A Path to Healing

By Elaine Cicora

As women in the food, beverage and hospitality industries, LDEI members understand the health benefits of seasonal, local, and natural foods. But this year’s Global Culinary Initiative Breakfast, during national conference in Seattle, emphasized the spiritual aspect of the story.

As its name suggests, LDEI’s Global Culinary Initiative embraces global communities through culinary connections. This year’s breakfast focused on Native American foods and traditions. In the process, it provided a valuable reminder of the wisdom that resides in traditional foodways – and how those foodways nurture both body and soul.

Valerie Segrest, Native Nutrition Educator, Tedx speaker, Kellogg Fellow at the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy, and Food Sovereignty Project coordinator for the Muckleshoot Tribe, spoke first. Her message was simple: For the native peoples of the Northwest, a return to traditional foods equals a return to good health and abundance.

Prior to first contact, she explained, “the native tribes [of this region] made up the largest, most densely populated non-agricultural region in the world. We knew how to use and manage the natural world.” But today, with diabetes “at epidemic levels among native peoples,” and attendant problems like obesity, heart disease, kidney disease, peripheral neuropathies and blindness on the rise, that traditional wisdom may be lost.

To help reignite that knowledge, Valerie has created the Cedar Box Kit, an educational tool containing the 13 quintessential foods at the center of the Northwest Indians’ diet.

Developed with a grant from the CDC, the Cedar Box represents a way to move tribal culture into current times, Valerie said, by explicating the links between food choices, nutrition, health – and community. Thus, the foods in the Cedar Box Kit are of both cultural and nutritional significance. Among them, water holds first place. “Water is life,” Valerie teaches. “Put down those sugary beverages and drink water.”

Other foods in the box include berries (“wild strawberries are great for women’s health”); greens (“when it comes to nutrition, nettles make spinach look iceberg lettuce” ), bulbs and roots (“camas, a starch that helps reduce blood sugar, was once the most traded item after salmon”), nuts (“hazelnuts make us feel full from eating just a few”), wild game (“elk, deer, and mountain goats are a living legacy”), birds (“duck is high in fats and protein), fish (“salmon give their lives so we can have life”), and shellfish (“perfect little packages of nutrition”).

“I ask people to walk through the grocery store as if they are walking with their ancestors,” Valerie says. “For every item they buy, I want them to ask themselves: Is it seasonal? Is it local? And how do I cook it with good intention?”

Darren Jameson, a member of the Tsimshian Nation and chef de cuisine at Lisa Dupar & Company, spoke next. While his love of cooking encompasses an entire world of cuisine, his passion and focus are wild, indigenous foods.

Darren spoke movingly about his childhood memories of potlatch gatherings on the beach, and the strong sense of connection they created. “I learned you didn’t have to be rich to have a good life,” he recalled. “You just needed to have a community around you.”

As a forager, Darren also shared his concern about our impact on the land and water, especially in the case of wild salmon, an endangered species “that connects everything in the world. Its importance is not just that it is delicious. It is a keystone species whose demise will effect everything: bears, whales, eagles, and us.

“And as hospitality people,” he reminded us, “we are in a great position to educate others about salmon’s importance.”
Sea, forest and wetlands: “There is enough wild food in each of these places to create a full meal,” he said. “As a chef, to be able to take these things and create a meal that appeals to all is very special. I am privileged to be a part of that.

“It’s the most special way there is to connect with the past – and to create traditions for our own descendants.”

Read more about this year's conference in the Winter issue of the LDEI Quarterly.

Fusion: Immigrant Kitchens and a World of Flavors Influence Modern Cuisine

By Paula Hershman | Photos by Elaine Cicora

In the Global Culinary Initiative session – one of the concurrent sessions at the 2017 LDEI Conference -- we heard from three distinctly different, internationally recognized women who made their way to America and have dramatically influenced the dynamic culture of fusion food in this country. Their ancestral cuisines have become part of some of today's most impactful trends, fusion dishes from Latin American-Latinx to Asian Pho.

Dame Sandra Gutierrez began her path to becoming a food writer at a young age, when she apprenticed with her aunt, a caterer in Guatemala. She became passionate about cooking, but her true love was writing about food. Today she is a recognized expert in Latinx cuisines and a nationally recognized food personality. Sandra was the Grand Prize winner of LDEI's M.F.K. Fisher Awards for Excellence in Culinary Writing, and was recognized for her piece, "A Voice from the Nuevo South," which is about the Latino population's influence on Southern food and her personal insight into assimilation, discrimination and the birth of food trends. She has also written over 1,000 articles as the first Latina food editor and columnist of the Cary News, in Cary, North Carolina. She has also written four cookbooks, "The New Southern Latino Table," "Latin American Street Food," “Empanadas, the Hand-Held Pies of Latin America,” and "Beans and Field Peas: a Savor the South Cookbook.” Sandra Gutierrez blends ingredients, traditions, and culinary techniques, creatively marrying the diverse and delicious cuisines of more than 21 Latin American countries. Each cuisine is a result of global diversity infused with the beloved food of the American South called "The New Southern Latino Culinary Movement."

Theresa Lin, born in Taiwan, was the food stylist for Ang Lee’s Oscar-nominated movie, Eat Drink Man Woman, and the catering director for Life of Pi, filmed in Taichung. The author of 16 cookbooks, and a host of a Sunday radio show in Los Angeles, her knowledge of Chinese cuisine is unmatched. She trained under the legendary Fu Pei Mei, one of the first cookbook authors in East Asia and a prominent Chinese television host. Mei is also her mother-in-law and, at the age of 22, Theresa ended up running the operations at the family’s cooking school. Eventually her children were her primary reason for moving to Southern California. Theresa is the catering director of the Sheraton Four Points Anaheim, home of the restaurant Tru Grits, and teaches healthy, organic, easy-to-make fusion cuisine. Her family values have been a vital part of her drive to succeed. Theresa said, "Opportunities are for those who get ready," and she believes in teaching kids to appreciate culture and to respect parents, grandparents, and teachers. Theresa espouses the philosophy that integrity, honesty and hard work, along with being independent and strong, is the way to run your business, and to always take time to be a mentor.

Dame Thoa Nyguyen, a Seattle chef/restaurateur who beat Bobby Flay on the Food Network, was born in Saigon, South Vietnam. At the age of 11, Thoa and her family left Vietnam for America; the year was 1975, after American involvement in the Vietnam War ended. Her family was part of the first large-scale wave of immigration for families fleeing persecution in South Vietnam. Thoa was the oldest child and found herself doing the cooking for the family. Finding ingredients in America to make her traditional dishes was hard but she improvised. Soon the aromas from her kitchen, and other Vietnamese immigrants’ kitchens, wafted through their neighborhoods, and the war veterans who longed for the taste of pho eventually found it. Pho is a Vietnamese noodle soup consisting of broth, rice noodles called bánh phở, a few herbs, and meat, primarily made with either beef or chicken. Pho is now one of the top five trending foods in America. It is not just an ethnic food but is becoming more mainstream, like pizza. Now in her 50s, Thoa Nyguyen is responsible for four Vietnamese crossover (fusion) restaurants in the Pacific Northwest: Monsoon, in Seattle; Slanted Door, in San Francisco; Noodles Bar, in Seaside, California; and Nine Roses, in New Orleans.

This was a fascinating talk for me because my tea business employs refugees. I have a greater appreciation for immigrants and their struggles with trying to learn our language, our customs, and our culture, while maintaining their unique identity and traditions. Our employees have immigrated from Rwanda and Iran to work and live in Cleveland. We have shared meals together and have broadened each other's perspective on what it means to be an American. I identified with these speakers who bridged the gap between our very different cultures by melding their traditional cuisines with ours to create a unique fusion of senses and sensibilities. We all came from somewhere else and now call ourselves Americans; this session also made me think about my ancestors who came from Italy and Germany, and how they impacted and were influenced by America. I was blessed by their stories and by the opportunity to experience first-hand the international flavor of our amazing organization. Likewise, I was honored to represent the Cleveland Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier.