DATS 2010: Stokes Purple Sweet Potato

DATS MashUp

Oct 9, 2:30-4:00
Four cooking teams of a professional chef and refugee-immigrant will present and discuss their joint creations using the Stokes Purple sweet potato as their point of inspiration. Each team will face language, tradition and cultural barriers as they work to communicate, collaborate, and create a great new recipe. Follow the teams' progress at http://mybridges.net/

Today people from all over the world have brought new flavors, ingredients, techniques and tastes to the Piedmont. The Stokes Purple sweet potato is an exceptional product available at Whole Foods and developed by enterprising Stokes County farmers from a variety of Ipomoea batatas cultivated in Asia. As a world food, the sweet potato is a familiar ingredient to newcomers from Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central and South America.

Participating Restaurants

Chef and owner Graham Heaton says Table 16 embodies a style of food that is strong, unique, and indicative of the bold flavors of the New World coupled with the refined and elegant traditions of the Old World. The multi-ethnic cuisine of the New World is influenced by the flavors of the Caribbean, Central America, South America, Cajun, Creole Cultures. These all collide with the more sophisticated classic approach to Old World cuisines of Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy.  Never losing our foot hold on our Southern Roots, the four seasons, and locally grown produce, our concept features many staples of the New World, such as legumes, fresh seafood, healthy grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, such as mangoes, passion fruit, papaya, yucca, yams, and plantains.

Table 16
600 S. Elm Street, Greensboro NC 27406
(336) 279-8525
http://www.table16restaurant.com/

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Chefs and owners Mark Grohman and Trevor Dye operate Meridian Restaurant . Each is a classically trained chef who has chosen to make Winston Salem their home.  They have worked at some of the finest restaurants in the Triad area as executive chefs.  The cuisine at Meridian Restaurant represents the combination and culmination of classical training and passion for Mediterranean and local cuisine.

Meridian Restaurant
411 South Marshall Street, Winston-Salem, NC 27107
(336)722-8889
http://www.meridianws.com/

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Chef John Drees reopened Southern Lights Bistro at its new location in June 2010 . The award-winning four-star restaurant, and one of Greensboro’s most popular eating establishments for more than two decades, Southern Lights Bistro is delighted to welcome you back. Inside you will find many aspects you fondly remember about the original location, such as popular menu offerings like Cream of Tomato Basil Soup, Tribecca Sandwich, Reference Burger, Grilled Salmon with Cucumber Dill Sauce, Chocolate Walnut Pie, seasonal items, house-made desserts, fresh daily seafood and chalkboard specials.
Chef Adrian Harris represents Southern Lights Bistro in the community-minded collaboration project!

Southern Lights Bistro
2415-A Lawndale Dr., Greensboro, NC 27408
(336) 379-9414
http://southernlightsbistro.com/

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Chef Jeff Bacon, Director and Excecutive Chef for the program, and certified guest chefs provide  classroom and kitchen training at the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC's Triad Community Kitchen. Ten-week training sessions overseen by Chef Bacon are given at no charge to unemployed, underemployed and homeless individuals to prepare them for careers in the food service industry. Training includes instruction and activities designed to help ensure students are "workplace ready" and a one-week internship with a local food service organization or restaurant to help students gain "real world" job experience. Graduates may obtain further training, professional development and scholarship assistance with transferable credits applied to continued study at Guilford Technical Community College's Culinary program.

Triad Community Kitchen students use donated and purchased food during their course time to create vacuum-sealed, ready-to-heat meals in a bag for distribution to Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC's partner agencies like soup kitchens, group homes and Kids Cafes.

Triad Community Kitchen
Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC
3655 Reed Street, Winston-Salem NC 27107
(336) 784-5770
http://www.hungernwnc.org/

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From Stokes County, NC — The Stokes Purple

The Stokes Purple sweet potato is about how innovation and economic development can be used to sustain local agriculture. It is a technology and globalization story that began five hundred years ago in America, went around the world, and came home to Stokes County, NC.

The Stokes Purple is a sweet potato cultivar (Ipomoea batatas) developed and promoted by StokesCORE, a local nonprofit economic development agency, to help Stokes County farmers diversify production and preserve rural heritage. Its striking color comes from its anthocyanin content, consumption of which is linked to reduced cardiovascular disease.

The sweet potato (not the same as the yam, Dioscorea alata) originated in Mesoamerica and was among many important world foods discovered and developed by generations of Pre-Columbian agriculturalists. Columbus brought it to Europe(1500) where it was carried to the Philippines, then China, India and Southeast Asia. In the late 1600s it was grown in Virginia. By 1700 it arrived in Japan. Today the sweet potato is an important world food. In the US, North Carolina is the largest sweet potato producer.

Contact

Andrew Young, 336-420-3768 or youngprojects@triad.rr.com
BACKGROUND STORY
• Food and economic development in the Piedmont
• Innovation sustains our rural heritage
• The sweet potato in world history
• The Purple Stokes: from local to global
The Stokes Purple sweet potato is about how innovation and economic development can be used to sustain local agriculture. It is a technology and globalization story that began five hundred years ago in America, went around the world, and came home to Stokes County, NC.

The Stokes Purple is a sweet potato cultivar (Ipomoea batatas) developed and promoted by StokesCORE, a local nonprofit economic development agency, to help Stokes County farmers diversify production and preserve rural heritage. Its striking color comes from its anthocyanin content, consumption of which is linked to reduced cardiovascular disease.

The sweet potato (not the same as the yam, Dioscorea alata) originated in Mesoamerica and was among many important world foods discovered and developed by generations of Pre-Columbian agriculturalists. Columbus brought it to Europe(1500) where it was carried to the Philippines, then China, India and Southeast Asia. In the late 1600s it was grown in Virginia. By 1700 it arrived in Japan. Today the sweet potato is an important world food. In the US, North Carolina is the largest sweet potato producer.

Montagnard urban garden in the Piedmont

Asian farmers at the Carolina Farm Stewardship conference

But here the story gets better: The Piedmont has become multicultural, with unique populations of Asians long familiar with growing the sweet potato. Here refugees and immigrants grow lush, dense backyard gardens, planting seeds and varieties of plants from their native lands. The original Purple Stokes was an odd looking potato presented to Stokes farmers by an Asian woman. At NC State University  it was definitively identified as a cousin of its American ancestor. Thus the sweet potato has been around the world, an early example of globalization and technology dispersion. Beginning with a trip that started five hundred years ago with stops all across Europe and Asia, the Purple Stokes has come home!