Food, Language, and Culture: Compiled Resources
Exploring the intersection between food, language, and culture is a topic I’ve wanted to explore in IB Language and Literature for a while. This last semester, I was finally able to do it. The unit started with a summer reading assignment of Samin Nosrat’s part-cookbook-part-textbook Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat that empowers the home chef, and it culminated in a Socratic seminar about the cultural responsiveness of the food industry.
In between these tasks, the students and I engaged with a whole host of texts related to the topic. The various texts we explored are listed below. Some we looked at in their entirety, while others we spent only 20 minutes or so on. This was effective Paper 1 practice. In Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, there’s a set of instructions about “How to Make a Mayonnaise and How to Fix a Broken Mayonnaise” that we had particular fun with. In addition to engaging with these texts, we also interviewed a family member about their relationship with food and culture, and then shared out to the class.
Books:
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat (Cook Book…but so much more than that!)
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (Memoir)
One-Hundred Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais (Novel)
Cooked Up: Food Fiction from Around the World (Short Story Collection)
Television Shows:
Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat (Netflix)
David Chang’s Ugly Delicious (Netflix)
Madhur Jaffrey’s Flavours of India (BBC)
Food Journalism:
Osayi Endolyn’s Counter Service (Oxford American)
Pete Wells’ Restaurant Reviews and Writing (New York Times)
Credit Where It’s Due (New York Times Cooking)
A White Restaurateur Advertised ‘Clean’ Chinese Food. Chinese-Americans Had Something to Say About It. (New York Times)
The chocolate treat at the heart of a racism debate (SwissInfo)
Berliners get an appetite for refugee cuisine (The Guardian)
Internet Culture:
Uncle Roger DISGUSTED by this Egg Fried Rice Video (YouTuber)
This is just to say we have explained the plum jokes in your Twitter feed (Vox)
Binging with Babish (YouTuber)
Osayi Endolyn’s Instagram Story in Response to this NYT article (Shared with the permission of the author – you can find her Instagram page at @osayiendolyn)
Podcasts:
“Reparations for Aunt Jemima!” Still Processing
“103. Food Into Words” (The Allusionist)
This is a non-exhaustive list, as it is just the resources I used for my unit. Please comment below if you have more resources about food, language, and culture!