Bananas and Politics

The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters

American Public Media

Food, Arts

4.3 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 7 March 2009

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week it's a different look at the seemingly simple and innocent banana. It's played a role in building regimes, toppling governments, partnering with the CIA and even gave Elvis his legendary grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich. Our guest is Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World.

The Sterns have found five-star Mexican food at Rosita's in the small Great Plains town of Scottsbluff, Nebraska.

Sally Schneider is back talking savory ideas for lemons. Try her recipe for Risotto with Dry Sherry and Lemon from her book, The Improvisational Cook.

Reporter Guy Hand tells of the morphing of the tater tot. From the ridiculous to the sublime, it's the story of what happened to those crispy little nuggets that started out as cattle feed in the Pacific Northwest and ended up in trendy bars all across America.

Lynne and Christopher Kimball of Cook's Illustrated fame play another round of Stump the Cook with Chris from St. Louis.

Professor Jessica Harris, the first scholar-in-residence to hold the chair endowed by Ray Charles at Dillard University, talks about the musician's great generosity, how he loved to eat, and his support of African-American culture.

Broadcast dates for this episode:

March 15, 2008 (originally aired)
March 7, 2009 (rebroadcast)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Our common nature is a musical journey with Yo-Yo Ma and me, Ana Gonzalez, through this complicated country.
0:08.1	We go into caves, onto boats, and up mountain trails to meet people, hear their stories, their poetry, and of course, play some music, all to reconnect to nature and get closer to the things we're missing.
0:24.5	Listen to Our Common Nature from WNYC, wherever you get podcasts.
0:34.8	Hi, it's Lynn Rosetta, Casper, and you're listening to The Splendid Table, the show for people who love to eat.
0:41.9	Well, today it's bananas.
0:43.7	Not how to cook them, not how to shop for them.
0:46.5	But instead, we dig into their politics with writer Dan Coppell.
0:50.7	He's author of the book Banana, the Fate of the Fruit That Change the World.
0:55.9	Sally Schneider, the mistress of culinary sleight of hand, brings us the savory lemon, all the
1:01.6	non-desert ways to work with the fruit that we take for granted. Then it's one of those only in
1:07.5	America tales. Cattle feed becomes a supermarket treat and then gets star power on
1:13.6	high-class menus. I get challenged to another round of Stump the Cook with our celebrity stuntmaster
1:19.1	Christopher Kimball of America's Test Kitchen fame. And as always in the second half of the show,
1:24.6	we're going to be opening the lines for your calls. Now you can reach us at
1:27.5	800-537-52-52. Okay, let's roll with Jane and Michael Stern. They write the road food column in Gourmet
1:37.1	magazine. Lynn, who knew that in Scott's Bluff, Nebraska, you could find some really good Mexican food?
1:54.0	No one.
1:55.0	Well, yeah, I mean, I realize that many people from Mexico have spread all over the country, but somehow Scots Bluff, Nebraska just doesn't seem to be a logical candidate to be a center of the culture.
2:07.5	Well, here's the logic.
2:08.7	It's all around Scott's Bluff are beet fields.
2:12.3	It's the home of the Great Western Sugar Company.
2:14.7	Ah.
	...

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