num_pages: 288
description: A sprightly deeply personal narrative about how gumbofor 250 years a Cajun and Creole secrethas become one of the worlds most beloved dishes. Ask any self-respecting Louisianan who makes the best gumbo and the answer is universal: Momma. The product of a melting pot of culinary influences gumbo in fact reflects the diversity of the people who cooked it up: French aristocrats West Africans in bondage Cajun refugees German settlers Native Americansall had a hand in the pot. What is it about gumbo that continues to delight and nourish so many? And what explains its spread around the world? A seasoned journalist Ken Wells sleuths out the answers. His obsession goes back to his childhood in the Cajun bastion of Bayou Black where his French-speaking mothers gumbo often began with a chicken chased down in the yard. Back then gumbo was a humble soup little known beyond the boundaries of Louisiana. So when a homesick young Ken at college in Missouri realized there wasnt a restaurant that could satisfy his gumbo cravings he called his momma for the recipe. That phone-taught gumbo was a disaster. The second cooked at his mothers side fueled a lifelong quest to explore gumbos roots and mysteries. In Gumbo Life: Tales from the Roux Bayou  Wells does just that. He spends time with octogenarian chefs who turn the lowly coot into gourmet gumbo; joins a team at a highly competitive gumbo contest; visits a factory that churns out gumbo by the ton; observes the gumbo-making rituals of an iconic New Orleans restaurant where high-end Creole cooking and Cajun cuisine first merged. Gumbo Life  rendered in Wells affable prose makes clear that gumbo is more than simply a delicious dish: its an attitude a way of seeing the world. For all who read its pages this is a tasty culinary memoirto be enjoyed and shared like a simmering pot of gumbo.
language: English
title: Gumbo Life: Tales from the Roux Bayou
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company