Kitchen Table: Ode to Asparagus
Ode to Asparagus is the first performative food encounter of the larger research project that focused on how movement of food cultures around the Mediterranean geographies influences the food on our table today. The performance is based on researching and remaking ancient recipes from 10th Century Abbasid Empire, major cities such as Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus. These historical explorations of food, taste, and trade give ways of looking at the politics and practices of food-making on our tables today, with an emphasis on the movement of food via ancient trade routes, linking it with contemporary urban food networks in cities.
In large cities, the different migratory communities bring with them their foods from 'back home', in turn bringing new ingredients to their new place of residence, which brings diversity to the food cultures of a city or a country. Brussels (the city I live in for over 7 years now) is a very good example of food diversity which is both present in the range of restaurants and the supermarkets that import the basic food stuffs from around the world. Foods that were traded along the spice routes of central asia to baghdad can be found in the local food specialty supermarkets in Brussels. For example, the raisins from Kandahar that were known and sought after for their sweetness, are sold in a supermarket called Cash and Carry, located on Chaussée de Gant (no. 33 in case you are interested to go check it out!). Understanding how people have always carried food with them over thousands of years, for trading but also bringing a small seed of a fruit that was tasted in one place, to be grown in another part of the world—re frames trade in a longer historical trajectory. What is local is not actually a clear cut line when it comes to food.
In large cities, the different migratory communities bring with them their foods from 'back home', in turn bringing new ingredients to their new place of residence, which brings diversity to the food cultures of a city or a country. Brussels (the city I live in for over 7 years now) is a very good example of food diversity which is both present in the range of restaurants and the supermarkets that import the basic food stuffs from around the world. Foods that were traded along the spice routes of central asia to baghdad can be found in the local food specialty supermarkets in Brussels. For example, the raisins from Kandahar that were known and sought after for their sweetness, are sold in a supermarket called Cash and Carry, located on Chaussée de Gant (no. 33 in case you are interested to go check it out!). Understanding how people have always carried food with them over thousands of years, for trading but also bringing a small seed of a fruit that was tasted in one place, to be grown in another part of the world—re frames trade in a longer historical trajectory. What is local is not actually a clear cut line when it comes to food.