African gastronomy makes its festival

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Ten women for six men. For once, the parity is not respected but no one complains. On Saturday, July 7th, sixteen African or Afro-descendant chefs will participate in the first edition of the festival " We eat Africa". Their ambition: to shake the clichés that stick to the kitchens of the continent.

Conferences, workshops and meetings will serve as dishes of resistance. Around the table, based in Boulogne-Billancourt, several themes will be discussed: fusion or traditional cuisine, the integration of spices and forgotten foods, or the idea of ​​the transmission.

The head of agapes, Anto Cocagne , is head chef at home in Paris and is in charge of the chief editor of the magazine Afro cooking, partner of the festival. But this is not enough for the young woman of Gabonese origin. In July 2017, "Chef Anto" and his team hosted a workshop on African kitchens at Galeries Lafayette. "At that moment, we felt the appetite of people around the subject", she confides. The "We eat Africa" ​​project was born.

A few phone calls later, fifteen African-born chefs responded to the invitation. Among the headliners, there is Christian Abégan, star presenter of S tar chef, a culinary entertainment program in Cameroon. "It's a little our dad at all," Anto Cocagne comments. In the same category, Alexandre Bella Ola, also a Cameroonian, owns two restaurants, the Rio dos camaraos and the Moussa l'Africain, located in Montreuil and Paris. 19659009] "Too fat or too spicy"

Saturday, the kitchens of twelve countries will be in the spotlight: Morocco, Cameroon, Senegal, Benin, Nigeria or Mozambique. And the challenge of discovering their culinary culture is significant

The gastronomy of the continent still suffers from misunderstandings. "Many customers confuse spicy and spicy, but it's not the same thing. Spices are not used to disguise the poverty of a kitchen but to sublimate it ", explains Fatema Hal, the owner of the Moroccan restaurant Le Mansouria in Paris.

To avoid African cuisine , all pretexts are good: "she is too fat or too spicy" "African restaurants are located in poor neighborhoods" … Anto Cocagne lists these excuses, a bit mocking before asking glue: "Who knows Black qwehli, the organic shrimp from Mozambique? Silence.

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If African dishes remain unknown, do we have to adapt them? Afro fusion, mixed cuisine, is at the heart of the debate. This new trend aims to blend the flavors of Africa with those of another culture. A way also to make these dishes more accessible to the western palates.

To adapt without denaturing

"The cooking is like a language, it needs to be understood" explains the chef Anto before Nathalie Schermann, chief of Congolese origin, takes the floor. "My dad always told me: when you come to a country, you have to adapt. If people walk on one leg, you do the same thing. For example, an African will not eat a chikwangue [bâton de manioc consommé en Afrique centrale] if it does not have the original smell but a white will not taste it if it feels too strong. You have to know how to attract both.

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Adapt it yes, but not at the risk of distorting it. Frowning eyebrows, Fatema Hal, the godmother of the festival, calls for caution. " I do not want to prostitute my kitchen," she says almost annoyed. In the 1970s, she left Morocco to join France. Feminist, this 66-year-old chef has written about fifteen books and received, in 2017, the François Rabelais Prize for all of his work. A first for a woman, who " prefers to cook rather than chef."

Mannequin, ethnologist or hotelier, the paths that have taken these sixteen chefs to the kitchen are full of turns. "I was a model in Tahiti and my husband was expatriated to France. At the time, I followed him everywhere like a little cat. Before going into the kitchen, my passion ", tells Nathalie Schermann. Self-taught, she launched her brand of delicatessen, in June 2016, with the help of her daughter. Its safou cream, a fruit that is reminiscent of plum, has already been doubly awarded at the price of Epicures and Gourmet Selection. A success

In a culinary world occupied by white men, with "a chef three stars a century" the festival is a UFO. Just like African cuisine in France. At least for the moment.