On THE FOOD SEEN today, Yael Raviv, director of the Umami Food and Art Festival, is joined by the event’s curator, Ame Gilbert, and participating artist Terri Hanlon, as they ready themselves for Edible Architecture: Umami 2011 Gala Event on Monday, March 28th, a fundraiser to support future Umami projects.

“The Umami Food and Art Festival, was created in 2008 as a non-profit biennale event. It offers a meeting ground to people who use food as a medium and who present their audience with a multi-sensory experience in the dining room, or gallery space. The festival’s objective is to open avenues of collaboration between these artists and culinary professionals and expose them to new audiences from both the art and the culinary worlds. Choosing food as a common thread allows Umami to present new ways to look at art and to integrate art into daily life. Umami offers an environment for non-commercial, time-based art and encourages artists who work with non-traditional mediums and forms.”

This week on Cooking Issues Dave and Nastassia get out their Valentine's Day gripes early in the morning. But moreover, Celiac disease sufferers, rejoice! Tune in for an episode all about how you can cook without gluten using xanthan and guar gums and even eggs! Learn about how you can make delicious non-alcoholic cocktails with coriander syrup, why gluten is important in bread making but not so much in cakes and cookies, the necessity of putting foot pedals on your sink and how you can look like a badass sharpening your knives with a leather strop. This episode is sponsored by Modernist Pantry.

"An easy tip to keeping knives super sharp is get yourself a leather strop and strop your knife, and you can use a little oil or even a little bit of an abrasive."

"[On cooking with Celiac's disease] the protein in eggs is fantastic and easy to use and can be used to replaced gluten."

"When you need hardcore gluten is in a bread, in a cake you don't need a lot of it. . in a cookie or a cake you can focus on the texture and structure"

"Don't store anything in your oven, people! It puts you in this mindset that you aren't going to use it."

"The coolest thing that you can possibly do for your kitchen is put foot pedals on your sink, so when your hands are disgusting you don't have to touch anything. And don't skimp on your sink size!"

--Dave Arnold on Cooking Issues

Nawal Nasrallah joins Linda Pelaccio in the studio to celebrate the new edition of her book, Delights from the Garden of Eden. This week on A Taste of the Past, Linda and Nawal delve into the history of Iraqi cuisine and the Sumerian people. Learn about some of the world's oldest recipes written on cuneiform tablets. Learn about the importance of stews in the Iraqi diet! How did traditional, medieval-influenced Iraqi recipes change with the discovery of the New World? Tune into this episode to learn more about cooking techniques for masgouf! Find out how Nawal blends ancient, medieval, and modern recipes in her book! This program has been sponsored by Hearst Ranch. Thanks to SNOWMINE for today's musical interlude.

Credit: Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C., Freer Gallery

"I wanted people to see the other side of Iraq- the culture, the food- the bright side! This was my chance." [3:00]

"We had a revolution in our kitchens in the 19th century when the tomato was introduced." [25:40]

-- Nawal Nasrallah on A Taste of the Past