Bite: Smoked Pigeon and Other Subnatural Delights

In this week’s bite-sized episode, Nicky travels to the campus of
Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina, for a day of talks and
tastings exploring the shifting status of stinky cheese, offal,
insects, and other funky foods. At different times and places,
these foods have been regarded as “subnatural”—low-class,
disgusting, even unhygienic. But what does categorizing these foods
as subnatural say about us, and what happens when we decide that
they’re desirable, after all? Episode Notes Here are links to the
peculiar but fascinating events, ideas, and books we discuss in
this bite-sized episode.Subnature: Architecture’s Other
Environments,David Gissen The term “subnature” was coined by
architectural theorist David Gissen in 2009 to describe the less
desirable aspects of the built environment: puddles, pollution, and
pigeons. His book explores the historical assumptions behind this
mostly unquestioned hierarchy in which light, air, and greenery are
perceived as “good,” while the equally natural dust, dirt, and
weeds are unwelcome. Image from the Brooklyn Pigeon Project,
Aranda/Lasch, 2004 It also includes a selection of projects by
contemporary architects and preservationists that engage with
historical perceptions of subnatural environments and attempt to
re-imagine them for the future. For example, Gissen includes both a
discussion of anti-pigeon spikes and a description of the Brooklyn
Pigeon Project, in which architecture firm Aranda/Lasch developed a
set of algorithms and tools to help humans re-visualize the city
from the point of view of a flock of pigeons.Subnature and Culinary
Culture, Duke University By collaborating with colleagues from a
wide range of departments at Duke, as well as chefs, cheese-makers,
and foragers from the local community, Tom Parker, a visiting
scholar from Vassar, created a campus-wide program of events,
talks, installations, and edible experiences exploring what the
idea of subnature might mean in terms of food, and why particular
foods, texture, and flavors have been marginalized in certain
societies. Chef Kim Floresca smokes sturgeon at the Duke University
campus smokehouse, with Tom Parker and Josh Evans from the Nordic
Food Lab. Photo by Nicola Twilley. Roasting quail in a downtown
Durham parking lot. Photo by Nicola Twilley. Highlights included
the construction of a smokehouse on the lawn outside the university
president’s offices, as well as a dinner in which the chefs from
five local restaurants came together to showcase local subnatural
ingredients prepared in transformative ways. On the menu: car-park
roasted quail, cooked using a set-up that chef Matt Kelly described
as “redneck ingenuity,” and sturgeon coated in a crust of corn
fungus and its own heart and collagen, smoked in the Duke
smokehouse. “Sturgeon: Its Roe, Marrow, Collagen, & Heart.
Lacto-Fermented Onions. Our Soured Cream. Saltwort.” As prepared by
chefs Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan, [ONE] Restaurant. Photo by
Nicola Twilley.“How Wine Became Metropolitan,”Edible Geography This
is the post about David Gissen’s new map of France’s wine regions
that started the ball rolling by introducing Tom Parker to the idea
of subnature. Gissen represents wine appellations as stops on a
subway line rather than as geographic territories in an attempt to
communicate the relationship between each region, rather than their
legal boundaries. The Metro Wine Map of France, David Gissen The
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