Summary
What can one single dish can tell you about America's history? One particular bowl of soup gives us an insight about the future of cultures that convene around it. Gumbo is eaten by nearly everyone in New Orleans, but its past speaks of the deep inequalities in American history that still resonate to this day. The BBC's Dan Saladino looks into the origins of this dish and discovers influences from Native Americans, slaves from West Africa, settlers from Nova Scotia, and European immigrants from Spain, France and Italy. Dan tries to track down the perfect recipe for one of Louisiana's most famous dishes, and discover how the politics of which food belongs to whom, is still at play, hundreds of years later.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:04.0 | Hello, you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program. |
| 0:09.0 | Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure. We hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:15.0 | There can't be many soups around the world deemed so emblematic of a place they're given their own festival. |
| 0:30.6 | Well in this program the second part of our journey into the southern US state of Louisiana |
| 0:36.3 | and the city of New Orleans were focusing entirely on one dish, Gumbo. and in the city's Armstrong Park, bowls are being handed out to a |
| 0:47.0 | soundtrack of live jazz. |
| 0:50.0 | At a time when the world might well be asking what is America and what does its future hold, |
| 1:00.0 | I'm going to be looking for answers at the bottom of a bowl of soup. Keep listening because |
| 1:05.8 | gumboo is no ordinary soup. When you look in a gumboo pot you're going to see what America |
| 1:12.1 | really stands for the |
| 1:13.5 | mixture of people who arrived here from their own shores looking for |
| 1:17.2 | opportunity and enter married all of the gifts that they brought here to create |
| 1:21.9 | something new they are the gumbo pot. |
| 1:25.2 | So I can really say we are the gumbo. |
| 1:29.2 | So the American psyche and the city of New Orleans all revealed through one dish. Easy as long as I can |
| 1:36.2 | find someone who can tell me what exactly is gumbo. |
| 1:40.3 | I still am trying to figure out the answer to the question. |
| 1:43.5 | What is Gumbo? |
| 1:45.0 | And I've been trying to ask the chefs what is it? |
| 1:47.0 | None of them can say. |
| 1:49.0 | They can't answer the question. |
... |
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