How European Exploration Led to Global Fusion Cuisine
Taught by Victoria Flexner
Victoria Flexner is the Founder of Edible History, a Brooklyn-based historical supper club, research lab and test kitchen. A born and raised New Yorker and Medieval History nerd, she’s engaged on a life long quest to bring the past to life through the history of food.
Follow the European explorers of the 15th and 16th centuries as they crisscrossed the earth on a journey to find the mythical East and the origin of spices. Of course, this search for spices led to more than cheaper pepper: it was the birth of globalization.
We'll unravel the journeys of European explorers’ first foray into the unknown, tracing the routes they took that led to an unprecedented movement of peoples all over the globe: from Japanese Samurai patrolling the silver roads of Potosi to Mexico City, to African shaman in the American Southwest, to Portuguese merchants in the Philippines, and Englishmen on the Swahili Coast.
And we'll focus on the foods that these Europeans encountered. Foods like tomatoes, chiles and potatoes were moved around the world as a consequence of European contact and their transportation and adaptation into new culture's cuisines ultimately led to the modern global fusion cuisine we now know today.
