IRON POTS AND WOODEN SPOONS: Africa's Gifts to New World Cooking

by Jessica B. Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 1989

The reciprocal flow of foodstuffs [between] the New World and Africa"" has inspired Harris' engaging and unintimidating sampling of the hybrid fruits of black culinary tradition. Well-informed notes on ingredients, culinary evolution, and Harris' own family memories and travels in Africa, the Caribbean, and North and South America accompany the recipes. There are directions for Jamaican curried goat, Southern American Chittlins and Hoppin Johns, Haitian mamba (peanut butter and chiles), sabayon au sodabj (a rum-flavored, European-influenced dessert from Benin), and other uncomplicated everyday dishes, all set down as they are prepared today--with canned peas or Worchestershire sauce, for example, but also with coconut milk, manioc flour, dende (palm) oil, and other traditional ingredients. If a New England blueberry cobbler turns up only because it's associated with the Martha's Vineyard vacations of her own childhood--well, that's all in the free-flowing spirit of Harris' ""cultural continuum.

Pub Date: June 1, 1989

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1989

Categories: NONFICTION