Esculent

Season 4: Chefs, Part 2

Season 4, Chefs is here: we revisit the dynamic role of the chef in popular culture through culinary literatures, from 15th-century cookbooks to PBS television series. 

Tasting: A Russell Stover head of an Easter Bunny (context provided, sort of).

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Host: Elizabeth McQueen
Producer: Stace Baran
Theme by Ronan Delisle
Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann

This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections.

The Idea of Solutions with Professor Julie Guthman

Can baking brownies save the planet? I’m a little embarrassed I even wrote this question out, but this rhetoric exemplifies the argument of our esteemed guest’s new book: The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can't Hack the Future of Food (UC Press, 2024). For our final episode of this season, we are joined by Julie Guthman, Distinguished Professor of Community Studies Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. We discuss my favorite food film, shifts in university pedagogy, and how to conceive of doing good while maintaining critical thinking.

Tasting: Renewal Mill Brownie Mix

Viewing: Bong Joon-Ho’s Okja (2017)

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Host: Elizabeth McQueen
Producer: Stace Baran
Theme by Ronan Delisle
Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann

This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections. Season 3 is supported by Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores.

Imagining Authenticity with Professor Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado

Authenticity. An idea that has plagued many conversations on food. This week, we are joined by Professor Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, the Jarvis Thurston and Mona van Duyn Professor in Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. We interrogate the role of authenticity in constructing Mexican national identity through another culinary idea: that of the taco. We discuss the taco’s malleable history across regions, including Taco Bell. Stay tuned for Professor Sánchez Prado’s upcoming book on the taco and modernity!

Tasting: Taco de machado con huevo by special guest Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores

Viewing: Viral Tiktok: White People Taco Night by Keith Habersberger and the Try Guys and MC Luka’s Lupita’s Taco Shop

Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram

Host: Elizabeth McQueen
Producer: Stace Baran
Theme by Ronan Delisle
Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann

This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections. Season 3 is supported by Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores.

The Idea of Real Food with Professor Charlotte Biltekoff

How are processed and natural contested categories - rather than objective definitions- of food? These questions are at the center of Professor Charlotte Biltekoff’s new book, Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge. Joined by a special guest, Dan Polsby of Best Friends Wine, to introduce our tasting and complicate “real” wine, we discuss food science, industry, and the Food Inc. documentaries.

Tasting: Sfera Bianco, 250mL can 

Viewing: Trailers for Food Inc. (2006) and Food Inc. 2 (2024) 

Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram

Host: Elizabeth McQueen
Producer: Stace Baran
Theme by Ronan Delisle
Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann

This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections. Season 3 is supported by Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores.

Thinking Indigeneity with Fabiola Santiago and Mi Oaxaca

We start off our third season featuring a conversation with Fabiola Santiago of Mi Oaxaca, exploring how indigenous knowledge is linked with mezcal and the colonial exploitation that occurs within Oaxaca today. From Mexico’s tourism board to the role of service and hospitality workers in disseminating knowledge around mezcal, this season, we are all about the big ideas that shape the esculent.

Viewing: Mexico Tourism Board’s 2014 campaign for Oaxaca, “Live it to Believe it”

Tasting: Kalawashaq Wine Cellars from Camins 2 Dreams

Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram

Host: Elizabeth McQueen
Producer: Stace Baran
Theme by Ronan Delisle
Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann

This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections. Season 3 is supported by Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores.

Season 3: Ideas

Back again. This season hosts four thinkers, shaping and questioning the ideas that make food esculent. 

Reading: Excerpt from Professor Kyla Wazana Tompkins' new book, Deviant Matter (NYU Press, 2024)

Tasting: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant: 2023 Coteaux du Loir Rouge “Cuvée du Rosier”

Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram

Host: Elizabeth McQueen
Producer: Stace Baran
Theme by Ronan Delisle
Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann

This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections. Season 3 is supported by Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores. 

Celebrity Chefs and Artful Eating with Professor Paul Freedman

The celebrity chef is not a modern concept, as we discuss with Paul Freedman, Professor of History at Yale. Joined by podcast regular Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores, we discuss early modern history, how food comes in and out of fashion, and what artistry might indicate in food history. And the conclusion of Season 2: Historians!

Professor Freedman specializes in medieval social history, the history of Catalonia, comparative studies of the peasantry, trade in luxury products, and the history of cuisine.  His latest books are The Splendor and Opulence of the Past: Studying the Middle Ages in Enlightenment Catalonia (Cornell University Press, 2023) and (co-authored with Marc Aronson) Bite by Bite: American History through Feasts, Food, and Side Dishes (Simon & Schuster, 2024). 

Viewing: Mark Bittman visits El Bulli in 2006, NY Times

Tasting: Chateau Thivin Cote De Brouilly Half Bottle, 2022 from Wine on Piedmont

Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram

Host: Elizabeth McQueen
Producer: Stace Baran
Theme by Ronan Delisle
Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann

This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections.

A taste of history with Professor Jeffrey Pilcher

What does it take to understand food historically? This episode takes a philosophical turn as Jeffrey Pilcher, Professor of Food History, joins the podcast to discuss what it means to study, write, and taste food history.

Jeffrey Pilcher is a Professor of History and Food Studies at the University of Toronto, Where he directs the Culinaria Research Centre. He is the author of several books, including Food in World History, 3d ed (2023) and Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food (2012), and the newly released Hopped Up: How Travel, Trade, and Taste Made Beer a Global Commodity (2024).

Viewing: Drunk History, Season 4, Episode 8, ‘Food’

Tasting: Stillwater Brewing’s Saké Style Saison Ale (special shout out to Wine on Piedmont for the suggestion!)

Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram

Host: Elizabeth McQueen
Producer: Stace Baran
Theme by Ronan Delisle
Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann

This podcast is supported by the UC Davis Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar, Thinking Food at the Intersections.