Where in the world?

The World Cuisines Cooking Group kicks off its Fall season — its first season of cooking together — in a couple of weeks, so it's time for me to organize a menu and send out a shopping list to each participant. Everyone brings part of the grocery list; in that way, we are all responsible to each other for the food we eat, and no one person has the burden of shopping for all of us.

Unique among Ninecooks groups, this group focuses on the cuisines and culture of a particular country or region in each cooking session, through recipes that utilize ingredients available locally or online (because if we can't get the ingredients, we're never going to add these recipes to our everyday cooking). So the decision about where to start doesn't revolve around technique or ingredient, but around culture. What, and how, will we cook together?

Now, I am not a procrastinator, but often I wait for patterns or signs from the universe ... which looks very much like procrastination to those who don't know me well! Laugh if you will, but yesterday I finally saw the pattern.

Clue #1: While shopping in antique-y Putnam, Connecticut, on Saturday, Ted and I stopped in the local bookstore, which carries an eclectic mix of old and new, toys and games, wrapping paper and crafts. I found two African cookbooks.

Clue #2: In the September 11 issue of The Nation, in an article titled "Slow Food Nation," Alice Waters writes: "The pleasures of the [family meal] are a social as well as a private good. At the table, we learn moderation, conversation, tolerance, generosity and conviviality; these are civic virtues."

Viola! as Julia Child would have said — a family meal, in celebration of our cooking family.

So, we're off to Senegal for Poulet Yassa, a chicken-and-rice dish traditionally served to honored guests, who eat with their hands from a communal bowl. We'll start with a simple West African peanut soup made with sweet potatoes, in honor of the season. We'll use spoons for that.

(Photo above of Poulet Yassa from www.seneportal.com)

Comments

[Pauline]

The menu looks organized, but the shopping list?????

[Lydia]

Pauline, the shopping list is coming by email. Nothing scary or hard to find!

[Jessica]

Oh yum! I have wonderful memories of a similar dish I ate in Senegal years ago. Food is such a great way to build community. Years ago in Cambridge I frequented an Ethiopian restaraunt where they featured a huge buckwheat pancake/crepe that you used to scoop up the food. The flavors are magic, but so is the coming together over the common plate.

[Lydia]

Jessica, please tell us more about your food experiences in Senegal. Were you staying with families, traveling with a group, student, etc.? It is definitely the "common plate" that drew me to this menu.

Injera -- that's the Ethiopian bread, made from teff flour. There's a market in Boston's South End where you can buy it. A bit sour (to me), but I find that whole wheat tortillas or lavash make a reasonable substitute.