. . . and gumbo for all

During my recent visit to New Orleans, one thing that impressed me most as I learned about the city’s cultural and culinary evolution was the way in which a key element was introduced into the mix.
When the slave traders arrived in west Africa and rounded up the locals for “import” to the New World, they refused to allow the enslaved to carry anything with them. Because okra held a sacred place in African culture as both a food and a healing agent, the women being pressed into slavery hastily wove the dried vegetable pods into their hair in order to bring it to their new home. This is how we came to have okra in North America.

Ever since people began leaving home for points unknown (whether their journeys were voluntary or forced), they’ve brought their treasured comfort foods with them. There’s nothing that can take the edge off of illness or loneliness or anxiety quite like having a meal of what soothed us when we were young. Even now, when I return to Los Angeles from a trip home to Tennessee, my suitcase is tight with packages of country ham and bacon and, until they started being shipped to the West Coast, good ol' Goo Goo Clusters. If I could manage it, I’d include fried catfish in the trove. None of these foods are haute cuisine, but that’s not the point. This is why chefs sharing with each other what their last meal would be, were they ever to end up on death row, invariably list their favorite comfort foods.

The Bantu word for okra, “kigombo,” gave us the name of that quintessential New Orleans food, gumbo. As okra was a special food to the west Africans, so gumbo is to New Orleanians. We all have our own “gumbo,” even if we don’t eat it with a spoon.

Yeah, What HE Said!

It’s gratifying to hear people with more knowledge, experience and authority than yourself say the same thing you’ve been saying all along.

Today I participated in a teleforum with James Oseland, editor of Saveur magazine and author of Cradle of Flavor: Home Cooking From the Spice Islands of Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, who spoke on researching and writing on foreign food cultures and how to respect people and their traditions while doing so. Having spent some 25 years living and traveling in Indonesia and writing on its cuisines, he knows a fair amount about the subject.

And he made the same point that I constantly explain to those who question me about the significance of culinary travel: that when you show curiosity about and enthusiasm for the food and food traditions of another culture, you honor the people of that culture.

Ask anyone, “What’s your favorite food your mother used to fix you when you were growing up?” and you’re almost guaranteed to send that person down a singularly happy path of remembrance. I can’t think of a better, more personal way to build good will with people of other countries and cultures or even other regions of our own country than to take a genuine interest in their foods and their food traditions.