Dining as Data Acquisition, Palace Gate (et passim)

Dining as Data Acquisition, Palace Gate (et passim)

We, the fortunate, eat with a gusto that is rarely driven by actual hunger.

Many times, I find myself pushing to eat more not only because I’m a glutton, but because I want to learn more about the food I’m eating. What’s that spice? Is there egg in here? Would you say this preparation is similar to other culinary creations from this region, country, continent, tradition? And so on.

This is not a criticism of any approach to eating or any cuisine in particular; it’s just an observation of how we, as food enthusiasts, approach food in a way that may be different than that of others.

Last night at Palace Gate, I must say, there was little that actually pleased my palate. This is not to say I had an unpleasant experience. Not at all. I like food that challenges my preconceptions of what tastes good, how to eat, and what flavors go together.

So let’s talk challenges, starting with viscosity. Before dinner, I was mentioning to crrush that we had eaten at Bolat last year and had several stews mixed with ground melon seeds that conferred upon some dishes an unsavory mucosity. I had a hard time getting enthusiastic about this food, but it was enlightening from a culinary perspective, because it highlights how the inventive spirit can use available resources to create a sauce that, in other parts of the world, might be made with veal stock and cream. I guess I prefer the latter, but eating the former is (and I hesitate to use this loaded term, but it fits) “educational.” Thusly, I approached the okra last night…and got down two spoonfuls, though Ms. Wiv and others loved it, so I am fully prepared to admit that my discomfort level is due entirely to small-minded cultural preconceptions. What can I say? I’m working on it.

Eating with one’s hands is obviously a culturally-bound skill. I eat with my hands all the time: tacos, asparagus, an apple, etc. Eating with one hand is more challenging, and eating with sticky yam paste in that one hand is a challenge pretty much beyond my admittedly limited physical skills. I guess I’m cool eating with one hand, as long as there’s a fork at the end of that hand.

Finally, some flavors I just cannot get into. I was really looking forward to banku, the ground corn used that serves as both eating implement and starch. One taste, and I had to slam some Heineken. The fermented tang was just too much for me. Now, I’m cool with Northern Thai sausage of fermented rice, stinky tofu, and various other funky preparations, but I guess I just prefer my fermented products in beverage form, chilled. There was a basic flavor here that I simply could not abide.

That said, I dug the experience. I learned something about Ghanaian food and about myself and the cultural perspective I bring to the table, and Erin helped make the eating experience be about so much more than flavors.

And that’s really all I’m saying. Even when food is not “tasty” by my own limited standards, I’m still glad to eat it because it might expand those standards – or perhaps, at a minimum, clarify them.

For those reasons, there isn’t anything I wouldn’t eat. Twice.

David “Well, maybe that one eyeball taco was enough” Hammond

Hammond:

I tend to agree with you, although perhaps there were a few more things at Palace Gate I liked than you...

but this gives me an opportunity to respond to a small dig from a while back...

No, not a fan of free "jazz." Not necessarily dismissing it; but DEEPLY not a fan of white noise as a substitute for music. This after a 10-year marriage to a musician, 25 plus years listening rather intently to jazz, 40 years of listening hard to any music, and just having an opinion on the matter. After many years and many attempts to enjoy or even appreciate free jazz, I don't not get it ... I think I get it, but that often as not, there is nothing there to get. Noise vs. Information (I recall a conversation I had about bebop about 20 years ago, in which I stated that what I loved about that music was the "dense information." I would stand by that estimation now.)

I declined to engage in the debate over there, but my feeling (about music in general, including but not limited to so-called "free jazz") is identical to how you've just described your approach to eating.

To be honest, compared to many LTHrs, I'm probably more conservative when it comes to food choices... but I do feel like I eat that way, and in general, I consume a lot of things this way -- but for me, nothing more so than music.

I had a related thought after last night. It was not so much that I didn't enjoy the food presented (the spinach and groundnut dish was superb, as was the groundnut stew, and the rice balls), but given my limited culinary-linguistic knowledge of Ghanaian cuisine, I found that the flavors were not so interpretable as to permit me to address the Q-question (quality).

For reasons that members of this board (and only members of the board) can appreciate, I ate lunch at Cafe Salamera over a concern over a potential shortage of fufu at night. The dishes at CS although little more expensive than those at PG have to my palate a subtlety of flavor that make me wish to return frequently. The reason is not (necessarily) that the preparation is "better," but Peruvian cuisine (and Norky's rendition of it) is more closely linked to culinary traditions with which I am familiar. I am past the phase of data acquisition and feel that I have reached the point of analysis.

David is right that the food at PG, well-prepared and graciously served, lacks a complexity, given what I know now about cuisine. It was hard to get beyond the viscosity of the okra stew and the straight-forward mildness of the tilapia, and to understand how they fit into Ghanaian cuisine - despite the excellent attempts of Erin.

Although I use Cafe Salamera as my example, I can read the components of French and New American cuisine in such a way as to make them "good to think" and "good to think for a long time." Many of us can - and the dishes are made to be read as complex text - and thus they constitute "haute cuisine." (Not neglecting issues of class display and conspicuous consumption).

So, David properly notes that one purpose of culinary engagement is to acquire that culinary grammar that helps us appreciate how excellent fufu is really distinct from ehhh fufu. I'm am not there yet.

Just thinking "out loud," here, but I'm guessing that part of the reason there was an absence of elevated complexity we expect in other foods, from French to Peruvian, is the level of society from which the food is coming. I'm guessing that the Ghanaian food we were consuming was "just folks" food, and that even relatively common food in Peru is anchored in the high expectations of the early Spanish invaders/settlers who, because they were in charge, expected to eat like kings. Countries that have a haute society are more likely to have an haute cuisine. I looked up Ghana in Britannica, and it speaks of "egalitarian tendencies," and a tradition of small, family-owned farms that precludes a landed gentry. Food was tied to family, rituatls, and holidays, not class distinction, so there was no real motivation to create an haute cuisine. You just wanted to survive, and after that, have it taste pretty good.

Granted, there are places where the "just folks" cuisine is more to my taste, but that has more to do with ingredients than complexity (for example, a pit roasted lamb in Morocco seasoned with nothing but buter, cumin, and salt).

Of the dishes we had, the groundnut soup/stew was the only one that was familiar, as I've both had it before and made it myself, and other than the spice level, it's not that much different from Virginia peanut soup, which I have long loved. So I do realize that some of this is an issue of acquired taste. I'm glad there are some things I enjoyed, just in case I get to Ghana someday, and I'm delighted to have had the experience. But it won't be replacing Thai or Mexican on my hit parade. However, I will probably go back for the groundnut stew.

GAF wrote:I had a related thought after last night. It was not so much that I didn't enjoy the food presented (the spinach and groundnut dish was superb, as was the groundnut stew, and the rice balls), but given my limited culinary-linguistic knowledge of Ghanaian cuisine, I found that the flavors were not so interpretable as to permit me to address the Q-question (quality).

To use the grammatical model (which I do think is handy), it is true that when it comes to the cuisine of Ghana, I (and perhaps most of us reading this) don't have an understanding of the component pieces and syntax to know when a dish is grammatically correct (acceptable and meeting the standards of the culture that speaks this culinary language). Because I don't have a standard of grammaticality, because I don't know when a dish is following the rules, I don't know when a dish is breaking the rules for aesthetic effect -- in other words, I am not capable of discerning craftsmanship let alone art in the food of this culture.

Cynthia wrote:Just thinking "out loud," here, but I'm guessing that part of the reason there was an absence of elevated complexity we expect in other foods, from French to Peruvian, is the level of society from which the food is coming. I'm guessing that the Ghanaian food we were consuming was "just folks" food, and that even relatively common food in Peru is anchored in the high expectations of the early Spanish invaders/settlers who, because they were in charge, expected to eat like kings.

In line with my comments to GAF, I'm not really in a position to recognize complexity in Ghanaian food. If you don't speak the culinary language, then you can't tell if a dish is elegantly composed or simply gibberish.

I'm not sure I agree that complexity follows class lines. There's some truth to the fact that more wealth buys more ingredients and "more stuff going on" in a dish, but "more" is not the only way of introducing complexity, and I believe I've seen a lot of complexity in local Mexican and Thai and other cuisines that are the products of "just folks."

HI,

When I got home from this Ghanaian feast, my family was curious about the experience. My overall thought was the food was simple as in what you see is what you get. The ingredients seemed few and to the point. Preparations were labor intensive: pulverizing or mashed, took time like the stews or flash cooked like the kabobs and fried fish. It was more home-cooking, than efficient production cooking for restaurants.

While I don't mind eating with hands, I do like my hands dry. Using bread or a pancake to lift the food is no problem. When the conveyance like fufu sticks to your fingers, then use it to scoop your portion of hot soup from a common bowl. This is where I go from enjoying a meal to having a cultural experience, though one I might not try at home. Every time I finished eating the fufu, I was licking my fingers clean and wiping them dry to begin the cycle again. I can imagine how welcome I might not have been two weeks ago with my raging head cold.

When it comes to culinary touchstones as to how to rate this meal, there were none as people discussed earlier. I do remember when I used to travel more, I would often be presented with a signature national dish. I learned I could not dismiss a national dish on the first go, because it may not be the recipe but the person preparing it. If I tried it three times, by three different hands and it was still not to my liking, then I concluded it may simply be a comfort dish with cultural meaning beyond the taste. Of course, I would always try it on subsequent offerings. I just would not seek it out independently or enthusiastically gush pleasure triggering someone to make another attempt.

Gefilte fish does not work for me despite many attempts to find one I like. Filippino food is often discussed here with people wanting to like it and not usually succeeding. While every Filippino meal at my friend Helen's has been excellent, it has not been so at restaurants. The more interesting Filippino dishes you simply don't find in restaurants, because they are too labor intensive. There is a Filippino tamale with all sorts of ingredients wrapped in a banana leaf that we've contemplated making for years. The point is, there can also be some very interesting and palatible dishes from other cultures, which are known and never made because of the intense labor translating to costs prohibitive to their market.

I like visiting other food cultures. Some simply are cultural experiences, which I am glad to experience. Others I take home with me, perhaps introduce elements to life and re-visit the memory over and over again. Overall I welcome the experiences whatever shape, form or taste they arrive as.

Regards,

David Hammond wrote:I'm not sure I agree that complexity follows class lines. There's some truth to the fact that more wealth buys more ingredients and "more stuff going on" in a dish, but "more" is not the only way of introducing complexity, and I believe I've seen a lot of complexity in local Mexican and Thai and other cuisines that are the products of "just folks."

Except that both Thailand and Mexico have immensely complex social orders with aristrocracies, kings, rulers, and others who have introduced much of the complexity. Mexico in particular -- you've got Indian influences (with immense differences between upper and lower classes) followed by Spanish influences (with increasing differences between upper and lower classes) followed by French influences (more class differences). A linguisitic parallel is found in the marriachi -- what could be more typically Mexican, and yet it's rooted in French -- the French hired local musicians for their weddings -- "marriage" in French (pronounced mar EE ajh) -- and this evolved into the word "marriachi." Same with the cuisine, it's got a lot of class-related complexity.

And in the real world, the worker on a big farm in Mexico today isn't eating what you're finding in the restaurants up here. That would be a once a week special meal, the food created for special events and the upper classes. The rest of the week would be tortillas and beans. So even now, big complexity is, at the ground level, associated with events or money.

As far as the quality of the Ghanaian food we enjoyed, while this was my first encounter with several of the dishes, it was my fourth or fifth encounter with groundnut stew, and theirs was both good and typical. I've had other Ghanaian dishes before, but didn't see them on the menu, so this is the only comparison I can make. (Other than having had toasted gourd seeds in Nigerian food, so I already knew that was not on my favorites list.) I'm taking my cue from Erin as to the quality of the rest of the food -- and she said it was good, though she said the groundnut stew can at times be better and the fufu was a little sticker than it should be.

Erin also said that eating cow skin or sheep skin, often left on pieces of cooked meat (as it was for us) is considered both a treat and an honor in Ghana, but is definitely an acquired taste. So there is clearly some of this that is not going to connect for us, even if it's the best available example of the item.

I had been looking through my African cookbooks, even before the dinner, as I had just attended a lecture on Ghanaian food at the IACP meeting (doesn't it always make you wonder when things like this seem to cluster -- does this presage a trip to Ghana?), and what I was seeing there seems to reflect what we were eating.

I still liked a lot more stuff than I disliked, and I don't consider simplicity a problem. After polishing off the "red red" last night, I thought I'd probably go back for that, too. I'd say that the groundnut stew, red red, and fried chicken were my favorites, along with the kenkey once I found out about the alchemy with the tomato sauce. And the snapper was great.

As for the okra, I'm glad I tried it, and if I go to Ghana, I'm glad to know I can eat it, but I don't see myself rushing back to order it. I'm adventurous, but I think I've collected enough data on that menu item.

Cynthia wrote:

David Hammond wrote:I'm not sure I agree that complexity follows class lines. There's some truth to the fact that more wealth buys more ingredients and "more stuff going on" in a dish, but "more" is not the only way of introducing complexity, and I believe I've seen a lot of complexity in local Mexican and Thai and other cuisines that are the products of "just folks."

Except that both Thailand and Mexico have immensely complex social orders with aristrocracies, kings, rulers, and others who have introduced much of the complexity. Mexico in particular -- you've got Indian influences (with immense differences between upper and lower classes) followed by Spanish influences (with increasing differences between upper and lower classes) followed by French influences (more class differences). A linguisitic parallel is found in the marriachi -- what could be more typically Mexican, and yet it's rooted in French -- the French hired local musicians for their weddings -- "marriage" in French (pronounced mar EE ajh) -- and this evolved into the word "marriachi." Same with the cuisine, it's got a lot of class-related complexity.

But surely African tribal affiliations are similarly complex, don't you think? The whole issue of "complexity" in a cuisine is as slippery as "authenticity," but if African cuisine seems less complex than, say, Thai, it seems more than likely the result of reduced biodiversity than reduced class distinctions.

Interesting point about mariachi/mariage. I did not know that.

There is a difference between the social complexity within a tribe and economic layers of society, as far as impact on cuisine. As I noted, I'm taking my info about Ghana's being egalitarian from Britannica. But that's probably not the dominant force here.

Unlike Mexico and South America, Europeans didn't come to West Africa to settle, they came to buy slaves. So most of the introduced foods were cheap food for cheap labor, not a party cuisine for your big events. The South American crops of peanuts, sweet potatoes, and cassava/manioc were easy to grow and inexpensive, and the Portuguese introduced them into Africa so they'd have something they could feed all the slaves they were gathering. So this was not a cuisine created out of a desire to have a good time or enrich life, just to keep the "merhcandise" alive. Africans, being very good at adapting whatever was at hand, rolled the new foods into their existing traditions.

I'm not going to try to appear more knowledgeable than I am, but Ghana has had its share of aristocracies and kings. The Ashanti, probably the most populous group, had a king (the Asantehene) and a "sophisticated bureacracy" (according to the Government section of the Wikipedia article on Ashanti).

I can't really offer anything more, but I did find some other cool links while trying to reconstruct stuff I learned in college and haven't had much excuse to keep fresh on...

Betumi: The African Culinary Network, which currently has a picture of Palace Gate on the front page! The proprietor was just in Chicago for the IACP and wrote this post about African Markets in our fair city. (This is one of the people who did the presentation Cynthia attended...)

I also liked this, from the text of one of her articles:

Fran Osseo-Asare wrote:Still, Afua [the author's sister-in-law] made a lot of allowances for obroni. In her oral culture, writing down recipes signaled incompetence. With amused tolerance she nevertheless wrote down cryptic recipes for me, always referring to the sacred combination of pepper (generally habaneros or scotch bonnets), onions, and tomatoes as "the ingredients." These vegetables formed a holy trinity, providing, in the appropriate amounts, the base for endless varieties of soups, stews, sauces, and gravies.

From all the photos, it looks like last year's GhanaFest in Chicago was a giant party!

NYTimes: A Taste of Ghana ("few countries reward the sidewalk chowhound as well as Ghana.")

Cool. And yes, that was one of the people who did the presentation. She was a wonderful speaker. And I loved the title of one of her books: "Good Soup Attracts Chairs." Knowing about the propensity for sharing among Ghanaians, the title makes even more sense now.

As fot Ghana, I'm not an authority by any means. A lot of what I was writing I was extrapolating from historical research I've done on West Africa and the slave trade combined with my knowledge of the movement of foods that followed that slave trade. So some of what I was saying was conjecture. However, I had a friend from Nigeria a few years ago who was studying in the U.S. He was a member of the royal family of Nigeria, but he lived modestly. I asked him what his life would be like when he returned to Nigeria, compared with non-royals, and he said it would not be terribly different. He told me that, on the whole, in West Africa, being king gave you authority, and you were expected to be wise, but your life is otherwise similar to that of other people. His family ate foods that were in many ways similar to those we had at Palace Gates, including jollof rice and fufu used to scoop up stews. So again, I was adding that info into my hypothesizing.

When, with the opening up of the New World, foods began being introduced around the world, the foods that went to West Africa were the foods that could feed slaves. So West Africa kind of got the short end of the stick, when it came to introduced foods. But they were admirable at adapting what they had -- and those who came to the Americas were equally admirable at adapting to what existed on this side of the Atlantic, and they made major contributions to the food culture of both South and North America.

The Betumi site (mentioned in germuska's post above) is great -- info on markets on the front, but if you click on Blog, you get all kinds of info about food preparation, including recipes and even a few YouTube videos of one really labor-intensive dish.