Check out Burt Wolf: What We Eat DVDs

I guess I never really thought about why I cared so little for Burt Wolf until I sat down to write this review. I like food, I like travel and I like food history…what’s not to like?

I think the answer may be that his shows are geared more toward the armchair traveler and folks that don’t have access to a major metropolitan center. I think it is difficult find much enthusiasm in a bowl of “authentic” salsa after you have had the luxury of tasting about fifty varieties and know at least the broad strokes of how they differ.

I also find that voice annoying. It is probably a holdover from early cable days, where loud and annoying gets you to pause with the remote –see success of Jerry Springer.

My final pet peeve is that Burt quite often glosses over historical facts or gets them flat wrong. Looking at his biography, he seems to concentrate on quantity rather than quality. I roll my eyes at the over generalizations, e.g., “Mexicans eat this on holy days.” Well, it is a big country and Mexicans in Oaxaca City rarely eat what the folks in Vera Cruz eat.

Why then am I writing about Burt Wolf? Well, I was at the library the about two weeks ago looking for some books by Sophie Coe.* On the way out I stopped in the popular library which has a terrific collection of food shows and instructional videos on VHS. Sadly, the upgrade from VHS to DVD is just barely taking hold in the cooking section...yet!

One of the few DVDs available is a four DVD set, including 13 episodes of Burt Wolf: What We Eat. What We Eat is a series for public television that looks at how Christopher Columbus and the Spanish Conquistadors changed what people ate and how that fundamental shift changed almost everything on our planet.

The series is terrific. The website has the details on the various episodes. Probably the best thing about this series is the in-depth research, I assume, provided in part by the significant experts appearing in cameos. The experts include the following heavy hitters: Susan Trilling, author of Search for the Seventh Mole; Betty Fussell, author of the Story of Corn; Margaret Visser, author of Much Depends on Dinner; and, of course, Michael Coe, co-author with the late Sophie Coe, of The True Story of Chocolate.

The website for What We Eatincludes links to transcripts for each of the shows. What is a particularly nice touch is the inclusion of links and a partial bibliography in the side bars. I was excited to see that I knew of almost all of the books (or do now), own more than half and read several. I need to beef up that last category.

You could really boost your culinary history knowledge just by viewing this series, not to mention you could spend a cold Chicago weekend in a lot worse ways. The online transcripts are a good start. This series while broad in its topics is quality and quantity.







* “If you stick a cattle prod up a horse’s ass you can teach him to deal cards…its just a matter of voltage" –Gene Hackman as Capt. Ramsey in Crimson Tide, discussing the subtleties of training Lipizzaner Stallions. Well, after Thaiobsessed chastised us for not mentioning any of the Sophie Coe books in the great books thread--While reading through the "Top 10 Cookbooks" discussion, I followed the link to these posts. I was a little surprised that no one has mentioned any books by Sophie Coe (given that some of the most interesting posts on this site come apparently come from someone who won her namesake award) –I had all the voltage I needed to head to the library in search of Sophie Coe’s books.