27 June 2005
"Food Culture USA" Highlights Diversity of American Cuisine
Folklife Festival features food exhibits from around the globe
Washington -- If asked to showcase in one dish the convergence of diverse cultures in modern American cuisine, chef Ed LaDou would have no problem. He would make a pizza.
That is exactly what he did in cooking demonstrations at the 2005 Smithsonian Folklife Festival on Washington's National Mall as part of the Food Culture USA exhibit.
“My goal is to bring in all the influences that have been assimilated into American culture,” said LaDou, who owns and cooks at Caioti Pizza Café in Los Angeles. He incorporates everything from Latin to Thai to Caribbean flavors into his food, and for the festival audience he made a wild mushroom pizza, a pizza with bamboo, his signature barbeque chicken pizza, and the experimental “Jewish pizza” -- crust, a thin layer of schmaltz (chicken fat), mozzarella cheese, julienne carrots, celery and onions, pieces of chicken, and gribenes (bits of fried chicken skin) for a touch of “crispiness.”
“It’s chicken soup without the soup,” he said.
LaDou’s self-proclaimed “Americanization of pizza,” which refers to all of the amalgamations of cultural tastes he has combined on top of round crusts, exemplifies the celebration of diversity central to Food Culture USA.
Funded in large part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with food, equipment and assistance from private donors, Food Culture USA gives festival visitors an array of gastronomic adventures.
A visitor could watch renowned chef Emeril Lagasse make Creole style gumbo on the Beyond the Melting Pot stage, then taste Steve Herrell’s homemade ice cream in the Garden Kitchen tent, or venture over to the Edible Schoolyard Ramada where Berkeley, California, chef Alice Waters has set up a replica of her garden project. In Berkeley she teaches middle school students about nutrition and the origins of organic produce by letting them grow and cook their own food.
Then, if still hungry, festival guests could catch Gilroy and Sally Chow on the Home Cooking stage whipping up Chinese food inspired by the culture of the Mississippi Delta: imagine fried rice with ham and bacon. The grandchildren of Chinese immigrants, the Chows have also added traditional Chinese flavors to such Southern staples as collard greens and crawfish.
“Everyone enjoys all the different cuisine, even in Clarksdale, Mississippi,” Gilroy said in reference to his hometown. “People in America are changing. We have a Mexican restaurant, a Lebanese restaurant, and this is in this tiny little town,” added Sally.
LaDou agreed with the Chows about the development of American tastes.
“People’s expectations are a little higher. Tastes and preferences are a little broader than they used to be. It’s a result of the diversity of choices available,” he said.
Food Culture USA also encouraged festival visitors to support organic food producers. “American consumers are demanding a greater variety of food,” she said, “and they want to know where their food comes from and how it was produced,” said Chef Joan Nathan, who helped to organize the exhibition. For instance, consumers will ask if beef comes from a family farm and if the cows were fed organically.
El Ceibo, a Bolivian federation of 38 cooperatives of small cocoa farmers, is committed to the idea of organic farming. Federation President Mario Choque Quisbert came to the Folk Festival to participate in the “Global Sources” exhibition. He told festival visitors about the cocoa bean’s journey from farms where it is grown to Bolivia's capital, La Paz, and onward around the world.
“Seventy-five percent of what we make we export,” said Quisbert, speaking through an interpreter. He said the federation requires that members practice organic farming techniques in order to “manufacture in an environmentally responsible way and at the same time improve the living standards of the people living in the co-ops [cooperatives]."
Quisbert welcomed the opportunity to “educate the American public” about Bolivian cocoa and to expand El Ceibo’s presence in the U.S. market by attracting more American Fair Trade partners—producers committed to providing fair wages to economically disadvantaged farmers.
Tanzanian coffee farmer David Robinson told a similar story in the next tent over. Robinson, who was born in New York and then moved to Tanzania 21 years ago, represents the Mshikamano Farmers Group, a cooperative of 300 small farmers. The cooperative provides coffee to Robinson’s independent brand, Sweet Unity Farms, which began selling internationally in 1999.
“These are second and third generation coffee farmers whose communities have remained poor,” he said. “Our effort [at the festival] is to both let the American population know the work that goes into coffee farming and to try to gain the consumer support for co-op marketed or directly marketed Fair Trade coffees.”
Mshikamano Farmers Group recently received its first-ever external financing, in the form of a five-year interest-free loan from the African Development Foundation, a U.S. government agency that provides direct financing to African enterprises and community-based organizations.
In addition to chocolate and coffee, Food Culture USA offered exhibits on organic dairy and soy production, organic teas, international spices and food safety. The public could discuss food topics with festival exhibitors in the Around the Table tent, or participate in a traditional Argentine asado -- or barbeque -- in the Slow Roast area. In the Local and National section, professional chefs demonstrated unique craft techniques, such as carving a model of an American football player out of jicama, watermelon, eggplant and other garden delights.
And for a mysterious ailment or heat-induced malaise, festival guests could talk to Eva Castellanoz, the daughter of an Aztec father and Otomi mother, who is the Mishica tribe healer in her town in Oregon. She knows that lavender and linden tree, which she found in the grass next to her display, help depression, while plantain cures athlete’s foot.
Castellanoz has a broad base of herbal knowledge. Her healing skills, she said, come from “my parents and the parents and the parents and the parents and the parents before them.”
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
