Claude Lévi-Strauss at the table

Rather than the French starter-main-dessert grid, I order these dishes according to the framework I myself proposed for reading all the world's cuisines: the culinary triangle. At its three poles: RAW (food in its natural state), COOKED (transformed by fire and culture), and ROTTEN/FERMENTED (transformed by time). A meal, in any society, is composed by leaning toward one or another of these poles. Here: fish cooked over a campfire (cooked), dried cassava flatbread for the road (between raw and preserved), Burgundy wine (fermented), and pressed tropical fruit (raw and fresh).

Cassava is the staple food of the Amazonian societies I studied. A toxic tuber in its raw state, it must be grated, pressed, dried, and roasted before it becomes edible: a textbook case for my triangle, where culture makes edible what nature offers dangerous. Farinha accompanies everything, thickens, travels, and keeps for months. It is the common thread of my ethnographer's table.