Douglas J.  Buege--Various Articles

#2

"Digby dinners:Cooking the impossible meal, A professor's challenge"

Appeared in Madison Magazine, April 2002, p. 20.

Throughout history, potentates have held cooks in high esteem, but when those culinary experts prepared a dish that insulted the emperor's tender palate, death became a likely punishment. In the realm of Tim Allen, colorful and outspoken botany and environmental studies professor at UW-Madison, an unsavory meal may result in the under-graduate's equivalent of a fate worse than death: a bad grade. Such risks are afforded only those students brave (or foolhardy) enough to take up the professor's "Digby dinner" challenge.

Rarely would a college student prepare dinner for her teachers, but in Allen's "Plants and Man," a biology course tailored for humanities majors, selected volunteers may avoid writing term papers by opting for seemingly less strenuous activities. Baking bread, brewing beer or cooking and serving the Digby dinner -- named after fastidious British food writer and social critic Digby Anderson -- all meet course requirements. Students who undertake the dinner must examine several of the writer's columns, plan and prepare a meal and serve it to teaching assistants and, possibly, Allen himself. Everything must, of course, meet Anderson's and Allen's stringent guidelines.

Allen's syllabus cautions students that the Digby dinner is not for the faint-hearted. Pitfalls abound, and Allen warns that the dinner's preparation must transcend that of a mere meal: "If you intend to invite friends over for Indian food, then you should start cooking nothing but Indian food two months before." Without taking this time, he contends, one cannot master it.

But mere mastery is not always enough. One student's grade was lowered because she served meat to the professor, but not to herself. Allen's criticism: "She knew nothing about the need for a full set of amino acids" and had given herself a nutritionally deficient meal. Certain meals, such as the "Lipton tea fiasco," live in infamy, earning reference in future syllabi. Allen is still amazed some-one would hand him a cup of tepid water in which a vague package had swum and dare to call it "tea." Tea, everyone knows, is made from leaves.

English major Carmen Martinez claims she really didn't see a choice between preparing a dinner and writing a lengthy paper. "I really love to cook," she explained. Martinez, whose parents both earned livings in the culinary arts -- her mother as a pastry cook and her father as a Paris-trained chef -- read Digby's articles and found herself agreeing with his rigorous approach. In her view, cooking is a "lost art, an important way to bring people together." Martinez's talents fell under the microscope on an early December evening, when she opened her Madison home to an inquisitive teaching assistant and a ravenous reporter.

Obviously, food is the cornerstone of the Digby dinner -- its source a key factor in assessing the quality of the meal. Martinez scored well by selecting a wide range of excellent merchants. The Seafood Center on University Avenue supplied delicious wood-smoked trout. Bread from La Brioche Bakery complemented the variety of cheeses from several sources. Organic fruits and vegetables came from Willy Street Co-op.

The little touches often prove most pleasing. Fern fiddleheads, home-pickled jalape–os, and Rivendell tomatoes all enhanced Martinez's extensive spread. But what really catapulted this culinary event was the selection of beverages. Martinez, who works at the Angelic Brewing Company, enlisted the support of brewmaster Dean Coffey, who supplied brews specially prepared for the upcoming World Beer Cup. Two beers, bitter and abbey, set the mood for a third treat not available in the pub, cyser, a crisp cross between mead and hard cider.

Over the course of the evening, Martinez praised Professor Allen and his mission in the course. His most audacious exploit, preparing bananas Foster and Caesar salad before 400 students, sticks in her mind. She couldn't imagine a more effective presentation to emphasize the ways in which historic quests for herbs and spices fueled global exploration. For Martinez and her fellow classmates, Allen's unconventional teaching methods afford them a deeper appreciation for food by examining the ways appetite has shaped the world throughout human history. In other words, they see that what we've eaten has made us what we are.

Professor Allen failed to make a surprise appearance that night. I believe he would have beamed at the array of comestibles; however, I was not the ultimate judge.

Martinez earned an A.

Douglas J. Buege is a beekeeper, organic gardener and environmental writer living on Madison's Isthmus.

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