Sensory Science and Culinology

I'm back from Las Vegas, Nevada, where I joined members of the Institute of  Food Technologists at their annual conference, IFT12, on a panel about African food. The organizers didn't mind that I was not a food scientist--they wanted someone who could celebrate African cuisines and talk about textures and tastes and processing and flavor principles from the culinary angle. My greatest thrill came from the numerous Africans attending the conference and food expo who were delighted to finally have someone talking about their food in a positive way! It was also wonderful to meet colleagues from the University of Ghana at the poster session (like Prof. Esther Sekyi-Dawson and Dr. Agnes Budu), and make numerous new friends, especially Prof. Riette deKock from the University of Pretoria who first suggested the panel.  Since we weren't able to arrange a tasting, I handed out samples of (dry) gari and recipes, and passed around an asanka (a ridged clay grinding bowl) and herbs and seasonings as I bounded through dozens of slides in 25 minutes. ("That was . . . fast," concluded organizer Chris Findlay with a smile.)

With about 18,000 attendees, I believe, there were hundreds (thousands?) of exhibitors at the Food Expo. However, except for many exhibitors whose wares included rooibos tea or hoodia, and those who imported cocoa from West Africa, I sought in vain for an African presence in the exhibit hall. Perhaps I missed someone, but I did finally find one company, Tiger Botanicals, that sells extracts from baobab fruit pulp and also African bush mango (Irvingia gabonesis). They began as a tea company (Herbal Teas International), with products like rooibos tea, but changed their name when they began expanding to other African ingredients. I'd love to experiment with baobab in cooking, and Tiger Botanicals has promised to send me some samples. Also, Prof. Sekyi-Dawson has promised to try and get me some kpakpo shito seeds to grow. Does anyone know how I could obtain some unhulled egusi (agushi) seeds?

I'm still processing the event, but learned a fabulous new word there: "culinology." It refers to "the blending of culinary arts and the science of food" and is the name of the journal of the Research Chefs Association.

Washington Post Celebrates West African Cuisine (and travel updates)

February 29, 2012: Happy Leap Year's Day! I was pleased to read Tim Carman's food column today (on West African cuisine) in the online version of  The Washington Post. He had interviewed me at length for background, and I was thrilled that he shared about the search for a publisher for the regional Ghanaian cookbook Barbara Baeta and I are writing. Incidentally, while the bulk of The Washington Post makes its way to our little community, it does not include the Lifestyle/Food section, so consider this a plea for any of you who are in that area to pick up a copy for me and send it to me at BETUMI, P. O. Box 222, State College, PA 16804. Thank you, I'd be very grateful.

Now that I'm back from Nigeria, I head to Oregon for a few days next week, then will attend the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) conference in New York City at the end of March and beginning of April.

Later, in June, I'll be at the IFT (Institute of Food Technologists) annual conference in Nevada,  speaking on

Beyond Peppers, Peanuts, and Palmfruit: The Multilayered Tastes and Textures of African Cuisines 

The presentation  "will introduce sub-Saharan African flavor principles, ingredients, and cooking equipment and techniques, with special emphasis on western Africa. From the special texture created by the ridged grinding bowl called “asanka” in Ghana to the signature steamed bean pudding “moinmoin” of Nigeria, from  “Grains of Paradise” and fonio and other “Lost Crops of Africa,” and on to Africa’s love affair with New World crops (e.g., cassava, maize and peanuts), this session will celebrate the abundance and diversity of good tastes from Africa."

I'm also on the books to teach a new course in the African Studies Department at Penn State for the fall semester: Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

I'll keep you posted on these and other activities. Meanwhile, I'm still filing away a massive amount of papers from the last few months, but haven't forgotten my promise to post the recipe for the cassava biscuits/cookies I made last December. It will be coming soon.

Ghana report and culinary entrepreneurship

Katie Cochrane (the PSU student who accompanied me for part of my trip to Ghana this summer) and I recently summarized our experiences in a brief article on pages 6-7 of the Fall issue of the  Interinstitutional Consortium for Indigenous Knowledge (ICIK)'s newsletter.  The newsletter can be downloaded (thank you for permission Prof. Maretzki) at http://www.betumi.com/home/ICIKE-News2010.pdf.

This issue is most informative and also includes a great article on page 5 featuring three Penn State graduate students who took first place in a competition sponsored by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT)  and called "Developing Solutions for Developing Countries,"  specifically  a contest in which students are challenged to come up with a way to provide sustainable, nutritional and affordable food for families with small children. I only wish the IFT had included "tasty" among the adjectives.

The winning students'  ingenious design was for "producing and distributing a confectionery product in Peru where traditional diets are extremely low in calcium." The students named their product “CalciMelo” (“Calci” for Calcium and “Melo” from Caramelo, the Spanish word for a confection or candy). I hope to profile one of the graduate students, Julius Ashirifie-Gogofio from Ghana, in an upcoming blog posting, and to learn if steps are being made to translate their idea into a reality. In the meantime, I recommend the article and others in the issue.