FERN’s Friday Feed: You say potato, I say tomato
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Millions of years ago, spuds evolved from … tomatoes?
The Atlantic
“For decades, evolutionary biologists pointed to such examples to cast hybridization as hapless—‘rare, very unsuccessful, and not an important evolutionary force,’ Sandra Knapp, a plant taxonomist at the Natural History Museum in London, told me. But recently, researchers have begun to revise that dour view,” writes Katherine J. Wu. “With the right blend of genetic material, hybrids can sometimes be fertile and spawn species of their own; they can acquire new abilities that help them succeed in ways their parents never could. Which, as Knapp and her colleagues have found in a new study, appears to be the case for the world’s third-most important staple crop: The 8-to-9-million-year-old lineage that begat the modern potato may have arisen from a chance encounter between a flowering plant from a group called Etuberosum and … an ancient tomato.”
Dolores Huerta on what it will take to get U.S. citizens to work the farm
Politico Magazine
“I think it would be really great to have American workers to work on farms. Farm work has been denigrated for so many years by the growers themselves, and they did this because they never wanted to pay farm workers the kind of wages that they deserve. Farm workers were essential workers during the pandemic. They were out there in the fields. So many of them died because they never got the proper protections that they needed. But they were out there every single day, picking the food that we needed to eat. Farm workers don’t get the same kind of benefits or salaries that others get. We just recently did a study with the University of California Merced. Their average wage is $30,000 a year, $35,000 a year. And on that, they have to feed their families. A lot of them, unless they have a union contract, they’re paid minimum wage. They’re not respected.”
A search for the world’s best durian
Smithsonian Magazine
“True durian aficionados don’t just accept extreme flavors; they celebrate, savor, even exult in them. The late celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once said of its aroma, ‘Try leaving cheese or a dead body out in the sun and you’re in the same neighborhood as durian.’ The fruit is complex in taste and smell, varied in texture, and surprising in its effects. Flavors can span sweet, bitter, acidic, fatty and creamy, with specific tasting notes that might include cacao, blue cheese, pumpkin, or even bacon or chives. In texture, durian can resemble cheese, custard, ice cream or overripe stone fruit. Some of the most sought-after durian boasts a rare and peculiar numbing effect, much like mala peppers, used in Sichuan cuisine. The smell, which at first can evoke garbage, raw onions and garlic, seems, as you grow to appreciate durian, to shade into more positive notes such as whole milk, strong cheese and high-proof rum,” writes Tom Downey. “In short, durian contains multitudes not found in any other raw fruit or vegetable, perhaps not in any other uncooked food.”
100 years ago, scientists thought we could make food from air. We’ve almost figured out how.
Popular Science
“In August 1925, Popular Science contributing writer Norman C. McCloud described how Daniel Berthelot—a decorated chemist and physicist from France—was conducting revolutionary ‘factory-made vegetable’ experiments in his Garden of Wonders. Berthelot, son of Marcellin Berthelot, a renowned 19th century chemist and French diplomat, was using the garden to expand upon his father’s groundbreaking work. Starting in 1851, the elder Berthelot began creating synthetic organic compounds, such as fats and sugars (he coined the name ‘triglyceride’), from inorganic compounds like hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. It was a revolutionary first step toward artificial food,” writes Bill Gourgey. “‘[The younger] Berthelot already has produced foodstuffs artificially by subjecting various gases to the influence of ultra-violet light,’ wrote McCloud. … But Berthelot’s experiment didn’t exactly catch on. A century later, most food is still grown the traditional way—by plants—but the idea of manufacturing food in controlled, factory environments has been gaining ground. In fact, Berthelot’s revolutionary idea may finally be bearing fruit—just not in the way he imagined.”
King of the Hill is back, and so is its obsession with food
Eater
“It’s been 15 years since we last saw the Hill family, who moved away from their home in Arlen after Bobby graduated high school. Peggy (Kathy Najimy) and Hank (Mike Judge) went off to Saudi Arabia, where Hank worked in — what else? — propane, and Bobby (Pamela Adlon) headed off to the big city of Dallas, where he became a chef and opened Robata Chane, a Japanese restaurant that also boasts German influences inspired by the history of the Texas Hill Country.” writes Amy McCarthy. “King of the Hill was, at its heart, always a food show. If there’s one thing you know about Hank Hill, it’s that he’s a salesman of propane and propane accessories, and his belief in the supremacy of that fuel for grilling steaks is practically religious. But it’s Bobby who’s the true gourmand — a noted fruit pie enthusiast and culinary risk-taker who also enjoys lutefisk. In the Season 7 episode ‘Goodbye Normal Jeans,’ we see the first glimpse of Bobby’s kitchen skills when he starts learning how to cook and clean in his new homemaking class. He’s so good, in fact, that Hank starts to prefer his cooking to Peggy’s, a development that irks her so much that she tries to sabotage the roasted turkey that Bobby wants to prepare for the family’s Thanksgiving dinner.”