| Synopsis |
Can you imagine a world without Fish & Chips? A world without french fries, without crisps? In short, can you imagine a world without potatoes?
In fact very seldom we pause to think that such an ubiquitous vegetable in present days, was almost completely unkown in Europe and North America up until 1700 and beyond.
Starting from the XVIII century the potato became a fortune and a disgrace for millions of people. It has revolutionized Western civilization more than we now perceive. In France, England, Ireland, the United States, the tuber was first rejected as an evil fruit, then heavily grown by the poor for whom it meant a formidable mean of subsistence but also took a terrible death toll during scarcity, to become today the ordinary and beneath notice vegetable that appears in almost everyone table.
From the Incas peasants who first dig it out of the earth some 5.000 years ago, the potato has made a journey into our society which encompass richness and poverty, population explosions and famine, power and despair.
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In this film we will:
- Describe the huge and high-technology modern days cultivation of potatoes and the amazing markets behind the crop.
- Enter into sophisticated kitchens of luxury restaurants to see how potatoes has attained stardom status in nowadays gourmet cuisine.
- Travel into the distant past of Andean Incas peasants. Their primitive and yet successful agricultural techniques. Their simple and yet nutritious recipes for potatoes.
- Follow the journey of the tuber into the Old world and the initial strong rejection of it by people.
- Discover how the spud rose to power in Europe during the eighteenth century and became the reason behind population explosions and famine.
- Explore the crucial role of the potato into the English industrial revolution, the Irish outstanding increase in population, the French imaginative use of the tuber.
- Learn about the easiness of growing potatoes, about their incredible nutritious content but also about the catastrophic effects of their selection.
- See how the potatoes are grown and used in present days in almost every country and culture. The potato is in fact the best all-round package of nutrition known to mankind.
The thread of the film, and the links among the journey of potatoes in space as well as in time, will be represented by the Quechua indians still living above 3500 meters on the Andes and still basing their diet on cultivation of potatoes exactly as their ancestors under the Incas rule did.
Following the Quechua we could follow steps which link their way of living off potatoes with the History of the tuber into our societies.
Quechua nowadays cultivate a staggering 4.000 varieties of potatoes and have at least 1000 words to name them. This is sharply in contrast with the fact that Irish peasants of the XIX century were almost solely growing a variety called the lumber. This brought catastrophe when disease struck.
Quechua have a few simple recipes for potatoes while France in 1800's, thanks to Parmentier, a lot of gourmet dishes blossomed.
The Indians still live almost only on potatoes. This is owed to the high nutritious content of the spud. Inside a potato there are almost all the vitamins, proteins, and carbohydrates able to sustain human life.
The labourers who allowed the Industrial Revolution in England were mainly fed on potatoes thanks to their nutritious value.
It is not preposterous to say that the potato had a central role in the making of History.
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