When 400 wine and food lovers converge, one of the first things they do is get something to eat-chicken braised in cabernet with Basmati rice or marinated squid and grilled artichoke with warm goat cheese, maybe a Wisconsin marscapone terrine with warm fruit-all with appropriate wines, of course.
But those attending the 10th annual conference of the American Institute of Wine and Food-an organization of lay and professional people with a passion for good wine and food-also settled down last weekend to three days of trying to understand American cuisine and its place in the history of gastronomy. And it became apparent to most that that concept is wide-ranging, perplexingly variegated and definitely multi-cultural.
Coordinated with the “Seeds of Change” exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, the AIWF conference, titled “Foods of the Americas,” began by examining how potatoes, corn and other foods of the pre-Columbian Americas clashed and melded with cattle, wheat and culture of Europe.
“The ecosystem of the Americas is still wobbling from the kick Columbus gave it,” said Alfred Crosby, professor of American studies, history and geography at the University of Texas, describing how the integration of such things as cattle, horses and wheat from Europe also changed the biology of the Americas. That the fallout from that event 500 years ago has continued was evident as almost 70 speakers and panelists debated such topics as:
– The ongoing global exchange of foods, illustrated by such anecdotes as how the native American tomato traveled first to Europe before returning to North America, where it wasn’t accepted by most people as a food until after Thomas Jefferson started growing them for food, according to Elisabeth Rozin, author of “Blue Corn And Chocolate” and lecturer on food history and ethnic cuisine.
– Corn has been and is a truly American symbol as well as a food and is intimately connected with the history of religion, sex and even embalming fluid. “We are the people of corn and the people of popcorn,” explained Betty Fussell, author of the book “The Story of Corn.”
– Agriculture in this country is so interwoven with business and government here and abroad that it is impossible for farmers to operate independent of them. “Those pretty cows you see on the hills in Switzerland are there only because Swiss farmers are the most subsidized farmers in the world,” said Thomas O. Kay, a specialist in agricultural trade negotiations and former administrator in the Department of Agriculture, as part of a long discussion on the complicated interreationship of national farm subsidy and price support programs.
– Restaurant trends: “We’re just scratching the surface of Chinese cuisine,”predicted Ruth Reichl, food editor and restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times.
– The advent of cattle and wheat to North America was not all positive. Rayna Green, director of the American Indian Program at the Smithsonian, explained how corn, “the mother” of Pueblo peoples, was replaced by wheat and changed the diets of those Native Americans who once had a diet of complex carbohydrates from corn, beans and squash but now have “red Kool-Aid, Jell-O and potato salad” and diabetes that strikes one in three Indians.
– And the questions of biotechnology: “All tomatoes have an enzyme that causes them to soften and go bad,” said Stephen Benoit, vice president of marketing at Calgene Fresh Inc., developers of the genetically altered Flavr Savr tomato. “We just took the gene that causes that enzyme to act and inserted it in backwards,” a practice some panelists think may have dangerous implications for the future of food products.
Between sessions offering food for thought were luncheons and dinners at Washington restaurants and tastings of at least 50 wines. Featured luncheon chefs were Jeremiah Tower and Mark Franz of San Francisco’s Stars Restaurant; Monterey California’s David Beckwith of Central 159, Mark Berger of Monterey Plaza Hotel and Beat Giger of The Lodge at Pebble Beach; and Ed Hanson and Jim Swenson of the Loew’s L’enfant Plaza Hotel, headquarters for the conference.
For many the culinary climax was a “Chilean Harvest” dinner in the ballroom of the Organization of American States Building, prepared by chefs Norman Van Aken of Miami Beach’s A Mano, Robbin Haas of North Miami’s Turnberry Isle Resort and Allen Susser of Chef Allen’s in North Miami. That meal, featuring hot-fried oysters, tamarind and guava-glazed barbecued quail and pepper-cured salmon, came with two chardonnays, three merlots and four cabernet sauvignons, all from Chilean grapes. Dessert was a double espresso brownie with spiced rum, carmelized bananas and ice cream in three tropical flavors, containing probably as many calories as the rest of the meal.
The AIWF was founded 12 years ago by Julia Child and vintner Robert Mondavi to promote American wine and food, which with the inclusion of Chilean wine seemed to expand to all of the Americas. Child called the conference the best yet because it was “serious and fun.”
The serious side may have been summed up by Lionel Tiger, professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, who said that food-wise, America is “a new country forged from an amalgam of old traditions.”
As for fun, R.W. Apple Jr., food lover and Washington bureau chief for the New York Times and former Moscow correspondent, said that before associates in his office asked him about what he thought of Boris Yeltsin’s recent declaration of power-which occurred during the course of the conference last weekend-“they wanted to know what it was like to have dinner with Julia Child.”
