Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.

Dan Saladino, author of the nonfiction book Eating to Extinction The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them.

Is a renowned food journalist who understands that food stories bring together our understandings of culture, power, and survival.

I'm grateful to be in the kitchen Zach Shrank from Indiana University, South Bend, as we talk about why preserving food diversity matters for the present and the future.

Welcome, Zach.

Thank you so much for saying yes.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

So tell me why you recommended this book, which I just found completely fascinating.

Yeah.

So I read this book a couple of years ago.

I think it was published in 2022.

And, I've studied food and foodways throughout my career.

But, one thing I've learned is that there's a lot about where my food comes from that I don't really know, I don't understand.

And what this book did is enlighten me about all sorts of additional foods that I don't even know existed, or foods that have slowly become endangered or we're losing, that we should preserve and protect.

I want to bring back.

So that is the very topic of our, of our menu.

So why don't you say a little bit about what you'll be making today, and then we'll dive into the book?

Yeah.

So the book has a number of chapters about different types of foods that are endangered or that we're slowly losing.

And one of those foods that is endangered is actually wild Atlantic salmon.

And so today I'm going to be cooking a tofu salmon, that, emulates some of the texture and taste of salmon.

And we'll, start with that.

And I've also got an emmer wheat that will work as a nice companion with the tofu salmon.

So that's what I'm starting with.

All right.

Will be we'll be learning a little bit more about grains.

And I'm making an heirloom apple salad with some, apple varieties that we'll both be talking about a little bit.

Super simple.

Nice way to highlight, a wide variety of maybe, new kinds of apples and colors of apples.

And then I'm also making, some millet cakes.

Using another grain that, that the book highlights.

Yeah.

So let's maybe just talk a little bit about what the major argument of the book is, which he then just fleshes out with all these examples.

Yeah.

I think one of the main points of the book that I find really fascinating is that, we eat more varieties of foods than we ever have before.

We have more access to foods year round, whether it's citrus, meats, vegetables, fruits, at our grocery store.

And when you walk in a grocery store, it appears limitless in many ways.

Yes.

Yeah.

However, we're selecting from a narrow, more narrow range of those foods over time.

And so the diversity of food in food ways is actually shrinking while our access to more foods is growing.

So that's kind of the central underlying paradox at the at the center, which is so interesting.

And maybe, this apple that I'm cutting, you brought in, this is, yeah, this is a McCowen apple.

Yeah.

I picked these at Lehmann's orchard, and I picked them because, one of the chapters in the book talks about our relationship to apples and how, there are more than 7000 varieties of apples in nature.

However, we're really only familiar with 6 or 7 at the supermarket.

And so I wanted to find some apples that, look a little bit different, tastes a little bit different, but are grown locally.

Yeah.

These are so these are McCowen.

Yeah, these are McCann's.

They're really dark red.

Sometimes they're crossed with new Jersey black and they can get really dark purple, almost black.

They're very tart and sweet, at the same time.

Very crunchy.

They're they're really delicious.

And this is, but not delicious apples.

Not capital D. This is, these are pippins and got a cheat here a little bit and some wine shops.

So these, you know, look, they don't look like perfect apples.

They're speckled and interesting.

And this, tart that I'm making is really just.

It's a very simple, pastry, simple pastry dough you could also use, frankly, pre-made pastry.

And then I'm making these little fans of different colored apples, and you leave the skin on it so that it's got this beautiful, burnished look that really highlights the different, the different colors of apples that we're using.

So I'll start layering them in in just a moment here and tell me what you're doing with the.

So I have, purchased some, super firm tofu, and I am straightening it diagonally just a little bit.

Right.

Straight.

Yes.

Just making, kind of, small cuts here.

Incisions diagonally to emulate the both look of fish, but also to allow some of the marinade to work its way into the tofu, which is the great secret of tofu, isn't it?

It's a it's a sponge.

It's very delicious thing.

So I love salmon.

It's hard to replicate the taste of salmon, but what we're going to try to do here is I'm going to create a marinade that I'll put in with this, and then cook with it and give it some of the look, texture and flavor of salmon.

So smart.

And of course, soy is one of those foods that has, you know, we can we can recover using it in responsible ways.

Unlike sort of the massive soybean fields that we often see around in, in Indiana here.

So this looks, looks great.

So the, the salmon, the problem of overfishing of salmon is actually one of the major themes of the book.

Yeah, yeah.

So the the book covers more than 30 different varieties of foods and gives you some background and insight into, kind of the origin of these foods, how they're domesticated, the different, ways in which cultures have interact with those foods over time.

And one of the chapters, looks at fish and particularly Atlantic salmon and really the, the alarming problem is that we are very effective at catching fish now on huge quantities and, fish stocks, salmon stocks have declined quite a bit in the latter half of the 20th century.

And so what we need to do is find ways to preserve and protect wild salmon, because they're so crucial in many, many ways for our environment, for, the food chain in the ocean.

We really want to preserve those numbers for our own for future use, too, because they're so delicious and healthy and good for us, too, as well.

So, yeah, some of the statistics that this includes, what is the ones about how many salmon are grown and just.

Yeah.

So, salmon stocks have declined so rapidly that now, we've replaced a lot of wild catch with farmed salmon or aquaculture.

And what's amazing is now there are more salmon in just ten pens around Norway than all the wild salmon in the ocean and streams and rivers, the whole world.

So the idea here is, how could we consider maybe making something like fish without necessarily impacting the number of fish?

Yes, which I'm really I'm eager to try.

Lots of us like tofu, just on its own, but I like the idea of making it look like something that on a plate, could we could maybe fool the eye a little bit here.

And I'm just layering in.

You can see this is kind of fun to build.

This is just right on the pastry crust itself.

You can make these little fans and, the country eating skin is really nice.

And then you just top it with butter and sugar and bake it for 25.

So it's really, really simple.

And while you're doing that, yeah, I'm putting together a marinade for the tofu and what goes in there.

So I've got so I've got some beet juice here to give.

Some color.

I've got some mayonnaise and dill as well as salt and miso paste.

I've got some nutritional yeast and garlic salt.

Oh my gosh, mommy extravaganza.

That's right.

And some, capers and brine.

Okay.

Marvelous.

And that just gets whizzed.

It's whisked.

I'll start mixing all this together.

And, that looks great.

So you need to warm your pan up or.

Well, yeah, that's right here in just a moment.

Okay.

All right.

So I love these, these little packets of miso.

I can buy these at Trader Joe's, and they're really easy to work with.

They come pretty easy.

So part of, what is what we learn with the apples, and actually lots of these other ingredients as well, is just how many varieties there used to be, how few there are now and why it is, I mean, why is it that there has that only a few kinds of both apples and other kinds of things have been cultivated?

Yeah.

One thing that I learned in this book is that all apples originate really, in the caucuses and, in a certain valley, in central Asia.

And in that valley, there are 5 to 7000 different varieties of apples that are growing, that have been growing for thousands of years.

And they have different shapes and colors and textures.

And we've really, over the last hundred years, narrowed down our, relationship to apples, just a few you're probably most familiar with Red delicious or the gala or the Fuji apple.

And all these are really good for storage or preservation or for texture taste, what will.

So we'll make it across the world.

Yeah, yeah.

So for a global food chain, a few of these apples work really well.

But at the expense of the diversity of a lot of other apples that might, also be worth preserving in many ways, yes.

Which, look how beautiful these are.

So I'm just going to sprinkle some sugar on here.

This is a fourth a cup of sugar.

This is the only thing that's going to sort of give it a little extra sweetness and caramelize it.

And then some butter on the top.

And that is it.

It really could not be simpler.

And, a nice way to highlight some of these flavors.

So the, one of the other, details in there that I think for anybody who enjoys fruit, it's worth really thinking about.

And that is the the imminent death of the banana.

Yeah.

Right.

How we've gotten ourselves here.

What is, Well, the theme here is that we've found certain varieties that are really, really good at growing on a massive scale efficiently.

And so the banana is a good example of this.

Anytime you buy a banana at the store, it's a Cavendish, which is a clone.

It's one of a kind.

And, really is the world's only source or primary source of bananas.

The problem is it makes it very susceptible to disease or blight.

And so if there's any type of blight that spreads, we don't have enough variation in our banana stock to replace that quickly.

So we want to preserve the variation of different foods for a lot of reasons.

One, I mean for taste and texture and culture and experience, but also protection against environmental change or different types of diseases that can merge and wipe out a monoculture, which is happening now in terms of fungus that is, taking over entire plantations.

That's right.

Banana is about to go away.

It could the Cavendish could go extinct.

And so it's useful to think of other varieties to preserve and protect.

And same with coffees and avocados and, different grains.

Right.

It's important to diversify our sources in these things for all sorts of reasons.

And we're in Indiana.

Indiana has, the Indiana banana.

That's right.

Yeah.

We actually have a native fruit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If we if we were in season, I could go forage and pick a pop off for you to show you our own kind of tropical banana we have growing here, which is just an amazing flavor.

So, so.

Well, the tarts in the oven there.

And, Zach gets this started.

We're going to take a little break, and you'll get a chance to see some of the foods and locations that Saladino highlights in his book.

We'll be right back.

I'm here with Zach.

We're, prepping here.

I'm about to take my heirloom apple tart out of the oven here.

It smells incredible.

And I gotta say, the those local McCown apples are just beautiful.

And they really are, because you're just up there to cool a little bit.

And and I am adding the tofu now into some butter on a cast iron skillet.

And then I'm going to apply marinade.

And I gotta say I got a little sneak taste of this marinade.

It's so good.

It is delicious.

But it does have a little bit of a taste of the sea to it, doesn't it.

From and so there's miso.

There's some seaweed in it, some capers and brine.

Salt and garlic, nutritional yeast.

So maybe it's the seaweed that gives that beautiful little flecks.

But it does have this lovely briny, briny flavor here.

Yeah.

And then the beet juice gives it a little sweetness, but also the pink hue that will once it cooks down the, the appearance of this will start to look like a a cut of salmon.

It's great.

It's wonderful.

So what I'm doing here is another kind of protein dish.

We're going to be talking about diverse grains here for a little bit.

So many of us eat the same kind of grains over and over.

It's part of that big agribusiness and the narrowing of the choices.

So I'm going to be cooking here some millet cakes.

Millet is one of those grains that we often like.

I buy it for bird food, but it is delicious.

And it's, you can make it into almost like a polenta with, this pan needs to come along a little bit here.

But, you know, I've made this with a little bit of.

There we go.

That's the sizzle.

I want, mix it with, a little bit, shredded carrot and zucchini and some salt and pepper will brown those up to get a chilies so that they stay together.

But those can be the base of, of a dish that I'm going to finish with some Wilton chard.

I've got the stems starting here because you don't want to get rid of the stems.

They're so pretty.

But they take a little longer to cook and then some, a little heirloom tomato, topping to that too.

And what is this vegetable you are cooking?

Yes.

So now I am beginning to cut up a kohlrabi here.

I will be making an apple kohlrabi grain salad with some ancient emmer wheat.

Yeah.

So he talks a lot about these ancient grains.

And where is this one from?

Yeah.

So, in, one of the chapters, he profiles a wheat that is, has been growing in Turkey for over 12,000 years.

It was domesticated by early hunter gatherers.

And there are it's one of several emmer wheats in this region.

And so I am using, a wheat.

It's called, commute course on wheat.

It's actually from Egypt.

It's very similar to the emmer wheat that he profiles in the book.

And what's really fascinating about it is that this particular variety of wheat has been growing continuously for over 10,000 years, and it's a little different than the types of wheat that we're familiar with.

It's very nutty.

It's very rich.

It's tough, robust texture.

Yeah.

Super chewy I think that's right.

So satisfying.

It took a while to cook.

Right.

You had to.

Yeah.

So I have this here.

I brought with me.

I put it in a pressure cooker for 45 minutes.

But what's fascinating is the types of wheat that we're familiar with, have been selected over the last couple of generations for their as a commodity crop, for efficiency.

So a lot of the wheats that we, grow today are, easy to grow on a fast scale or a large scale and also, capable of producing an enormous yield.

The difference with these types of wheats is they're sometimes harder to grow.

They, can take longer to grow, and they're harder to remove from the husk.

It is also and also difficult to mill.

So there's some extra processes that make this type of wheat hard for a global economy or for, economy of scale.

But the trade off here is that we've lost some of the nutrition, the flavor and the robustness in terms of their hardiness with environmental conditions.

Yeah, just cultural knowledge as well.

So I've got, you can make these little cakes here with lots of different types of grain.

So I tried with stuff so that you can get tough flour and also, these little, just the seeds.

This is what it looks like.

It's adorable.

So, so forth.

Before you cook it up.

So, Zach Shrank, what do you have in this pan?

Yeah, I actually turned it on to high instead of off.

So that's a little smoke there, but turn it down.

I've also just out of curiosity, I purchased some plant based salmon to compare to the salmon tofu I'm cooking.

This one was pre-purchased at a grocery store, and I've never tried it before, so I'm going to cook with it just to see how it's, how it works with the other plant based tofu.

And it's got pea protein and seasonings.

We both tried it.

It's interesting.

It's, you know, it's not something probably you'd eat in a big pile on your plate, but, this is actually sold to be part of, pool table.

So you can imagine, it's got a nice kind of briny flavor texture, sort of like, cantaloupe sort of takes it like salted cantaloupe to me.

Mixed in with a poke bowl.

I think it would be delicious.

And a nice alternative to what you were saying in the first part of the show about how we just need to, get unhooked.

Right?

Fish pun intended there from, from so many, the, you know, the 2 or 3 kinds of fish that we that are so common to find on menus.

So what I'm doing here is cooking the Swiss chard with a little bit of garlic.

Oh, I need some salt and pepper and, a little bit of white wine to cook down.

You could also use broth, of course.

To put some salt and pepper in here and let this cook check on.

How's your.

Oh there.

I'm going to flip this over.

Doing all right, so am I.

Let's see how these and these are staying together.

I'm pretty happy about that.

So, So 200.

Hello, friends.

That one's right.

Right over the burner, I guess.

So these would both be nice alternatives to, to meat production.

So that is, you know, something probably that most of us know we should be eating less meat, in part because, you know, like, like other foods.

Yeah, there's a health reason, but also an environmental footprint and also to preserve some wild wildlife as well.

Yeah.

Especially with this.

So I'm, cooking this tofu here.

I'm also cutting up this kohlrabi, which I'm going to then mix in with this, Egyptian emmer wheat, and then eventually I'll add in one of these McCowen apples and some goat cheese, my corn with a, a sauce that I pre-made at home.

It's got some mustard and olive oil.

And honey.

And it could all be mixed together for this apple kohlrabi salad.

Oh, it just sounds absolutely delicious.

And probably, you know, you could mix and match other kinds of vegetables that you enjoy as well.

And while this is cooking down, I just love Swiss chard.

I'm going to be making, this will go on top of the millet cakes, and then I'm going to make a little tomato, topping as well, just for some nice different colored, local tomatoes and a little bit of olive oil and balsamic.

And then that will, and partially that will go on the very top of these.

So, so the, the book is full in some ways of some pretty sobering news, about, you know, like the banana is going to disappear.

If we don't change our ways.

But also inspiring stories as well.

And he's I would say it's a hopeful.

Yeah.

Book and a book, by somebody who just loves food that grew up in the UK and spent summers in Sicily and really fell in love with food as a child.

So the history of food, the cultural relationship to food.

Yeah.

So there are there are a few examples in the book where while there's a lot of, statistics that are alarming, there are opportunities to rethink our connection to the land, rethink our connection to foods.

What were some of that stuck out to you, April?

Chocolate.

Hello.

Nice opportunity to learn about the how the chocolate industry in Venezuela is, re employing indigenous workers, recalling, some of the knowledge that, you know, is in some cases, already lost.

We want to preserve some of that.

And think about just work tactics as well that put some of this on the, on the plate here.

Why they're good stories to tell about wine and cheeses.

All right.

Here we go.

A little bit of this on top, and then we'll top up a little bit of this tomato as well.

So, yeah, because there are so many varieties, there are of all sorts of different types of foods.

Many different ways in which we can really engage with those varieties, kind of intentionally, reassert them back into our diet and be creative.

And I think unlock a whole cultural history as well as nutritional and flavor history that most of us are not accustomed to on a daily basis.

Yeah.

Super delicious.

So that that is the optimistic part of this.

And, you know, he also shares stories about launching both of these off here.

About, places in Mexico where, places that have been overfished have recovered.

So I think that is a really nice, reminder that some of the stuff is a little scary, but we can indeed, if we choose to, we can through a combination of constraints in some ways, but also intentional expansion of our relationship to foods and others.

We can live in balance with nature.

Yeah.

Oh, nice.

Nicely put.

We're going to let that be our final word in this part of the show.

On dancehall is, you know, website.

You can see, what he calls 15 fast facts that you need to know.

That would be a great way to get you started learning a little bit more.

We'll be right back.

All right.

Zach Schrank and I have cooked up a feast inspired by Dan Saladino's Eating to Extinction.

And let's talk about the beautiful foods that you made.

What are these?

What are these dishes?

Yeah.

So I've prepared here a plant based tofu.

Salmon dish, along with some store bought plant based tofu salmon.

And they're sitting on a bed of emmer wheat.

And then I also have a grain salad with some, McCown apples.

Kohlrabi.

There's some goat cheese and walnuts mixed in just once.

Delicious.

This is just a vision.

So.

And I made, another, kind of protein based dish.

So these are millet cakes.

So again, using a grain that we may not use that much topped with some Swiss chard and some marinated, little tiny tomatoes here.

And then a beautiful heirloom tart.

Very simple, but it highlights all the different colors and flavor palettes, flavor profiles and apples.

I encourage you to try putting just a little pinch of flaky salt in your whipped cream.

See what that does, along with a little bit of sugar to lift the flavor.

It is fantastic.

So, Dan Saladino, this book has some hard truths, but also some inspiration as well.

So what are some of your favorite parts?

Yeah, so I think this book offers a lot of ways in which we can think about the incredible variety of foodways and traditions around the world.

Some of them we can reclaim and practice right here at home.

And those foodways and traditions are more than just the foods themselves, but the cultural history and connection to the food, the deep way in which food is a part of our lives and represents our traditions.

But there's also economic and environmental benefits to these as well.

And I think then finally, sometimes these foods just taste better when we when we reclaim our connection to them.

Yeah.

Nicely put.

So he's just a wonderful science writer.

As a journalist, you can read around in this book and learn so much.

So we hope you will, continue to read widely.

Cook Adventurously, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for joining us.

We'll see you next time on dinner and a book.

This Wnit, local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.