CLOSURE: Central Library will be closed Tuesday, July 21, through Saturday, July 25, while emergency repairs are made to the building’s cooling system. We expect to reopen Monday, July 27. Click for more details on holds, program schedules, and returns during the closure. 

Notice of Public Meeting: Kalamazoo Public Library Board of Trustees | July 27 | 5:30 pm | Central Library/Van Deusen Room. The packet of information for the meeting can be found on the library’s website. 

NOTICE: Due to a power outage, Oshtemo Branch Library is closed Tuesday, July 21 until further notice.  

Book

Gumbo life : tales from the Roux Bayou

Author

Ken Wells

Call Number

  • 641.813 W4548 (CEN)

Browse similar titles by call number

Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : W. W. Norton & Company, [2019]

Physical Description

259 pages ; 25 cm

Summary

Ask any self-respecting Louisianan who makes the best gumbo and the answer is universal: "Momma." The product of a melting pot of culinary influences, gumbo, in fact, 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? And what explains its spread 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 began with a chicken chased down in the yard. Back then, gumbo was a humble soup little known beyond the boundaries of Louisiana. So when a homesick young Ken, at college in Missouri, realized there wasn't a restaurant that could satisfy his gumbo cravings, he called his momma for the recipe. That phone-taught gumbo was a disaster. The second, cooked at his mother's side, fueled a lifelong quest to explore gumbo's roots and mysteries. In Gumbo Life: Tales from the Roux Bayou, Wells does just that. He spends time with octogenarian chefs who turn the lowly coot into gourmet gumbo; joins a team at a highly competitive gumbo contest; visits a factory that churns out gumbo by the ton; 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 simply a delicious dish: it's an attitude, a way of seeing the world. For all who read its pages, this is a tasty culinary memoir--to be enjoyed and shared like a simmering pot of gumbo.

Contents

  • 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.

Subjects