Dan Barber’s Quest for Flavor

In this latest episode of Gastropod, chef and author Dan Barber
takes listeners on a journey around the world in search of great
flavor and the ecosystems that support it, from Spain to the deep
South. You’ll hear how a carefully tended landscape of cork trees
makes for delicious ham, and about a squash so cutting edge it
doesn’t yet have a name, in this deep dive into the intertwined
history and science of soil, cuisine, and flavor. It’s hard to
imagine now, but there was a time before refrigerators, before
long-distance trucks and ships. Most people had to survive on food
from their immediate surroundings, no matter how poor the soil or
challenging the terrain. They couldn’t import apples from New
Zealand and potatoes from Peru, or rely on chemical fertilizer to
boost their yields. From within these constraints, communities
around the world developed a way of eating that Dan Barber calls
“ecosystem cuisines.” Barber, the James Beard-award-winning chef of
Blue Hill restaurant and author of the new book The Third Plate,
spoke to Gastropod about his conviction that this
historically-inspired style of cuisine can be reinvented, with the
help of plant-breeders, his fellow chefs, and the latest in flavor
science, in order to create a truly sustainable way to eat for the
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