Category: Cooking

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African food blogging

Emeka Okafor over at Timbuktu Chronicles points to a blog that sounds really fascinating: BetumiBlog. Betumi is the African Culinary Network. It “connects anyone who delights in African cuisine, foodways, and food history.” BetumiBlog is run by Fran Osseo-Asare, who is clearly incredibly knowledgeable and enthusiastic about African food and cooking. She has contributed a chapter on Food and Foodways to the Sub-Saharan Africa volume of The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Popular Culture ((Edited by Dennis Hickey, with Gary Hoppenstand the general editor of the series.)). That includes a very useful table summarizing the many different ways Africans prepare their starchy staples. My personal score is nine.

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Cheese and olives

A column in the current issue of The Economist uses the example of Gruyère and Emmental cheeses in Switzerland to make the case that, if Europe wants to protect its traditional farmers and producers — and the agrobiodiversity which underpins their livelihoods — in the face of globalization, moving upmarket and selling expensive niche products to rich foreigners may be a better bet than “to deploy subsidies and tariffs to compete artificially on price.” Which is mostly what’s happening now.

[EU farm Commissioner] Mariann Fischer Boel … has urged food producers to focus on quality, heritage and new markets. This summer, she told exporters that import tariffs will move in only one direction in the coming years: “downwards”.

Of course, that will require marketing savvy. It will also require a robust quality-monitoring and labelling systems. Because, as a New Yorker piece on the “slippery business” of trading in fake Italian extra virgin olive oil entertainingly demonstrates this week, there are plenty of wise guys around ready to exploit loopholes and weaknesses.

Later: Cheese, olives, and wine!