Learning via tastebud

 

            It's almost Thanksgiving, so our thoughts turn to food. It's also pumpkin spice season, whose main components, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, are not native to North America.

Until Covid and supply chain issues caught our attention, grocery stores, well-stocked with a wide array of foods from near and far, were taken for granted.

It was not always so. Lindsey Dewey, who teaches social studies at Goochland High School recently collaborated with Chef David Booth head of the culinary arts section of the Career and Technical Education (CTE) program, to give students hands on insight into food sourcing and preparation in the southern United States in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

Dewey divided her students into teams by region, upper, middle and lower south. They analyzed ethnic, socioeconomic, and geographic influences on diet and cooking, then created websites with their findings including recipes. These results went to the culinary arts lab at GTech where the recipes translated research into lunch.

Chef David Booth discusses food prepared from traditional recipes while Lindsey Dewey (right) looks on. 

 Before there were railroads and interstate highways to transport food vast distances in a short time, people pretty much ate what they could grow, catch or kill close to home. This explains the dietary differences among the regions. Methods of preparing available food, however, was greatly influenced by ethnic traditions of settlers in the different regions.

Ingredients that are readily available today, like sugar, were so expensive that they were used only by the affluent. Most people used honey or syrup as sweeteners. Even fruits like orange and lemon, often used as flavorings, were rare. Cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg were exotic and expensive.

Food was cooked over wood fires. An outdoor fire place, complete with a welded stand to hold cast iron pots over a fire was built by CTE construction trade students and used to prepare parts of the lesson.

GHS social studies teacher Lindsey Dewey and fireplace created by CTE students who also welded the bracket to suspend heavy pots over the fire.

Lacking refrigeration, early Americans used fermentation to preserve food. The food prepared by Booth's students included pickled green beans, cucumbers, red onions, and deer pears as well as a fermented hot sauce. Relish made from the Jerusalem artichoke—a plant native to North America used as a food source by indigenous people—was used an accompaniment to roast pork loin prepared with a traditional East Carolina mustard and vinegar barbecue sauce.

Booth chose recipes from the research done by Dewey's students that would translate to contemporary kitchens. These included deviled quail eggs, which Booth said originated in the deep South. Other classic southern dishes included hoecakes, corn and potato chowder, gumbo, Cajun style rice, collard greens with smoked turkey stock and cheese grits.

Dessert was pumpkin pie, apple dumplings, and beignets, New Orleans style doughnuts. Given the way that the students dug into their "lesson", it was a tasty one.

Kudos to Dewey and Booth for creatively engaging their students.

Go to https://sites.google.com/glnd.k12.va.us/culinaryproject2021/ for details and recipes.