I spent a few days last week at a conference at the Culinary Vegetable Institute in Milan, Ohio, listening to chefs from around the world talk about the meaning of food.
True to the conference’s name, Roots: Power, Purpose and the Meaning of Food, the discussion was aimed at helping to establish healthy roots from which ideas can flourish.
The Culinary Vegetable Institute is the nonprofit arm of the Chef’s Garden Farm in Huron, which grows gourmet specialty vegetables for chefs throughout the world. It is operated by the Jones family, a longtime Ohio farming family.
It is the same organization that brings the Veggie U program to the Akron Public Schools each year, so that fourth-graders can learn where their food comes from and how to grow it. So the Jones family already knows something about how to use food to bring about positive change.
Each presenter at the conference focused on a different way that food has changed the world in which they live. While their topics varied, all were intended to inspire chefs with new ways to think about how they could use food to affect positive change in society. Their conversations are equally inspiring for those of us who don’t work as chefs for a living.
One topic focused on food’s potential to liberate the disenfranchised, and used as an example a group of women who live outside of Damascus, Syria, who had been able to use their kitchen skills to provide for their families.
The discussion was led by Anissa Helou, a London-based cookbook author, teacher, chef and journalist. Helou was born in Beirut to a Lebanese mother and Syrian father. She was raised in the city, and spent summers in rural Syria with her father’s family.
In 2010, Helou spent time in Syria writing about a group of women who are able to support themselves by chopping vegetables for a local market, known as “the souk of the lazy people.”
The market catered to working women who didn’t have the time to prepare all of their meals from scratch, which was the local custom. At the market, they could purchase vegetables already prepared and ready to be taken home to be turned into traditional dishes. Squash, for example, were sold cleaned and cored for stuffing in the Middle Eastern style.
While conducting research for a magazine story on the market, Helou met Bessbuss, a mother of two, who was able to support herself and her two young sons by working through the night chopping parsley to be sold at the souk.
At 10 p.m., Bessbuss received a delivery of about 12 cases of parsley, and after her sons were in bed, she would work about 10 bunches at a time using just a knife and cutting board, mincing it into piles fine enough to be used for tabouli salad the following day.
She was one of a network of about 200 women who prepare foods for the market, who had to find a way to support themselves without leaving their homes, Helou said.
The system empowered women at both ends of the spectrum. For the poor, it enabled them to make a living. For the professional working women, it gave them the ability to produce good food for their families, even though they were not at home all day.
“There is no stigma for either side of the women,” Helou said.
Unfortunately the civil war in Syria has likely destroyed most of the system, with 7 million people — a third of the Syrian population — now displaced in their own country or living as refugees in others.
While she knows the war could rage for years, Helou hopes that in the end, the Syrian people will be free. She said in addition to the tremendous loss of life, the loss of heritage and history from the country was what she regretted most.
Concerns about history were echoed by a group of native American chefs, who have been working together to preserve their own food traditions.
Chef Nephi Craig, founder of the Native American Culinary Association, wants to help preserve and renew native American culinary heritage.
The group has been working to return indigenous foods to their restaurant kitchens. “Ingredients all have a voice and a story,” Craig said.
The group discussed what each was doing to keep their heritage alive and to abide by the Native American adage: “Each generation has the responsibility to ensure the survival of the seventh generation.”
Tracy Ritter, culinary director at Santa Fe School of Cooking, has been promoting the teaching and history of native American cuisine on a public level. Chef Arlie Doxtator has been cooking for Head Start programs in the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin, to help young children reconnect with their native foods. Chef Curtis Duffy discussed how the staff at his Chicago restaurant, Grace, has been working to use native American ingredients in new ways.
“Revitalizing food traditions propels us forward in a beautiful way,” Craig said.
Lisa Abraham can be reached at 330-996-3737 or at labraham@thebeaconjournal.com.