Product details
- ISBN 9781958888384
- Dimensions: 228 x 152mm
- Publication Date: 28 Nov 2024
- Publisher: John F Blair Publisher
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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Straight from the roux bayou, a culinary memoir about how a centuries old Cajun and Creole secret―gumbo―has become one of the world’s most beloved dishes.
The product of a melting pot of culinary influences, gumbo reflects the diversity of the people who cooked it up: French aristocrats, West Africans in bondage, Cajun refugees, German settlers, Native Americans―all had a hand in the pot. What is it about gumbo that continues to delight and nourish so many, in America and around the world?
A seasoned journalist, Ken Wells sleuths out the answers. His obsession goes back to his childhood in the Cajun bastion of Bayou Black, where his French-speaking mother’s gumbo often got started with a chicken chased down in the yard. In Gumbo Life: A Journey Down the Roux Bayou, Wells shares his lifelong quest to explore gumbo’s roots and mysteries. He spends time with octogenarian chefs to make a gourmet gumbo; joins a team at a highly competitive gumbo contest; visits a factory that churns out gumbo by the ton; and observes the gumbo-making rituals of an iconic New Orleans restaurant where high-end Creole cooking and Cajun cuisine first merged.
Gumbo Life, rendered in Wells’ affable prose, makes clear that gumbo is more than a dish: it’s an attitude, a way of seeing the world. This is a tasty culinary memoir―to be enjoyed like a simmering pot of gumbo.
This edition includes recipe additions as well as a story about the author’s quest for authentic Cajun Dark Roux, which involved a hunt for (thankfully scarce) bear lard.
