Take a moment to close your eyes and enjoy the warm, humid breeze scented with magnolia and orange blossom…
Three deep breaths to help you leave the rest behind…
You’re in Florida now — Welcome.
Guide
Welcome
Special Thanks
About Anand
What is Florindian?
Menu
Ancestors & Place: Every day, we are our ancestors
Privilege & Poverty: A dish of high or low class
Ingredients: Water is the only Chef de Cuisine
Expression: Cuisine is the ecstatic expression of the gifts available to us
Identity: Fusion is a universal pull, not an isolated push
A Letter from the Chef
Welcome
A Couple Requests:
Please let your server know if there’s anything at all we can do to make you more comfortable throughout the evening
Use of your phone for photos and good times are encouraged, alongside presence with the lovely people within this room. Use #Florindian, and tag @ALetterfromtheChef if you do post pictures please.
However, use of your phone for communicating with folks beyond these walls is discouraged - you’re among good people. Enjoy it!
You are encouraged to interact with folks that you did not previously know - there are only good people in this room. Of course, please be respectful in case somebody wants more space
Humor me in doing a little experiment - turn to a person or people near you (preferably a new friend) and ask them these questions:
When you’re desperately ill and just need a little comfort, what do you eat?
When your family gets together for a large holiday meal, what’s on the table?
What makes a dish absolutely excellent to you?
After you ask those questions to your new friend, proceed to think about the following. You can share with your new friend or do this on your own:
Who are some people that love your new friend?
How does your new friend like to receive love?
What identities does your new friend hold dear?
What does Home look like for your new friend?
What are some things your new friend values highly in life?
I’m curious to see how much you learn about each other. Food is human. Food is empathy.
- Anand
Special Thanks
Tonight would only be possible with the help of a whole team of incredibly giving, loving and hard working friends that just wanted to see this event happen. For their help in this endeavor, special thanks go to:
Aishanie Marwa who has stepped out of her day to day to be a server for this evening
Kevin Treu who is managing the line, helping a restaurant novice and preparing the food tonight — Kevin frequently does Vietnamese Californian Street Food pop ups. You can stay posted on when the next is by following him on Instagram @Tum.lum.lum la
Leigh Loper & Natalia Bushyager who are the gracious owners of Picnic on Third that have made this venue possible
Michael Washington who has brought his expertise as a server to this event and help Aishanie and I learn
Nimai Bhatt who has helped with more logistics than I can list here
Vibha Gupta who has helped in getting the word out about Florindian and been so supportive. Her non-profit, @NoImmigrantsNoSpice does amazing work advocating for immigrant rights through food based initiatives
Wendy Brucker, a seasoned restauranteur who has provided immeasurable guidance and helped get the ingredients for tonight’s dinner. Visit her restaurants Rivoli and Corso in Berkeley
You who have trusted me with your valuable weekend time and attention, so that we might co-create a wonderful and unforgettable evening of food, fun and fable
And to all those who have been my teachers so far and will be in the future
About Anand
Anand Deshpande is a cook, storyteller and food researcher who brings people closer through shared stories and experiences.
At the core of his work, Anand believes that, “contained in a recipe is a treasure of knowledge. Look deep enough and a dish tells you what’s available and what’s scarce for the cook, what’s important to them to show off- their medicine, religion, politics, history, economics. It’s all in the food that’s served to you. In short, a recipe is a letter from the chef connecting you to them in the most intimate, human, life-giving way.”
Anand is the creator and host of A Letter from the Chef, a podcast dedicated to exploring recipes and food traditions to understand what they teach us about others.
He teaches history classes centered around cooking as a case study in the history topic being discussed.
If you’d like to stay up to date with Anand’s work, please follow him @ALetterfromtheChef and check out the offer on the last page of this program
Follow Anand.
Menu
Ancestors & Place
A dish of refuge and surrender
3 Sisters Sofki
Black Bean Vada | Butternut Squash Chutney | Pomegranate
Privilege & Poverty
A dish of high or low class
Beet Green & Baby Kale Salad
Shepu Crème | Blood Orange | Heart of Palm | Vidalia Crisp | Pickled Egg or Pickled Cauliflower
Ingredients
Water is the only Chef de Cuisine
Mofongo
Camarones Hindúes or Olya Kaju | Malvani Kalvan | Baby Cilantro - Jicama Salad
Expression
Cuisine is the ecstatic expression of the gifts available to us
Buttermilk Fried Chicken
Mathri Biscuit | Greens | Red Chutney | Green Chutney
Homestead Tasting
Black Eyed Pea Vada | Yams | Fried Okra | Red Chutney | Green Chutney
Identity
Fusion is a universal pull, not an isolated push
Sweet Somethings
Key Lime Payasam | Muscadine Falooda | Amrakhand w Fry Bread or Poached Pear
Pairings
First & Second
Margerum M 5|White Rhone Varietal Blend | Santa Barbara County
Third & Fourth
A Tribute to Grace | Grenache | Santa Barbara County
To Finish
Moscato d’Asti | Sparkling Moscato | Asti, Piedmont, Italy
Kinder Offerings
Blood Orange & Thai Basil Soda
Muscadine Soda
Roselle (sugar free, served hot)
Ancestors & Place:
A dish of refuge and surrender
Florida is a refuge for those who submit to the wild and primordial swamps and shores of this place where water and land are indistinguishable and where time stands still.
The First Nations of Florida were decimated upon the arrival of the Spanish, but were soon replaced with another First Nation community descended from the Mvskoke-Cree. With them came the staple dish of Florida’s First Nations, and subsequently the entire South - Sofki, otherwise known as Grits.
The Mvskoke came to Florida to escape relocation under British and American rule in the South and became known as the Miccosukee or Seminoles. They brought the culture of 3 Sisters farming that started in Mesoamerica and traveled to most of the Americas. The 3 Sisters of Maize, Gourds and Legumes represent a companion planting technique in which corn form a trellis for beans and squash to grow up. The beans, in turn, have nodes of nitrogen fixing bacteria in their roots that provide nitrogen for strong growth of the pumpkins and corn. The young sprouts of the pumpkins are shielded from the sun by the early growth of the beans and then quickly provide thorns and broad foliage to stop the advance of pests and weeds from encroaching.
Under the Spanish, Colonial Florida had a policy of amnesty for any slaves that escaped from British territories, attracting a large influx of African origin people to the region. A large Black settlement was created outside of St. Augustine at Fort Mose, which became the first official free Black settlement in America in 1738, and was the termination point of the original Underground Railroad.
However, most escaped slaves immediately or eventually became part of the Gullah community on the coastal islands of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina or they integrated with the Miccosukee and Seminole communities. An independent Black Seminole tribe exists to this day in both Florida and Oklahoma.
This course represents the surrender of the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes to Florida. It showcases their influence on Southern cooking today, and it is complemented by flavors of the Caribbean and East Indies to pay homage to all cultures that make tonight’s menu possible.
Privilege & Poverty:
A dish of high or low class
Often, the cuisine we celebrate and associate most with a region is not the food eaten by the majority of people in that place. Oil and animal proteins are expensive, yet we associate the South, traditionally populated with over 80% subsistence farmers, with fried chicken and pig barbecue. Rich curries and tandoori cooking are courtly dishes that came to India with Afghan and Persian invaders who established courts in feudal India. We often forget that wild scavenged greens, pickles and vegetables are both the norm and the symbol of day to day resource limits in both the South and India.
In the case of Indian Harijans, or the formerly “untouchable” community, status made certain foods impossible to have and other foods inevitable to consume. Since they were deemed impure and relegated to abject poverty (and many still are), they could often only afford weeds and foraged fresh vegetables, steaming rather than frying, using rendered fat in place of oil for cost effectiveness.
Additionally, beef, due to the sacred symbolism of the cow, was eschewed as food by high caste Indians. This in turn makes it the only affordable meat available to Harijan communities, yet the consumption of beef by Harijans gave high caste Indians greater social license to deem Harijans impure. We see this food-based casteism to this day, and sadly increasing in modern India with the advent of “cow vigilantism”.
Born in the vacuum of the US, I hadn’t realized how much of a privilege it is to be born in a “high caste” family until I research into a peaceful vigil turned riot which I had heard my family in India complaining about prompted me to look up the Battle of Koregoan. It was the last battle of the Maratha Empire in which the British defeated the Peshwa ruler of Maharashtra and colonization of our land was secured.
Of the English troops that ended our self-rule, almost 70% were from the Harijan community. For them, the end of our Empire, was the beginning of a path to freedom. Self-rule is relative to those that rule and benefit from it.
This dish showcases the foods of the yeoman farmers, the Harijan, those that history doesn’t write about and that society deems impure or unfit for celebration. It is both low and high, because, when it comes to humans, there is no such thing as high or low.
Ingredients:
Water is the only Chef de Cuisine
Your food is a representation of what nature and your abilities have conspired to permit you to have. The greatest judge in the matter is water.
The Caribbean Coast of Florida and nearby islands like The Bahamas, Cuba and Puerto Rico as well as the Konkan Coast of Maharashtra share a few things in common. They’re extremely lush, endowed with many fruit trees and abundant seafood. Counterintuitively, lands with lush forests have poor soil since the forests are so productive that organisms vie for any available nutrients quickly.
Proximity to the sea doesn’t just mean seafood, it means rain and lush forests - these coastal cuisines have been profoundly affected by this fact. In these cuisines, we see a general scarcity of vegetables. In the Caribbean, vegetables are often left out and legumes, animal proteins or starches may fill that niche on the plate. In Konkan, however, surrounded by regions with heavy vegetable forward and vegetarian cuisines, we see the innovation of using unripe fruits, flowers and other plant ingredients in place of typical vegetables. Examples of Konkani bhaajis or vegetables, are green bananas, green mangoes, banana flowers, green jackfruit and fresh/wet cashews.
Wherever they exist, coastal regions have a profoundly different culture because of their relationship with water in all its forms. Water truly decides what you can and cannot cook; water is the only true Chef de Cuisine.
With this dish, we explore how easily coastal cuisines from a globe away can play with each other and complement one another — a testament to the commonalities found across tropical coastal regions due to their relationship with water.
Expression:
Cuisine is the ecstatic expression of the gifts available to us
Those gifts can be tools, ingredients, world views, time, and for me, some of the greatest gifts I was given was exposure and deep immersion in the cultures that surround me. As a Florindian, I was particularly exposed to Indian and old Florida Southern culture.
Indian Cuisines
Indian culture is one of layering and multi-focused aesthetics - simplicity is never a statement used when describing anything Indian. There always has to be a massive joint family, thousands of gods, a million legitimate explanations for any given tradition, and, following suit, the food has layers of flavors intentionally put in place so that no single ingredient dominates.
Other cuisines, usually coming from individualist societies, they seek to celebrate a vegetable or “main” ingredient by adding layers that support and showcase that one ingredient. Indian cuisine, coming from a communitarianist society, instead chooses to celebrate ingredients by how they all work together to make a completely different and beautiful dish in which the individual ingredients are often unrecognizable. A basic masala or spice mixture will always have layers of flavors that contradict, or rather, fill the missing blanks of flavors that aren’t yet strong enough in the dish.
Southern Cuisines
Meanwhile, the Southern cuisine of Florida is informed by a traditionally agrarian society with access to simple, fresh ingredients and a variety of local fruits throughout the year. It does not always maintain the European tradition of supporting a single flavor profile in a dish, for example, greens traditionally always have four flavors. However, it has a strong repertoire of cooking techniques and a Place based sense of tradition about the dishes, such as Derby Pie or the traditional New Years meal of black eyed peas and greens for good luck in the coming year - a childhood tradition I hold dear today.
These plates in front of you represent an ecstatic expression of who I am as a Florindian with deep reverence for the cultures that produced me and gave me the culinary skills of buttermilk brining, oven roasting and touching citrus casually throughout savory dishes alongside the tools of balanced masalas, flavor substitutions and fortifications and the freedom to evolve traditional foods into new dishes without losing its original essence.
Identity:
Fusion is a universal pull, not an isolated push
There is no such thing as fusion, or, rather, there is nothing other than fusion. We live in a strange time of identity politics where identity has taken on such a profound ability to both empower and disenfranchise. We find meaning and reason in our identities, but we also often find ourselves in boxes constructed both by ourselves and others because of the identities we hold.
I grew up with an ever haunting, yet weakly constructed, paradigm that required every move, name, fashion choice, mannerism, major life event to be qualified based on how much it represented our culture. We had to qualify everything to ensure it was both Indian enough and American enough. This judgement became sharp with the casual self loathing of not wanting to be too Indian. Even worse still would be if we were seen as totally American, losing something palpably but intangibly priceless.
Humans have always been the product of many different influences and cultures. It’s even more evident today more than ever. So it follows that everything that we do is in fact a form of fusion.
The concept of fusion in America has often taken the form of resolution to identity, rather than the more organic expression of identity. We have historically inspired fusion through the push of identity first - I am this, so I made that. However, fusion has happened since humans started cooking, and that fusion has been inspired by the pull of expression - I made this, I guess because I am that.
Your identity is just whoever you are, and what you cook is what that identity is - a fusion of many different influences. Whatever you or whomever else around you decides to call it.
With these dishes, I’ve plated up my identities. The fusion that is me - a Florindian ecstatically expressing and celebrating the gifts I’ve been lucky enough to receive so far in my life.
Thank you for coming along on this journey of radical self-expression.
A Letter from the Chef
Final Asks
Please give me your anonymous feedback! It would truly mean a lot and be very helpful. (One to 3 minute ask.)
2. Follow A Letter from the Chef by Anand on your favorite podcasting platform and social media (see below)
3. Sign up for Anand’s upcoming Gastrohistory Cooking Class -
Biryani: A Delicious History of Islam in India
Explore the Muslim influences on Indian culture from the first Arab Muslim invaders all the way to the Mughal descendents of Genghis Khan who fell to the British Raj. We’ll focus on how West and Central Asian cultures merged with South Indian culture to form the State of Hyderabad and the gorgeous cuisine that came from this wealthy, cultured and cosmopolitan society.
You’ll learn how to make your own biryani from scratch, including the masala. You’ll be leaving with the knowledge and a bundle of ingredients to impress your friends when you recreate the dish at home.
Saturday, February 22nd
4:30pm to 8:00pm
Use the promo code “Florindian” to get 25% off tickets for you and your friends if you sign up by Tuesday, Jan 21th at 11:45pm PT
Click here to see the event and get your tickets!