It’s the same here! I am learning to always start with the end result in mind when speaking to people about adapting plants - specifically to their likes and dislikes.
Maybe there’s a little piece of France in all countries after all - or maybe there’s a piece of something very human in what you describe.
I get really hopeful to see how this presentation is helping to make a shift in our community towards more focus on involving other people in selecting for taste. I think we can learn a lot from people in participatory plant breeding here - and then do it our own way.
Before this conference, I had contacted Lane a few years ago to ask him the following question:
“What are the keys to the success of your Sagra events? Why do they seem so fun and popular?”
I think, now, I have a better understanding of his answer. Copying his work, which takes place in North America in an urban environment, with young people, would not make sense here in rural France in an agricultural context with an aging population.
So we’re going to try to do this in a way that is more in tune with our community…resilience, humor, and taste will be our ingredients!
Definitely… rural France is not the hip and trendy US cities with chefs making kale salads…
When thinking about the finished dishes, it might be necessary to split populations for different uses. A great maxima for gnocchi is going to be very different to one for soup. A summer squash moschata is very different to a winter one, etc. From our point of view, we still want resilient, diverse mixes but we’ve got to be careful not to end up with something in the middle that’s just “meh” for specific uses. I think Carole Deppe also mentions that her books (she talks a lot about prime/gourmet vegetables). Malte, you seem to be doing a lot of that work already, breeding for specific uses.
Maybe that split will not happen everywhere, depending on cultural cuisine.
In area where there is a strong regional cuisine, maybe the taste tests could reflect that. So for example, in Nice/ Côte d’Azur, you could taste test beefsteak tomatoes in pan bagna, summer moschata in tourte de courgettes, round pepo courgettes in farcis niçois, chard in raviolis, tourte de blettes and barbajuan etc etc. (now you know why I started gardening!!! ). People will quickly realise how different the same dish can be and that they have the power to fine tune that flavour/texture by getting involved in the selection process.
Nice ! It is very relevant to link our work to local cuisine and not just cuisine in general!
We can also look at the problem and the solution from the other perspective… why not develop local cuisine in line with advances in selection?
Local cuisine has always been enriched by exchanges and the arrival of new ingredients.
Sure, the new ingredients will evolve with the new chefs/home cooks and get assimilated into new dishes. That’s exciting! Especially with all the foodie content on social media/internet, it’s much easier to understand how to use an unfamiliar ingredient.
I think it will be much harder with the older/traditional generations. Some of those still aren’t buying fruit and veg from supermarkets that are different to the traditional/local ones they grew up with…. I don’t remember eating a “long” pepo courgette as a child. My mum, grandma, great grandma didn’t have any recipes to use them for (and the long pepo didn’t work in our traditional recipes) so we never had them. Guess what? Apart from grating them into cakes or bakes, I don’t use them either!
Probably, to be successful, we need a bit of both…
the gourmet squash population that makes the best comforting squash soup everyone is familiar with
the unfamiliar/new gourmet population that makes great gnocchi/smooth sorbet or whatever that the adventurous chef/home cook will want to try out
Could one population make everyone happy (that would make it easier for us…)? Will the populations evolve differently due to culinary choices driven by the local community? Will the French maxima population have different selection than the Italian, German, Norwegian.. It will be fascinating to see how all of this develops! It goes beyond seeds, growing and breeding for resilience…
Please send me links to the video s. This sounds fascinating, I’ve seen a few of the sagra events on you tube and they are what nudged me towards landracing. In fact it got me thinking about landrace/regional cuisine. If we can breed landrace vegetables, adding variety to what is already locally resilient then we can influence landrace cuisine, in fact the two feed off each other. I’m only just getting started on this journey so more enthusiasm than experience
). People will quickly realise how different the same dish can be and that they have the power to fine tune that flavour/texture by getting involved in the selection process.
