Plotkin to host dinner at Tableau

By ALAN SMASON

It was a fortuitous meeting of the minds some time ago when native New Orleanians Mark Plotkin, an ethnobotanist, and Dickie Brennan, a renowned restauranteur, elected to share a good bottle of wine and discuss New Orleans Creole fare.

Ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin, center, with shaman Don Luciano Mutambajoy, right. (©ACT)

Visiting his hometown on one of his all too brief annual visits, Plotkin remarked to Brennan how truly dependent the local cuisine has been upon items originally cultivated from the Latin American rainforest. He reeled off item after item of local cuisine standard ingredients: red pepper, black pepper, okra, mirlitons, bananas, rice, coffee, chocolate, vanilla, cinnamon, red beans and sugar cane. Brennan was nonplussed.

“New Orleans red beans are native to Mexico,” Plotkin pointed out, “and sugar cane is from the tropics of New Guinea and India.”

“Imagine Bananas Foster with no banana, no vanilla, no cinnamon and no sugar,” he told the restauranteur, whose family invented the dish back in the early 1950s.

Brennan became ever more interested and paid close attention to what Plotkin had to say about the importance of the work he is conducting, literally, in the field. Before the evening was over, Brennan was convinced to help Plotkin in whatever way he could.

Plotkin elaborated many of these same points in a recent CCJN telephone interview from his Amazon Conservation Team (ACT) offices in Arlington, VA. “Before Columbus discovered America, the Irish had no potatoes, the Swiss had no chocolate and the French had no vanilla,” the ACT president stated. Plotkin started ACT in 1996.

Plotkin’s work with the indigeous peoples living in and around the rainforest has taken him to the remotest areas of Latin America. Over the course of the last two decades, he has worked with local shamans – medicine men – who know the rainforest curatives and medicines as intimately as any local pharmacist knows his stock. This sophisticated scientist has learned much from these simple tribesmen, who wear loin cloths and walk around bare-breasted, yet carry with them impressive knowledge passed down to them orally from similar shamans over untold generations.

Mark Plotkin and Don Luciano Mutambajoy (©ACT)

“They are the original locovores (local eaters),” Plotkin stated. “They don’t go anywhere to get the stuff they eat or use in their medicines. They either grow it, they hunt it or they pick it.”

Plotkin’s efforts to focus on the importance of the products derived from the rainforests, the shamans and to link them with the Creole cuisine that has made New Orleans one of the world’s great centers of epicurean delights will pay off this Tuesday night, October 1, when he, Brennan and ACT welcome dozens of diners to Brennan’s Tableau Restaurant, 616 St. Peter Street for a lecture and benefit dinner.

The dinner will highlight many of the food staples that originated in the rainforest and will be covered in Plotkin’s address.

In addition the paramount shaman of the Ingano tribe of the northwest Amazon, Don Luciano Mutambajoy, will be on hand to greet supporters of conservation at the event. According to Plotkin, many of the most promising leads for curing so-called “incurable” disease come from the rainforest.

“That means rainforest plants and rainforest knowledge,” he continued. This is what the indigenous people know.” Mutambajoy received the equivalent of a knighthood in conservation from the late Prince Berhnhard of the Netherlands. He speaks no English, but will converse with the help of one of his vice-presidents, Lilliana Madrigal, a Costa Rican who will serve as translator. It was Madrigal who helped to found ACT with Plotkin in 1996.

Funds raised at the dinner will help ACT continue its important work in managing and helping to protect some 32 Indian tribes and over 70 million acres of rainforest lands. This is especially important in the case of several tribes who wish to have only limited contact with the outside world.

For his part Brennan has put together an impressive menu featuring many of the foodstuffs and spices Plotkin will mention in his address. The Tableau staff has prepared a six-course meal complete with wine pairings and a cocktail hour prior to the lecture portion of the evening.

“That’s what so exciting about this. They’ve come up with a unique menu (and) a unique feast that they are concocting,” Plotkin explained. “This is something very special. They’ve put a lot of elbow grease in coming up with unique preparations.”

The main course will feature duck, since duck is native to the rainforest areas and a staple among the tribes living there. “My hat’s off to Dickie,” he continued. “How many New Orleanians would ask ‘How can I help the rainforest?'”

Plotkin also spoke of his own Jewish connection to tzedakah (charity) and social activism, best shown in the concept of tikkun olom (“healing the world”).

“There are very few non-profits that can show the kinds of measurable results and that have such impact with as modest a budget,” he added. “I’m coming home to look for like-minded souls to (improving) the world we live in terms of healing by making the world better.”

Tickets are $85 each with corporate and other sponsorships also available.To register for the event in advance, click here. Tickets will be available at the door. For more information call ACT at 703-522-4684 or 301-651-9106.