INTANGIBLE HERITAGE: PRESERVING IDEAS

Heritage Moments | Annabelle Kolomeisky  

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As a person studying in Museum Studies, I often think in a very material sense. Thinking mostly of heritage being portrayed through physical spaces, such as protected heritage sites, and traditional objects such as the collections on display in museums, it is easy to forget the larger umbrella that covers what else heritage can be.

The overarching definition of heritage, according to Google, is: “property that is or may be inherited,” or “valued objects and qualities such as cultural traditions, unspoiled countryside, and historic buildings that have been passed down from previous generations.” Meaning, heritage in a broader sense can be understood as something, whether it be physical or not, that is inherited or passed down. It has less focus on what the piece of heritage actually might be physically and has a greater focus on the traditional and cultural impact the piece of heritage may have on society and the communities they originated from.

With this understanding of what heritage can include, it provides us an opportunity to take a look at a different type of heritage – intangible heritage. Intangible cultural heritage, according to UNESCO, are “traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants,” with examples including “oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe, and knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.”

Under the lists of "Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Register of good safeguarding practices," one can explore the different traditions and practices that are being preserved and recorded for the future memory of these cultural valuable intangible heritage pieces. These examples range from commonly practiced and well-known traditions such as the traditional Neapolitan culinary practice of ‘Pizzaiuolo,' the four phases of preparing traditional Neapolitan pizza (as described by a MMST colleague who wrote about it recently!), to less well-known traditions such as the traditional Vallenato music of the Greater Magdalena region in Colombia.

Performance by traditional Vallenato musician | Source

While some of the traditions may continue to be passed on strongly, many traditions that are listed on the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage face serious danger of being forgotten and are noted to be in need of urgent safeguarding. For instance, one of these endangered traditions is the Ma’di bowl lyre music and dance from Uganda. These songs and dances are based on by the community’s ancestors and are traditionally performed in various important community situations. Many rituals are also associated with the creation and use of the lyre as well. These traditional songs and dances were used to strengthen family ties and communities, as well as to educate from generation to generation. However, these traditions are now endangered, with the younger generations seeing them as old-fashioned. If these traditions are not be widely practiced, it may result in the loss of knowledge associated with them – in other words, the historical and cultural significance that is tied to these practices.

Performance featuring the Ma'di bowl lyre | Source

Looking at and preserving intangible heritage is extremely important, especially as we attempt to preserve the histories and traditions of cultures that rely on oral traditions, rather than material ones. Especially as emerging museum professionals, we must understand that different cultures present different traditions that are practiced and understood in different ways. Therefore, as we attempt to represent these cultures and work with local communities to preserve their traditions, we must look at all types of heritage – not just your average material collection in an object-based museum, but, rather, the intangible heritage as well.

If you are interested to see what intangible cultural heritage is being protected under UNESCO, you can visit their website and take a look at their list. Explore the different traditions from around the world that are being preserved and learn about international heritage from a different perspective!

EATING YOUR HISTORY: PASTA AND INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HISTORY

A Muse Bouche | Natalie Scola

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In 2003, UNESCO adopted the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), in an effort to protect global intangible heritage. The ICH includes oral histories, performing arts, social practices, traditional knowledge and craftsmanship. However, the ICH does not include the production and consumption of food, which is a key part of heritage. Cultural groups worldwide have varied practices relating to food. It is a central tenet of identity for individuals, communities, and entire countries. The production and consumption of food is a practice that forms community bonds while maintaining cultural practices.

The Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity does include a variety of food practices. This list contains elements of intangible cultural heritage in order to "help demonstrate the diversity of cultural heritage and raise awareness about its importance". The examples of food practices on this list are fascinating and show the variety of cultural food practices found around the world: Washoku, Japan (2013); Qvevri Wine-making, Georgia (2013), Neapolitan Pizzaiuolo, Italy (2017); Airag, Mongolia (2019).

One food practice not found on the list is pasta making. My family is Italian, and I have been around pasta my whole life, from preserving tomato sauce in the summer to rolling gnocchi by hand with my nonna (grandmother). Pasta making is a varied and unique practice that changes throughout Italy and the diaspora. 

Homemade garganelli pasta. I discuss how I made this pasta at the end of this article. Photo courtesy of Natalie Scola

There are so many varieties and methods of making pasta that it is impossible to know or even name them all. Recipes change from house to house and village to village. The mechanization of pasta in the 19th and 20th centuries changed pasta production and mass immigration contributed to loss of knowledge. Some pasta types are only made in a handful of villages or by a few people. For example, in Sardinia, the rarest pasta in the world is made only by three women. The pasta, called su filindeu in Sardo or fili di Dio in Italian (Threads of God), has been made for over 300 years by women in the same family. The women make dough of semolina, wheat, water and salt and create extremely thin pasta strands. The strands are criss crossed over a circular wooden frame and dried before being cooked in a broth of mutton. It is a beautiful, complex dish but will it still exist in 50 years? With decreasing populations in smaller villages and an aging population, knowledge of how to make regional pastas and sauces are quickly dying out.

A few years ago, I was amazed to discover a YouTube channel dedicated to recording regional and often disappearing pasta dishes. Pasta Grannies is a fascinating channel that records Italian nonnas making pasta at home. The channel features pasta from all over Italy, including Sicily and Sardinia. It is addicting to watch these old women – some in their 90s! – make pasta by hand. So many unique varieties have been recorded on video: Su succu; bauletti; code de pecora; strozzapretti; curzul; ndunderi; trofie and so many more. These videos are a way of preserving a dying art and creating a digital record for years to come. I highly recommend you watch them!

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A Many-Stranded History

Pasta is of course the quintessential Italian dish. But for a food that looms large in the popular imagination, it’s origin is maddeningly difficult to trace. Popular culture gives us the tale of Marco Polo bringing pasta to Italy from his travels to China but that is most likely a myth – records of pasta predate his 13th century journey. Pasta as a form of boiled dough has existed since Roman times. The first written record of pasta, or a pasta-like dish, is found in the Jerusalem Talmud from the 5th century CE. The author mentions itrium, a dish of boiled dough. By the 9th century, this word is recorded as itriyya, referring to string-like dough made from semolina that was dried prior to cooking. Pasta likely made its way to Italy through the cross-cultural Mediterranean trade. The Arab conquest of Sicily introduced many dishes and flavours that are still seen in Sicilian dishes today; pasta may have been one of the foodstuffs introduced. From Sicily, it likely spread up the peninsula. The Arab geographer al-Idrisi makes mention of pasta production in Sicily, where large quantities of pasta were produced and exported to mainland Italy and throughout the Mediterranean. Other Italian cities had strong trade connections throughout the Mediterranean, so pasta may have entered different areas of Italy at separate times.

However pasta was introduced, by the 13th century it was an established food. Pasta was not referred to as pasta, but instead called vermicelli, meaning a long, thin noodle — a word we still use today. Vermicelli was produced on a large scale and dried for long-term storage and trade. It was a common ingredient in most households and was eaten in broth or as part of gruel. Some recipes called for vermicelli to be cooked in almond milk, sugar and saffron, which is very different from how we think of pasta today.

14th century illustration from the medical treatise Tacuinum sanitatis (written by the physician Ibn Butlan in the 11th century). Pasta was thought to have medicinal properties and be good for the chest and throat. This illustration shows two women making pasta. One is kneading the dough and the other is laying long strands to dry on a frame. Source.  

While pasta-like dishes existed elsewhere in Europe, Italy developed a particular approach to pasta. There were a huge variety of pasta dishes but contemporary cooks did not categorize them as “pasta” dishes in the modern understanding as a category of cuisine. Pasta referred to a dough-based preparation made of flour mixed with other ingredients to form a paste. This paste could take on different flavours and forms, including cakes, tarts and shaped dough that were boiled or cooked in moist heat. These dishes were an ancestor of modern pasta. Pastasciutta were dishes of pasta served with sauce and pasta in brodo referred to pasta cooked in broth. Fresh pasta was made in the kitchens of the rich while common folk used dried pasta, which was a traded commodity throughout the Middle Ages. Areas like Apulia, Naples and Sardinia were main producers of durum wheat, a key flour for pasta production, and they exported pasta across Italy, to Spain and other areas throughout the Mediterranean and Europe.

By the 14th and 15th century, pasta is seen as a category of dishes on its own. Pasta varieties expanded and some familiar shapes developed: lasagne, tagliatelle, gnocchi, tortelli, and ravioli. Tortelli, a stuffed pasta, was considered a bite-sized cake, hence the name “little cake”. This is also where we get the modern-day name tortellini, which is a round, stuffed pasta. Tortelli would have been square and pan fried or cooked in broth. Bartolomeo Scappi, chef to Pope Pius V, recorded a recipe for torelli stuffed with capon as well as cow udders. The filling was scented with sugar and spices, which were common additives in savory Medieval and Renaissance dishes. While a filling like this is very different from what we are familiar with today, the idea of shaped pastas existing as a discrete genre of food emerged.

Bartolomeo Scappi's recipes for tortelletti with capon. The first lines of the recipe reads: "In a mortar grind the flesh of two capon breasts that have first been boiled with a pound of boneless beef marrow, three ounces of chicken fat, and three ounces of boiled veal udder..." There is an excellent English translation of Scappi's cookbook by the historian Terence Scully. Recipe source. Translation source. 

The commercialization of pasta was greatly helped with improvements to a machine called a brake. Brakes were used to knead pasta dough which could be very stiff and heavy when produced in large quantities. Kneading the dough by hand – or by feet! – was time consuming and strenuous. The brake mechanized this process and made it quicker to produce pasta. Brakes were used as far back as the Middle Ages but became adapted for pasta use by the 16th century. The development of the brake coincided with the development of manual extrusion presses to produce different pasta shapes. Shaping pasta was another laborious, hands-on part of pasta making. Naples was an important producer of wheat and the hot weather was ideal for drying the finished product. Pasta manufacturing was a mixture of mechanical process and artisanal skill. The machines needed workers to turn them by hand and some pasta shapes could not be made through an extruder; handmade shapes were often produced by women.

An image showing a baker's brake 17th century baker's brake. From Giovanni Branca's Le Machine (1629). Source.  

Industrialization in the 19th century brought steam and increased mechanization to pasta manufacturing. Machines automated almost all steps of the process, from kneading the dough to extruding shapes to drying. While machines were faster and more efficient than human workers, the mechanization of the industry throughout the 19th and early 20th century eliminated the knowledge of workers who had been making pasta for generations. Pasta factories, while industrial, were not massive companies, and towns often had multiple pasta producers; this shows how important pasta production was for the Italian economy. But throughout the 20th century, large companies expanded their operations, putting smaller pasta producers out of business. International companies also impacted Italian pasta export, with North America producing much of its own pasta by the 1920s, greatly reducing the need for Italian pasta exports.

Men carrying pasta, early 1900s. Source.

Pasta drying in Gargano, a town near Naples known for its pasta production. Source.

The popularity of pasta has spread through industrialization and immigration, cementing it as a national food. Artisanal pasta making is still a common practice today in many households across the country. However, the physical composition of pasta changes throughout Italy: in the North, egg-based pastas are more common but in the South, pasta is made mainly of flour and water. There is also a great variety of flours used, from the more common 00 flour ("doppio zero” or the finest grind of flour) to semolina or even flours made from chestnuts and chickpeas.

Pasta shapes themselves can be formed in many different ways, not just by cutting or filling. Pasta alla chitarra is produced using a wooden frame with wires stretched across. A sheet of pasta is placed over the frame and pressed with a rolling pin, cutting the pasta into long, thin strips resembling guitar strings, hence the name. Grooved boards are used to create ridges on gnocchi and cavatelli. A thin iron rod, called a ferrato, is used commonly in the South. A piece of pasta dough is wrapped around the rod and rolled, making a semi-closed tube, creating pasta shapes like carrati and filijie.

It is important to see the intangible heritage of pasta being preserved through projects like Pasta Grannies. How are cultural dishes are being remembered in other countries? Hopefully there will be more movements across the world to bring awareness to intangible heritage and the importance of preserving living culture.

Cuciniamo — Let's Cook! 

While researching this article, I was inspired to make one of these pastas and I settled on garganelli, a short tubular pasta made from egg dough originating from the Emilia-Romagna region. The defining feature of garganelli are its thin ridges which help to hold a heaty sauce – typically a ragù made from duck or lamb although other sauces can be used. The ridges are produced by rolling the thin squares of dough on a tool known as a pettine or comb. These are curious tools as they are historically made from the combs of weaving looms! The combs are typically made from hemp, bamboo and wood. These traditional tools are hard to find but modern ones can be made from solid wood. (In a pinch, a gnocchi board works well.) Follow along as I try my hand at making this wonderful pasta!

I started by making my egg dough. I used a mix of fine 00 flour and semolina rimacinata (a durum wheat flour). The eggs are placed in a well in the flour and beat, then small amounts of flour are incorporated until a loose dough is formed. The dough is then kneaded until smooth — about 10 minutes. It is definitely an arm workout! 

After the dough is made and left to rest, portions are passed through a pasta maker to make thin sheets. The dough is then cut into 1 1/4" squares. The squares are placed diagonally on the petinne to be rolled. I don't have an authentic petinne but my father made me one of wood and a matching dowel! 

The bottom point of the square is rolled around the wooden dowel. The dowel is then rolled forwards, pressing into the petinne to form ridges. This also seals the edges of the dough. 

And here we have garganelli! They resemble penne with their ridges but are different in that the sealed "flap" is visible. 

I didn't make ragù, the traditional sauce for garganelli (I don't think my family would enjoy duck ragù...) so I served it with pesto I made last summer using basil from my garden. The garganelli were a hit, there are no leftovers! I can't wait to try making another heritage pasta. 

Photos in this series courtesy of Natalie Scola

THE NOSE KNOWS: HISTORIC SCENTS AS INTANGIBLE HERITAGE

 Heritage Moments | Madison Carmichael 

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There are certain smells that stick with you. The chemical tang of chlorine transports me to a childhood of community centre swimming pools. One particular kind of tea takes me back to the early mornings of my undergrad, where I bought that very specific tea from student-run coffee shops for a neat $1.80 entirely too often. Smells remind you of people, places, and things, or perhaps an entire experience. As I’ve hinted, they can be intensely nostalgic. It is that very effect of odours – be it physical, psychological, or emotional – that inspires Cecilia Bembibre, a researcher at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage, to argue that odour influences the way that we engage with history and that, as a result, experiencing the smells of the past can enrich our understanding of it and allow us to engage with our history in a more emotional way. 

I stumbled onto her research project eons ago – i.e., back in January – in an article written for the BBC by Miguel Trancozo Trevino. The title snatched my attention from the start: “The people trying to save scents from extinction.” How dramatic, I thought, how exciting. But what was more exciting was the recognition of smell as a form of intangible heritage and its attendant question: if smells could be cultural heritage, how might we identify, protect, and conserve them?

Bembibre's research focuses on the preservation of smells. (Source)

There are certain scents that threaten to disappear from common, olfactory parlance. The smell of old books, for example, is paradoxically threatened by their own decay and efforts to preserve them; as they disappear into temperature-controlled vaults, accessed by only a select few, public access and experience of that scent wanes. 

But this is not a matter solely confined to old books. Similar concerns are raised over any number of historic ephemera. Bembibre’s research works to develop techniques to recover “extinct” scents from the past and to preserve those around today for the future. Like a great deal of intangible heritage, scent is often overlooked. Indeed, scent as a form of intangible heritage only really entered the international heritage scene in 2018, when the perfume-making region of Grasse in France applied to UNESCO for the recognition of their olfactory traditions as intangible heritage. As such, the cultural significance of scents is often tied to place, as the smells and sounds associated with a site can be included as part of the site’s aesthetic value, therefore marking those scents and sounds as an intangible property of that tangible heritage. But much in the way of Grasse, the cultural significance of scent can also be tied to aspects of cultural heritage like tradition and language.

The Pays de Grasse is well-known for its perfume since the 18th-century. (Source) 

Bembibre’s work to preserve scent is a marriage of chemistry and interpretation. One method includes exposing a polymer fibre to the odour, allowing for the smell-causing chemical to stick to it. From there, that sample can be analyzed in a lab. Another separates and identifies the compound from the gas sample. And a third uses the nose itself, consulting with panels to describe the scents or with expert “noses” – often perfumers or scent designers. Bembibre states that the human element is critical; if these scents are to be preserved for the future, then our experience of them is just as important as their chemical composition. 

With these methods, she has extracted the smells of old leather gloves, ancient books, and mould. She’s also worked to reinterpret the scent of potpourri from 1750 and the old books housed in St. Paul’s cathedral.

A peek into their process. (Source)

In her paper on this subject, the smell of historic paper was used as a case study. The smell of historic paper, or old books, is ubiquitous; second-hand bookstores, or else the very unvisited stacks of a university library, are rife with such a smell – which Bembibre identifies as “a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.” Through two different routes, she sought to recreate that very smell. Using the methods listed above, she produced a literal chemical recreation of the scent. The other was “an intuitive interpretation” by perfumer Sarah McCartney. 

Bembibre then asked panels to identify which smell resembled an old library best. She was surprised by their response, because it was nearly split. In Trevino’s article for the BBC, she added that if anything, more people chose the interpreted scent rather than the extracted one. 

And so comes a question of authenticity that has no easy answers. If an artist’s reproduction can evoke an olfactory experience to the same degree as a chemical mimic, is it then necessary to duplicate a scent at its chemical level? Conversely, if the smell is not the precise chemical makeup of the original scent, is it truly authentic?

The astonishing amount of candles that mimic the smell of old books and libraries speaks to their cultural significance. (Source)

Putting that aside, here’s another difficult question: which smells should be preserved? It’s a question as political and pressing as any that currently concerns any GLAM institution’s collecting policy. 

There’s a feeling that the significance of scent ought to be concerned with how they are associated with people and their values, or how they are associated with collective memory. These values and memories are many and multifaceted – historic, aesthetic, cultural, scientific, communal, emotional – and determining their importance would necessitate consultation with both experts and communities. The eventual creation of any archive of smells would need to be incredibly mindful of power and privilege, and how that factors into what is preserved and what is not. 

Our knowledge of the past is odourless, according to Bembibre. But on her website, she also poses the question: what smell would you take into the future? What smell would you like to see preserved? Give it a think, and think too on how such considerations may transform the landscape of cultural heritage as we move into that future. 

WHY FOOD?: AN INVESTIGATION INTO PASSION AND INTEREST

A Muse Bouche | Jordan Fee

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As I close in on the end of my term as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Musings, I am beginning to reflect on just what it is about food that fascinates me. Over the course of the past two years, my thoughts and opinions on the relationship between food and museums have varied greatly. Now, at the end of my time in the Museum Studies program, I am struggling to understand how I might go on preaching about the social, political and educational value of food to groups of people who might not share the same degree of passion and interest.

When I began thinking about food and museums, it was mainly on a sensory level. While museums are generally defined by the act of looking – and in some cases, touching – I was fascinated by the concept of a multi-sensory museological experience, one that included senses like smell and taste. Local iSchool Professor Irina Miahalache’s book, Food and Museums, provided me with a great amount of reading material on this subject, and inspired me to consider how individuals outside of the museum, such as chefs and community members, could form new approaches for exhibition and interpretation. Reading about the Southern Food and Beverage Museum (SOFAB) in New Orleans and the ElBulli Foundation in Spain, my eyes were opened to an entirely new mode of thinking.

The Southern Food and Beverage Museum (Source)

Following this initial fascination with multi-sensory museum experiences, I began to notice how the educational aspects of museums can, in some ways, mirror food industry. While working at my job at a local butcher-shop, I had unique interaction with some customers that made me realize that the meanings that we assign to objects in museums are often somewhat arbitrary, and how important it is to let visitors develop their own relationships with these objects without too much intervention.

A local butcher shop in Spain (Source)

Later, I began to consider how contemporary and historic cookbooks could be used as a means for companionship and understanding between individuals, which I would argue is also one of the core tenants of contemporary museology. Since beginning my internship in the Publications department at the Art Gallery of Ontario, I have thought more and more about how art books – those fancy codices that accompany museum exhibitions – resemble cook books in their format and content. Since then,  I have since learned about companies like Figure 1 Publishing, a firm based in Vancouver which designs cook books and art books exclusively.

If you’ve read some of the more recent articles that I’ve published on Musings, you’ll have seen that my focus has not necessarily been on how to get food into the museum. There are already many individuals working hard to accomplish this task. Rather, I have been trying to show how food and reflect all aspects of our culture, from generational knowledge, to intangible heritage.

Of course, this is not to say that I don’t want to see a more literal crossover between food and museums. In my opinion, some of the most interesting museum displays in the world are food-related, such as Julia Child’s kitchen at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum for American History. Furthermore, I believe that art can serve food in the way that it challenges our modes of perception and thinking about the world around us. 

Julia Childs Kitchen in the Smithsonian Museum of American History (Source)

Ultimately, I believe that food and museums are important to me because they point outwards. When I serve food to my friends, I am thinking not only of what is on a plate, but also about where this food came from, how it got to me, and who was affected by this process. This is something that I find myself doing whenever I am strolling around a museum; wondering where these objects came from, how they got there, and who might have played a part in this process. Unfortunately in both cases, the process may or may not be very clear, and sometimes, many individuals have been taken advantage of along the way. Still, I can’t help but seeing food and museums as vast networks of connections and relationships that extend across the globe.

While it may be cliché to say, many of us today are stuck in a culture of self-gratification. I, myself am implicated in this. However, I believe that both food and museums force us to look outwards, into the world around us, and understand that we form part of something larger. When you look at an object in a museum, try to think about all of the other objects that were not put on display, or that were sent to a different museum by a different collector. When you eat a piece of food, try to not only think about how it might taste, but also about all of the people who made it so. Focus not only on what is present, but also on what is absent. In this way, we can all become more empathetic towards both people and objects, which can only help us to become better professionals.

MAIZE AND MEXICAN HERITAGE: AN EVENING AT THE DEPANNEUR WITH IVÁN WADGYMAR

A Muse Bouche | Jordan Fee

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In the final weeks of 2019, just days before we all sunk into holiday-hibernation, a friend and I took a leisurely stroll to an unknown location. That is to say, my friend knew where we were going but I did not. The entire night had been set up as an end-of-semester surprise, and I had no serious expectations as to what we were getting into.

Around 6pm, we arrived at our destination: The Depanneur, which is located at 1033 College Street, just a few blocks west of Ossington Avenue. Lovingly referred to by patrons and owners as “The Dep”, this space is one-part kitchen, one-part restaurant, and one part-forum. As I write this article, I find it quite difficult to define just what is The Depanneur. Perhaps, it is best to simply refer to their website, where the space is described as “a place where interesting food things happen.”

Inside of The Depanneur (Source)

The event attended by my friend and I was part of a larger Table Talk series. For each of these events, the owner of the Depanneur, Len Senater, invites a local culinary personality to speak to guests about a topic that is of particular interest to them. The talk is then accompanied by a series of plates and dishes that reflect the ideas and themes found within the talk.

The personality invited to speak at this particular event was Iván Wadgymar, who is the owner of a tortelleria (ie. a place where tortillas are made) called Maizal. Originally a restaurant, Maizal has scaled down to become a one-stop shop for hand-made tortillas and totopos (think the best chips you’ve ever had). Although hard to find, the business is located on Ossington Avenue, in the kitchen space behind the bar Baby Huey. 

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#ActFast TUE Dec 3 — Table Talk: Iván Wadgymar on The Past and Future of Maize Maize, the staple grain of many pre-Colombian civilizations, is now one of the most widely cultivated crops on Earth. But along the way, so much of what made corn culturally central and sacred is under threat of being erased by the soulless commodity products flooding the global market. Artisanal producers like Iván Wadgymar are returning to the heritage varietals and traditional processing techniques, along with zero-waste agricultural practices. This produces a higher quality, more authentic, and far more delicious product that honours this precious gift of nature and culture. ----- Dinner by Len Senater This menu showcases the versatility of maize in Mexican cuisine Tostadas – crispy tortillas topped with squash, beans, chorizo (optional) & garnishes Pozole Verde – a pre-colombian soup of whole nixtamal corn (hominy) in a green chicken broth w/ tomatillos, green chiles, cilantro and pepitas Tamales Dulces – festive dessert tamales filled with dried fruit and garnished with cajeta caramel Chocolate Atole – a cornflour thickened beverage with vanilla and Mexican cacao. #GF #vegan options available ----- Doors open at 6pm, talk starts at 7pm Includes dinner and coffee or tea. $35 (includes HST) BOOK NOW https://thedepanneur.ca/event/table-talk-ivan-wadgymar-on-the-past-present-and-future-of-maize/ This Table Talk is presented in collaboration with Artery Every space is a stage. Artery lets anyone bring creative experiences to life, in places you may not expect. ----- Iván Wadgymar is a tortillero and molinero who runs Maizal, a tortilleria that evolved from a Mexican restaurant into an end-to-end producer of artisanal corn masa, tortillas & totopos. They grow heritage maize locally, nixtamalize it in traditional ways and produce products that seek to reconnect to centuries of cultural tradition and wisdom. ----- Every month The Depanneur invites a local food personality to talk about something that interests them while Dep founder Len Senater cooks dinner for everyone. Find out more on Table Talks at The Depanneur https://thedepanneur.ca/table-talk/

A post shared by Len Senater (@thedepanneur) on Nov 25, 2019 at 11:36am PST

Originally, hailing from Mexico, Wadgymar was careful to emphasize the importance of what is known as maize to Mexican culture and heritage. Although corn and maize are both varieties of the same species Zea Mays, the corn that we consume in North America today is generally prized for its high-sugar content, whereas maize is much more prized for its starch. This means that maize holds greater potential health benefits than corn, and that it can sustain humans for a longer period of time.

However, Wadgymar explained that one cannot simply eat maize like you would a piece of corn-on-the-cob. Instead, maize needs to be dried and then boiled in an alkaline solution (most commonly water and limestone). This solution breaks down the cellular structure of the corn and produces a thick porridge called nixtamal, which is highly nutritious in nature. This can in turn be used to make masa, which is the dough that can be made into those tortillas and totopos that I mentioned before.

A Traditional Tortelleria (Source)

According to Wadgymar, both nixtamal and masa have integral to the agri(cultural) history of Mexico for thousands and thousands of years. In fact, the process of nixtamalization (ie. the process through which dried maize is turned into nixtamal) has been dated back to 1500 B.C. This means that this process could have been just as important for pre-Columbian, Mesoamerican societies as it is to people like Wadgymar today.

In keeping with this extensive tradition, Wadgymar has travelled to Mexico to collect indigenous species of maize and brought them back to Canada to be cultivated here. Much of the maize grown for Wadgymar’s tortelleria is produced on a farm north of Toronto, and he is very careful to follow the steps taken by his predecessors to produce the highest quality masa possible. 

More recently, Wadgymar has also taken the opportunity to plant varieties of corn that are indigenous to North America, thereby constructing a bridge between the Mesoamerican cultures that relied on varieties of Zea Mays as a major food staple. He has even gone on to describe the food that he makes as “indigenous Mexican cuisine”, thereby embedding himself firmly in the traditions of his home country. 

When this talk began, I believed that I possessed a strong understanding of what the many varieties of corn represented in todays agricultural system. For many, corn is representative of some of the worst aspects of contemporary agriculture, from habitat destruction, to animal feed lots, to monocultures whose scale exceeds comprehension. However, Wadgymar’s talk revealed a completely different world, one that is defined by local communities, intangible cultural heritage and generational wisdom. In just a few short hours, Wadgymar flipped the script completely and showed each of the guests how maize can represent some of the strongest and most resilient aspects of food culture.

I would highly recommend that anyone reading this article check out the Depanneur’s website to see all of the exciting events that they have planned for the coming months (these are not limited to the Table Talk series!). Furthermore, if you want to taste the product of Wadgymar’s hard work, make sure to stop in at Maizal for some tortillas! I promise that you will not regret it.

Finally, if you’d like to find out what me and my friend ate on this wonderfully informative evening, follow this link: https://thedepanneur.ca/event/table-talk-ivan-wadgymar-on-the-past-present-and-future-of-maize/ to find out.

CULTURE(D): FOOD, MICROBIOLOGY AND INTANGIBLE HERITAGE

A Muse Bouche | Jordan Fee

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Since it has been a recurring topic in my past two articles, I thought it best to write my final piece for this semester on how some producers and distributors of food can function in similar ways to cultural institutions. However, while my last two articles dealt with the inherently human side of this question, my article today will be centred on something different, and quite microscopic: namely, bacteria.

One of the most popular topics in the world of food today is fermentation. While entire books have been written on this topic, fermentation can be defined simply as a biochemical process where certain compounds – sugars, in most cases – are broken down in an environment that is anaerobic (ie. free of oxygen). Fermentation is the process that produces alcoholic beverages such as wine and beer, but it is also integral to the production of dried meat products, as well as things like tofu, soya sauce and kombucha.

Chocolate is also fermented product! Here are some fermenting cocoa beans. (Source.)

So how exactly does the process of fermentation begin? Generally, there are two ways: one is to add what is known as starter culture to the mixture, which is essentially packaged bacteria that will help kickstart the process. The other, more traditional method is to let the mixture become inoculated with the natural yeasts and bacteria that exist in the air around us, which can be referred to as a low-intervention method. 

In either case, when the mixture is inoculated with these bacteria, it is referred to as being cultured. This open-access study, published in Frontiers in Microbiology, defines the distinction between two kinds of culture (ie. the one that we generally refer to in museums and the other microbial kind) as such:

"Every community in the world has distinct food culture including fermented foods and alcoholic beverages, symbolizing the heritage and socio-cultural aspects of the ethnicity. The word “culture” denotes food habits of ethnicity; another meaning for the same word “culture” is a cluster of microbial cells or inoculum, an essential biota for fermentation, often used in the microbiology."

These days, cultural institutions around the world are becoming more and more concerned with what is referred to as intangible cultural heritage. A fellow writer for A Muse Bouche wrote in 2018 about this topic in relation to the cultural practice of saving seeds, emphasizing how it sustains the traditions and memories of communities across the world. According to the website for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO):

“Cultural heritage does not end at monuments and collections of objects. It also includes traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.”

While this definition certainly covers a broad range of cultural practices, is it possible that this emphasis on intangible cultural heritage could be taken one step further, into the microscopic realm? Currently, UNESCO lists over 15 food-related practices on its list of intangible cultural heritage. While some, like the Washoku diet in Japan, are related to the spiritual beliefs of a particular culture, there are other traditions that require micro-biotic activity as well. Kimchi, for example, is a fermented cabbage product that is traditional to both North and South Korea. Each year, many communities come together in what is known as the Kimjang where kimchi is produced en masse in autumn to prepare for the harsh winter.

Portioning Kimchi at a Kimjang celebration in Seoul, South Korea. (Source.)

According to the report linked earlier, Kimchi has been found to contain up to 17 different kinds of bacteria, and several other kinds of naturally-occurring yeasts. Each of these microscopic organisms contributes to the development of flavour and texture in the kimchi, breaking down the contents into a sweet, spicy, funky and tangy product (can you tell that I like kimchi?)

In any case, what I find so fascinating about this tradition is that it relies on both kinds of culture. The participants in Kimjang help to form the macroscopic culture that we in museums know so well, while the bacteria form the microscopic culture that helps to produce these unique food products that help to define a particular country, region or town.

In a lecture published in 2015, David Chang – owner of the Momofuku restaurant group and star of Netflix’s Ugly Delicious – spoke on what he referred to as “microbial terroir”. The word terroir is used most commonly to describe the characteristics of wine, generally in relation to the soil that the grapevines are grown in. However, in this lecture, Chang makes the argument that this terroir – the unique set of geographic characteristics that determine the taste of foods around the world – exists on a scale that is invisible to the human eye.

While I won’t get too far into it, Chang highlights two different kinds of yeasts – aspergillus orzyae and pichia. He speaks about how the former (which is also known as koji) is traditionally used in Japan to create products like soya sauce. He then goes on to tell a story about how, in an attempt to inoculate a certain food product with koji, he actually ended up producing a different kind, the aforementioned pichia. This led to the realization that because he was in New York, "using New York ingredients in New York air", that the naturally occurring yeast would of course be different from the ones that occur naturally in places like Japan. This essentially means that each region in the world has its own microscopic culture that is unique. This variation is also reflected in the article published in Frontiers of Microbiology!

It it would of course be difficult to officially designate these yeasts and bacteria as manifestations of intangible heritage. Still, I think it is something very interesting to think about. Museums today are having to readjust their practices to allow for new modes of cultural expression, and I believe that these microscopic cultures should be included in that discussion, even if it is only theoretical.

To quote Stuart Hall: ““theory is always a detour on the way to something more important.”