Extra Matter

A promise kept

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Last summer i had a really good conversation with Frederik van Oudenhoven about his book With Our Own Hands, documenting culture and agriculture in the Pamir mountains of Central Asia. Frederik and his co-author Jamila Haider promised that they would return copies to the people whose information they had collected; I’ve only just learned that they kept their promise late last year.

Five tonnes of book travelled overland from the Netherlands to Tajikistan, where it met with a great reception.

Everyone who has seen the book, whether in the police, the bus stop or bazaar, has immediately asked how to get one. The Mountains Societies Development Support Programme will help distribute them to every community, to ensure that at least one copy is accessible in a public space.

The book should live, it is not a monument set in stone. Already we have received critiques: mistakes in spelling, which differs from valley to valley based on pronunciation; differences in recipes from grandmother to grandmother, village to village and certainly valley to valley; and discontent about showing some of the less appealing sides of the Pamirs (like the opium addiction especially on the Afghan side). We would love to find a way to create a live forum for discussion, to capture these differences and nuances – to open up a space for imaginings.

How hard can that be, in this hyperconnected world?

Extra Matter

More eggless mayonnaise

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Aquafaba is kind of what it sounds like; pseudo-Latin (or Italian) for “bean water”. And so far in the boonies is Rome that until this morning, it meant nothing to me. You know how bean water froths? That’s because it contains surfactants, and apparently vegans have been doing all sorts of things that make use of its surfactant abilities as a replacement for egg yolks. The latest commercial product, turning 20,000 gallons of hummus waste aquafaba into gold, is Fabanaise. Read all about it at Food52.

Podcasts

Where’s the latest episode? An explanation

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etp-coverBy rights, there should have been an episode last week, but there wasn’t because I was just back from New York and the James Beard Awards, and I just didn’t have time to put something together. Also, of course, I didn’t win — that honour went to Gravy, from the Southern Foodways Alliance — and richly deserved it was too.

If I had won, I’m sure I would have found time to record something, but it was an immense honour just to be nominated again.

So no episode, because nothing to say, but I have been thinking about the show, and the main conclusion is that I need to carve out more time for myself to make Eat This Podcast. To do that, though, I need to spend a little less time on paid work. And that’s the biggest change I want to make here.

After a lot of soul-searching, I’m going to put Eat This Podcast on the line and open a Patreon account. In case you don’t know about it, Patreon allows you to engage with people who are making things you like with a regular cash donation. You can do different amounts, and you can do it either per item — per show in my case — or per month.

Anyway, the point of this episode is to let you know why the show is late.

Next week, I will, definitely, for sure, have a new show — and details of how you can help me make more and better shows.

Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 030

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2 May 2016

Authentic food news

  1. The whole cultural appropriation story continues to weigh on me. I read Cynthia Bertelsen on “Peanuts and the cooking of West Africa” reflecting on my own pitiful atempts at a “Ghanaian stew” many years ago and wondering whether the twittersphere would descend on her. It didn’t, I don’t think, and the piece remains well-worth reading.
  2. Cynthia suggests that there’s appropriation of a different kind at work, with the peanut (from South America) embraced by the people of West Africa after its introduction by the Portuguese and then again by those same people transported to North America as slaves, as a substitute for their remembered local Bambara groundnut. Cynthia has written in detail about Bambara groundnuts too, but not (I think) about which groundnut was named first in English, and which appropirated whose name. Very intriguing, and something I’d like to research more.
  3. But how do I actually feel about cultural appropriation, given that I don’t really have a culinary culture? The closest I can come is my hatred for what the bagel has become, so often; a soft, unfulfllling bread roll with a hole. And being in New York, that’s doubly obnoxious. But who is baking the fabled New York bagels, which can still be found, today? Puerto Ricans until fairly recently, and probably all sorts of others, not necessariy even Jewish. More research needed on that front too.

And there I’ll leave it, for now.

Extra Matter

Eat This Newsletter 029

  0

25 April 2016

Authentic food news

Not much for you this week. I’m in New York, awaiting tomorrow night’s James Beard Awards dinner, and wondering what I’ll do if I win, and what I’ll do if I don’t win.

  1. The whole cultural appropriation story continues to weigh on me. I read Cynthia Bertelsen on “Peanuts and the cooking of West Africa” reflecting on my own pitiful atempts at a “Ghanaian stew” many years ago and wondering whether the twittersphere would descend on her. It didn’t, I don’t think, and the piece remains well worth reading.
  2. Cynthia suggests that there’s appropriation of a different kind at work, with the peanut (from South America) embraced by the people of West Africa after its introduction by the Portuguese and then again by those same people transported to North America as slaves, as a substitute for their remembered local Bambara groundnut. Cynthia has written in detail about Bambara groundnuts too, but not (I think) about which groundnut was named first in English, and which appropriated whose name. Very intriguing, and something I’d like to research more.
  3. But how do I actually feel about cultural appropriation, given that I don’t really have a culinary culture? The closest I can come is my hatred for what the bagel has become, so often; a soft, unfulfllling bread roll with a hole. And being in New York, that’s doubly obnoxious. But who is baking the fabled New York bagels, which can still be found, today? Puerto Ricans until fairly recently, and probably all sorts of others, not necessariy even Jewish. More research needed on that front too.

And there I’ll leave it, for now.

Wish me luck.