Tag Archives: Food

Spring 2017 Issue IX: The Narrative Behind the Photo

Hygge of My Semester

March 8, 2017 bsmithdewey

A major part that made studying abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark such an enriching experience was my host family. Their home is in Dyssegård, a suburb of Copenhagen and a twenty-minute train ride from the city center. The opportunity to explore beyond the city center, and have a purposeful journey as well as excellent people-watching time was an important part of each day and helped me delve into the everyday lives of a diverse array of people in Copenhagen.

While the two listed as my “family” were Jette and Hans-Erik, the others whom I interacted with because of them — including their kids and grandkids, their neighbor Peter, Hans-Erik’s mother, and other family friends — all added to my love for their home and helped me feel welcome in their environment.

Each evening, we (Jette, Hans-Erik and I) would cook together dancing between their blue SVEG fridge and front entryway to make simple, yet interesting dishes. As someone who mainly baked cakes, cookies, and other sweets growing up, my major cooking challenge prior to going abroad was usually trying not to burn grilled cheese. Under their roof, the importance of experimentation and trying something new both in the manner of tasting as well as overall dish creation was expressed.

The various ways they created dishes out of simple ingredients was new to me, and their manner of cooking fascinating. However, it wasn’t the food that made me never want to miss an evening at home, it was the atmosphere. Beyond just cooking, this time was a chance to discuss current events, try to pronounce Danish words, and often get advice about life in a variety of contexts.

One evening, Hans-Erik came home ecstatic with the deal he got on steaks, showing off the twelve packages he bought to freeze and use. I found this particular event hilarious because it also helped me see my own love of a good deal in Hans-Erik’s excitement over the steak. This event of excitement was not rare, in fact, it was pretty regular for Hans-Erik to come home with groceries bought from a supermarket deal, overjoyed at their total cost. Over the semester, I slowly began to understand the European culture of going to the grocery store multiple times a week, in contrast to the usual, once a week, giant grocery trip typically practiced in the United States.

Beyond the physical aspect of living in their home for four months, being taught Danish pronunciations and to distinguish different red wines, my entire experience was shaped by the love and friendliness of their everyday lives. This experience reaffirmed the importance of not only traveling to see the physical aspects of different cities but having real connections with those from such places, if possible. Those evening moments of bonding, from the quiet ones to the ones filled with thunderous laughter, are what I miss the most about my time in Denmark.

Bailey is a Minnesota native and a coffee addict. You can find her wearing spottie dotties (polka dots, as some call them) or talking numerous jumping pictures in her pink Doc Martens. She loves to explore either through traveling in the physical world or through moving picture films. As a senior at Smith, she is house president of Gardiner House and a gold key tour guide.

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

SMØRREBRØD in Copenhagen

October 27, 2016 rlusiaga

When I arrived in Copenhagen for my spring semester abroad, I did not even notice that I walked right past Amman’s airport restaurant, an outlet of downtown’s most famous place for Denmark’s most famous food. Smørrebrød is a broad category of traditional Nordic cuisine, which was rather mysterious to me. It is not pronounced “smore broad” but rather closer to “smoe boe”, and a direct translation from Danish is not very accurate at all; “butter bread” doesn’t describe these decorative dishes at all.

ratna_lusiaga_2016-09-26-essay-image — Danish smørrebrød – beef tartare with egg.

“Decorative” might be an understatement here, as I would rather think of the underlying slice of rye bread as being the chef’s canvas, where he lays on a collage of ingredients that are as pleasing to the eye as tasty to the palate. The brown rye bread sets off the meat possibilities which come next, traditionally either a strong fish such as pickled herring or smoked lox, or else a mound of beef tartare with the bright yellow raw egg yolk shining on top. While I preferred the herring (shying away from red meat), I certainly enjoyed sampling some of the New Nordic innovations such as prawns, crab, tuna, and even carpaccio.

The vegetable ingredients are often the most attractive given the laciness of dill or the stodginess of avocado, or anything in season. These vegetables generally divide into two classes. First there are the staples such as diced onions and capers, obligatory in perhaps 80 percent of recipes. But then come the charismatic ones such as the aforementioned dill, or chives, and perhaps a clever slice of cucumber or radish delicately carved and sculpted. These higher-class vegetables seem to always land on top with just the right angular attitudes, which I doubt come from being tossed at random.

I got my smørrebrød briefing one morning in January , and drew lots with my fellow classmates to determine my destination before setting off from school into the chaos of the Copenhagen lunch hour. The target of my research was the Slotskælderen Hos Gitte Kik restaurant, whose Michelin star and location across

from Parliament attract the sort of official clientele which appreciates the more traditional forms of these dishes rather than the Neo-Nordic.

It wasn’t always this way, these decorative meals for the power elites. Smørrebrød’s origins were more humble in the fog of earlier times: simple finger-food for field workers on limited budget, for whom rye bread and liver paste were the most affordable ingredients. But this all changed in 1883 when the Nimb restaurant, in the famous Tivoli Gardens, served it as equal to their fancier Nordic dishes.

But where can a girl go to find some less traditional smørrebrød? For fancy New Nordic, the famous Schønnemann restaurant would seem a likely candidate, but their high-quality ingredients seemed a bit lost in the concentrated saltiness of their sauces.

Fortunately, on my third outing, I finally connected with Amman’s, the parent restaurant of the very same airport outlet I had totally ignored on my first day in Denmark. It was marvelous.

I had great experiences testing all of these smørrebrød offerings; now I enjoy making my own seafood version. I prefer it without any sauce or butter, and relish the opportunity to decorate it with a favorite fresh salad or fruit.

Ratnasari Lusaka is an Ada, Fall 2017, and food is one of the important parts of her future career, as her professional experience is mostly in event planning. Thus, she took the Anthropology of Food class in Copenhagen as my study abroad program. The New Nordic style of cuisine has given her new appreciation for thoughtfully including local ingredients, particularly seasonal produce.
Her tasting experiences with New Nordic smørrebrød were part of her explorations of a new genre of food where decoration and ingredient are intermingled in ways that leave plenty of opportunity to innovate for years to come.

Fall 2016 Issue VIII: Notes from the Field

A Taste of Cultural Change

October 27, 2016 ieyman

I wanted coffee that day. Not the espresso finished in a matter of seconds that had become habit in the four months since arriving in Paris, and not the immense, watered-down interpretations of coffee reflective of what could be found back home. I wanted filter coffee, a mug of something strong, standing as coffee without pretense, without cream and sugar.

It was a forty-minute metro ride from my apartment in central Paris to the 11th arrondissement, where the Beans on Fire situates itself on the perimeter of Maurice Gardette Square. Walking into the café, you’re immediately confronted with a mass of heavy roasting equipment, which serves as a cooperative where many of the other coffee shops in Paris come to roast their beans. I looked around, shocked to see a crowd of young professional Anglophones eating scones with their coffee, the barista responding to customers in English, and the baker behind the counter frying doughnuts. And then I saw it, café filtre for three euros.

Satisfied with my coffee, I began speaking to the barista and baker about this business structure and learned they each functioned as independent entities within a common space. Amanda, the baker, is an expat from North Carolina and runs Boneshaker Sweet Rolls, while Tim, a native Parisian, is the head barista at O Coffeeshop whose travels to the UK, Scandinavia, and Australia have exposed him to a coffee culture entirely different from what was traditionally found in France. They each described themselves as “pop-ups” in their respective focus, spending Monday through Thursday at the Beans on Fire and then distributing to and setting up business in other cafés throughout the city the rest of the week.

Because of social media’s prevalence in the food world today, I compared this conversation to similar discussions on Instagram. Everything currently trending in Paris’ food realm confirmed this development of expat influence in the city. Images of avocado toast, chia pudding, açai bowls, pizza, and burgers dominated searches of the hashtag “parisfood,” confirming my suspicion that Amanda’s doughnuts were not simply a result of her nostalgia for what she could find back in the States, but rather a fulfillment of what customers, both Anglophone and French, wanted to eat.

This phenomenon appeared throughout my observations in the city. When I was told to go somewhere new, whether for coffee or for dinner, it was always a place where English was spoken and foods reflective of Anglophone culture were in demand. What’s more, I found that previous searches through print publications geared towards food proved antiquated, that this method of finding a restaurant had become obsolete. Food establishments were gaining attention not through Le Fooding or the Michelin Guide, but rather through bloggers and patrons who had found Instagram fame. This rise in social media’s influence over where and what we want to eat drastically changed the atmosphere of these cafés as well. Rather than simply enjoying the food and company, restaurant-goers’ immediate reaction to the food being placed in front of them was How will this look in a picture? How should I situate my latte so that it gets the best lighting, without glare, without compromising the barista’s work? It was commonplace for the person next to me to spend several minutes aligning the various plates on her table, proceeding to stand on her chair to get a better angle, a better shot. In Paris, food has gained what is almost solely a visual interest. Comments on these images of food no longer raise a question of taste.

This focus on aesthetics applied not only to the food but to the people as well. Patrons are always conscious of how they appear in a restaurant, driving one food critic I spoke with to deem them the new clubs, a definition which applies an entirely new social understanding and hierarchy to what previously fulfilled a simple human need: eating.

I created a blog during the year to document my findings. It was titled Sobremesa and served as an online journal composed of interviews with people who I saw as contributing to these shifts being made in the changing identity of Paris’ food. “Sobremesa” is an untranslatable Spanish term describing the time after lunch or dinner you spend in discussion with those who sit around the table as well. My intention for the blog was to become the online equivalent, a space where I exposed the connections between food and culture and showed how this interaction revealed a new image of Paris defined by its food.

Updating the blog allowed me to construct a narrative which gave voice to these developments, bringing to light the observations that visual representations like Instagram only skimmed across. Though I applied my findings to a general impression of Paris’ food culture today, I also heard the personal stories of the people behind such developments, reminding me that though food is indicative of the culture which drives it and reacts to it, food also serves as an intimate connection between people who would otherwise remain strangers.

Though so much was answered in these interviews and in my research, I’m left with the constant reminder that these are occurrences in continual development. Yes, the larger factors and results of cultural and culinary movements take years to generate significant change, but the smaller shifts are instantaneous. As a result, the question of what will happen next is always present in my research, a thought that can manifest itself in so many ways: What will be Paris’ next food trend? What social media platform will appear and completely change the way we see food? Will any of these developments be sustainable enough to alter the external perspectives of Paris’ food?

This all ends in a question of endurance. Before associating Paris with croque monsieur or steak tartare, we think first of the city’s appeal to inventive and authentic thought, a characteristic which will always put Paris at the forefront of creation, whether it be of literature, art, music, or food.

Isabelle Eyman is a senior English Literature and French Studies major. Her favorite places to read are in coffee shops, parks or in any window seat she can find. Upon graduating this year, she hopes to work as an English teacher in the private school environment, later working towards a Ph.D. in English Literature, focusing her work on food’s appearance in 19th and 20th century literature.

Fall 2015 Issue V: Tastes

Taste of Grief

November 5, 2015 lcrimaldi

Jonathan Dos Santos, 16, had only been dead a few short hours in June 2015 when the Boston home where he lived with his parents and 9-year-old sister began to fill with relatives.

His mother, Laura, was inconsolable, crying out her only son’s name over and over again: “Jonathan! Jonathan! Jonathan!” The boy had been fatally shot while riding his bicycle to a relative’s house just a few blocks away.

In the kitchen at the Dos Santos house, a mercy meal that would go on for days had started to take shape. It was simple, just a box of pastries from Dunkin’ Donuts. Mourners were probably also served coffee, if they felt up to tasting it.

My job as a reporter for The Boston Globe brought me to this sad scene. As often happens, I was dispatched to the home to try to interview a family who had been plunged into indescribable grief by an act of street violence.

The scenes inside these homes share some common threads. There’s lots of anguish, and there’s also a lot of food. The act of gathering around a table to share bread is basic to human beings, and in times of grief, food can help heal the wounds inflicted by loss and violence.

But what I’ve learned in my years covering crime and the people it touches is that sometimes taste has no bearing on food’s ability to alleviate pain.

Several days after Dos Santos was murdered, I returned to his family home, because two teenagers had been arrested in connection to his death. The kitchen table that had once held just a single box of doughnuts was now crammed with plates of couscous and tins of fried foods.

Mourners told me about who had been at the house to pay their respects since my last visit, and the food and drink they brought with them to ease the heartache.

At every turn, someone asked me if I wanted something to eat. I demurred. But, at some point, I was presented with a plate of food and felt I could no longer decline. It wasn’t about food anymore; it was about connecting with a family in their grief.

The elements of the plate made no sense: there were room temperature chicken nuggets with dipping sauce, slices of cheese, and a slice of peanut butter pie, drizzled with chocolate and caramel, for dessert.

I couldn’t even remember the last time that I had tasted chicken nuggets.

After I finished my interviews, I retreated to my car. Raising the hatch of my Ford Escape SUV, I climbed into the back so I could file my story before deadline.

One of the Dos Santos cousins passed by and told me she was en route to get more food. She returned a short time later with a fresh tray of sandwiches and asked if I’d like to try one.

I politely declined. I had already had my first chicken nuggets in years. They had hit the spot and will always remind me of Jonathan Dos Santos.

Laura Crimaldi ’01 is a Metro reporter for The Boston Globe who has been covering news in New England since 2001. She is graduate of Smith College where she majored in Comparative Literature and spent her junior year abroad studying in Geneva. Crimaldi lives in Winthrop, Mass., with her husband, photojournalist, Mark Garfinkel.