Darwin Day 2009: Cooking the Tree of Life

The State Museum presents four cooking demonstrations that highlight the evolutionary history of the meals’ main ingredients. Each demonstration teams a local chef with a biologist sous chef, and the two prepare the meal together, giving both culinary and scientific perspectives. Each menu will be specially designed to focus on a different branch of the Tree of Life: vertebrates, invertebrates, plants, and fungi.

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• Cooking the Tree of Life: Plants
  February, 11 — 7PM
  You don’t have to be a vegetarian or a botanist to appreciate the diversity of life forms in the Kingdom Plantae. Chef Timothy Warnock, corporate chef for U.S. Foodservice, uses ingredients from across the botanical Tree of Life to create the most biodiverse meal you have ever seen. Dr. George Robinson, professor at the University of Albany, guides you through the 500 million-year-old plant Tree of Life.
  
  Cooking the Tree of Life: Invertebrates
  February, 18 — 7PM
  Invertebrates are the most varied group of life on earth, and Chef David Britton from Saratoga’s Springwater Bistro tries to set a world record for the most diverse meal ever prepared. Dr. Jason Cryan, an entomologist from the State Museum, helps steer the menu away from the creepy-crawlies eaten on extreme reality shows and toward the more appetizing branches of this part of the Tree of Life (think lobster!). Birthday cake, in honor of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, will be served.
  
  
• Cooking the Tree of Life: Yeast & Fungi
  February, 25 — 7PM
  This branch of the Tree of Life may give us the most diversity of flavors, from wine to bread to mushrooms to corn smut. Chef Paul Parker from Chez Sophie creates one of the most unusual meals of this series, promising a variety of tastes to match the diversity of Life. Cornell’s Dr. George Hulder, author of the book Magical Mushrooms, Mischievous Molds, offers the evolutionary color commentary as he helps chop and stir the meal.