This week we are deep in the grip of what I call Tropical Appalachia. When the humidity reaches full saturation, the temperature hangs near triple digits,the monsoon rains pound down for hours, then the brutal sun returns to steam the rain right back up to the clouds and start the cycle over again. Some years we get this for months; this summer it seems we will only have a few weeks of it. Up here at our little homestead on Break Iron Mountain, the last few days have been more like living in the tropics than the temperate cloudforest we are used to. In my travels Ive spent a lot of time in rainforests - a lot of time in the Hoh on the Olympic Peninsula, the Khao Phra Thaew of southern Thailand, a very damp month in a tent in the Na Pali on Kauai and the wet side of the Big Island, a surreal week near the Columbian-Brazillian-Peruvian border at the conflunce of the Rio Negro and the Amazon, and Im always struck by the similarities to West Virginia. ( In fact, Kauai was more like WV than anyplace Ive ever been, except for that ocean thing, of course. Lots of friendly unemployed overweight people sitting on porches of rundown shacks with a yard full of chickens and a dog chained to a broken down car , while a very small population of incredibly wealthy people live in separatist splendor amongst them.) My ancestral farm, where my parents still live, is right on the Ohio River, and in the summer the fog lies over our fields every night until well after the sun rises, the humidity is overwhelming, and I swear you can watch the foliage grow before your eyes. West Virginia is the northernmost outpost of the paw-paw, a member of the papaya family, and the ridge where Ive had my deer-hunting stand for the last thirty years is covered with paw-paw trees. Up here in the mountains where I live now, tropical plants and herbs thrive. My lemongrass and kaffir lime absolutely love it here, as does my epazote. When I first moved to Morgantown in the mid-eighties, there were a lot of expat Jamaicans around; West Virginia reminded them of the Blue Mountains, and they felt at home here. I dont know where they all went while I was gone all those years, but I like to think they are living up a holler somewhere still, having become feral Hillbilly Maroons, practicing Obeah, handling snakes, and waiting for West Virginia to legalize the Sacrement. I bring up the tropical aspect because this is the week that I chose to build the foundation for our new barn/garage up here on the mountain, and Ive been out setting block in this insane heat and humidity, trying to work off twenty years of accumulated chef gut. While working, Ive been listening to the album Brown Sabbath by Brownout, an Austin-based ultra-heavy mariachi Hispanic funk band who are doing a series of tribute albums to bands that influenced them, and this is, obviously, a Black Sabbath tribute. War Pigs with a horn section and duel Latin percussion? Hell yeah. To take something great and turn it into something completely new, without losing the intrinsic integrity but to build upon it, to make it your own while paying respect to the roots, isnt that what art strives for? Our Global Dinner Series was based on the idea that we are all more alike than we realize. As a chef, I see no dichotomy between Appalachia and the tropics; rather, its my nature to see the similarities, and food is the place where we all come together.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 13:51:34 +0000
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