My Japanese Ginger is finally in full bloom. You can literally see the pollen inside the flower. This also happens to be the season for pawpaws. It has become a ritual to make a Fall solstice dinner using these two ingredients. Afro Futuristic is about getting the best ingredients with the most eclectic flavors.
The recipe I make with these ingredients and French Lentils is called Ngwíkoraha.
The name is inspired by a combination of Charles Darwin and a Gíkùyù proverb.
I am not the only person who has been fascinated by this flower from Japanese Ginger. It looks like a form of orchid. Darwin was so puzzled by the fact that Orchid flowers did not smell. He went to his grave with the belief that orchid plants do have a scent.
We now know that the orchids attract their pollinators, not by their scent, but with the shape of the flowers which mimics the sexual organs of their female counterparts. By the time the insects realize that they have been duped, pollination has already taken place.
I therefore see some similarities between the orchid and Japanese Ginger except that they do have a scent, or I think they do. I should know them by now as I have been growing my patch of the plant for the last six years. They grow better every year and thereby produce more flowers every year.
I also looked at the cost of a single plant of Japanese Ginger on would cost me in a 2 gallon container online. One of the sites had a price of $39 dollars.The seller did not indicate if the Japanese Ginger was actually organic or not. Whatever the case might be, it would be reasonable to compare a salad and dish garnished with the sexy flowers compostable in cost to an expensive bottle of wine. But I am not a big buff of fermented grapes because I prefer to do my own.
I had never been served Japanese Ginger before I grew my own. But that did not deter me from trying. Eating high end food is not something new that I am inventing, it is part of my culture as well as a family heritage. There is a clan in my culture called Ambui who are known to brag about wealth and romance. A man from that sub-tribe would talk in jest amongst his colleagues and say that he would not die while digging yams but rather handling calves. That is a way of saying that he is wealthy enough to marry another wife who would bear him more children even in his old age. In cultural lingo, such talks where a person brags about his wealth or prowess has a specific name. It was referred to as kwÍraha. It was a common practice amongst good friends while they socialized over honey mead and meat. I am greatly interested in such matters as most people are as aware about the fun part of elderhood amongst our community, but traditional men in general. There also happens to be a very close intersection between food and fun.
Yams for example were very closely related with sex and romance. The man of the family had his own garden where he would plant yams. The yams itself was trellises upon a special tree known as Mùkùngùgù. The tree and the yam are synonyms of any close relationship. It was a common idiom that every Gíkùyù understands. The harvesting of the yams takes a lot of work and the process was very secretive in the old days. A man would go to the extent of harvesting the yam at dusk while naked. The idea was to keep everybody away while he is digging his yams. No man wanted other people to know which yam was dug as someone could come behind him and dig from the same hole he had dug. Since a man only dug out some of the yams in one whole and left others for another harvest, it would be extremely difficult to know if someone happened to come behind the owner of the yams and dug some in the same holes that had already been dug on the same day. For that reason, the whole process was a secret of the owner.
Out of the nine sub-clans of the Gíkùyù, Ambui were the junior to the Anjiru. I happen to be from the Anjirù, the oldest of the nine daughters who formed the nine sub-clans. The sub-clans were known for their hard work and knowledge of the plants. So if the younger clan of Ambui would claim that they were wealthy enough to marry more than one wife, I am pleased to share more ways of ensuring that the Ambui have a challenger from the Anjiru. We too are not just older in age but also in “kwíraha”. I know I can expect a lot of love from my Ambui friends but I just can’t wait to see what kind of comeback I will get.
While enjoying the preparation for my recipe, I remembered the Gíkùyù proverb that states that “Ngwíko ya arùme ní nda”. Loosely translated to mean that food is as intimate to men as sex. The orchid-like flower of Japanese Ginger makes a recipe that is intimate to me in more ways than sex. It is both flavorful, organic and original. But I would be dishonest to claim that having a sexual appeal doesn’t raise the stakes for the recipe. It’s a recipe that hits many notes and senses. Food without imagination is bland, boring and unfashionable. But the worst part of it is that such a classification makes a recipe unfit to be classified as Afro Futuristic Conscious Cuisine. It’s a cuisine that is beyond just being futuristic, it is also scientific & romantic. Can you imagine if all the nine clans would come up with their own recipes of romance, science and futurism. Since I am a Münjirù, I have taken my first stab at it, the rest can hire me and I will do sisterly and brotherly food justice by them. Kwíraha is romance and so is the Japanese Ginger recipe by a Mùnjirù. How cool is an Afro Futuristic recipe that taste great, keeps one healthy but also predicts how I will die, not in poverty but in love.