Idylls of Cuisine #13
[A couple of pictures with some food for thought and contemplation.]
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Palm Oil, Chicken In
Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe once wrote that proverbs are the palm oil with which words are eaten. A recipe for …
Palm Oil Processing
Because palm oil added calories and flavor to traditional African dishes, it entrenched itself in the culinary landscape long before …
Palm Oil, A Mixed Blessing
African palm oil — from Elaeis guineensis and used in traditional African cooking — adds a rich red color and …
Bambara Groundnuts, Not Peanuts
Bambara groundnuts (Voandzeia subterranea) claim no peanuts as relatives. Another indigenous food from West Africa, the groundnut does tend to …
Guinea Fowl, Pintade, Faraona
I first ran into guinea fowl in South America, little balls of feathers covered with Seurat-like pointillage. Later, in Burkina …
Fish: Garum and Beyond
O le bi oju eja ti ehin ko le iwe. (Yoruba) : It is as hard as the eye of …
Idylls of Cuisine #12
[A photograph, and nothing more, for silent contemplation.]
The Black Death Revisited, Momentarily
All the talk about swine flu (April 2009) naturally calls up images of the catastrophic 14th-century pandemic of bubonic plague. …
What Mummies Tell Us about Food
As we all know, or suspect anyway, mummies provide an amazing treasure trove of information about life (and death) in …
