I'm in the airport at Brussels waiting for the flight via Chicago back home to Pennsylvania. I have a few "free minutes" at the airport to let everyone know that, as expected, we had a joyous time on Thursday. I was awed by all the impressive number and rank of the hundreds who showed up. We ran out of our over 180 books and many folks pleaded with us to bring more to Ghana. The flowers, music, food, and presentation were up to Flair's standard of doing everything with "flair." No time to go into details right now, but I thought folks might like to see a few photos from the launch. I'll be more specific when I have more time to reflect on the meaning and to share some of the comments we received. The media were also generous in their coverage with interviews before and also at the launch itself.
It's exciting to see North Americans (and Europeans) embracing West African food! Unfortunately, many of us do not live in large urban areas where we can easily locate some of the unfamiliar ingredients. Last week I made a trip to our local international market here in State College, Pennsylvania, for a spontaneous, quick runthrough of some items locally available. I was rushing, and missed many things (like cream of palm fruit aka palm butter) in the store and also cannot believe some of the words that came out of my mouth, such as saying "coconut paste" when I meant "groundnut (peanut) paste," and holding some Ga kenkey and saying it is fermented corn dough rather than that it is made from steamed fermented corn dough (with a bit of cassava dough, too). I spoke about "dried fish powder" when it would have been better to say "dried flaked fish/shrimp." Still, I hope you find it helpful, especially if you are exploring recipes from The Ghana Cookbook.
And remember, too, that as North American tastes are changing, it is getting easier and easier to find many of these ingredients in local supermarkets, from millet flour to fresh coconut to red palm oil to taro (Ghanaians call it "cocoyam") to plantains or fresh papaya. I find many of them in our local Wegman's, Giant, Trader Joe's, Weis, or even Wal-Mart. (Hint: there's a recipe in the book that calls for smoked turkey, which is only available around here at Christmas, so this time of year might be a good time to try it out!)
Note: Thank you to students Nick Weis and Jessica Stefanowiz, both from Happy Valley Communications for running video and helping set up, respectively, and for owner Jin Zhou for allowing us to film in The International Market
Cookbook update: Yay! Friends, it's finally happening. We're just days away from The Ghana Cookbook's release. Thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered. (Note: Hippocrene increased the size of the print run given the enthusiasm and advance orders.) Here's a link to more information from the publisher (it should be in stores by Nov. 9, 2015). All remains a labor of love on my part, and many, many hours of work, which is why I've basically ceased blogging these past months. Projects currently underway:
Updating BETUMI's website (a long-overdue project)
A trailer for The Ghana Cookbook (stay tuned)
Events, articles, and signings to be arranged. Already planned:
November 13, 2015: cooking demonstration and luncheon at New Leaf Initiative in State College using recipes from the book.
January 28, 2016: Accra, Ghana. Book launching at Flair Catering (with Barbara!) Hopefully, events will also take place in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Portland, Oregon.
A team at Penn State's Happy Valley Communications (HVC) is helping to get the word out, and has set up a twitter account to help with the countdown and offer tantalizing tidbits to whet your appetite for the book. HVC is also working with me on an instagram site called The Ghana Cookbook. I'll update folks here as things roll out.
Many of you know one of my favorite sayings from Ghana that has long been my mantra: "Little, by little, the chicken drinks water."
In my previous post I promised to share about what's happening with BETUMI's "mountain moving" projects.
BETUMI's Original Africa Cookbook project: In2007 at the TED Global conference held in Arusha, Tanzania, BETUMI launched the
Africa Cookbook Project--we now have collected well over 120 books written by Africans and published (mostly) in Africa. They range from mimeographed (yes, before the 1960s, before photocopying or scanning, there was mimeographing) informal collections of recipes to sophisticated full-color print books. They are in English, French, Portuguese, Amharic, Malagasy. . . We have also collected dozens more cookbooks published outside of Africa and/or written by non-Africans, along with dozens of African-food-related reference books.
The earliest books in the collection were originally published in 1933 (The Gold Coast Cookery Book, by the Government Printing Office in Accra, reprinted in 2007 as The Ghana Cookery Book by Jeppestown Press in the U.K. AND the 1934 The Kudeti Book of Yoruba Cookery by J. A Mars & E. M. Tooleyo--we have the 3rd (Revised) Edition (1979) and the reprinted and repackaged 2002 edition, all from Lagos.
The most recently published additions are: from South Africa, Ukutya Kwasekhaya: Tastes from Nelson Mandela's Kitchen by Xoliswa Ndoyiya with Anna Trapido, published in 2011; from Ghana, Florence Sai's Aunty Mama's Cook Book launched in Ghana in December 2011, and from (Côte d'Ivoire (via France), Marguerite Abouet's Délices d'Afrique, published in 2012 by Editions Alternatives.
A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed so far to this
project. One immediate mountain that needs moving is getting all of the
books into the fledgling data base. We need help to do this. Maybe the next step after that is getting some of the earlier works digitized and available to everyone, while ensuring that there is fair compensation to authors and publishers. The Newest Africa Cookbook project:
As many of you already know, for over a decade (when the photo on the left was taken), Barbara Baeta and Fran Osseo-Asare have been collaborating on compiling an ambitious Ghanaian cookbook designed as a basic cooking course. It will feature regional variations and step-by-step
instructions for a wide range of Ghanaian recipes (roughly 150), along with Ghanaian
artwork, scenic shots, and anecdotes from both of our lives.
We're thrilled to report
that in August 2013 we signed a contract with Hippocrene Books,
respected for over 40 years as a publisher of ethnic cookbooks. The manuscript will be completed by the end of August 2014, and the
book is expected out 9 months later, around May 2015. Thank you to all of you who have been supportive of this unfolding dream. We trust that, like all truly great things, it will prove worth the wait.
We're very excited!
P.S. Those of you who have offered to help (or would like to) with the final recipe testing, stay tuned. We welcome your involvement, and will soon give more details on how you can be a part of this project.
I'm off to Chicago in two days for the International Association of Culinary Professionals' (IACP) annual conference. Gloria Mensah and I will be doing a presentation on Ghana's food and foodways, featuring tastings of gari foto and groundnut stew. Our session is called "The Good Soup Comes from the Good Earth: Cooking of Ghana, Gateway to West Africa." Gloria will join us fresh from the Ghana Jubilee celebration held in Calgary, Canada, where she helped oversee a culinary (and cultural) feast enjoyed by some 600 folks. There're still a lot of loose ends to tie up, so it'll be a few days before I'm able to blog again. While in Chicago, some of us plan to dine at Madieye and Awa Gueye's newly enlarged Yassa African Restaurant restaurant, and I hope to pick up supplies for our presentation at Chicago's Makola Market. I'll be sure to report on the trip, and will have my trusty digital camera in hand.
