Digging into a mountain of caviar, sea urchin roe, succulent Kyoto beef, rare conger eels, truffles, and fine champagne, the leaders of the world’s richest and most powerful countries shook their heads over soaring grocery prices in the developed world and spreading hunger in Africa, India, and Asia. Over an eighteen- course banquet prepared for them by sixty chefs, the eight global potentates declared, “We are deeply concerned that the steep rise in global food prices coupled with availability problems in a number of developing countries is threatening global food security. The negative impacts of this recent trend could push millions more back into poverty.”
This statement, which followed the July 2008 meeting of the G8 (Group of Eight) nations in Hokkaido, Japan, was revelatory in several ways. The leaders of France, the United States, Rus sia, Britain, Germany, Canada, Italy, and Japan seemed bemused by the sudden emergence of the specter of food scarcity after de cades of apparent abundance and cheap prices. This was a problem they clearly thought had been fixed.
Concealed within their response were embarrassing admissions. First, in urging major increases in global food aid, the leaders appeared to tacitly concede that wealthy countries had failed to fulfill their pledges to the United Nations’s Millennium Development Goals of 2000 to fight poverty. Second, in calling on the world to reverse declining support for agricultural development and research, they were implicitly confessing that they had let these deteriorate. Third, in demanding food security early warning systems, the G8 leaders effectively admitted that they had been caught unawares by the emerging food crisis— and didn’t like it. There are few things a politician likes less than an unforeseen development, so for good mea sure they backhanded the United Nations Food and Agriculture Or ga ni za tion (FAO), demanding its “thorough reform,” presumably for the sin of having failed to get their attention with its previous warnings.
The “Blessings of the Earth and the Sea Social Dinner” for the G8 leaders, hosted by the government of Japan, had more than a touch of the fall of the Roman Empire about it. The Earth’s eight most powerful leaders and their partners regaled themselves on cornbread stuffed with caviar, smoked salmon, and sea urchin roe; hot onion tart and winter lily bulbs followed by kelp- flavored cold Kyoto beef with asparagus dressed with sesame cream; diced fatty tuna flesh with avocado, shiso, and jellied soy sauce; boiled clam, tomato, and shiso in jellied clear soup; water shield and pink conger dressed with a vinegary soy sauce; boiled prawn with jellied tosazu vinegar; grilled eel rolled in burdock; sweet potato; and fried and seasoned goby with soy sauce and sugar. This beginning was followed by a bisque of hairy crab and salt-grilled bighand thornyhead with vinegar- pepper sauce. The main course was poele of milk- fed lamb flavored with aromatic herbs and mustard, as well as roasted lamb with black truffle and pine seed oil sauce. This was followed by a special cheese selection with lavender honey and caramelized nuts, and then a whimsical “G8 fantasy dessert” and coffee with candied fruits and vegetables. The food was accompanied by Le Rêve grand cru/La Seule Gloire champagne; a sake wine, Isojiman Junmai Daiginjo Nakadori; Corton- Charlemagne 2005 (France); Ridge California Monte Bello 1997; and Tokaji Esszencia 1999 (Hungary). The cost of holding the G8 summit (five hundred million dollars) could have fed for a week the additional one hundred million people left hungry by the emerging food crisis.
Vegetables in South Asian Food
