Pre
sident Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama have relentlessly encouraged educational achievement, so it makes perfect sense that their beloved Crustmaster, Executive Pastry Chef Bill Yosses, will be a guest lecturer this Fall for a pathbreaking new undergraduate science course at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts--which also happens to be where both Obamas earned their law degrees. Yosses will also be giving an evening lecture that's open to the public.The course, Science of the Physical Universe 27, “Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to the Science of Soft Matter” uses food and cooking to explicate fundamental principles in applied physics and engineering, and is bringing together eminent Harvard researchers and world-class chefs. When it debuted last week, the class was mobbed with hundreds of excited students who were desperate to enroll, according to the student newspaper. Yosses (above) will be teaching about the mechanics of solid foams--otherwise known as how mousse, meringue, cakes, and breads become the delights that amaze the First Family as well as anyone lucky enough to be invited to a White House event that includes his pastry kitchen creations. Students will be cooking--and eating--their science experiments during lab sessions.
DC-based chef José Andrés, who has an empire of restaurants that includes Jaleo and minibar, and Los Angeles's The Bazaar, as well as New York's Dan Barber of Blue Hill, are two internationally acclaimed chefs who do double duty as policy advisers for the President and Mrs. Obama. Both will also guest lecture for the course, and they'll be giving evening lectures that are open to the public, too.
The course is super haute
Taught by Harvard professors Michael P. Brenner and David A. Weitz, the course is a collaboration between Alicia, the foundation created by chef Ferran Adrià of El Bulli fame, and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The science of cooking, also known as molecular gastronomy, has a huge following among professional chefs and home cooks alike, and in addition to Yosses, Andrés, and Barber, Harvard has some of the best chefs in the world showing up for the in-class lectures, as well as for the evening talks, which are described as "topic-related lectures" that are meant to "inform and inspire." The Harvard Crimson reported that about 600 students turned out for the first class meeting last Thursday, with every seat in the large auditorium taken, and students sitting in the aisles, standing along the walls, and spilling into the hallway. Three hundred students will be enrolled, by lottery.
Yosses lectures on September 20
Yosses' fantastic dessert cookbook The Perfect Finish was just published in June. In addition to all the history Yosses literally makes at the White House, he's also the only White House chef to ever publish a non-White House cookbook while still "in office." His lecture on Monday, Sept. 20 is titled "Brain Candy: How Desserts Slow the Passage of Time." To get an idea of Yosses' lecture style when he's talking food science, watch him explain the mechanics of composting in this White House video. Yosses is deeply immersed in food history, too: He's frequently noted that University of Michigan's Feeding America: The Historic American Cookbook Project is one of his favorite resources. It's a digital archive of cookbooks from the 1600's forward.Andrés will lecture on October 26
In addition to much behind-the-scenes work on the Let's Move! campaign, Andrés is currently starring in episode two of Let's Cook, the White House video cooking series, with Senior Policy Adviser For Healthy Food Initiatives Sam Kass. Andrés is also the only chef serving on Commerce Secretary Gary Locke's US Travel and Tourism Advisory Board. This evening, Andrés will join Adrià and Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking, for the first lecture event of the series, which is being billed as "Science and Cooking: A Dialogue." Professors Weitz and Brenner will moderate. Although the lecture is free, it required tickets, and they're all spoken for. Andrés will be making a second solo appearance, however, on Tuesday, October 26, for a discussion of "Gelation." His ThinkFoodGroup is one of the sponsors of the lecture series. (Above: The First Lady with Kass, center, and Andrés in the Kitchen Garden) Barber lectures on November 15
Barber is a world-famous advocate for organic and sustainable agriculture, and a board member of the Stone Barns Center For Food and Agriculture in New York, as well as a renowned author and James Beard Award winning chef. In 2009, he was on the Time 100 list of most influential people in the world (as were the President and Mrs. Obama). Barber is the only chef who is currently a Council member of the President's Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition, which was revamped and updated for Mrs. Obama's Let's Move! campaign. Barber's public lecture will be on Monday, November 15, and he'll be speaking on "Cultivating Flavor," which he'll also cover in the class. He'll talk about soil and microbes, and how these impact the flavor and nutritional values of food crops. Barber's Greenwich Village restaurant, Blue Hill, was one of President and Mrs. Obama's date-night venues in 2009.
Information
The full schedule and details for the public lecture series is here; other chefs scheduled to speak include Alinea's Grant Achatz; master chocolatier Enric Rovira; Wylie Dufresne of wd~50; and Carles Tejedor of Via Veneto, among others. Harvard's March, 2010 press release announcing the new course is here.
*Photos by Obama Foodorama; cover of The Perfect Finish from W.W. Norton
