Life From Scratch (37 page)

On cooking day, I peel through the tough brown exterior, more like bark than skin. The inside is pristine—white and smooth. I tell Keith I cannot wait to taste it. He doesn’t look so sure.

The initial excitement fades when I spend the next hour and a half grating the cassava. Tough fibers thread through the woody core, making the job even more difficult. My biceps and shoulders burn as I hurry to grind them down and make the packets before Ava wakes up.

My cheeks flush. My forehead glistens. Bits of cassava flick onto the counter, the floor. In the midst of this mess, I imagine myself living in Angola. I read that in the small villages equipped only with outdoor kitchens, neighbors come together to help each other make food. The social contact makes quick work of the arduous task.

But my kitchen, ample though it is, is silent. There is no grandmother, no mother at my side. I spoon the paste into the banana leaves and roll them up into long, green cigars. By the time Ava wakes up, my knuckles are raw, and the sun is low in the cotton sky.

That night, we eat the bâtons de manioc with some friends and their small child. Keith takes one tight-lipped bite before putting the packet down. Ava does the same. Our guests nibble politely around theirs. Everyone reaches for the traditional Angolan stew I prepared, made with chicken, okra, pumpkin, and red palm oil.

I should be happy they’re enjoying
something
, but I cannot help staring at the neglected green bâtons. There are 20 in the stack. I think about the hours I spent grating. Unwilling to let the work go to waste, I wolf down one, then two, then three. The gummy mixture tastes like a combination of steamed artichokes and a mild starch, like potato. I’m not sure if I’m eating them because I’m hungry or because I want to show Keith what a
real
appetite is. By the time I get up from the table, I’ve eaten six.

After our guests go home and Ava goes to bed, Keith and I argue about the leftovers. I want to save the cassava and the chicken, but he says there’s only room for one. His vote is for the chicken, which I take as blatant disregard for my bloody knuckles. It’s a stupid fight, but for some reason it feels like it matters.

The longer we argue, the weirder I feel. There’s no pain, just a stretching, an expanding, as if there’s an enormous balloon in my stomach. The distention becomes so uncomfortable that I switch into sweats and go to bed early, leaving Keith to deal with the leftovers. I drift into a fitful sleep, waking up around midnight when Ava cries out for her first feeding of the night. I’m still nursing, so I am surprised to hear Keith get out of bed. His footsteps are muffled, as though I’m listening from inside a fishbowl. I wonder if she’s been crying a long time.

I slide out of bed to go to her, but no sooner do I stand up than I crash to the floor. I land on all fours, but the carpet fibers feel like knives. My bones, my joints feel like the edges of a shattered chandelier. Still, I know Ava needs me. I stumble to my feet and track through the bedroom, dragging my hand along the wall to steady myself. By the time I reach the dining room, my ears buzz, my temples throb, and stars flood my vision. The room shrinks like a candle without oxygen. I wonder, vaguely, if I’m dying.

The room goes completely black just as Keith thrusts Ava into my arms. I open my mouth to say something, but the words don’t come.

Suddenly I’m sideways, crashing into something hard. The last thing I hear is a grating metal sound.

“Sasha, Sasha, wake up.” Keith shakes my shoulder.

My face is pressed against the living room carpet, my left arm lies across one of our bar stools. Keith kneels beside me with Ava in his arms, whimpering.

“What happened? You almost dropped her, Sash. She was dangling upside down when I took her from you. Her head was two feet from cracking onto the kitchen tiles,” he whispers.

When I shake my head, the small movement brings on a wave of nausea I cannot control. Afterward, Keith helps me back to bed.

The next day, the doctor listens to my story with squinted eyes and pronounces the culprit: dehydration. I’ve been dehydrated before, I tell him. This has nothing to do with dehydration.

I ask him if the two falls could be the result of something I ate. I mention the bâtons de manioc, the strange ingredient, and the complex preparation, but he just smiles over his spectacles. He hooks me up to an IV of fluids and sends me on my way.

The dismissal irritates me. That night I look up cassava poisoning, finding my way to several sites including Ohio State University’s Research News. One word jumps off the screen: cyanide. Apparently, the woody fibers inside cassava contain a form of the poison: “An unprocessed cassava plant contains potentially toxic levels of a cyanogen called linamarin. The proper processing of cassava—drying, soaking in water, rinsing, or baking—effectively reduces cassava’s linamarin content. But shortcut processing techniques can yield toxic food products.”

Even though I soaked the cassava and cooked it for hours, nothing would change the fact that I grated the tough fibers right into the packets. With such small traces of the toxin, no one else was affected. But eating so many of them was another story. I’d emptied my stomach and then some; only spending an hour hooked up to the IV had brought color back to my cheeks.

Continuing my search, I land on a page from Hong Kong’s Centre for Food Safety site, which warns: “The clinical signs of acute cyanide intoxication include rapid respiration, drop in blood pressure, rapid pulse, dizziness, headache, stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea, mental confusion, twitching, and convulsions. Death due to cyanide poisoning can occur when the cyanide level exceeds the limit an individual is able to detoxify.”

The people of Angola grow up knowing these dangers inherently. Their elders teach the others to soak and grate the cassava. In Angola, the risks of cooking are balanced out by cooking in community.

In the afternoon, I look over the kitchen, peppered with creature comforts: a microwave, a bread machine, an indoor kitchen, for goodness’ sakes. For the first time, I feel the emptiness of cooking without the wisdom of the ages at my side: How little these conveniences matter when there’s no guiding hand to help keep us safe. I pull the cassava sticks from the refrigerator and toss them in the trash. The next day I donate my microwave and give a friend my bread machine.

When I tell Mom what happened, she groans. “Doctors are such idiots. I hope you fired him. Of
course
, it’s the cassava.”

“But the website says the cassava in the United States is supposed to be cyanide free. They treat it with some kind of … wash?”

“Nonsense! Are you going to trust your body or what’s
supposed
to be?”

“Well, it sure would be easier if I knew what the hell I was doing,” I say. “What kind of mother am I, to risk my child’s life like that?”

“Yes, that’s scary,” she agrees. Then she brightens. “Maybe you should focus on recipes that are going to
work
for your family, Sash. That’s all. Don’t try so hard to be shocking. I’m sure Keith’s not a fan of all this fuss, anyway.”

Muamba de Galinha

This spicy Angolan chicken stew presents none of the difficulties of
bâtons de manioc.
It’s a homey chop-and-simmer, one-pot dinner. The unique red tint and bold flavor come from red palm oil, the oil of choice in West Africa. Expats say it tastes like home, but the carrot-colored paste (that sets up at room temperature, like butter) is certainly an acquired taste. Angolans use the oil with abandon—doubling the amount I used here would not be unheard of—but I find a restrained hand goes a long way. It is available in ethnic grocers, certain natural grocers, and online
.

Although this rendition makes my nose sniffle, feel free to add more chilies to taste. Angolans don’t hold back. The stew certainly can be served on its own, but it tastes great with boiled yucca, or served over rice
.

Juice and zest of 1 lemon

4 large garlic cloves, crushed

A generous pinch of salt

1½ teaspoons chili powder

4 to 5 whole chicken legs

¼ to ⅓ cup red palm oil

2 large onions, chopped

3 tomatoes, quartered

1 habanero pepper, as desired

1 cup water

Salt and pepper

1 small pumpkin (about 1½ pounds), to make 1 pound cubed

½ pound okra (fresh or frozen), sliced in rounds

Mix lemon juice, zest, crushed garlic, salt, and chili powder, and rub into the chicken. Cover and refrigerate for an hour or overnight.

Heat a large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the oil, and brown the chicken, 5 to 10 minutes a side. Avoid crowding. Do this in several batches if needed. Next, cook the onions until soft and beginning to brown. Tip in the remaining marinade and tomatoes. Slit the habanero in half (or, for more fire, chop it), and toss into the mix. Splash in the water, and season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook at a gentle bubble for 30 to 45 minutes, or until the chicken is tender.

Meanwhile, peel, seed, and cut the pumpkin into 1.5-inch cubes. Stir the pumpkin and sliced okra into the broth, cover, and continue bubbling until all ingredients are cooked through, a good 30 minutes. Adjust seasoning. Serve hot.

Enough for 4 to 6

CHAPTER 24

Stove Top Tra
v
el

B
Y NOW MY BLOG
, Global Table Adventure, has a sprinkling of devoted readers, and I cannot imagine telling them I almost killed myself with the very recipe I suggested they try. I don’t want my ignorance to reflect on the Angolan people; it’s not their fault I screwed up. Ultimately, I decide to modify the recipe with clearer instructions and to keep my mouth shut about my reaction.

Still, the incident has repercussions. Keith is increasingly cool on the project, and I find myself wondering if the adventure is a risk to my daughter’s safety. After all, I could have unwittingly passed the cyanide—or whatever it was—through my milk to her.

But somehow I cannot stop cooking. Though I’ve yet to make a meal from a country I’ve lived in or experienced firsthand, this adventure reawakens deep-seated yearnings. The photos and stories of the world’s people lure me, inviting me to taste, explore, and imagine myself elsewhere. I feel young once again, as I was in Europe, with infinity at my fingertips. But where those voyages were bandages for a broken heart, these new journeys will launch me toward the uncharted life I crave. They
must
.

That March, we sip bittersweet grapefruit sparklers from Antigua and Barbuda. Even the summery glow of our curried chicken salad sandwiches and the heat from our jalapeño-studded mango and avocado salad do nothing to take the chill from the air.