Esculent

Can baking brownies save the planet? I’m a little embarrassed I even wrote this question out, but this rhetoric exemplifies the argument of our esteemed guest’s new book: The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can't Hack the Future of Food (UC Press, 2024). For our final episode of this season, we are joined by Julie Guthman, Distinguished Professor of Community Studies Emerita at the Univ...

Authenticity. An idea that has plagued many conversations on food. This week, we are joined by Professor Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado , the Jarvis Thurston and Mona van Duyn Professor in Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. We interrogate the role of authenticity in constructing Mexican national identity through another culinary idea: that of the taco. We discuss the taco’s malleable hist...

How are processed and natural contested categories - rather than objective definitions- of food? These questions are at the center of Professor Charlotte Biltekoff ’s new book, Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge . Joined by a special guest, Dan Polsby of Best Friends Wine , to introduce our tasting and complicate “real” wine, we discuss food science, industry, and...

We start off our third season featuring a conversation with Fabiola Santiago of Mi Oaxaca , exploring how indigenous knowledge is linked with mezcal and the colonial exploitation that occurs within Oaxaca today. From Mexico’s tourism board to the role of service and hospitality workers in disseminating knowledge around mezcal, this season, we are all about the big ideas that shape the esculent. Vi...

Back again. This season hosts four thinkers, shaping and questioning the ideas that make food esculent.  Reading: Excerpt from Professor Kyla Wazana Tompkins ' new book, Deviant Matter (NYU Press, 2024) Tasting: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant : 2023 Coteaux du Loir Rouge “Cuvée du Rosier” Stay up to date with Esculent on our  Instagram Host:  Elizabeth McQueen Producer: Stace Baran Theme by  Ronan Del...

The celebrity chef is not a modern concept, as we discuss with Paul Freedman, Professor of History at Yale. Joined by podcast regular Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores, we discuss early modern history, how food comes in and out of fashion, and what artistry might indicate in food history. And the conclusion of Season 2: Historians! Professor Freedman specializes in medieval social history, the hi...

What does it take to understand food historically? This episode takes a philosophical turn as Jeffrey Pilcher, Professor of Food History, joins the podcast to discuss what it means to study, write, and taste food history. Jeffrey Pilcher is a Professor of History and Food Studies at the University of Toronto, Where he directs the Culinaria Research Centre . He is the author of several books, inclu...

Corporate power is a relentless force in shaping how and what we eat. Join us this week with Professor Enrique C. Ochoa, author of the upcoming book México Between Feast and Famine: Food, Corporate Power, and Inequality , to discuss the role of corporations in constructing a thread of Mexico’s culinary history. Enrique C. Ochoa is Professor of History and Latin American Studies at California State...

Much of food history is a history of trade: how crops, plants, and tastes move around the world. Professor Andrés Reséndez discusses a trade route often overlooked in the 16th and 17th centuries, that of the Manila Galleons, one that can be overshadowed by the intellectually exhausted narrative of the Columbian Exchange. We also eat corn puffs. And an extra special reading by poet Rick Barot from...

Is meat modern? We explore this question and more with a historical dive into human relations with animals across the Atlantic from 1492 (yes, that 1492). Professor Marcy Norton (University of Pennsylvania) brings insights from her new book, The Tame and the Wild (Harvard University Press, 2024) We discuss colonialism, Western concepts of esculent, and pre-colonial Indigenous life with animals in...

Welcome to Season 2: Historians! Dr. Shantel George visits Esculent from the University of Glasgow to discuss the history of the Kola nut, West African spirituality in food history, and community in research.  Tasting: Coca-cola Viewing: Series finale of Mad Men , Season 7, Episode 14 (AMC) Read more about Dr. George’s research and publications Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram Host:...

We are back! Season 2: Historians, is here. Join us for six episodes exploring food history: from research methods to turning points in the history of chefs to influential commodities and more.  Read more about Dr. Amr Shahat's research . Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram Host: Elizabeth McQueen Producer: Stace Baran Theme by Ronan Delisle Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann This pod...

A belated season trailer - we're still getting the hang of it. Listen to find out why season one begins with chefs, and get a hint at what is coming up in 2025! Cooking with Beer on Emeril Live, Food Network (Season 1, Episode 13, 2002) Chef's Table , Netflix (Season 1, Episode 1, 2015) Stay up to date with Esculent on  Instagram Host: Elizabeth McQueen Producer: Stace Baran Theme by  Ronan Delisl...

Our first live podcast welcomes Chefs Norma LIstman and Saqib Keval. Join us as we taste their historically complex dish of fermented peanuts, the first dish served at their restaurant, Masala y Maiz. Our conversation covers their commitments to radical transparency and rethinking the restaurant model, as well as the limits of representation in a capitalist system, including in their most recent a...

What does esculent mean? Why is it the title of this podcast? And what is the seminar that is funding this project? Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores joins Elizabeth McQueen to unpack the word, and why thinking about the esculent might be useful in approaches to food justice, especially in humanities research. This episode is also a preview for the in-person research colloquium, Reimagining the P...

A pinch of this and a pinch of that captures my conversation with Chef and Artist Minh Phan. We discuss her methods of fermentation all the way to rethinking efficiency in her anti-colonialist mindset.  Tasting: Los Angeles River Wine Company , Palomino, 2022 Spam Jingle thanks to Janine Sun Rogers Follow Minh Phan on Instagram LA Times Article: This Michelin-starred chef wants to feed people. So...

Our inaugural episode features a tasting and conversation with Chef Martin Draluck of the Black Pot Supper Club, with a tasting of the inaugural whiskey from Uncle Nearest, the first black-owned whiskey distillery in the U.S.. It honors Nathan 'Nearest' Green, a formative distiller enslaved to Dan Call. Join us as our host Elizabeth McQueen talks with Chef Martin Draluck about the hearth in early...