomyatbu.com. Her research focuses on food and Filipino-American identity.
Figuring the Fork
By M. Ruth Dike
Have you ever thought about the fork? Darra Goldstein has. On Monday, October 22nd, as part of the "Pépin Lecture Series" sponsored by BU's Program for Wine, Food, & the Arts, Goldstein, founding editor of food journal Gastronomica gave an excellent lecture on the “Progress of the Fork: From Diabolical to Divine.”
Goldstein began by explaining how the fork, originally associated with pitchforks and the devil, contrasted to the more holy knife and spoon. While the knife is used during the Last Supper to cut bread and the spoon is associated with birth and the Virgin Mary, both have both been in use for much longer than the fork. Before the widespread use of the fork, tapestries, paintings, and even texts like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales give examples of nobles using their hands to eat.
With the rise of the sweetmeat or “wet succets,”which are fruits preserved in sugar and syrup, the succet fork became necessary to ensure that European nobility did not soil their hands. However, there was still much opposition to the fork; France’s Henri III even said that he would not use a fork (like the Italians did) because it was too “dainty” for him. Slowly the fork became more and more widespread throughout Europe, eventually becoming standard in a traveler’s personal cutlery.
With the invention of electroplating in the 1840’s, silver plated forks became easily obtainable by the middle class, especially after silver deposits were discovered on US soil. Because the fork had become accessible to [almost] everyone, the upper class decided to distinguish themselves by producing an exorbitant amount of forks for various uses. Forks were created specifically for macaroni, flaky fish, oysters, various fruits, etc.
Tiffany even created a set including 131 items for one person during the 1880’s. After Herbert Hoover decreed that sets could have a maximum of 55 pieces in 1925, the surprisingly relieved Emily Post said that “no rule is less important than which fork to use.” With some artistic exceptions, fork design has mainly focused on utilitarian purposes recycling previous styles heavily, since the 1930’s.
Needless to say, the audience left with a new appreciation for the engaging history of the fork.
M. Ruth Dike is a first year Gastronomy student. She has BA in Anthropology from the University of Tennessee Knoxville. Her past research explores the tension between traditional and modern cuisine in Morocco.
Three Food Anthropologists Gather Around the Italian Table
by Emily Contois
photo credit Lucia Austria
Featuring the work of three influential food anthropologists, the fall 2012 BU Gastronomy lecture series concluded with a flourish on November 12 with “Around the Italian Table: A Roundtable Discussion of Contemporary Food Ethnography in Italy.”
United in their methodologies and Italian focus, each explores different aspects of Italian foodways. The work of Carole Counihan, Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Millersville University and Visiting Professor of Gastronomy, spans more than thirty years. From studying the modernization of consumption in the late 1970s to analyzing the motivations and function of food activism in the twenty-first century, Counihan’s body of work demonstrates how a scholar’s study questions evolve over time. Valeria Siniscalchi, Associate Professor of Anthropology, EHESS, has studied food as a social connector and an economic object in Italy and France. Her recent work analyzes the Slow Food Movement, focusing on the economic and political dynamics of the organization’s leadership. Rachel Black, Assistant Professor of Gastronomy, has studied Porta Palazzo, the largest open-air market in Western Europe, as a field unto itself that prompts discussion of topics as far afield as immigration, culinary tourism, and urban renewal. She now focuses on the anthropology of wine, an understudied topic, exploring the construction of vino naturale and the economic contribution of wine cooperatives.
photo credit Lucia Austria
Taking questions from the audience, the speakers engaged in a lively discussion, beginning with the role of the anthropologist and the “schizophrenia of anthropology.” As they spend significant time in a culture not their own, anthropologists endeavor to see a culture with new eyes, but without ethnocentrism. In this process, there is a constant negotiation of the insider-outsider relationship. In the end, even for Siniscalchi, an Italian who studies Italians, the anthropologist is always an outsider.
photo credit Lucia Austria
The conversation later turned to the generational and gendered dimensions of Italian foodways, as even women who work outside of the home perform as much as 90 percent of domestic duties. Black shared that many Italian women in their twenties and thirties have never learned to cook, as their mothers have instead encouraged them to pursue professional careers outside of the home. Counihan and Siniscalchi discussed how youth are often drawn to the Slow Food Movement for political reasons, desiring to resist the hegemonic power of the agro-industrial food system. Older Slow Food members, however, are more highly motivated by the taste of good food that they recognize as Italian.
photo credit Lucia Austria
Italians often perceive good food as local food, grown in Italy, a perspective greatly impacted by globalization. Black discussed how market vendors post signs reading, nostrano, meaning “ours” and indicating a strong and intimate connection between food and place. Counihan posits that participating in a global economy has made Italians even more chauvinistic about local food. As new immigrants continue to enter Italy, however, tensions must be negotiated, determining the place of the “other” in Italian culture and foodways.
This dynamic roundtable event revealed that we in food studies are never studying only food. As Counihan stated, food is heavily inflected with emotions, customs, economics, politics, and power, which inevitably link up with other things in a culture. For food anthropologists, and food studies scholars more generally, food is our powerful lens of choice for viewing the greater world.
Emily is a current gastronomy student and graduate assistant. Check out her research in food studies, nutrition, and public health on her blog, emilycontois.com.
Taza Chocolate: An Experience in Flavor, Amongst Other Senses
Last month, Rachel Black's Food and the Senses class and Gastronomy lecturer Netta Davis took a field trip to Taza Chocolate in Somerville, MA. The class participated in a factory tour, and each student had the opportunity to closely scrutinize the facility not only with their eyes, but also with all of their physical senses. Student Robert Haley recounts his experience.
by Robert Haley
photo credit Lucia Austria
Taza Chocolate Factory provides any visitor to their facility with a multi-sensory experience that ensures the guest will leave with greater knowledge of their product, as well as familiarity with all of the types of chocolates they offer through firsthand interaction. The first sensory experience takes place when you enter the door, and you go from a dilapidated factory exterior in a rundown area of Somerville to a cozy gift shop well-decorated in a Central American theme. The shop is adjacent to the closest production room, which can be viewed through the large picture windows located next to the register. Though the interior of the production room is quite commercial and unflattering in color, it does provide the visitor a chance to see instantly a part of the chocolate making process as it is happening.
Taza goes even further to ensure that your first moments at the factory are as connected with the coveted chocolate as possible, as throughout the shop area there are baskets of free samples containing a variety of their different types of chocolates. Unlike most tours associated with food items, Taza encourages sampling of their unique Mexican chocolates before beginning the factory tour. It seems that this multi-sensory exposure to the chocolate at the outset is beneficial for both Taza and its guests – the ingredients and processes behind the production of Mexican chocolate is different from what most Americans associate with more “traditional” chocolates. There are no dairy additives, and the resulting smell, flavor, and taste reflect this difference. The mouthfeel of the chocolate is grittier than its counterpart produced with dairy, and the flavor of the cacao is more defined here than in other chocolates. Taza seems to suggest that for the guest to fully comprehend the production process viewed on the tour, they should first expose themselves to the product using all of the senses.
While only a small section of the factory was in production while we participated in our tour, Taza Chocolate does an excellent job describing the process from farm to factory. As with the gift shop, Taza ensures the tour is a multi-sensory experience, where throughout the visit raw ingredients are made available for the guests to see, smell, touch, and taste. Our group was able to smell various cinnamon samples, handle a roasted cocoa bean, examine nibs created from the cocoa bean shell, and of course, sample many types of chocolate. The strongest sense experienced throughout the tour was smell, as even though production concluded for the day, the smell of the chocolate making process still lingered in each room, seemingly inviting the guest to experience more.
The Taza Chocolate tour is a welcome experience for anyone looking to learn the unique process behind the production of Mexican chocolate, and participate in a multi-sensory experience along the way. By allowing the visitor to experience all facets of the product at the outset, as well as throughout the tour, they ensure the guest has a greater understanding of what Taza is trying to achieve with their brand, and how they go about creating their product.
Rob Haley is working towards his Master's in Gastronomy, and is also the Senior Media Producer at the Office of Distance Education at Boston University.
Wine and Dine, Medieval Islamic Style
By Elizabeth Mindreau
Photo credit Elizabeth Mindreau
The students of Kyri Claflin’s History of Food (ML622) class were treated to a lecture and cooking demonstration by scholar of Medieval Islamic cuisine and food writer, Nawal Nasrallah. Nawal discussed what historians consider the Golden Age of the Arab World, between the 8th and 13thcenturies. She described Baghdad as the center of the world during that period and made medieval Baghdad come alive with descriptions of a cosmopolitan city with a bounty of ingredients in its markets brought by the many caravans passing through. Baghdad was full of nouveaux-riches with a taste for fine cuisine and the means to buy it.
Nawal followed her lecture with a cooking demonstration using recipes from the 10th century Baghdadi cookbook, Kitab al-Tabeekh by Ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq. She translated this medieval work under the title Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens. Using these age-old recipes, Nawal transformed simple shredded chicken into an aromatic delight by adding sibagh, a dipping sauce made from ground walnuts and pomegranate juice. Additionally, soy sauce was used to replace a medieval Arab condiment made of fermented barley known as murri. The chicken and sauce were blended together and presented on a platter sprinkled with fresh pomegranate seeds.
Photo credit Elizabeth Mindreau
Nawal prepared a few other dishes, like bazmaward, a pinwheel-type sandwich of cheese, nuts, mushrooms, and eggs, and badhinjan mahshi, a dish of boiled and chopped eggplant mixed with caramelized onions, ground almonds, fresh cilantro, chives, parsley, caraway seeds, cinnamon, olive oil, vinegar, and soy sauce. By the end of her demonstration, our appetites were in high gear. We filled our plates and dug in. So what does food from 10thcentury Baghdad taste like? The chicken and sibagh were bright and savory. The badhinjan mahshi was soft and succulent. The herbs in the bazmaward danced on my tongue while the finely minced ingredients of the sandwich melted in my mouth.
Recreating dishes from a medieval cookbook is an amazing way to immerse yourself into a sensory connection with the past. Of course, it can never be the same since the cooking environment, cooking technology, and taste of the raw ingredients (due environmental changes) are different. But, I believe that one can get close to the experience by physically recreating the movements that someone made so long ago to prepare the food and the final experience of tasting and eating it. It can bring us a new understanding of what life in the past may have been like in a very intimate way. It is also a thrill to taste flavor combinations that may not be available in the modern culinary arena.
Photo Credit Elizabeth Mindreau
Nawal's lecture made me appreciate the rich, noble, and lengthy history of Arabic cuisine as well as of the Arabic culture in general. I am discovering that learning topics through a food-centered lens is highly effective. Because food is deeply embedded in one's daily life, it can be an excellent vehicle for transmitting knowledge. As we ate, Nawal discussed the challenges of translating Medieval Islamic cookbooks into English. She said that so much more work needs to be done, particularly with the cookbooks of Andalus, (Medieval Islamic Spain). More scholars, particularly with foreign language skills, are needed. Time to sign up for Arabic class!
Elizabeth Mindreau is a former graphic designer and first year Gastronomy student. When not studying, Elizabeth is busy trying to feed her two young sons anything but chicken nuggets and Oreos.
Course Highlight: Food and the Senses
by Lara Zelman
All Gastronomy students take the course Food and the Senses, a class that marries the humanities and scientific approaches to understanding the physical senses in relation to food experiences. Graduate student Lara Zelman questions and discusses the complex relationship between the senses, brain signals, and external influences on perceptions of food.
The article “Flavor and the Brain” by Dana Small defines flavor as “a perception that includes gustatory, oral-somatosensory, and retronasal olfactory signals that arise from the mouth as foods and beverages are consumed.” Small discusses that “although the sights, sounds and smells of foods that occur just before, or in the absence of eating, can impact flavor perception, it is argued that these sensory signals exert their influence by creating expectations based upon prior associations.” The discussion touches on “top-down” influences including attention, expectations, and beliefs and how they impact neural and perceptual responses. For example, being told about the intensity of a flavor can impact the resulting response in the brain. In the context of her article, Small discusses how vision influences flavor, similarly to how verbal labels and cues might create expectations about the sensory experience. These top-down mechanisms bias “the neural code towards expected experiences.”
After reading the article I began to think about how flavor is influenced by expectation, specifically in the context of dining out at restaurants. What information influences and shapes the diner’s expectations, and how does this impact the diner’s perception of flavor? Is it influenced by expectations created before the dining experience as well as during? When information is readily available, how does this change the dining experience? If the diner is armed with photographs and descriptions prior to eating, will the flavor he experiences be different than if he just ordered off the menu with no prior knowledge? There are numerous ways to get information before dining out. Information on restaurants is available on websites, on television, in magazines, in guidebooks, and in newspapers. How does this impact the diner’s sensory experience? Websites like Tasted Menu and smart phone apps like Nosh let users post reviews and photographs of individual menu items at restaurants. Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram allow users to post real-time accounts of their dining experience. How does this information and visual representation shape the diner’s expectations?
Information on food is also presented through both food advertising and television programming. There are numerous television programs that feature restaurant dishes, like Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. What impact does watching this type of program have on a viewer’s future dining experience? Viewers watch featured chefs prepare dishes, eat, and describe their experience. The viewer is getting a visual (and somewhat auditory) play-by-play of the sensory experience of the host – smells, texture, and flavor – but without actually experiencing them. Areas for future study could look at the impact that this prior information has on shaping expectations and the resulting brain response and perception of flavor. From a marketing perspective, restaurants and food companies could understand how this type of information either positively or negatively impacts the diner’s experience.
Lara is a BU graduate and works full-time as a marketing manager. She is currently taking the course Food and the Senses. Read her full post and follow Lara on her blog at GoodCookDoris.com.
November Events
Plenty of fun events to be had this November! Mark your calendars with these awesome food events and lectures!
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3
Boston Event Guide presents Fall Wine Fest. Celebrate Fall and taste wines of the world. Guests will be given a passport (event layout) to travel to different regions around the world and taste wines from each.
12 pm, 3 pm, & 7pm; Cyclorama, 539 Tremont Street, Boston
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5
Gastronomy Lecture Series - Join us in a conversation with Kyri Claflin, Gastronomy lecturer and co-author of Writing Food History: A Global Perspective.
5-6 pm, Fuller 109, 808 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8
The Harvard University Food Literacy Project invites all to join David Buchanan, author of Taste, Memory, to the event Forgotten Foods, Lost Flavors, and Why They Matter. A grower of over 250 heirloom varieties of plants, Buchanan explores how biodiversity impacts the future of food and farming. How can we strike a balance between preserving the past, maintaining valuable agricultural and culinary traditions, and looking ahead to breed new plants? To what extent should growers value efficiency and uniformity over matters of taste, ecology, or regional identity? In this talk, David Buchanan will discuss agricultural biodiversity, what it means, why it’s important, and how we can maintain it. Open to the public. Heirloom tasting to follow.
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm, Sever 103, Harvard Yard, Cambridge
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11
Museum of Fine Arts presents Gallery Talk: Feasting, Food And Festivals In Ancient Art. Experience a banquet for your eyes as we examine the art of food and drink in the ancient world. Join guest lecturer Christopher Gilbert for a deep draught of knowledge as we learn about the role of feasting and food!
2pm, Sharf Visitor Center MFA, Boston
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12
Gastronomy Lecture Series - Join us for “Around the Italian Table: A Roundtable Discussion of Contemporary Food Ethnography in Italy," with Carole Counihan, Visiting Professor of Gastronomy, Rachel Black, Assistant Professor of Gastronomy, and Valeria Siniscalchi, Associate Professor of Anthropology, EHESS.
6 pm, SHA Auditorium, 928 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston
--AND--
Boston magazine presents their annual Taste event. This event celebrates the November dining issue with an evening of delectable offerings, highlighting some of the best chefs, mixologists, and restaurants featured in Boston magazine this year. Purchase tickets here.
6 pm, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Boston
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13
The Culinary Historians of Boston present BU Gastronomy Program Coordinator, Barbara Rotger. In this presentation she will shed light on her path through the wonderful world of gastronomy as well as some of the cherished recipes she has collected along the way.
6 pm, Schlesinger Library, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14
Rachel Black, Gastronomy Assistant Professor and Academic Coordinator, will present a special lecture, A Taste of Britain: From Post-Colonial Cuisine to Molecular Gastronomy as part of the Museum of Fine Arts course series, Cheers! Celebrate Enchanted England. Ticket purchase required; $25 for MFA members, seniors, and students, $30 for nonmembers.
1-2:30 pm, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Remis Auditorium, 161
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16 & SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17
Get your tickets for the Beer Summit Harvest Fest. Celebrate the Fall beers from over 60 different breweries. It's a celebration of the best Autumn beers in the world, right here in Boston. Purchase are on sale here.
various times, 130 Columbus Ave, Boston
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18
Meet locals and exchange creative prepared foods in a Boston Food Swap. All swap items must be homemade, homegrown, or foraged by you. Bring as little or as much as you like. You can bring a bunch of one thing or multiples of a few different things. The possibilities are endless! Admission is free but RSVP is required.
2 pm, Space with a Soul, 281 Summer St, Boston
Gordon Shepherd on the Science of Flavor
By Miki Kawasaki
Photo credit Lucia Austria
Anyone looking for proof of the truly multidisciplinary nature of Gastronomy would have been well advised to attend Gordon Shepherd’s lecture Neurogastronomy: What is it, and why does it matter? on October 24th. Shepherd is a professor of Neurobiology at Yale University whose research has largely focused on the olfactory systems in the brain responsible for processing the sensory information humans receive via their sense of smell. Keeping in mind the significant role odors play in articulating flavor, he has coined the term “neurogastronomy” to describe the pleasures of eating on a biological level. The key concept behind neurogastronomy, according to Shepherd, is that flavor does not exist in food, but is created in the brain. His interests lie in how the brain shapes our experience of food and influences our decisions regarding what to eat. In many ways, his work is biological proof of Pierre Bourdieu’s maxim that personal taste is “produced by conditions of existence which rule out all alternatives as mere daydreams”.
Shepherd’s research has implications for a wide range of topics familiar to students of Gastronomy, from the role of language in advancing food procurement among early humans to the present day obesity epidemic. Underlying these themes are the difficulties in modifying human behavior due to the entrenchment of neurochemical processes. In the case of food, this involves the role that memory and emotion plays in driving our cravings (think of Marcel Proust’s famous example of the madeleine). Shepherd points to research showing that the formation of food memories determines individual eating behaviors, leading to the conclusion that humans are most vulnerable to forming bad habits during the developmental stages of youth. He strongly believes that it is necessary to start looking at the neurological causes of disordered eating and to consider recent developments suggesting that the brain is more adaptable than previously assumed. Unsurprisingly, in an echo of the woes of food scholars who lament the lack of recognition for their field, research on the brain flavor system is still quite underdeveloped.
Columbia University Press
Shepherd’s lecture ended in a lively question and answer session, with many members of the audience inquiring about the nature of food addiction. While some questions focused on dietary frustrations (Why is it so hard for some people to stop eating? Can I get addicted to broccoli?), others sought to reflect on our perceptions of unhealthy eating (Is addiction a disease?). Shepherd’s overall response was that it is not only necessary to recognize these problems as a concern of public health, but to also consider the terms by which we frame our discussion of them. Shepherd urges that even in light of the melancholic view that human perception is a slave to past experience, food activists must be adamant in questioning and reforming the institutions that have resulted in the food dilemmas society faces today.
Gordon Shepherd’s latest book, Neurogastronomy - How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters, was published last year by Columbia University Press.