The Atlanta Food & Wine Festival lands on Midtown next week like a four-day pleasure bomb. But while the country's first major festival devoted to the food of the entire region will have no shortage of lucullan feasts, the organizers also hope to drop some science on attendees.
With discussions, demonstrations and panels on everything from white lightning to tailgating to head cheese, the festival is intended to explore "what it means to be from the South, grow up in South, cook in the South," said co-organizer Elizabeth Feichter. Celebrity chefs and area experts will examine many aspects of Southern foodways, including these four:
Preserves
“Putting up” is a tradition as Southern as bread and butter pickles, but it is one in danger of disappearing, said Steven Satterfield, executive chef and co-owner of West Midtown's hip Miller Union.
On May 21, Satterfield will help preserve preserving, by teaching one of several quick how-to courses in pickles and jams.
For home-growers, putting up vegetables and fruit make it possible to save that crop for a rainy day; preserving offers a solution for the overflow when all the okra comes in at once. It also allows us to keep control over our diet, Satterfield said.
“We are so used to getting whatever we want whenever we want it, but we didn’t always live that way,” said Satterfield. “At some point we may need to know that technique again. Maybe Snowpocalypse won’t end? It might be a good thing for everybody to know.”
Chocolate and bourbon
With his Tennessee drawl and his colorful locutions, chocolatier Scott Witherow of Nashville's Olive and Sinclair Chocolate Co. sounds a bit like a cowboy philosopher when it comes to chocolate and bourbon.
“It’s a classic pairing, two of the best things in life. It kind of hits two different parts of the brain and if you can hit ‘em both at the same time, you got a dang good thing going on.”
Dang right. Witherow, 32, admits that chocolate making isn’t very Southern, unless you’re talking about South America, but he’s doing his part to put some hillbilly bone in that bar.
His white chocolate, for example, uses buttermilk to offset the sweet taste of that cocoa butter with a little acidic tang.
And for his smoked and nibbed brittle, he gets country ham artist Allan Benton of Madisonville, Tenn., to run the chocolate nibs through his smokehouse. Witherow uses those smoked nibs in a brittle recipe that fools the nose into thinking it’s enjoying that third best thing in life.
“There’s not bacon in it, but you would swear that there was, because he’s smoking them just like he smokes his bacon,” Witherow said.
On May 21, Witherow and several artisan distillers will speak to a group about the marriage of chocolate and bourbon, offering samples of their collaboration. Kristen Hard of Atlanta chocolate company Cacao will add to the discussion of chocolate making in two other events Saturday and Sunday.
Farm to table
Local chefs agree that the South was playing the farm-to-table game way before it was cool. "We were doing this stuff in ‘94, but nobody cared, " said One Flew South executive chef Duane Nutter.
The Atlanta Food & Wine Festival will focus, rightly, on the region's intimate connection between field and kitchen, bringing in such notables as Nutter and Tyler Brown, executive chef at the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville and a born-again farmer.
For the last two years Brown, 34, has been cultivating produce, herbs, honey and flowers and raising cattle at the 65-acre historic Glen Leven plantation just outside Nashville, climbing on the tractor at 5 a.m., tilling the soil, reporting to work at the restaurant, then returning to the field for more work in the evening.
"There are some very steep learning curves going on in my life," said Brown, who is also the new father of a toddler.
Farmed by community volunteers, the Glen Leven property produces food for the kitchen at the Hermitage, for nutritional programs at local schools and other hunger programs. More importantly it helps strengthen awareness of the land, he said.
Brown points out that two generations ago Americans tilled the soil in their own back yards to grow vegetables to help the war effort.
"It wasn't just giving money. It was an actual act of the heart," said Brown. He will speak at a "Southern 101″ panel May 20 called "All Roads Lead to the Farm."
Black chefs
"When I was looking at this career, nobody who looked like me was doing this thing in Seattle," said Nutter, 37, who will speak May 20 at an event called "Where Are the African-American Chefs?"
Some of the road blocks to the rise of black chefs came from without and some from within, said Nutter.
"In our communities this whole cooking thing was viewed as servant work," he said. But the African influence in Southern food continues to resonate, witnessed by the high-end fried chicken craze.
What Nutter would like his audience to take away from his appearances: 1. They should eat with their grandparents if they want to learn about Southern food; and 2. If they want to go into the business they should be prepared to scuffle.
"This is a vocation you learn by doing, like welding or something," he said.
The Atlanta Food & Wine Festival
May 19-22, at locations throughout Midtown Atlanta; tickets from $75 to $2,500; information: 404-474-7330; www.atlfoodandwinefestival.com/
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