"The work of knowing intimately the conditions that prove ground for our explorations, the long spiral of diaspora; how else could we come to develop a tasting menu for the forgotten? We pluck and dice with care and carefulness. We feed and we are fed."
"Swɛɛt Salonɛ" (Sierra Leone, sic) is the name of Chef Maria Bradfords' brilliant text on the remarkable sights and phenomenal taste of food culture from Sierra Leone. Maria is the Head Chef and Founder of Shwen Shwen, a restaurant that offers exclusive food and beverage services in Rochester, Kent in the United Kingdom.
Published in 2023, "Swɛɛt Salonɛ" is a special entry into the growing haute cuisine/food literature by a Black author from the continent. Deftly weaving the forms of memoir and history, Chef Maria's text is a shorthand map for us readers to begin to grasp her studied understanding of food. The emergent property that Chef Maria puts forth is the ability, beautifully illustrated, for Salone food to be an ecological matrix: both mother cuisine to places like Brazil and the Carribbean and simultaneously power the fusion of other cuisines from it's own traditional roots.
Don't worry, there won't be any delicious spoilers here. All that goodness will remain wrapped in the wonderful kontri cloth jacket design of the hardcover by Quadrille, Hardie Grant Publishing.
I want to expound on some of the brilliant storytelling ability that Maria demonstrates, for example, when she writes of "stories written by time."
Preparing food as we understand it in the everyday urban sense, isn't something the majority of folks have the privilege of ascribing pleasure, 24/7. At home in Tkaronto, a primer to a long shift would see me down a filling one-two-three of a shake, a snack and a sweet potato. Or, after work, tiredly cooking Farfalle for a Chicken bolognese. Even then, every single person no doubt has a dish that they personally know and love, a meal they can breakdown into components of what is so very satisfying to them. The essential genre of cookbook/recipe books today demonstrates folk's healthy desire for strengthening food literacy.
What has changed over time, then, is how frequently involved we are as 'urbanites' with the beginning of our dining experiences, harvest and food processing. Like the authors of "Consider the Tongue" I argue that food creation is a labour of love and like with any labour under conditions of capitalism, we have the inevitability of alienation that workers face. For our liberation, what we may be tasked with next is to find within ourselves and community, the love for food again.
Through her cultural work, Chef Maria offers us cultural workers "paleo-friendly" dishes, food likely to have been eaten by early humans. Fonio, Palm Oil, Grains of Paradise. Travelling to Salone, Chef diligently traces a 4000+ year history of continuous human habitation in recipe format. In her history, the methods are clear: multiple steps, simple or improvised implements, the layering of flavours, the preeminence of colour, the adventure to source key ingredients.
The question of the modern in our food today isn't abandoned by Chef Maria, it shoudn't be abandoned. She elevates the kinds of dining expriences (we never knew) we can have by expanding the definition and preparing the archive anticipating the constraints of a changing climate. Salone cuisine is repositioned as contemporary world class fare, instituting our care and consideration for the broad spectrum of ecological beings and compounds that support "harvest" and "food processing."
Swɛɛt Salonɛ is a fun, beautiful and authentic recipe book. In sections of spectacular photosets, we are entertained to the expert food and beverage palate Chef Maria has gathered over the span of more than 10 years in the industry. One dish resembles a Swahili chapati dish I know and love. Another drink seems like a cousin to Cote D'Ivoire's "gnamankoudji" drink. I believe the recipe is very similar to that shared by Marguerite Abouet in "Aya: Life in Yop City (2007)," illustrated by Clemet Obrerie. For this mystery drink and more information about her exclusive studio, visit Chef's website once more here at Shwen Shwen.
The very bowls and serving dishes within the pages of this book are sophisticated pieces themselves, curated vessels of the inspiring light that Chef Maria Bradford shines on her heritage cuisine. Afro-fusion food will shine bright this year and beyond, and I am happy to say that I'll be starting on these recipes to keep improving my food literacy in our changing world.
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Edited by Chebet Fataba Kakulatombo (they/she). Visit their work at https://djembequest.wordpress.com/