The Story of Algerian Pastries and an Epiphany

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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.

TOFU PROCESSING TOUR

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Presented by
The Cheng Family of Sun Xien Soy Products and Sun Wah BBQ

Podcast courtesy of WBEZ’s Chicago Amplified

Sun Xien Soy Products
613 W. 47th St., Chicago, IL 60609
http://www.sunxiensoyproducts.com

Tofu has long been a traditional food of Asian cultured and a mystery to many.  Believed by many to be a “fountain of youth” food, it has served as a staple for many countries in the Far East for thousands of years. Continue reading →

Julia and Simca: A Franco-American Culinary Alliance

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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

Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art

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Presented by

Stephanie Smith, Deputy Director and Chief Curator

 Limit: 30 people, Reservations expected. 

Podcast courtesy of WBEZ’s Chicago Amplified
This recording from April 29, 2012

Since the 1930s, numerous artists have used the simple act of sharing food and drink to advance aesthetic goals and to foster critical engagement with the culture of their moment. These artist-orchestrated meals can offer a radical form of hospitality that punctures everyday experience, using the meal as a means to shift perceptions and spark encounters that aren’t always possible in a fast-moving and segmented society.

Feast surveys this practice for the first time, presenting the work of more than thirty artists and artist groups who have transformed the shared meal into a compelling artistic medium. The exhibition examines the history of the artist-orchestrated meal, assessing its roots in early-twentieth century European avant-garde art, its development over the past decades within Western art, and its current global ubiquity. Through a presentation within the Smart Museum and new commissions in public spaces, the exhibition will introduce new artists and contextualize their work in relation to other influential artists, from the Italian Futurists and Gordon Matta-Clark to Marina Abramović and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Feast addresses the radical hospitality embodied by these artists and the social, commercial, and political structures that surround the experience of eating together.

Stephanie Smith joined the Smart Museum as associate curator in 1999 and was named deputy director and chief curator in 2010. She is an affiliate member of the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts and a contributing editor to the journal Afterall. She has held curatorial positions at Rice University, where she earned her MA in art history, and the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston. For her ambitious contemporary exhibitions such as Beyond Green (2005) and Heartland (2009), Smith has been named one of the most visionary curators in Chicago. Smith is curator of Feast.

This program is hosted by the Chicago Foodways Roundtable.

Saturday, April 7, 2012
Please arrive early, program begins promptly 11:30 AM
Smart Museum of Art of the University of Chicago

5550 S. Greenwood Ave
Chicago, Illinois
Street Parking