Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [136]
Oddly, few of the relatives know each other, and they tend to regard their cooking as unique. One night in Phoenix, during a culinary conference, we had dinner with a superb New Orleans chef at an authentic Mexican restaurant. He asked us about one of the menu items, huachinango a la veracruzana (snapper Veracruz), and we said it’s similar to the New Orleans favorite named courtbouillon. Laughing, he said, “That’s impossible. New Orleans cooks created courtbouillon strictly out of local inspiration and it remains unlike any other fish dish in the world.” He ordered the huachinango, recognized the affinities, and apologized for his presumption. Neither of us worked up the courage to tell him that French Caribbean islanders also claim exclusive rights to another variation of the same dish, which they even call courtbouillon themselves.
To us, this broad Creole food tradition is the signature cuisine of the Americas, and one of the most fascinating culinary syntheses on earth. Except for Bahia, we’ve visited all of the centers of Creole cooking in the past and have gone to many of them multiple times in recent decades. Salvador became gradually but steadily the biggest case of unfinished business on our food agenda. It is our main reason for visiting Brazil, to plop into place the final piece of a jigsaw puzzle that we’ve been carrying around for years; anything else we enjoy here is gravy.
The local cooking, it becomes clear early, resembles other Creole cuisines in many respects. Some of the common combinations of ingredients look almost identical to those elsewhere, particularly the rice with beans or peas and the shrimp with okra. The casquinha di siri here brings to mind the crab farci on Guadeloupe and Martinique. The most popular kind of molho de pimenta, mixing fiery chiles with vinegar, recalls Caribbean hot sauces, and occasionally you even see a molho in the familiar New Orleans Creole style, with tomatoes, bell peppers, and onions.
Not surprisingly, though, Bahian cuisine remains more purely African than other varieties of Creole cooking. That’s due in part to the prominent role played by dendê, an African ingredient virtually unknown in other Creole capitals; the palm oil adds an inimitable musky accent to loads of local dishes. You also have to credit the Candomblé influence again. The orixás brought many of their favorite dishes almost intact from Africa. They demanded a faithful execution of the original or at least tastes as similar as possible with available ingredients. Even today in terreiros, initiates hew to old recipes and preparation methods in the kitchen in an attempt to maintain continuity with former African versions of the fare. They perpetuate an allegiance to African foods and flavors within the Candomblé community, which for practical purposes means all of Salvador.
A direct Candomblé connection probably even exists to some of the best restaurant chefs of the city, mostly women of a traditional bent. Like Guadeloupe with its cuisine de mères, Salvador boasts its own comida de mãe, cooking defined and refined by mothers with boundless energy and saintly authority. Our most memorable meals come from their kitchens.
Alaíde da Conceição, respectfully known as the “Queen of the Beans,” prepares the first of these local feasts late one afternoon before she closes her tiny restaurant at sunset. Dona Alaíde began cooking with her mother almost a half century ago at a stand in the Comércio district, and