"Olga Dies Dreaming" by Xochitl Gonzalez

The devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico a few years ago is central to the events and character development in the novel Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez. Prieto, one of the two central characters, is a congressman representing a district in Brooklyn. He reacts to the plight of the Puerto Ricans:

“Unlike when Sandy took out power in New York, or when Houston was flooded after Harvey, or when fires burned the houses of Sonoma to the ground, these people had no one to go to. They had no real voice as far as the government was concerned. They paid taxes, served in U.S. wars, yet there was no one with actual power whose job was to fight for them. No one to represent them and demand action. On a good day, Prieto didn’t trust this administration not to fuck anyone who wasn’t a part of their ‘base.’ He could only imagine the cruel neglect they would subject upon an entire island of disenfranchised Brown and Black people. It was playing out before his very eyes. He wanted to stay to help, yes, but also so that no one could deny what he saw. No one could ‘spin’ it and say the footage was worse than the situation. He needed to bear witness.” (p. 264)

Olga Dies Dreaming (published in 2021) has many themes besides this, and I found a lot to like in the novel. I was impressed by the insights about the characters’ thoughts about material goods and especially the way that they view ultra-rich people and their values. The author has an original way to contrast wealth with poverty: contrasting those who have everything to people who want to avoid being poor and ethnically different. The author deeply understood how alienated and impoverished people wanted a place of their own:  “Stomping up and down the stairs of a house your family owned, not getting policed by a landlord who wants your money but not the smells of your food or the sounds of your language.” (p. 25)

Olga Acevedo, her brother Prieto, and others in the book really came to life as they were depicted in a plot that was appealing, if somewhat unbelievable when it came to their all-powerful mother the revolutionary!  The dialog was readable, though sprinkled with references to Puerto Rican music and use of New-York-Puerto-Rican-Spanish-in-group expressions that you were supposed to learn by reading. (It reminded me of some older New York novels that used Yiddish that way.)

Lots of home life characterizes the narrative; also lots of thoughts on the life of closeted or nearly closeted gay people afraid of the ethnic disapproval of their families. This is key. For example, here’s how the author shows Olga’s aunt, beginning as she makes arroz con habichuelas blancas—Olga’s favorite:

“Olga stared at Tía Lola intently as she seasoned beans, boiled rice, chopped onions, and sliced avocado. While she cooked, Lola hummed along to the Daddy Yankee song playing on the stereo system and from across the kitchen Olga attempted to discern something of her aunt beyond her boundless capacity to love. Her mother’s baby sister had always bucked convention. In college, she had studied accounting and, once done with school, landed a good job, chopped off all her hair, and took an apartment forty blocks north in Park Slope. Lola then proceeded to stack cheddar in a way that enabled her to care for her mother as she aged, keep Olga and Prieto in fresh back-to-school clothes, and still go on one cruise a year. On Saturdays, Lola, who had been the family chef since she herself was a girl, came and cooked for whatever family showed up. On Sundays, in good weather, she rode with her Puerto Rican motorcycle club. She never married. What she did with her days and nights outside of that, none of them knew. The block had long whispered that Lola was a lesbian, and Olga hadn’t ruled that out, but she also wasn’t completely convinced.” (p. 110)

Politics of Puerto Rican freedom and independence are a major topic in the novel, handled with a great deal of skill and tact so that they didn't overcome the reader with stuff that's not focused on character development. And character development is very much the center of this book: Olga, the central figure, learning to understand who she is, became able to relate to many people: friends, relatives, lovers, and coworkers, and to the memories of her dead father and absent mother.

The poem from which the author took the book’s title is “Puerto Rican Obituary,” and it’s worth reading at the Poetry Foundation website. The character in the book says of the poem: “That Olga was ashamed of her identity and died dreaming of money and being anything other than herself.” (p. 276) As the quote implies: this novel is about identity.

Review © 2022 mae sander

"Gastronativisim"

Gastronativism: Food, Identity, Politics by Fabio Parasecoli is a new book: publication date July 5, 2022, but available already. Based on the title, I expected it to be an interesting and comprehensive study. Unfortunately, I found the book to be about what I would consider to be a rather old subject, for which the author has coined a new word -- the book's title, gastronativism. He also coined other words like gastronationalism and gastrodiplomacy. But that doesn't mean, in my opinion, that he actually has much new to say. 

Parasecoli's book is full of buzzwords like globalism, nationalism, colonialism neoliberalism, multiculturalism, elitism, patriarchy, hegemony, identity, tradition, cultural heritage, cultural capital, authenticity, appropriation, community, migrant culture, environmentalism, autonomy, national cuisines, ethnic cuisines, and many more. The author loves the word exclusionary. All this jargon makes for tedious reading.

Getting past the jargon, I found much of the book to describe the behavior of people who have the upper hand because of money or social privilege or political advantages, and who exploit others, have contempt for them, steal their land or livelihood, etc. In connection with such behavior, the word gastronativism refers to a sense of superiority among members of a such a group, a social class, or a national group and how they judge or put down the food ways and food choices of another group such as a racial or ethnic minority, an immigrant group, or a conquered people. 

"Gastronativism tends to be exclusionary when it is based on the tangible and emotionally charged defense of the status quo against internal and external forces, trying to limit access to the perceived privileges that come with belonging to a community. White supremacy in the U.S., anti-immigrant movements in Italy, conservative identity politics in Poland, and Hindu hegemonic efforts in India find enemies not only outside of the country but also inside." (p. 21).

Thus strong communities have frequently forced their food ways on the weak, one way or another for centuries. This is not news. It's been discussed over and over. Recently, globalization has been creating another go-round of this trend, as first-world food corporations force their manufactured products on third-world and underclasses, and force out the foods that are traditionally grown and processed by the unlucky members of other societies: "When it is the focus of exclusionary gastronativism, food can become a symbol of national sovereignty, cultural purity, or social unity, depending on the context." (p. 37) 

Parasecoli does make a good case for the cynicism of many politicians and other privileged people in exploiting food attitudes. Specifically,  these demagogues succeed in creating irrational support for political ventures through invoking food taboos, fears of multinational corporations, and fear of food insecurity. I would have appreciated it if he had made his examples more detailed, and curtailed some of the wordy generalizations.

Various examples of efforts to make native or traditional foods into tourist attractions provides another way to look at the relationship of privileged people (like tourists) to less privileged people (like natives) -- gastrotourism. It seems as if this would be the opposite of gastronativism, but the two abuses go hand in hand, in exploiting differences among cultures for the profit and even the amusement of the privileged.

Conversely, immigrant groups and colonial subjects have continually introduced new foods to societies and classes of people who were more powerful, while the underprivileged victims are often forced to give up their methods of cultivating food and the native foods of their culture. 

"What is at stake here are not only matters of international trade, comparative advantage, or even economic protectionism. The political debates that food-related incidents provoked in Japan, Taiwan, and Italy suggest that those concerns are accompanied and supported by deeper fears regarding the survival of one’s community. If the nation is the immediate horizon for the perceived threat, its ultimate cause lies in something broader, less easy to understand, and definitely tougher to keep at bay: the unregulated dynamics of globalization, which, on the one hand, facilitate exports and is supposed to endure food security but, on the other, force countries to partly give up their protections, their internal policies, and their autonomy." (pp. 146-147). 

Not really a new idea, but Parasecoli makes a big deal out of his observations of how this form of abuse has worked out in the past and how it goes along with other isms and class structures and modern efforts at food justice and respect for differences in food ways. Many of the specific examples are pretty well known, like the French contempt for people who eat couscous (even though the French eat it themselves) or the English people who hate curry (even though the English eat it themselves) and many other not very startling phenomena, including the UNESCO list of Intangible Cultural Heritage which "protects" such concepts as the Mediterranean diet. 

The biggest example of conquerers adopting the food of conquered people, appropriating foods from disadvantaged people, and simultaneously changing the food ways of the conquered is far from new. It began around 500 years ago. Parasecoli writes: "The isolation between the Old and the New World came to an end in the late fifteenth century with the Columbian exchange: corn, tomatoes, beans, and peppers were adopted from Spain to China, while olives, grapes, wheat, and onions were brought to the Americas." (p. 77) Not a new idea at all -- the historian Alfred Crosby began using the term "Columbian Exchange" and documenting this history in the 1970s. 

An example of Peruvian-Japanese fusion food (Food & Wine Magazine).
A google search provides pages of articles on this subject:
another example of his not having much new to say.

Here are some things I think the author missed or glossed over: he mentions fusion food, but doesn't say anything new about this much-discussed subject. He doesn't go into the way so-called traditional food is always changing, for example via the invention of new recipes that quickly seem to be a long-term part of traditional cuisine -- like tiramisu and ciabatta bread, both introduced in Italy in the second half of the 20th century. He is vague about the constant arguments about appropriation vs. honest adoption. He is also vague about trends of absorbing the food of the poor into the food of the rich (like polenta in American trendy restaurants). Feeding the victims of natural and human-caused disasters is currently a big endeavor in our global world. For example, José Andrés, whose efforts to provide sustenance that's culturally right are so effective in Haiti, Puerto Rico, and right now in Ukraine. But this isn't part of Parasecoli's story either. He loves to generalize vaguely, not to show how specifics support his ideas.

Mostly, I am very turned off by the pretentious jargon in which the book is written. Here's a passage from the book with my translation into normal English:

Quote from Gastronativism: "Culinary competence operates in four conceptually distinct but often overlapping dimensions: the personal, communal, collective, and institutional spheres of migrants’ social life. The personal dimension is the most immediate and idiosyncratic. Individuals find themselves at the juncture of necessity, external inputs, and their inner world of feelings, memories, desires, and instincts. Eating forces them to interact physically, emotionally, and cognitively with the new environment. Reactions may vary enormously in terms of involvement with foreign culinary practices, ranging from enthusiastic embrace and participative negotiation to active resistance—all the way to total refusal." (p. 164). 

My translation: "When people move to a new country, they react in various predictable ways to the food of the new place. Many but not all of them learn to eat new foods."

Marion Nestle, whom I respect, mentioned that she would be interviewing the author of Gastronativism, which I took for a recommendation, so I bought it. Sadly, I'm disappointed in this book despite her endorsement. I haven't found any professional reviews, I guess the book is too new.

UPDATE June 24. Marion Nestle's review: Weekend reading: Gastronativism

Review © 2022 mae sander for mae food dot blog spot dot com. 

"We Feed People" -- A Great Documentary

José Andrés is famous for his restaurants and for World Central Kitchen, an organization that has established emergency kitchens after natural disasters caused food emergencies. A recently released documentary, “We Feed People,” describes how Andrés and his dedicated coworkers created operations after the Puerto Rico hurricane, the Haiti earthquake, the Guatemala volcanic eruption, covid's effects on the Navaho Nation and on American cities, and other disasters. The scenes of total destruction and the sufferings of the victims are overpowering, but the ability of World Central Kitchen to offer humanitarian and empathetic help are inspiring.

The documentary offers an absolutely wonderful view of Andrés, a dedicated and successful chef. He could have simply enjoyed fame, success, and wealth from his restaurants. He could have stayed at home with his wife and children -- but the documentary shows how he constantly left them to help those in need. I've eaten in a few of his restaurants in Washington, DC, so I know what a talented restaurateur and chef he is. But he did so much more! 

I was already aware of World Central Kitchen and its unconventional way of creating feeding operations when much better-funded organizations like the Red Cross and FEMA allowed themselves to be enmired in bureaucratic nonsense. I was aware of the way that WCK always tried to create meals that satisfied the foodways of the local people, and I enjoyed the way the filmmakers stressed this commitment. The drama of overcoming the challenges of driving trucks and delivery vehicles into rushing water or just-erupted volcanic fields or desert roads to out-of-the way villages was exciting and fun to watch, but always with sadness for the victims. I enjoyed the visual detail and the emotional intensity shown in almost every scene.

I loved the cooking scenes!

The documentary was finished before World Central Kitchen's current efforts in the Ukrainian war areas and in the refugee camps just outside the Ukrainian borders. The fact that Russia is creating victims intentionally, and causing suffering like that from natural disasters must make these volunteers really mad. It makes me mad.

Official description: "WE FEED PEOPLE, from Oscar-winning director Ron Howard, spotlights renowned chef José Andrés and his nonprofit World Central Kitchen’s incredible mission and evolution over 12 years, from being a scrappy group of grassroots volunteers to becoming one of the most highly regarded humanitarian aid organizations in the disaster relief sector."

Review © 2022 mae sander. Images from the trailer.

 

What’s cooking in my kitchen and happening in the world

In my kitchen in March, I tried quite a few new recipes for various vegetable dishes, and I want to share them with the other bloggers who participate in Sherry’s blog event called “In My Kitchen.” I’m always happy to see what others have written about their kitchens — but also saddened by a few spoilers who link posts that have no kitchen content, nothing but a recipe, an old blog post, or even just an ordinary post about some unrelated topic. It’s too bad when they do this at Sherry’s blog event or other blog events. Many of the committed participants -- whom I feel are my friends on almost every continent -- share new things they have acquired for their kitchens, which is always fun. So here is a wrap-up of what's been happening in my kitchen, and what I've been thinking about.

Trying New Recipes

Raw carrot salad with dates and almonds. (Recipe here)

Steamed Brussels sprouts: to be cooled & tossed with parmesan and pecorino cheese 
 and dried fruits and nuts. Recipe from combined sources online.

Aloo Gobi: the “dry” version without tomato sauce.
A classic made with cauliflower, potatoes, and Indian spices.

Squash made from a recipe in my Ethiopian cookbook.

Red beans to go with brown rice. A vegetarian version of the Louisiana dish.
I started with a recipe, but used canned beans and smoked paprika in place of
ingredients suggested (source).

Dressing: kefir, mayonnaise, chopped green onion, crushed garlic, dill, fines herbes, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, salt, black pepper
Veggies: fresh green bean, frozen peas, and to be added: leaf lettuce

Old Favorites

Shakshouka: the tomato sauce is simmering, the eggs ready to be poached.

Artichokes waiting to be steamed and eaten with melted butter.
Small Campari tomatoes are a winter treat!

Salmon patties, which I made from frozen salmon filets.
My mother's recipe, but she used canned salmon.

Len made a few batches of bread.

Outside my Kitchen

On my week of travel in March: I watched this vendor making tortillas on a tortilla press at the Charlottesville Art Park.

Food Thoughts about the War Zone

Everyone expected the war to end in March, but it goes on and on, increasing the suffering of the citizens of Mariupol, Kyiv, Kharkiv. Kherson, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv, and numerous other cities. Haunting images of bombed-out apartment towers, ruined cultural institutions, subway stations turned into bomb shelters, and makeshift graves appear in newspapers day after day, along with reports that supplies of food and safe drinking water are becoming scarce or nonexistent. 

Bread distribution in a subway station in Kharkiv. (source: UN)
One of many brutal Russian actions was killing people in a bread line.

Each day there is a new total for the number of Ukrainians displaced by the war. Endless streams of refugees are arriving in the surrounding countries with almost nothing of their former lives. The refugee total beyond the borders of Ukraine is now more than 4 million! People throughout the affected areas, aid organizations, and local and foreign governments are struggling to provide basic food and shelter to displaced residents, to people stranded in the devastated areas, and to those that have fled across the borders. 

World Central Kitchen, for example, was founded by the chef José Andrés, and is one of many organization providing meals to Ukrainian refugees. World Central Kitchen was recognized for success with previous disaster relief efforts; for example, they were among the most helpful after the hurricane in Puerto Rico a few years ago. They have set up a kitchen just over the Ukrainian border with Poland where large numbers of refugees are fleeing to try to find safety from the invasion.

World Central Kitchen operating in Poland in March.

Hunger and heroism are hand in hand throughout the devastated areas. Here is a description from mid-March of the efforts of one Ukrainian corporation, attempting to deal with the food shortages in cities that are being attacked:

"MHP, the sixth-largest poultry exporter in the world and said to be the biggest food company still operating in Ukraine, is giving away as many as 330 tons of chicken every day to feed thousands of civilians in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Mariupol under attack by Russian forces led by President Vladimir Putin. The courage comes in getting the food safely to destinations, bypassing blown-up bridges, maneuvering checkpoints, avoiding bombed-out terrain—and death. There’s no telling how many Ukrainians are living in desperate circumstances, without heat or sustenance, but reports of apartment buildings and hospitals ablaze in residential neighborhoods are frequent."  

 

“'It’s a humanitarian crisis,' said John Rich, chair of MHP, an Australian who’s running the company from safer ground in Slovenia. 'People in bombed-out areas have no access to anything.' 

 

"Thousands of drivers in Ukraine are embarking on what Rich called suicide missions to bring vans full of chicken to people who’ve gone days without food. Many of the drivers are new employees who turned to MHP after the closing of other companies, including MHP’s competitors.” (Source: Forbes)

This particular producer is currently struggling to maintain production in the agricultural areas of Ukraine, where the invasion has not destroyed the infrastructure. The spring planting season begins now, and they are trying to establish a way to keep going, and to continue exporting food, despite the war.  Details about their struggles give some insight into how the war is affecting the areas outside Ukrainian cities. (Source: Bloomberg)

The disruption of Ukrainian agriculture is a looming threat to global food supplies, as Ukraine is a major international agricultural supplier; however the immediate threat of hunger and even starvation is an unthinkable part of the life of large numbers of people in Ukraine right now, and my kitchen thoughts turn to them.

Ukrainian grain-processing plant as photographed last year. (source)

Blog post © 2022 mae sander.

Artists and Writers

This is not a cookbook.

Zone out. Open The Artists' and Writers' Cookbook. Open it to any page, or begin at the beginning. Read a brief food memory from the life of an author, a poet, a photographer, an installation artist, or another creative person. On the next page, you will read a few paragraphs from a completely different personality in a different world. Also, you will see a recipe from each one. Some of these memoir writers describe much-loved dishes and happy food moments. Some are passionate about particular dishes. Others don't actually love food, or they have mixed feelings about the dishes they have eaten or about childhood experiences. 

Zone out, read on to the next vignette, be in the moment. Don't worry if the foods are unfamiliar or the recipes very conventional or very weird. Don't worry about whether you have heard of a particular writer or seen the work of a particular artist: or even whether you have met them or heard them give a reading. Some of the obscure memoirists present more vivid food stories than the more famous ones. Just be in the moment.

When I first flipped through the pages of my new copy of The Artists' and Writers' Cookbook by Natalie Eve Garrett, I thought it looked overwhelming -- incoherent, diffuse, unfocused, unapproachable. (It was published 2016 and I've been meaning to read it every since, and I thank the blogger Eliot who jogged me into buying it!) At first, I felt jerked around by the change from one point of view to another. The points of view ranged from super-serious to totally satirical, and the recipes were the same way. Every writer had a different approach to giving a recipe. Some were enormously labor-intensive, some full of pre-made ingredients. The range included recipes that sounded delicious, disgusting, nostalgic, or even pathetic. 

The writers and the accomplishments that qualified them varied widely, including some that I had heard of, others completely unfamiliar. In the case of one author, I not only had met him, but even had dinner with him once; however, he certainly wasn't writing about the food we ate together! Another writer, whom I never heard of, wrote about Cafe Pasqual in Santa Fe --a place I ate once and loved, and then went back a few years later and was very disappointed. Author Ruth Ozeki wrote about the experience that she transformed into her wonderful first novel My Year of Meats. As I read through the vignettes, I enjoyed the constant changes in locale: rural Puerto Rico; Knoxville, Tennessee; Cape Cod, Massachusetts; various neighborhoods of New York City; Calcutta, India; urban Iran during wartime; Vietnam as experienced by a city child and by an American soldier; and many others.

I had to zone out. I had to empty my mind and just read one after another. Then I liked it.

Authenticity is of course a recurring theme of the many writers who come from such a variety of places. Peter Ho Davies writes "I like to think the dishes I'm eating are authentic" but then identifies one of his real food identities as "U.S.Chinese food... popular with and produced for a largely non-Chinese clientele of hungry white prospectors and their hangers-on" in the early days, and continues to evolve (p. 114). Another writer discusses the question of authenticity in the context of Ethiopian food, and quotes Ficre, an Eritrean chef:

"Tricky word, authentic.... Tricky idea. Food ideas move around the world very quickly today, and if you went to Eritrea today, you'd find American touches here and there. There are thousands of Eritreans living in the United States, and when they go home, they take new food ideas with them. For us, that's no more foreign than pasta once was." (p.112)

 Read The Artists' and Writers' Cookbook. You can get lost in its wild variety.

 

In 1961, a group of editors compiled the first Artists' and Writers' Cookbook, a volume I would love to see. Despite the somewhat high price tag, I've ordered a copy, and will report back when I have it in hand.  (A few less-than-astronomically priced copies have suddenly become available.)

Here's the publisher's description:

An illustrated cookbook with 19th-century engravings and original drawings by Marcel Duchamp, Robert Osborn, and Alexandre Istrati. It features 220 recipes and 30 courses by 55 painters, 61 novelists, 15 sculptors, and 19 poets, including such luminaries as Man Ray, John Keats, Marcel Duchamp, Lawrence Durrell, Robert Graves, Harper Lee, Irving Stone, William Styron, and Georges Simenon. The diverse contributors take the assignment with various degrees of seriousness, some sharing their recipes in earnest and others using the cookbook as a canvas for wit and creative deviation, but all having invariable and obvious fun with the project. 

Review © 2021 mae sander.

Chefs Cook for the Neediest Community Members

Celebrity chefs currently and in the past have at times been interested not only in producing food for wealthy diners, but also in addressing social problems with hunger, malnutrition, and deprivation. Some raise money through charity galas; a few have rolled up their sleeves and actually tried to produce appealing meals for the needy. Running such a program involves different skills than running a high-end restaurant, and some of their efforts have been more successful than others. My knowledge of such endeavors comes from Food Gatherers, a centralized organization for collecting and distributing food to the hungry. They run a community kitchen to prep food for distribution and to serve meals directly to hungry people. (Photo of workers in the kitchen at right, from Food Gatherers' website). Learning about local issues has made me aware of what's involved when anyone, celebrity or not, tries to run such a program.

I found several very interesting instances of celebrity chefs who have worked on such programs. It's surprising how much the programs vary with the individual chefs.

Alexis Soyer

Alexis Soyer is considered one of the earliest celebrity chefs. Soyer, who lived from 1810-1858, is best remembered for his flamboyant cuisine at the Reform Club in London, where his kitchen full of novel inventions was as famous as his creative dishes such as his Reform Club Lamb Cutlets. I'm thinking about him because

Soyer's Irish Soup Kitchen
from The Cork Examiner, February 26, 1847. (source)

my culinary reading group is currently reading a fictitious detective story, The Devil's Feast by M. J. Carter, which is set in the Reform Club (which I reviewed here). This novel includes quite a bit of background about Soyer and his accomplishments including his commitment to develop new ways to feed impoverished workers, specifically, the silk workers who had recently become unemployed. He set up a soup kitchen to provide them with a nourishing soup of his invention, and also wrote pamphlets about the theory of how to feed the hungry.

Looking for more about Soyer's charitable efforts, I found an an article in the Irish Times with a summary of his role in trying to feed the desperate famine victims in Ireland:

"The Soup Kitchen Act of 1847 called for food to be distributed under Sir Robert Peel’s Relief Commission. But with British taxpayers unwilling to pay for Irish needs, the government was overly dependent on private benevolence. Quaker soup kitchens were rarely productive or efficient enough. But Soyer believed he had devised a palatable soup that was easy to prepare, 'of trifling expense' and, if properly administered, capable of helping to arrest the crisis.  

"The key word was 'palatable' – the poor were believed to have simpler alimentary needs than the rich – so the soup required only a leg of meat, dripping, flour, root vegetables, pearl barley and fresh herbs to revitalise. Soyer published his “receipts”, meticulously calculating the price of each ingredient and the measurement needed to minimise waste: 100 tons, he promised with bravura, could be made for just £1." (source)

Soyer's efforts to raise money and create feeding programs for the Irish had mixed success. His recipe for economical soup didn't in fact provide enough calories, and Irish newspapers of the time objected to his over-the-top personal style.

José Andrés

José Andrés cooking in Puerto Rico (New York Times article)

José Andrés, founder of many innovative restaurants in the US, perfectly fits the definition of celebrity chef today -- he received two Michelin stars in the 2016 guide to Washington, D.C., for one of these restaurants along with high praise for Zaytinya, China Chilcano, Jaleo, and Oyamel. Andrés has recently been in the news for his efforts to feed the victims of last summer's hurricane in Puerto Rico; earlier, he created a program to help victims of the Haiti earthquake.

The New York Times, in an article published October 30, 2017, described his efforts:

"Since he hit the ground five days after the hurricane devastated this island of 3.4 million on Sept. 20, he has built a network of kitchens, supply chains and delivery services that as of Monday had served more than 2.2 million warm meals and sandwiches. No other single agency — not the Red Cross, the Salvation Army nor any government entity — has fed more people freshly cooked food since the hurricane, or done it in such a nurturing way. 

"Mr. Andrés’s effort, by all accounts the largest emergency feeding program ever set up by a group of chefs, has started winding down. But it illustrates in dramatic fashion the rise of chefs as valuable players in a realm traditionally left to more-established aid organizations. 

"With an ability to network quickly, organize kitchens in difficult circumstances and marshal raw ingredients and equipment, chef-led groups are creating a model for a more agile, local response to catastrophes." (source)

Narayanan Krishnan

Narayanan Krishnan (From HuffPost)

In India in 2002, Narayanan Krishnan was a rising hotel chef, but left his celebrity job to found a charity, the Akshaya Trust, for feeding and housing the poorest people of the south Indian city of Madurai. In 2010, he was listed as one of CNN's heroes of the year.

Unlike the other chefs I've read about, Krishnan entirely left his celebrity life behind. All his efforts are dedicated to housing, feeding, and trying to bring dignity to the lives of homeless and often mentally ill people -- even cutting their hair.

The most recent article about him that I found was published in the Huffington Post in 2013: "Narayanan Krishnan: Chef Dedicates his Life to Help the Homeless in India." Even the charity's website has not been updated recently, so I don't have any recent information. Unfortunately, he was at one time accused of abuse in his home for poor people, but has been exonerated by an Indian court ruling.

From the HuffPost article:

"The Akshaya Trust is currently building a shelter home for the deserted and helpless and working towards providing medical and water facilities with the help of voluntary donations.  

"Krishnan's day begins early morning at 4 a.m. and finishes at 11p.m. He and his team cover nearly 125 miles in a donated van, routinely working in temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Krishnan had approached a team of barbers to help give haircuts to the homeless, however they declined and he decided to take matters into his own hands. 'I decided to attend a hair cutting training school for six months and have done more than three to four thousand haircuts for people on the road.' Krishnan said."

Massimo Bottura

Massimo Bottura (right) greets diners in his Milan Reffettorio. (Guardian)

At the Milan food expo in 2015, several celebrity chefs were asked to produce a showy meal for homeless people. Massimo Bottura, whose restaurant in Modena had three Michelin stars, was one of these chosen chefs. His vision for feeding refugees, victims of poverty, and other needy people has developed into a permanent organization, created with the cooperation of Pope Francis and others. His establishments are called Refettorios; besides Italy, one is in Rio and another is currently opening in London. An article, "Massimo Bottura and his global movement to feed the hungry" published in the Guardian in May, 2017, described his efforts.

Using ingredients donated by supermarkets, chefs in these kitchens for feeding poor people do very imaginative and delicious cooking to please their clients. An example from Milan: "aubergine and courgette with mozzarella and parmesan, a cannelloni (the chefs are just rolling the pasta), raspberry ice cream (from a mountain of glorious slightly overripe fruit that has just been delivered)." And: "He looks forward to the challenge of creating his British menus as much as anything, working with what comes through the door each day, spreading the Italian tradition of cucina povera, make do and blend. As we head back inside to prepare for that night’s service he is full of talk of a rice and pumpkin soup he created here recently, from the previous day’s risotto, with the addition of some ginger, the softened crust of parmesan and some leftover herbs."

Feeding the Hungry in My Own City

As the end of the year approaches, I am faced with decisions of how to donate money for many good causes, including feeding hungry people. Food Gatherers, the local organization that collects food and distributes it to a variety of social service organizations, is a very effective Ann Arbor organization, which I've written about several times. Several local organizations rely on volunteer cooks to prepare meals for homeless and underprivileged people; though we don't have any celebrity chefs, we do our best! I hope you will also find a good way to help people who are in need.

Caribbean Cookbooks

Logo from Louise, who invented
Cookbook Wednesday

Along with Caribbean memories of spectacular coral and colorful reef fish, I also have memories of interesting foods I once ate there. These memories include delicious fish dishes, unfamiliar tropical fruits, exotic spice combinations, and interesting breakfast breads. Although our hotels often served primarily standard hotel fare, we looked for local specialties when we could.

A savory cornmeal pudding called funchi served with fried plantains was a delicacy in a beach restaurant where we ate in Puerto Rico. We ordered stewed iguana and local fish at a restaurant at the far end of Curaçao. Keshi Yena, a Gouda cheese stuffed with picadillo-type meat filling is special to Bonaire and Curaçao, reflecting the islands' Dutch, Portuguese, and African roots. At a food stall in Bonaire, we once had a barbecued goat sandwich.  In Saint Lucia we tried local freshwater crayfish. On another visit there, we enjoyed roti, an East-Indian-influenced dish, and we also visited a farmers' market at Christmas. I think we have tasted breadfruit, but it's rarely on tourist menus. We've also eaten conch chowder occasionally.

Over time, as I've learned about one island after another, I've acquired a few Caribbean cookbooks, which I'll tell you about now for Cookbook Wednesday.

"What's Cooking in St. Lucia," a pamphlet lacking any title page information, says "The St. Lucians can dazzle you with baked lobster, stuffed breadfruit, and mangoes with ice cream. Delight you with banana bread or fried plantain. Surprise you with pumpkin soup and boiled cucumber." I've tried the pumpkin soup, and it's very nice. (I always try pumpkin soup recipes.)

Pumpkin Soup from "What's Cooking in St.Lucia" -- Caribbean pumpkins have a different look from ours.

The Complete Book of Caribbean Cooking by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz -- a professional cookbook writer -- is a compendium of recipes from many islands, including four recipes for Keshy Yena (the spelling varies) with chicken, meat, or fish. She describes the dish as "a baked Edam or Gouda cheese with a variety of fillings. It originates in Curaçao and the name... is in Papiamento, the patois of the Netherlands Antilles.... Curiously, enough, the dish has been adopted by Chiapas and Yucatan in Mexico where it was probably introduced some time in the nineteenth century by Dutch and German coffee men. It is called queso relleno there." (p. 388)

Ortiz's cream of pumpkin soup from Jamaica calls for Pickapeppa hot sauce, a condiment from Jamaica that I've grown quite fond of. She included five recipes for West-African-inspired Callalou -- from Guadeloupe, St. Lucia, Martinique, Haiti, and Trinidad. And many, many other recipes -- the book runs 400 pages!

Recipes from the Jewish Kitchens of Curaçao was published by the historic Jewish congregation there. This Jewish community began in the 1650s, when the Dutch settlers included Jews who had come to Amsterdam fleeing the Portuguese Inquisition. The synagogue itself is often visited by tourists. The building has been in continuous use since 1732.

Curaçao's Jewish community has a complicated history. I'll just mention that the recipes in the book reflect both the Sephardic Jewish traditions and many other Jewish and non-Jewish Caribbean traditions, right down to a classic tuna-macaroni casserole no doubt reflecting the influence of North Americans who worship there (though the recipe does call for raisins and Tabasco sauce as well as canned tuna and the usual ingredients).

Two pages from the cookbook:

Because beef or chicken-filled Keshi Yena would violate Jewish dietary laws, the version in this cookbook calls for tuna or salmon. Codfish for "Bakiou" comes from the Atlantic, salted and dried: this ingredient is popular throughout the Caribbean, as it needs no refrigeration.

Here is a recipe for Nasi Goreng, the Dutch dish influenced by Indonesia where they also had colonies. The drawing shows a dock-side market offering produce from a small inter-island boat. Other recipes include various curries, introduced to the Caribbean by immigrants from India, and many dishes to be made especially for Jewish holidays.

Island Cooking: Recipes from the Caribbean by Dunstan A. Harris unfortunately doesn't identify which island each recipe comes from. Though not as long as the Ortiz book, this book includes a wide selection of dishes with numerous ethnic origins, including roti (a type of curry), paella, pepperpot, breadfruit pudding, various ways to use salted codfish, and many more.

In Harris's introduction, he describes the history of the region and of several of the individual islands. I found it fascinating that pineapples are native to the region. "Columbus came across them in 1493 on the island of Guadeloupe" (p. 2). And that papayas, called paw-paws there, are also of Caribbean origin.

The three cookbooks (but not the St. Lucia pamphlet) are all still available from amazon sellers, if you are interested in them.

At the time that I was buying these books, I found it hard to locate books about Caribbean food history and recipes. In contrast, I've recently seen reviews of several new Caribbean cookbooks and food histories that would probably fill in the gaps in my knowledge. I don't know if I'll actually ever read them, but here's my wish list:

• Eating Puerto Rico: A History of Food, Culture, and Identity by Cruz Miguel Ortíz Cuadra. The review at amazon.com says this book is "a magisterial history of the foods and eating habits of Puerto Rico [which] unfolds into an examination of Puerto Rican society from the Spanish conquest to the present."
• The Cuban Table: A Celebration of Food, Flavors and History by Ana Sofia Pelaez. A profile of the author recently appeared in the New York Times: "Sweet and Savory Memories, Caramelized in Exile: Restaurant-Hopping With the Author of ‘The Cuban Table’"
• Food and Identity in the Caribbean by Hanna Garth: a collection of essays on the anthropology of island food.
• Congotay! Congotay! A Global History of Caribbean Food by Candice Goucher.
According to the amazon.com summary the book includes "foodways, Atlantic history, the slave trade, the importance of sugar, the place of food in African-derived religion, resistance, sexuality and the Caribbean kitchen, contemporary Caribbean identity, and the politics of the new globalization."

Further Thoughts on Caribbean Cooking and Travel

When I consider cooking tropical island recipes at home in Michigan, I'm challenged by the wide variety of perishable ingredients needed. Numerous ethnic groups who settled in the islands in their first few hundred years displaced or extinguished the local Indian populations, but continued to cultivate some of their produce. A huge variety of fruits, vegetables, spices, and domestic animals from northern Europe, Iberia, the Mediterranean, and Southeast Asia came in with the immigrants; above all, many foods and cooking methods came with enslaved people from Africa. While colonial masters may have tried to eat as if they were at home, local cooks fused a variety of tastes and ingredients into distinctive dishes.

  

Two photos from my visit to the market in
Soufriere, St.Lucia (blogged here)

Each island has developed its own distinctive style, depending on its political history, on the range of available products, and on local economic factors. Sugar cane plantations, established soon after Columbus first landed, exhausted once-fertile lands, wrecked the water table, and disrupted local flora and fauna. Spice plantations and tropical fruit groves also altered the landscape. The most brutal slavery in the New World supported the sugar industry, with many lasting tragic consequences.

By mid-19th century, the once-flourishing Caribbean region became a backwater. A few islands, like Haiti, were self-governed; others were governed by various indifferent European powers with no motive for redeveloping their economies. Quite a few of the islands suffered from centuries-long abandonment and near-starvation after the land became useless for producing export commodities. Some islands are still governed by European countries; many are now independent.

Today much food has to be imported from larger countries -- especially provisions for the hotels and tourist restaurants. However, on banana boats, local fishing boats, and other inter-island boats, as well as by plane, people still share foods among various islands.

Tourism, oil refineries, off-shore banking, and other 20th-century efforts to restore failed economies have met with varied success, little of it trickling down to the native residents. Poverty and food insufficiency are problems for the worst-off residents of benevolently-ruled Dutch Curaçao, for many citizens of independent Jamaica, for most of those living under the broken government of Haiti, for the residents of Communist Cuba, and for those on many other islands.

We have chosen Caribbean vacations in the past because diving and snorkeling on many of the islands used to be a fabulous adventure. Unfortunately, in the last 20 years or so, environmental changes have very much decreased the beauty of the coral reefs. Hurricanes have demolished some of the shallow reefs where a snorkeler could once see the coral just a few feet below the surface. Construction projects on some islands have caused muddy run-off water during heavy rains, and the mud smothers the coral near the shore. Warming sea waters have resulted in coral bleaching, a sad destruction that's shared by many other places on earth. I am happy with memories and underwater photos, while sad for the recent deterioration and especially sad for the many threatened species of underwater life.