Hands-on Learning: Food and Folklore

Back in December, Afsane Rezaei took her students from the Foodways class (ENGL 3710: Topics in Folklore) to the culinary lab on campus for a class contest to make Swedish pancakes. The recipe was submitted by a student as part of their class cookbook, and started a debate about whether Swedish pancakes were basically the same things as crepes. So, they had to try and find out for themselves! Students worked in teams in the kitchen and the final products were judged by Afsane and the student who had brought the recipe. Each entry won the contest in one category: design, taste, creativity, authentic representation (or closeness to the typical Swedish pancake), and crepe-ness.

At the end of January, Afsane’s Regional Folklore class (ENGL 3700) was in the kitchen again to hold a fry sauce contest. The five teams experimented with different variations of the popular Utah sauce, including the classic mayo and ketchup combo and four versions with BBQ sauce, pickle juice, dill relish, and Worcestershire sauce (the teams were respectively called The OG's, Baby Back Fries, the Picklers, Dill with It, and Not Cane's Sauce). Afsane also made an "everything" version with all the available ingredients and spices, which surprisingly was among the winners of the anonymous tasting contest, alongside the BBQ sauce and Worcestershire sauce versions.