Gumbo Life: Tales from the Roux Bayou
Ken Wells
Apr 2019 · Highbridge Audio · Narrated by P.J. Ochlan
headphones
Audiobook
8 hr 10 min
Unabridged
family_home
Eligible
info
reportRatings and reviews aren’t verified Learn More
Want a 53 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline.
Add
About this audiobook
Ask any self-respecting Louisianan who makes the best gumbo and the answer is universal: "Momma." The product of a melting pot of culinary influences, gumbo, in fact, reflects the diversity of the people who cooked it up: French aristocrats, West Africans in bondage, Cajun refugees, German settlers, Native Americans—all had a hand in the pot. What is it about gumbo that continues to delight and nourish so many? And what explains its spread around the world?
A seasoned journalist, Ken Wells sleuths out the answers. His obsession goes back to his childhood in the Cajun bastion of Bayou Black. Back then, gumbo was a humble soup little known beyond the boundaries of Louisiana. So when a homesick young Ken, at college in Missouri, realized there wasn't a restaurant that could satisfy his gumbo cravings, he called his momma for the recipe. That phone-taught gumbo was a disaster. The second, cooked at his mother's side, fueled a lifelong quest to explore gumbo's roots and mysteries.
In Gumbo Life, you follow Wells as he watches octogenarian chefs turn the lowly coot into gourmet gumbo, joins a team at a hotly contested gumbo cook-off, and visits a factory that churns out gumbo by the ton. Brisk travelogue, riveting history, heart-felt memoir—this is a book to be savored like a simmering pot of gumbo.
A seasoned journalist, Ken Wells sleuths out the answers. His obsession goes back to his childhood in the Cajun bastion of Bayou Black. Back then, gumbo was a humble soup little known beyond the boundaries of Louisiana. So when a homesick young Ken, at college in Missouri, realized there wasn't a restaurant that could satisfy his gumbo cravings, he called his momma for the recipe. That phone-taught gumbo was a disaster. The second, cooked at his mother's side, fueled a lifelong quest to explore gumbo's roots and mysteries.
In Gumbo Life, you follow Wells as he watches octogenarian chefs turn the lowly coot into gourmet gumbo, joins a team at a hotly contested gumbo cook-off, and visits a factory that churns out gumbo by the ton. Brisk travelogue, riveting history, heart-felt memoir—this is a book to be savored like a simmering pot of gumbo.
About the author
Ken Wells covered car wrecks and gator sightings for his hometown weekly before leaving the bayous for a journalism career that included twenty-four years with the Wall Street Journal. He has written five novels of the Cajun bayous and lives in Chicago.
P. J. Ochlan, an Audie Award-winning and multiple AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator, has recorded hundreds of audiobooks. His acting career spans more than thirty years and has also included Broadway, the New York Shakespeare Festival, critically acclaimed feature films, and regular roles in television series.
Rate this audiobook
Tell us what you think.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
