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NPR's Body Electric, a special interactive series in Velveting. habits. in the TED Radio Hour Feed wherever you get your podcasts. It's the Bitter Southerner Podcast from Georgia Public Broadcasting and the magazine I edit,

The Bitter Southerner.

My name is Chuck Reese and this is episode two of our first season and today we're talking about food.

Good food can do more than just satisfy craving.

With the right ingredients, the texture, the smell, the taste, they can make powerful statements.

And Chef Tunde Wei knows how to work those combinations very well.

Add salt, and if it tastes good, then you are winning in life.

In his home kitchen in New Orleans, Tunday Way makes his own special version of Jollif Rice.

It's a spicy one-pot dish from his home country in Nigeria.

You can find Tunday's recipe for jollif rice easily online, but in this version he's adding Eru, I-R-U, a pace made of fermented locus beans which are native to his home in West Africa.

The way I cook it, I cook the rice and then I smoke it by burning the bottom of the pot.

And so it's smoky, it's spicy, and then it's

by burning the bottom of the pot.

And so it's smoky, it's spicy, and then it's like

has this mint or licorice thing going on.

You see, those kinds of personal touches have contributed to southern food for a long time.

People from other cultures arrive here and their knowledge adds a little something extra to

the gumbo that is the South.

So I'm putting the Iru with the onions.

Many chefs in our region have developed a keener appreciation of the hands that

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