Wolfson Plans & Prospects 2019

Wolfson News
For more Wolfson news, visit www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/news
Wolfson news
Washoku dinner hosted by
Embassy of Japan
The College welcomed the Embassy
of Japan to host a Washoku dinner
as part of the Japan UK Season of
Culture 2019–20 on 2 February. The
dinner presented Japanese food in
its social and historical context, with
a particular focus on how umami
flavours came to be so integral to
Japanese cooking.
Chef Daisuke Hayashi of London
restaurant Tokimeite worked in
collaboration with Tony Baughan,
Wolfson’s Head Chef, to create a
menu that showcased Japanese
ingredients. The evening began
with Chef Hayashi introducing some
of the key concepts of Japanese
cooking: combining ingredients such
as kombu seaweed and bonito flakes
to amplify the effect of the so-called
‘fifth taste’, umami. He also discussed
the importance of water in creating
the perfect dashi, a class of soup and
K Team work at the Washoku dinner
cooking stock that is the cornerstone
of much Japanese cooking.
Commenting on the evening, Tim
Hitchens said: “Tony Baughan
and Hayashi san partnered up to
produce a meal which was wellbalanced,
unforgettable, and a perfect
introduction to Japan’s unique cuisine.
And the food was complemented
by a suite of sake varieties, each
appropriate to the dishes. The evening
was a triumph.”
Celebrating International Mother
Language Day
Wolfson celebrated International
Mother Language Day on 21 February
with a video featuring students talking
in their own mother language. From
Bengali to Hungarian, British Sign
Language to Dutch, ten different
languages are highlighted in the
video. International Mother Language
Day aims to promote peace and
multilingualism around the world and
K Sampling sake
to protect all mother languages. It
was established to recognise the
1952 Bengali Language Movement in
former East Bengal and the day was
proclaimed by the General Conference
of UNESCO in November 1999.
Wolfson Fellow discovers new
biochemical pathway in plants,
named CHLORAD
Professor Paul Jarvis at the
Department of Plant Sciences and
his team have discovered a new
biochemical pathway in plants
which they have named CHLORAD.
By manipulating the CHLORAD
pathway (from ‘cloroplast-associated
protein degradation’), scientists can
modify how plants respond to their
environment. The researchers hope
that their results, published in Science,
will open the way to new crop
improvement strategies as we face the
prospect of delivering food security for
a global population that is projected to
reach nearly 10 billion by 2050.
WOLFSON COLLEGE OXFORD . PLANS & PROSPECTS . 2019 . 17