Singkong, Manioc, Mandioca, Mandió, Tapioca, Yuca: Singing the Praises of Manihot esculenta (Cassava)

May 10, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Chipa, chipa!” yelled the little Paraguyan girl – all of maybe 8 years old, thrusting a large flat basket draped with a smudged white cloth against the open window of the bus. I smelled the warm cassava bread even before she flicked off the cloth with a flourish, much as a magician reveals the white rabbit cowering under his top hat. I pointed to the bread closest to me and she held out her hand. Payment first, then food. I […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Cassava, Cooking, Food writing, Latin America, Local foods, Paraguay, Photography • Tags: Brown streak disease, Cassava, Chipa, Latin American cooking, Manioc, Manioc flour, Paraguay, Photography

With Roots in Africa: Okra, a Veritable World Traveler

February 22, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Although my father used to fry fresh okra, rolling it first in beaten egg and then coating it with crushed saltine crackers, he never grew it in the vast backyard gardens of my childhood. So, quite by accident, I learned about the okra plant in an entirely different place. Rigoberto and his cousin dug the garden patch, stirring up the Honduran earth with a rusted shovel and a hoe missing a screw, which made a loud squeak each time it […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, American Cooking, Cooking, Ethiopia, Honduras, Local foods, Okra, Photography • Tags: Africa, Brunswick Stew, Charleston Receipts, Cornbread Nation, Ethiopia, Gumbo, Honduras, Karen hess, Margaret Holmes, Okra

The Story Behind a Kitchen-Counter Sweet-Potato Patch

February 6, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

There’s something about sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) that I cannot seem to shake. Maybe there’s some sort of cellular memory thing going on, like perhaps my ancestors sat around somewhere, gratefully chewing on roasted sweet potatoes, surviving a dry spell in food production. A good reason to foster a sweet potato patch. We Americans now harvest far fewer sweet potatoes than 50 years ago – 190,000 acres in 1960 as opposed to 116,000 in 2010 according to statistics from the […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, American Cooking, Cookbooks, Cooking, England, Gardens, Local foods, Photography, Southern Food, Sweet Potatoes • Tags: Elinor Fettiplace, George Washington Carver, Hilary Spurling, John Gerard, John Parkinson, Sweet potato, Thomas Dawson

* “We raise the wheat, they give us the corn” : a reflection on life in antebellum Virginia

February 4, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Not too long ago, before the snow fell and kept falling, I drove down to Critz, Virginia, the homeplace of Virginia tobacco baron, J. R. Reynolds. Reynolds’s parents, Hardin Reynolds and Nancy Jane Cox Reynolds, owned  several hundred slaves, who worked the 717-acre Rock Spring plantation. One of these slaves went by the name of “Kitty,” a cook so celebrated that her picture now hangs in the restored cookhouse. Nancy Jane – who could apparently write a fine hand – […]

Categories: Africa, Southern Food, Sweet Potatoes • Tags: Critz, R. J. Reynolds, Slavery, Southern cooking, Southern Food, Sweet Potatoes, Virginia

*”Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new”: A Sweet Potato Rhapsody

January 25, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new,” or so confessed St. Augustine, a Catholic saint born in 354 A.D., in what is now Algeria. And I, I could also say the same, about many things. One of them being sweet potatoes, a beloved Southern staple.** It was a Thanksgiving Day. I was five, going on six. Old enough to know what I liked to eat. But that day I added another “yuck” food to a list […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, American Cooking, Bibliographies, Southern Food • Tags: George Washington Carver, Old Ebbitt Grill, Southern cooking, Sweet potato, Thanksgiving, Virginia, World Food Habits

* A Cuisine Created by Slave Women: A Review of Kitty Morse’s Mint Tea and Minarets, and a Brief Word about Dadas**

January 8, 2013 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Dealing with the death of beloved parents takes a great toll on people, leading them on journeys of self-discovery often not possible while parents still live and breathe and exert influence on their adult child’s life. Rarely does settling up an inheritance take sixteen years of patience and hair-pulling, constantly reminding the bereaved of their loss. But that is exactly what cookbook author Kitty Morse endured as she stayed true to her English father Clive Chandler’s last wishes, to preserve […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Cookbooks, Cooking, Morocco, Photography, Southern Food • Tags: Azemmour, Kitty Morse, Leonora Peets, Marrakech, Mint Tea and Minarets, Moroccan cuisine, Morocco, Southern cooking

The Meat of the Matter: A Question of Sacred Reverence

October 26, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Meat eating presents modern society with a bit of a dilemma. How to raise and slaughter large numbers of animals under humane conditions, while keeping the price down and within wallet reach of most consumers? That’s the major issue, tinged with other, often moralistic, questions. First, right up front, I am not a vegetarian, and never will be, despite having fumbled with the idea a few times. My first experience with vegetarianism came about chiefly out of curiosity. The central […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Beef, Cattle, Cooking, Festivals, Hunger, Lent, Local foods, Photography • Tags: Beef, Bruce Aidells, Farming, Meat, Michael Symon, Photography, Vegetarianism

Reflections on a Green-Grape Tart

September 28, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Sugary milky sweetness, that first delicious taste, imprints itself on a baby’s tiny tongue, and seals forever a great love. From the very beginning of life, then, a yearning for that nectar haunts us forever and never leaves us in peace. This primal urge for sweetness led to the scourge of slavery and fuels the modern obesity epidemic. Imagine, for a moment, vast fields of sugar cane, saber-sharp green blades swaying under gentle tropical breezes, fed by the merciless sun […]

Categories: Africa, France, French Cooking, Grapes, Middle Ages, Science of cooking • Tags: Grapes, Paula Wolfert, Sidney Mintz, Slavery, Sweetness and Power

Another Holy Trinity of the Kitchen: The Magic of Milk, Eggs, and White Flour

September 21, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Every time I pour crêpe batter into my 8-inch Teflon*-lined crêpe pan, I see deep scratches, the ones that Habiba made with the fork she used while cooking a three-egg cheese-and-herb omelet one wintry Moroccan morning. The scratches don’t affect the pan’s performance, just as wounds and scars don’t fundamentally change who we are and how we function in the world. Pots and pans, like sugar-burned hands and fingers cut by dull knives, bear pale scars. These blemishes remind me […]

Categories: Agriculture, Cattle, Cooking, Eggs, France, French Cooking, Local foods, Milk, Morocco, Photography, Techniques • Tags: Crêpes, Eggs, Flour, France, French Cooking, Meditations, Milk, Photography

Two Moons and a Ksar

September 4, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

It’s funny how sights, sounds, and smells trigger memories, isn’t it? Tastes, too. When I photographed a blue moon the other night, a very specific image bubbled up for me.* Perhaps, in a way, you could deem it a Proustian madeleine moment. Although I didn’t really eat anything. Standing there, trying to keep the camera still as the small telephoto lens pulsated in rhythm with each of my heartbeats, I remembered a night in Morocco, in El Kalaa des M’Gouna, […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Arab cooking, Cooking, Food writing, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Photography • Tags: Morocco

Where Rosemary Flourished, the Woman Ruled*

August 12, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I cut the rosemary this morning, the lack of love and attention these past few weeks plainly written in its leggy tendrils, reaching too far for the sun, like arms longing for something to hug. Rosemary, the herb of remembrance. What do I remember when the piney, resinous odor of rosemary sticks to my fingers and leaves a lingering perfume on everything I touch? I remember Morocco, where I lived in a very modern house, its kitchen festooned with orange and […]

Categories: Africa, Beef, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Photography • Tags: France, French Cooking, Herbs, Remembrance, Rosemary

An Imam in Paris: Al-Tahtawi’s Visit to France (1826–1831) by Rifa’a Rafi’ al-Tahtawi, Translated by Daniel L. Newman

May 14, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“For readers interested in early encounters between European and Arabic culture, An Imam in Paris: Al-Tahtawi’s Visit to France (1826–1831) provides an alluring glimpse into the life and thoughts of one man who recorded Parisian life around the time that Orientalism firmly captured the European imagination.” Rare is the native English speaker who reads and writes Arabic, classical or otherwise. And thus a vast body of literary work lies inaccessible to those who desire to increase their understanding and appreciation of the Arabic-speaking […]

Categories: Arab cooking, Book Reviews, Egypt, France, French Cooking • Tags: al-Tahtawi, Arabs, Daniel L. Newman, Egypt, France, Ottoman Empire, Travel memoirs

Prometheus Unbound: New Evidence on Humans’ Early Use of Fire

April 3, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I woke up this morning fully intending to end my two weeks of silence on this blog – due to familial obligations – with a preliminary examination of the role of ducks in French cuisine. But that alluring topic took a sudden backseat when I opened up my local newspaper and read, “Humans May have Used Fire 1 Million Years Ago.” Recent archaeological finds in a South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave place human use of fire at least several hundreds of thousands of […]

Categories: Africa, Archaeology, Cooking, Drawings, France, Paintings • Tags: Africa, Félix Régnault, Grottes de Gargas, Myths, Paleolithic Diet, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Richard Wrangham, Wonderwerk Cave

The Surprising French Kitchen

March 14, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

One of the best things about owning a lot of books is that I tend to forget what I have. That makes it seem like Christmas nearly every day, if you know what I mean. This morning I wandered through my house, poking at different books lounging in rather haphazard order on my rather odd collection of bookshelves. Searching for pictures of traditional kitchens, I stooped down in front of one of the Pier 1 bamboo bookshelves and pulled out […]

Categories: Algeria, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Spices • Tags: At Home in France, Christopher Petkanas, Dordogne, France, Mique, North Africa

Tasting France in Senegal

March 9, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The ocean there, it’s infinite, a place where horizon and water meet like a seam in a dress, a little bump and then smoothness again. Sunlight pierces the dawn’s fading blackness and, overhead, the parasitic gulls swirl, their curved yellow beaks moving incessantly, filling the air with their own peculiar songs. And then human voices join in, throbbing, shutting out the pounding noise of the waves. Senegalese fishermen singing Men, women, and children rush to the boats, thrusting their hands […]

Categories: African Cooking, France, French Cooking, Senegal • Tags: African Cooking, Fish, France, French Cooking, Mullet, Senegal, West Africa

Fatema Hal: The Interchange of Culinary Ideas Between Morocco and France

February 13, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

On Tuesday, Fatema’s talk (in French) is on “Maroc-France: La cuisine en partage” (“Sharing Food and Cuisine: Between Morocco and France”). Fatema will also do a demonstration on almond briwats on Wednesday March 14, at 3 at GU (Location is ICC 425), and she will give a talk at the French Embassy/Maison Française on Thursday March 15 at 7 p.m.: “Le Maroc sur la route des épices” (Morocco and the spice road). This talk will be translated in English.

Categories: Food News, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco • Tags: Culinary History, Fatéma Hal, Food History, France, French cuisine, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco

Preserved Lemons: The New French Staple?

January 23, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Meats preserved in wine become dry and nourishing: they dry out because of the wine; they are nourishing because of the flesh. Preserve din vinegar, they ferment less, because of the vinegar, and are quite nourishing. Meats preserved in salt are less nourishing, as salt deprives them of moisture, but they become lean, dry out, and are sufficiently laxative. Hippocrates, On Regimen in Acute Diseases  A few days ago, contemplating some minutiae or other on French culinary history, I came across […]

Categories: Cooking, Food Science, France, French Cooking, Lemons, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Nutrition, Science of cooking • Tags: Culinary History, Food History, French Cooking, Kitty Morse, Lactic acid fermentation, Larousse Gastronomique, Lemons, Meyer lemons, Moroccan Cooking, Preserved Lemons

Arabs in France: An Early Account by an Egyptian Imam

January 20, 2012 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Rare is the native English speaker who reads and writes Arabic, classical or otherwise. And thus a vast body of literary work lies inaccessible to those who desire to increase their understanding and appreciation of the Arabic-speaking world. Because there is this hole in the material available to scholars and others, the scholarship of much of Europe’s past likely could be construed as being incomplete or even erroneous. That’s why it’s necessary to herald the appearance of works like An […]

Categories: Book Reviews, Egypt, France, French Cooking, Middle East • Tags: al-Tahtawi, Culinary History, Egypt, Food History, France, Imam in Paris, Orientalism, Ottoman Empire, Paris

Unquenchable: Natalie MacLean’s Terrific New Book on Wine

November 7, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

If, like me – overwhelmed by the hundreds of possible choices in front of you at the grocery store or local wine shop – you’ve ever stood in front of the endless shelves of stunning wine bottles and felt like just closing your eyes and grabbing a bottle, any bottle (preferably one on the lower shelves where the price stickers read below $10 a bottle), then, you’re going to just love Canadian wine writer Natalie Maclean’s new book, Unquenchable: A […]

Categories: Africa, Book Reviews, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Germany, Italian Cooking, Italy, Wine • Tags: Book Reviews, Château de Roquefort, M.F.K. Fisher Award, M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, Natalie MacLean, Peter Mayle, Provence, Rosé, Unquenchable, Wine

The Creation of French Africa: Officialdom at Work

October 27, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

True, the British colonized the Gambia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Nigeria, but for all practical purposes, like a roll of the dice, West Africa fell to the French. And it wasn’t an easy roll of the dice, either. Carton after carton of documents from the late 1800s arrive at my assigned reading space in the Archives d’Outre-Mer. I’m looking for things like the impeccably handwritten book on West African agriculture or mentions of food eaten by colonial administrators, things that […]

Categories: Africa, France, Paintings, Portugal • Tags: Maps, Portugal, West Africa

Belleville Revisited

October 6, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The Belleville market — straddling the crossroads of Paris’s 10th, 11th, 19th, and 20th arrondissements — presents the determined photographer with a tremendous dilemma: how to take pictures without being literally swept up in the crowds and jostled like a buoy bobbing in heavy seas? Although the market runs from the Menilmontant metro stop to Belleville (about 2 km.), the easiest way to tackle it  seems to be to get to the Belleville stop, the beginning (or end, depending your […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Algeria, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Photography • Tags: Belleville, France, French cuisine, Open-Air Markets, Paris

Belleville, Paris, France: II

September 22, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Algeria, France, French Cooking, Photography • Tags: Belleville, France, French Cooking, Paris, Photography

Belleville, Paris, France: I

September 19, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Belleville, the site of my upcoming study in France, filled with other worlds and other tongues, other ways and other dreams, but all French, just the same.

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Agriculture, France, French Cooking, Local foods, Photography • Tags: Africa, African Cooking, Belleville, France, French Cooking, Open-Air Markets, Paris

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France and Me, Etc.

August 26, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Dear readers of Gherkins & Tomatoes /Cornichons & Tomates, Soon I will embark on a great adventure, doing research on France’s colonial empire at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Archives nationales d’outre mer in Aix-en-Provence, thanks to a grant from the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Until I return, I will not have the time to devote to posting the intricate blog posts that I love to research, write, and share. I trust that you, gentle readers, will however […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture, Algeria, French Cooking, Libraries, Local foods, Photography, Reference, Senegal, Tunisia, Vietnam • Tags: Aix-en-Provence, Archives, Archives nationales d'outre mer, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Colonial France

Vivre en l’Outre-Mer, or, The Trials of Living in French Congo ca. 1923: Part III

August 22, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Once settled into their bungalow overlooking Stanley Pool in Brazzaville, the Vassals faced the problem of hiring household help, especially a cook. Unlike many Europeans, they found a cook who knew his business, of whom Gabrielle wrote: I am glad, too, to have a change from German cooking.* Our primitive black Matamba is far superior to the fair, civilized Anna we have left behind [in Germany]. In such extremely primitive surroundings, I come to a meal without any expectation of […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Chefs, Cooking, French Cooking • Tags: Africa, Brazzaville, Cooks, France, French colonial empire, French Colonies, French Cooking, Gabrielle M. Vassal, Life in French Congo

Famine in Somalia: Why are Food Writers Not Talking about the Black Horse?

August 12, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, ‘Come!’ I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a day’s wages, and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!’” (Rev. 6:5-6 NIV). I […]

Categories: Africa, Agriculture • Tags: Al-Shabaab, Djibouti, Famine, France, French Somaliland, Horn of Africa, Malkhadir M. Muhumed, Mogadishu, Somali people, Somalia

Vivre en l’Outre-Mer, or, The Trials of Living in French Congo ca. 1923: Part II

August 11, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Like many writers of her era, Gabrielle M. Vassal tended not to be very complimentary of Africans in Life in French Congo (1925) and compared them negatively and constantly to the Asians she’d known during her sojourns in Vietnam and China. She recorded her experiences during a trip to Libreville early during her stay in A.E.F. , before she and her husband settled in a bungalow in Brazzaville, saying about a luncheon meal served at the hospital there: At 12 […]

Categories: Africa, Cooking, French Cooking • Tags: Africa, Brazzaville, French colonial empire, French Colonies, French Congo, French Cooking, Gabrielle M. Vassal, Libreville

Vivre en l’Outre-Mer, or, The Trials of Living in French Congo ca. 1923: Part I

August 8, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

When the French government appointed Dr. Joseph Vassal, Englishwoman’s Gabrielle Vassal’s French husband, Head of Health Services for Equatorial French Africa (A.E.F.), he exclaimed happily to her, “Je suis nommé en A.E.F.” Naturally she asked, “What’s A.E.F.?” So he replied “Afrique Equatoriale Francaise,” and pointed to Gabon, Tchad, Oubangi-Chari, and the Congo, with its capital at Brazzaville. And that is how she started on the journey that she recorded in minute, if somewhat racially biased, detail in Mon séjour au […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, France, French Cooking • Tags: Africa, Brazzaville, Colonialism, Congo, France, French colonial empire, French Cooking, Gabrielle M. Vassal, Natural History Museum, Oubangi-Chari, Tchad

RAMADAN KARIM — The Fast

July 28, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

(I wrote this several years ago and include it here as a tribute to the Moroccans I knew then and to all the people who will begin fasting for Ramadan starting on Monday, August 1. Note that while Paula Wolfert’s cookbook, Couscous and Other Good from Morocco, seems to be cited everywhere, Kitty Morse — who grew up in Morocco — has also written a number of excellent books on Moroccan cuisine.) Manage with bread and butter until God sends the […]

Categories: Bread, Morocco, Recipes • Tags: Agadir, Ait Baha, Anti-Atlas, Bread, Cooking, Fasting, Food, High Atlas, Morocco, Peace Corps, Ramadan, Recipes

“Authentic” French Food: A Real Parvenu

July 5, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Spend a weekend reading Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography (2007) and you’ll end up with quite a full plate, filled with crazy peddlers, ruthless kings, slain surveyors, and insular peasants. And you might even gain a whole new outlook on France and her hidden history, Rick Stein’s TV show, French Odyssey, to the contrary. Named a Slate Best Book of the Year and winner of the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, The Discovery of France takes common nostalgia about […]

Categories: Africa, Algeria, France, French Cooking • Tags: Algeria, Duc de Talleyrand, France, French cuisine, French Odyssey, Graham Robb, Marie-Antoine Carême, Marine Le Pen, National Front, Ondaatje Prize, Rick Stein, Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, The Discovery of France

Eating Around the Empire in a Day: The 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition

June 30, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

To her sons who have extended the empire of her genius and made dear her name across the seas, France extends her gratitude. ~~ Inscription on the facade of the colonial museum, now the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration Before EuroDisney, people who might never be able to go to Tahiti or Senegal or Morocco often attended various fairs and expositions. One such exposition left a lasting mark on France:  the 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition. Twenty-five years in […]

Categories: Africa, Asia, Cooking, France, French Cooking, Morocco • Tags: 1931 Paris International Colonial Exposition, Africa, France, Louis Hubert Lyautey, Marseille, Morocco, Paris, Vincennes

Couscous in France: It’s a Long Story

June 28, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

To look at all the Maghrebi/North African restaurants in Paris, you might be tempted to think the food they serve appeared only recently in France. It’s not hard to visualize this scenario when you consider the exodus of pieds noirs and Harkis (local men who served as soldiers for France) that occurred as Algeria fought for independence from France, culminating in 1962 with the Evian Accords. Think about the numbers – guesstimates, yes: over 900,000 pieds noirs and 91,000 Harkis […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Arab cooking, Cookbooks, Couscous, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco • Tags: Charles de Clairambault, Clifford Wright, Couscous, Françoise Bernard, France, Francois Rabelais, Garnantua, Ginette Mathiot, Harkis, Je Sais Cuisiner, Jean-Jacques Bouchard, La Bonne Cuisine de Madame Saint-Ange, Mohamed Oubahli, Morocco, Pieds noirs

Léon Isnard: Bringing the Cuisines of Africa to France

June 24, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

“It seems that the word couscous is a Gallic version of “rac keskes,” which means “crushed small.” ~ Leon Isnard Whether you think about it consciously or not, the nineteenth-century European drive for overseas colonies still molds our world. Ever since the Portuguese sailed for Prince Henry the Navigator out of Sagres, an ocean-facing place now boasting a top-flight pousada, the world was destined never to be the same again. France grabbed just as hard for her share of the […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Algeria, Bibliographies, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Morocco, Tunisia • Tags: Algeria, France, Henry the Navigator, Léon Isnard, Le Grand Hôtel Bourelly, Maghreb, Oran

An Ancient Mediterranean Taste: France’s Boutargue

June 20, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

The Egyptians who fled to Marseille from Egypt after the Napoleonic debacle there  (1801) brought with them a hankering for batarekh, now called boutargue or poutargue in Provençal. Happily, Marseille happened to be a place where they could find batarekh, a caviar-like product made from the pressed and dried roes of grey mullets (Mugil cephalus). Eaten sliced potato-chip thin with olive and lemon juice, batarekh dated back centuries to ancient Egypt. At the time that the refugees stumbled off the […]

Categories: Arab cooking, Egypt, Fish, France, French Cooking • Tags: Africa, Ancient Egypt, Batarekh, Boutargue, Egypt, Francois Rabelais, French cuisine, Marseille, Potargue, Simeon Seth

The Lost Arabs of Marseille: Food, Family, and France

June 17, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

In his  timely Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798-1831 (2011), Ian Coller writes of the Arab families associated with Ya’qub Hanna, an Egyptian, a Copt and first non-French general who’d served with  Napoleon Bonaparte in his military campaigns in Egypt. The cover, I believe, was chosen to highlight the idea of the Arab “Other.” The artist, Anne Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (1767 – 1824) titled it “Portrait of Mustapha” and painted it in 1819. These families […]

Categories: Africa, Chicken, France, French Cooking • Tags: Chicken, Egypt, France, French cuisine, Immigration, Marseille, Molokhiyya, Paris

Fatéma Hal, Queen of Moroccan Cuisine in France

June 3, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Fatéma Hal, a Moroccan chef with a penchant for busting female stereotypes, cooks traditional Moroccan food at her Parisian restaurant, La Mansouria (11, rue Faidherbe, 11th Arrondissement, Paris), opened in 1984. The restaurant began with only women working there, including Fatéma’s mother, the cooking in “the hands of women.” Unusual for France, non? One of many “ambassadors” of non-French cuisine from France’s former colonies, Fatéma Hal is a moving force in the dissemination of Moroccan cooking in France today. Not […]

Categories: Africa, Chefs, Cookbooks, France, French Cooking, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco • Tags: Fatéma Hal, France, La Mansouria, Moroccan Cooking, Morocco, Paris

Celestine: A Memory from French West Africa

March 10, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

Blending as they do into the green leaves of the red-flowering flamboyant trees above the crumbling mud brick wall, it’s hard to see the bottle-green chameleons. Dozens of these “ground lions,” with their red throats puffing in and out like bellows stoking a fire, perch in the crevices of the wall.

Categories: Africa, Burkina Faso, France, HIV-AIDS • Tags: Africa, Burkina Faso, Food, France, French Colonies, HIV-AIDS, Markets, Red Pump, Upper Volta, Women in Africa

Cooking with Saint-Pierre (John Dory)

February 23, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

As it fell on a holy-day, And vpon an holy-tide-a, Iohn Dory bought him an ambling nag, To Paris for to ride-a.* ~~ Child Ballad #284A: “John Dory” I first met John Dory at the open-air fish market in Rabat, Morocco. He’s a solitary soul. Doesn’t hang out too much with his own kind. And he goes by many names, John does: Saint-Pierre in France (also Poule de Mer, Sea-Hen, and Dorée), Gall in Catalonia, Gal in the French Midi, […]

Categories: Africa, Fish, France, French Cooking, Morocco, Recipes • Tags: Africa, Ballads, Child Ballads, Cooking, Fish, Food, France, French Cooking, John Dory, Louis Eustache Ude, Morocco, Recipes, St. Perre, The French Cook, William MacGillivray

Banania — an Image of French Colonialism?

January 31, 2011 by Cynthia Bertelsen

I will tear down those Banania smiles from the walls of France. ~~ Léopold Sédar Senghor, poet and first president of independent Senegal* Branding. Such a loaded word, when you consider it. For many Americans it suggests branding cattle and other property, to prove ownership. Very capitalistic, those cowboys, don’t you think? In any case, branding products sometimes pinches cultural nerves. Banania, a French product with very strong branding, began in the heyday of France’s colonial empire and is still […]

Categories: Africa, African Cooking, Chocolate, France, French Cooking • Tags: Banania, Black Skin White Masks, Caricatures, Cocoa, Colonialisme, France, Frantz Fanon, French colonial empire, Lake Managua, Nutrial, Peau Noire Masques Blancs, Pierre-François Lardet, Stereotypes, Tirailleurs Sénégalais, United Fruit Company, West Africa