The Ethnomusicologists' Cookbook: Complete Meals from Around the World

You will make friends and influence people with this book. You will be able to invite friends to amazing dinner parties at which you can serve food from all corners of the World and impress them with your knowledge. The World is divided into nine sections: Africa, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Middle East, South and Central America, North America, Oceania and Europe. Each section has between three and nine contributions, forty-seven in all, mainly from eminent ethnomusicologists and those, like me, interested in food. Each contribution is a complete meal for six people. That should keep you going for about a year without repeating yourself. Start off somewhere exotic like Tonga. After 3½ hours you could be serving `Otai' a coconut fruit drink to welcome your guests, followed by `Ota Ika' a tasty dish of raw fish seasoned wih lime juice, onions, garlic, chili pepper and tomatoes, and `Lupulu' which are baked packets of taro or spinach leaves containing corned beef, fish or chicken (the Tongans like corned beef the best), Puaka Ta'o, baked roast pork and sweet potatoes, finished off with tropical fruits, ice-cream and fruitcake. For your next dinner party go to Estonia and try the recipes for cucumber salad, beet and herring salad, sauerkraut, blood sausage and creamed semolina on fruit soup. All good peasant fare. Helpfully drinks are also recommended: Saku brand beer and juniper berry soda. Have some bread too. Bread is sacred in Estonia and giving the heel to a young woman will ensure that she has large breasts. Take your friends on a trip to Namibia and treat them to `Braaied', grilled goat or lamb chops, `Mahangu', sorghum or maize meal porridge with a spicy tomato sauce, `Ekaka', fresh spinach and Oshikuki, doughnuts or pumpkin fritters. These recipes are from Minette Mans' 88-year old Namibian mother. I was flattered to be asked to contribute the Balinese section. I provided my family recipes for `Base Genep,' which is a spice paste used in many dishes, `Babi Kecap', pork in kecap sauce, which is eaten during the Balinese ceremonies of Galungan and Nyepi, `Lawar', spicy green beans, which accompanies all ceremonies, `Nasi Putih' steamed rice, `Krupuk Udang', shrimp crackers, `Tahu Goreng', fried tofu, and `Pisang Goreng', banana fritters. We serve most of these in my restaurant in Ubud, which Sean Williams frequented every day during her visits to Bali in the 1980s. Every contributor was asked to write a bit about the role of music and food in their society. The links between music and food are strong and it is interesting to compare them. This is the first book of its kind and may be responsible for creating a new subject which Sean Williams calls gastromusicology. She is a Professor of Ethnomusicology at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and has studied Indonesian and Irish music since the 1970s. She contributed the recipes from Sunda, West Java and Ireland. Not only are there anthropological essays wi

The idea of the cookbook is appealing, and so are many of the recipes, although ingredients may be hard to locate. The text gets sometimes gets bogged in pedantry, but that is probably to be expected, given its academic slant.

It's hard to decide whether to just sit and read the recipes and the reflections and experiences of the contributors or actually get into the kitchen to try the recipes myself. This is a great and very interesting insight into food and cultures from people who've experienced it first hand. I highly recommend it.