Podcasts

Back to the mountains of Pamir A book about Pamiri culture and agriculture wins a global award

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:10 — 22.1MB)

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pamirs In 2007, Frederik van Oudenhoven travelled to the Pamir mountains in Central Asia to document what remained of the region’s rich agricultural biodiversity. Almost 100 years before, the great Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilov became convinced that this was where “the original evolution of many cultivated plants took place.” Soft club wheat, with its short ears, rye, barley, oil plants, grain legumes like chickpeas and lentils, melons and many fruits and vegetables; all showed the kind of diversity that Vavilov said pointed to the places where they were first domesticated. As he wrote, “it is still possible to observe the almost imperceptible transition from wild to cultivated forms within the area.”

What van Oudenhoven found was bewildering; incomprehensible diversity in the fields and unspeakably dull food on his plate. It only started to make sense when he began to talk to Pamiri people, and especially the older women, about their food and culture. The result was a book – With Our Own Hands: a celebration of food and life in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan and Afghanistan – by van Oudenhoven and his co-author Jamila Haider, which documents a culture that remains in danger of disappearing.

That book recently won the Gourmand International award for Best Cookbook of 2015, which is why I am now repeating the conversation I had with Frederik van Oudenhoven in July of last year.

Notes

  1. With Our Own Hands is published by LM Publishers and is available from them and other booksellers.
  2. For other notes, see the original episode notes.
  3. There are plans to make a documentary about the people and their culture. Watch a trailer here.
Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 033

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20 June 2016

Authentic food news

  1. There’s a new cheese mountain in town, and it isn’t in Europe. But it may be Europe’s fault, what with a weak euro, the end of production limits and pesky Putin’s cheese import ban.
  2. I picked up the copper-coin-in-the-bowl-if-you-haven’t-got-a-copper-bowl tip for better whipped egg whites when I first read On Food and Cooking in the 1980s. But I hadn’t realised there was a sequel: silver is apparently as good, and there are less expensive subsititutes.
  3. A strange piece asks “Celery: Why?” without once mentioning celeriac, Queen among difficult vegetables.
  4. A far-reaching history of rhubarb, which isn’t nearly as toxic as some people imagine.
  5. The attack by sausage-wielding thugs on a vegan cafe in Tbilisi, Georgia, has been heard around the world, but I’ve been hard-pressed to find anything like an original source. This will have to do.
Podcasts

Sweetness and light Sugar may not be the malevelent demon many people think it is

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:51 — 24.0MB)

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sugarBefore I read Christopher Emsden’s book Sweetness and Light: Why the demonization of sugar does not make sense I had no idea that the statistical correlation of air pollution and the epidemic of “diabesity” was stronger than the correlation with sugar. Or that among the indigenous people of Canada, those who still spoke their tribal language have far lower incidence of type 2 diabetes and obesity than those who have mostly lost their language.

Does that let sugar off the hook as a dietary demon? There’s no doubt that as a potent source of calories, sugar can be a problem. But as a specifically toxic substance, as many authors have claimed? Emsden makes a good case that there is more to blame for society’s dietary woes than pure, white and deadly sugar.

Personally, I’m not convinced there’s anything worse about sugar than that it packs a lot of calories into a small volume – but then so does peanut butter, even without added sugar.

Notes

  1. Order Sweetness and Light from Amazon.
  2. The media’s latest sugar binge began recently with an article by Ian Leslie in The Guardian.
  3. Katherine Docimo Pett, aka Nutrition Wonk, followed up with a lengthy response. You may find Marion Nestle’s summary easier going. Or you may want even more meat, from Nutrevolve or Sheila Kealey.
  4. Banner artwork by Lucy Clink.
Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 032

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6 June 2016

Authentic food news

  1. I had intended to do my own guide to homemade butter when I published the episode on Irish butter, but haven’t, yet. In the meantime, here’s a quick guide to quick homemade butter.
  2. To use that butter, you need to bake some bread. But forget about that bag of flour; obviously you need to mill some fresh. (I couldn’t access the original in the Wall Street Journal, so that’s the précis.)
  3. And if you’re going to mill some flour to bake some bread for that butter, you’re going to want to use newly fashionable ancient wheat. All you need to know about einkorn.
  4. A little bit of cheese for the royal slice of bread?
  5. OK, I really hadn’t intended to go all-in on bread and butter and cheese, but like London busses, these things sometimes hunt in packs. So what else have I got? How about some tarnished Golden Rice. I’ve honestly got nothing against specific GMOs, but sometimes failure to deliver really is a failure to deliver.
  6. In search of Ibn Battuta’s melon. No cheap jokes about how he came to lose it, please.
  7. Which came first, bananas, or banana flavour?
Podcasts

The True Father of the First Green Revolution Nazareno Strampelli, born 150 years ago this week

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:09 — 16.4MB)

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strampelliToday’s show is something of a departure; I’m talking about someone who is crucial to global food security and yet who is almost unknown.

It’s true, as Jean-Henri Fabre, the French naturalist wrote, that “History … knows the names of the king’s bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat.” Most people are blissfully unaware of the men and women who created the plant varieties that keep us fed. I say as much at the beginning of the show, when I guess that perhaps one in a hundred people can name a plant breeder, and that the name they’re most likely to come up with is that of Norman Borlaug. (The true stats, from a very small, self-selected sample, are somewhat different. Two out of 13 – about 15% – can name a plant breeder, although neither of the names they came up with was Borlaug’s.)

I thought Borlaug might be the most familiar plant breeder because he is credited as being the Father of the Green Revolution, for work that won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

Nazareno Strampelli, an Italian plant breeder, exactly foreshadowed Borlaug’s work by about four decades. His wheats doubled production in Italy and beyond and were crucial to the second green revolution ushered in by Borlaug. He was born on 29 May 1866, 150 years ago as I write this. He deserves to be better known (as do all plant breeders, actually).

Notes

  1. There is very little about Strampelli’s life and work in English. I am indebted to Sergio Salvi for his books, articles and time, without which I could not have produced this episode.
  2. Music for the show graciously provided by Jon Fuller, aside from bits of soundtrack lifted from archive Italian newsreel.
  3. The banner image I grabbed from Ridley Scott’s Gladiator; it’s a little in joke for anyone who does know even a smidgen of the history of wheat.
  4. There is so much more to the story of Strampelli and the early days of plant breeding; would you be interested in an e-book?