A tasty treat.
Affectionate portrait of that favorite Cajun comfort food and the tradition from which it came.
Down on the bayou, it’s all about the gumbo, the overstuffed soup that babies eat “as soon as they go off the breast or the bottle.” Now, bayou has a specific meaning, and former Wall Street Journal writer Wells (The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous: Fighting to Save a Way of Life in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina, 2008, etc.) opens with a glossary of key terms, including that one, which describes a riparian ecosystem that “provided habitable high ground in a place where high ground was rare” for the Cajun, or Acadian, French-descended refugees who arrived there after being expelled from British Canada nearly 250 years ago. Gumbo itself derives from an African word for okra, a key ingredient, along with sausage, shrimp, bell peppers, and always rice. Beyond that, there are spices of various sorts, making the gumbo peppery or mild, simple or savory. One is filé, a powder made of ground sassafras leaves, whose “application in gumbo was subject to a rather robust debate even in the deepest part of the Gumbo Belt,” namely whether it goes in while the gumbo is cooking or as it is cooling off. As the author notes, gumbo is not, strictly speaking, a Cajun invention, since it owes so much to West African antecedents, but nowhere has it become quite so elevated than Louisiana. From there, Cajun cooking has spread around the world. For instance, Paul Prudhomme’s concoction of spices for blackened redfish has found a welcome home in Greece. Gumbo allows for experimentation, which “requires confidence and willing guinea pigs,” though traditionalists will argue about that, too. In one cook-off, Wells, who grew up in the bayou, encountered gumbos made with tried-and-true hog lard, duck, and shrimp, with the most exotic thing being rabbit (“My mother would put rabbit in her sauce piquant but would never think of putting it in her gumbo”). The author closes his gently spun tale with a few recipes that foodies will want to test immediately.
A tasty treat.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-393-25483-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
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Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
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