The Original Food Pyramid

Beer, Bread and Foie Gras
Presented by
Michael Fenster, MD
Chef, Interventional Cardiologist, and Martial Artist

Podcast courtesy of WBEZ’s Chicago Amplified

“Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.”–Hippocrates

Dr. Michael Fenster is making a house call to the Culinary Historians of Chicago.  And he’s going to ask all of us if we are healthier today. But before we’ll have a chance to answer, this physician/chef will give us the real skinny about health, ancient cuisines and their modern implications. Continue reading

“What’s Your Hurry? Enjoy Our Curry! A savory tale of what curry is–and isn’t

Presented by
Anupy Singla
author and teacher

Join Indian cookbook author, Anupy Singla, for a discussion on deconstructing curry. Anupy will discuss the differences between curry powder and what South Asians term ‘curry’ — essentially any dish with a gravy. Most in the West are shocked to learn that curry powder is rarely used by South Asian cooks. Continue reading

The South, According to Nathalie

An intimate perspective from a Dixie culinary queen
Presented by
Nathalie Dupree
TV host, chef, author, and teacher

Podcast courtesy of WBEZ’s Chicago Amplified

According to Southern cooking icon Nathalie Dupree, Southerners lie awake at night and remember their grandmother’s biscuits, their Aunt Sue’s mashed potatoes and gravy, the grits from the mill down the road, and the boiled peanuts their grandfather taught them to cook in a large, well-used old can over a fire in the backyard. “We crave our food and dream about it,” Nathalie says. Continue reading

The Story of Algerian Pastries and an Epiphany

Presented by
Rachel Finn,
Founder, Roots Cuisine

Podcast courtesy of WBEZ’s Chicago Amplified

When Rachel Finn was living in Paris several years ago, she tasted Algerian pastries for the first time; her life was changed forever. “It was, without question, love at first bite,” she recalled. “An obsession was born. I visited pastry shops throughout Paris, sampling pastries including m’khebez, rzimette, maqrout, skandriate, and my very favorites d’ziriate. After moving back to the States Rachel soon returned to France to do a short apprentissage at her favorite bakery, La Bague de Kenza, which taught her as much about Algerian culture, cooking, and Islam as it did about baking.

Please join us as Rachel gives a brief overview of the history, culinary influences, and cultural significance of Algerian pastries, which are often linked to very specific holidays, or family celebrations such as marriages and births. She will touch on their immense popularity in France, where northern African food has become part of modern French culinary heritage. It is a situation that has much in common with the other Afro-diasporic cuisines around the world that continue to transform culinary and cultural landscapes.

BIO
Rachel Finn is a freelance writer, editor, researcher, and the founder of Roots Cuisine (http://rootscuisine.org), a nonprofit created to promote the foodways of African Diaspora around the globe. Her work has appeared in print and electronic publications including Gastronomica, Chicago Sun-Times, Seattle Weekly, and The Root. She has also written encyclopedia entries on the foodways of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone for ABC-CLIO’s Food Cultures of the World. She is currently working on a book on the food history and recipes of the global African Diaspora. Her personal website is http://rachelfinn.net.

Program hosted at Kendall College.

Julia and Simca: A Franco-American Culinary Alliance

Presented by
David Strauss, PhD

Julia Child was born nearly 100 years ago, in August 1912. To help celebrate her centennial, Professor David Strauss, a Julia Child devotee, will shed some more interesting light on this already greatly documented American icon. Strauss will explain how one of the seminal events that launched our current gourmet dining craze was the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961. “In rightly celebrating Julia Child for her role in writing this cook book, we often forget that it was a cross-national, collaborative project featuring Julia and her French partner, Simca Beck,” Strauss says. “The story of their lively and sometimes stormy relationship tells us much about the personalities of these two women, while also revealing cultural differences between France and America which fueled their controversies.”

Strauss says that we should recognize the partnership’s role in enabling the two authors to produce a classic cookbook. “Without Julia’s insistence on educating American housewives in basic cooking skills and Simca’s knowledge of the recipes available to middle-class French households, the book would not have succeeded. Even so, we should not underestimate the good fortune of the authors to publish Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961, the year the Kennedys hired a French chef in the White House.”

BIO: David Strauss is professor emeritus of history at Kalamazoo College where he taught courses in American cultural history for 29 years. Recipient of two Fulbright grants, Strauss has also taught American Studies at the University of Lyon, France, and Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. In addition to Setting the Table for Julia Child: Gourmet Dining in America, 1934-1961 (2011), Strauss has published Percival Lowell: The Culture and Science of a Boston Brahmin (2001) and Menace in the West: The Rise of French Anti-Americanism in Modern Times (1978).

Presented by Culinary Historians of Chicago on:

Saturday, April 14, 2012
at
Kendall College, School of Culinary Arts
900 N. North Branch Street, Chicago