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Registration is now open for the workshops at our Eating Through Time Festival on October 17! Workshops are each $25 to attend and limited to 15 participants. Please note: workshop participants must already hold a ticket to the all-day Festival in order to gain admission. View the full schedule and purchase tickets.
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM This workshop with historian Ken Albala will explore early modern cookbooks and how they can be translated into contemporary kitchen experiments, not only to gain an understanding of the intellectual and physical labor involved in cooking in the past, but
also to appreciate the aesthetic sensibilities of our forebears. There will be tastings.
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM Butter is a focal ingredient in many cuisines throughout the world. But while common, it is hardly mundane. More than just a fat, butter can be manipulated to unlock new flavors and physical properties. In this interactive demonstration session, we will
evaluate diverse forms of butter—including cultured butter, beurre noisette, clarified butter (or ghee), and smen, a funky fermented butter from North Africa—from both chemical and culinary perspectives. Whether it is molecular composition and its transformation
when it comes to these various types of butter or the role of beurre noisette in financiers, little will be left unexplored by the Experimental Cuisine Collective.
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM From antiquity into the early eighteenth century, the western world believed that the key to wellness was balancing the four “humors” in the body. Humoral theory held that sugar was an almost perfectly balanced substance and therefore uncommonly healthful,
and through the Middle Ages, it was primarily used as a medicine. However, the medieval wealthy also used expensive sugar in cooking, and by the sixteenth century, sugar increasingly came to be regarded as a food. In England, this new meaning of sugar was
institutionalized in an elaborate little meal of sweets called a “banquet,” whose indulgent, ostentatious, sometimes licentious character was justified on the basis of sugar’s putative wellness properties. In this workshop, Stephen Schmidt will demonstrate
a banqueting fruit preserve outlined in a 17th century manuscript cookbook in the possession of The New York Academy of Medicine. He will also provide samples of several other favorite “banqueting stuffs” and discuss the health benefits they were believed
to confer.
Insects are not only sustenance for many people in the world; in many cultures they are also beloved delicacies. And though the emerging discourse surrounding edible insects focuses primarily on their nutritional content and theoretical benefits for sustainability,
perhaps the best way of developing an edible relationship with insects is through their taste. This workshop aims to illustrate the delicious potential of insects with a few samples to try, and to bring gastronomy deeper into the complex discussion of sustainability
and food.
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Food for astronauts has come a long way from chalky chunks of freeze-dried ice cream. Astronauts now can eat a variety of dishes in space—even udon noodles. But do they actually taste good? In this workshop, chef and food scientist Alex Plotkin will discuss the challenges of developing food for astronauts and how this food might change how we eat on earth. Tastings will be a part of program.
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