147. Rice and Beans: A Unique Dish in a Hundred Places by Richard Wilk and Livia Barbosa

BOOK REVIEW: Rice and Beans - A Unique Dish in a Hundred Places by Richard Wilk and Livia Barbosa

Rice in an Asian staple, highly regarded as the "filling" food throughout the day. Beans on the other hand has proven as a sustenance for many poor agrarian communities around the world. But just how did these two combine through the ages as a food in Jamaica highly revered as the "coat of arms" or maybe as a New Orleans style food?

This book is about the paradox of local and global. On the one hand, this is a globe-spanning dish, a simple source of complete nutrition for billions of people in hundreds of countries. In every place people insist that rice and beans is a local invention, deeply rooted in a particular history and culture.

The authors of this book explore the specific history of the versions of rice and beans beloved and indigenous in cultures from Brazil to West Africa. But they also plumb the shared African, Native American and European trans-Atlantic encounters and exchanges, and the contemporary forces of globalization and nation-building, which combine to make rice and beans a powerful substance and symbol of the relationship between food and culture.

With contributions from several famous food anthropologists, many of these articles are backed by years of research on food anthropology (the study of food history and foodways throughout the world). 

Highly informative and a refreshing respite from most books which only explain origins of the food, this book piqued my interest on the world's food commodity that feeds the poor and the rich. If you will excuse me my mum has made a porridge with black eyed peas....