The Culinary Institute of America

In November 2006, as part of this program series, The Culinary Institute of America staged the critically acclaimed “Spain and the World Table,” the largest and most comprehensive conference ever held in the United States on Spanish food, cooking and wine. The following is a video excerpt from that program.

The annual event is the college’s flagship conference, transforming the Napa Valley campus each November into an amazing crossroads of world food and culture. The conference showcases the “gold standards” of world cuisines—from the Mediterranean and Latin America to Asia—that are increasingly reshaping American palates and our industry.

In November 2006, as part of this program series, The Culinary Institute of America staged the critically acclaimed “Spain and the World Table,” the largest and most comprehensive conference ever held in the United States on Spanish food, cooking and wine. The following is a video exercpt from that program.

The annual event is the college’s flagship conference, transforming the Napa Valley campus each November into an amazing crossroads of world food and culture. The conference showcases the “gold standards” of world cuisines—from the Mediterranean and Latin America to Asia—that are increasingly reshaping American palates and our industry.

The Worlds of Flavor International Conference Festival is widely acknowledged as our country’s most influential professional forum on world cuisines and culinary flavor trends. Now in its tenth year, the annual gathering has become a “must attend” for leading chefs, corporate menu decision-makers, foodservice management executives, suppliers, and journalists and other professionals—and always sells out many months in advance.

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of its ground-breaking Worlds of Flavor Conference Series, the CIA will stage The Rise of Asia: Culinary Traditions of the East and Flavor Discovery in 21st Century America this coming November. This spectacular, multi-dimensional event will bring together a conference faculty of more than 60 top chefs, market cooks, food writers, beverage experts, food producers, and other authorities from throughout Asia, the Pacific, and across the United States.

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With Culinary Institute of America chef-instructors to guide you, you'll perfect your technique for making some of the world's classic rice dishes and learn some contemporary ways to present them.

Watch Chef Bill Briwa prepare Spicy Lemongrass Tofu Rice Bowl with Asian Basil.Download Podcast Video

Watch Chef Bill Briwa prepare a Beef Satay Rice Bowl.Download Podcast Video

From the bustling spice markets of Cochin, India… to vibrant Oaxaca, land of the seven moles….from San Sebastian, headquarters of the daring new Spanish cooking….to magical Bangkok, where sumptuous curries challenge our palates with their bold, spicy flavors…the world of food takes us places beyond imagining. For a chef, every journey brings new tastes, new ingredients, new skills and inspiration. The more we see, the more we grow. Travel with Julie Sahni, the cookbook author and Indian food expert, to the coconut plantations of Kerala and the fragrant spice stalls of Delhi. Meet Rick Bayless, chef, Mexican cooking expert and your guide to the subtle secrets of mole negro. Cook a Catalan seafood paella with paella masters from Barcelona, and learn the elements of authentic pad Thai from one of Thailand’s most eminent chefs. Fasten your seat belt for a whirlwind tour of the world’s best tables.

The signature flavors of Thai cooking lie in its foundation seasonings—the ingredients a Thai cook uses to add sweet, sour, salty or herbaceous notes to a particular dish. Chef McDang leads us through those essential, defining ingredients.

In India, fruit chutneys go far beyond the mango version known to most Americans. Watch chef Abhijit Saha prepare one of his favorite chutneys, made with dates, raisins, spices and pomegranate juice.

Exotic and mesmerizing, India is a land of complexity and contrast, a vivid tapestry of peoples, languages and cultures. Among the oldest civilizations on earth, Indian culture has evolved over centuries, absorbing ideas from the Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Moghuls, Portuguese, Dutch, French and, of course, the British. From the Moghuls, northern Indians learned to make rice pilaf and biriyani, an elaborate layered dish of rice and meat. The Moghuls’ refined cooking became the palace cooking and the dominant influence in the north. In the tropical south, the food is hotter and seafood dominates the coastal diet. The treasured fruit of the coconut palm yields coconut milk for curries and coconut water for toddy, a fermented beverage. From north to south, India offers an endlessly varied feast, befitting its varied geography and multicultural heritage.

Join us as we tour the spice coast of tropical Kerala, where home gardens are a tangle of pepper vines and cardamom bushes and mountain plantations yield coconut, cashew nuts, nutmeg and coffee. We’ll cruise the backwaters of Kerala, past rice paddies, shrimp farms and mango trees. With local cooking teacher Nimmy Paul, we’ll have a private lesson in Kerala home cooking, and we’ll watch the great Kathakali dancers perform in their dazzling makeup.

Moving north, we’ll experience the rich Moghul cuisine and the splendor of the Taj Mahal, the most beautiful tomb ever created, an emporer’s tribute to his beloved wife. In nearby Delhi, we’ll explore the colorful stalls of the market, learning the names and uses for the mysterious vegetables and fruits, lentils, chilies and herbs that underlie this major regional cuisine.

In Jaipur, our culinary tour leads us past Hawa Mahal, the Palace of the Winds, a late 18th century example of architectural artistry. And we’ll watch elephants bathing in Moatha Lake outside the fabled Amber Fort, overlooking the great desert plains of Rajasthan.

Together, we’ll uncover the essence of the Indian kitchen as we learn from tandoor masters, market vendors, and specialists in biryani and dosa. In this vast country, with its well-preserved regional cooking and agricultural abundance, we’ll never lack for extraordinary foods to taste.

India is an enormous country, encompassing numerous religions and languages and every possible landscape, from the snow-covered Himalayas to the tropical palm-lined coasts of the south. Likewise, Indian cooking is far from monolithic. To begin to understand it, we must divide India into regions. Suvir Saran, chef-owner of New York City’s Devi restaurant, helps us out.

With its reverence for old ways but its passion for the new, Spain may be Europe’s most exciting food destination today. On this culinary tour of Northern Spain, you’ll see why Catalonia and the Basque Country are captivating American chefs. Nowhere else will you find such a profound dichotomy between the practitioners of traditional cooking and the advocates for change. Catalonia, after all, is home to the restaurants of Ferran Adria, Juan Mari Arzak and others who are shaking culinary foundations with their daring new compositions. Their foams, emulsions and other ultra-modern creations have pushed Spanish cooking forward and intrigued chefs around the globe.

Oaxacan women have perfected the art of making mole. Here, Abigail Mendoza, show us the elaborate preparations required to make this classic dish

Abigail Mendoza Ruiz is the owner of Tlamanalli in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, a restaurant specializing in typical Zapotecan foods. At the age of six, Chef Mendoza Ruiz first learned to make tortillas and began to study the foods and beverages of the Zapotecan Indians.