Gumbo life : tales from the Roux Bayou / Ken Wells.
Material type: TextPublisher: New York : W. W. Norton & Company, independent publishers since 1923, [2019]Copyright date: ©2019Edition: First editionDescription: xxv, 259 pages : map ; 25 cmContent type:- text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780393254839
- 0393254836
Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book | Main Library | NonFiction | 641.813 W454 | Available | 33111009324936 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
A sprightly, deeply personal narrative about how gumbo--for 250 years a Cajun and Creole secret--has become one of the world's most beloved dishes.
Ken Wells grew up in the Cajun bastion of Bayou Black, eating his French-speaking momma's gumbo and living what he calls the Gumbo Life--where the rhythms of the day cling to rituals of a previous century and gumbo begins with a chicken chased down in the yard. He later would roam the world as a journalist but never forgot his roots.
In Gumbo Life , Wells returns, taking readers on a lively tour that includes visits to a coot-cooking gumbo group, a factory producing gumbo in insane quantities, and Commander's Palace, an iconic restaurant where high-style Creole cooking and reenergized Cajun cuisine merged to change the culinary landscape. Along the way, Wells explores the soup's global profile--including how it got to China and who won New York City's Gumbo War. A lively travelogue and moving memoir, Gumbo Life is a celebration--of a place, a dish, and the cultures that created it.
Includes recipes.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Roux awakening -- Academic gumbo: it's a swamp out there -- Gumbo gets going : Hank, Ted Kennedy, and the Great Wall of China -- Gumbo Inc. -- The meaning of "T" : man in the land of a zillion chefs -- Feasting among the poule d'eau cookers -- Moby gumbo -- Ready, set, cook! -- Creole gets its Cajun on -- Gumbo hunting in Treme -- My gumbo life -- The glory of gumbo's pantry -- Gumbo as destiny -- Serpents on the Roux Bayou -- Bayou black today -- The gumbo highway and gumbo life converge.
In this culinary memoir, Ken Wells delves into the history and culture of gumbo, a dish that reflects the diversity of the people who cooked it up: French aristocrats, West Africans in bondage, Cajun refugees, German settlers, Native Americans. Wells travels his native Louisiana to spend time with chefs cooking gumbo, at gumbo contests, at a gumbo factory, and at an iconic New Orleans restaurant.