fungi in my food – experimental dinner

Fungi in my Food is a dinner experience emerging from a collaborative process between a designer-chef and myself in the first year of my PhD. On the occasion of the ‘Minor Movement’ celebration, we conceived, prepared and organised a participatory event around foodstuff related to fungi.

Do you know what a fungus is? Does the word inspire disgust, or fascination? Do you happen to know that fungi are involved in the creation of many everyday dishes? This collaboration between Marcus O’Shea and Carole Papion, creative researchers, proposes to shed light on these hidden narratives between fungi and humans in an experimental dinner.

Our interpretation of the ‘Minor Movement’ celebration is that of connecting people with fungal specimens through food, one of the most mundane, yet delightful parts of life. This multi-sensory experience intends to engage the audience through every sense to connect them with an ethnographic narration about fungi, their origins and products. In superimposing sensation and mind, we present the intertwined stories of the fungi involved in our dinner to create amplified culinary experiments.

This ‘happening’ consists firstly in recording how we source the fungal products, and creatively document their trails from harvesting, to production to transformation and consumption using methods inspired from Geographies of food: following, by I. Cook et al. (2006). These short narratives are presented in this document to take away. We gave ourselves the realistic maximum of 6 fungi to investigate and experiment with. We will also document the making of the dishes — including diverse fermentations, tearing and melting materials — as well as the participants’ feedback when tasting. Our cooking will aim to expand the original flavours and properties of the fungi, combined in two independent courses.