At the Museum of Civilisations, we are working on intangible heritage, on those aspects of culture that are not material and that are behind objects or food. For example, we mean knowledge about how to cook, cooking practices, legends or proverbs behind certain dishes, properties, and climatic and social factors that have made certain ingredients chosen for centuries. These are unseen and intangible cultural aspects that are behind objects used for preparation as well as specific recipes. These are cultural aspects that have been handed down over time but also change over time. Intangible aspects of cuisine are also smell and taste as well as the names given to dishes. We would like to reflect with you on these cultural aspects that are behind the cuisine, you who know different culinary traditions and also combine them.
Interview with Chef Immaculate Ruému by Gaia Delpino and Rosa Anna Di Lella
What cooking means to you? When did your interest in cooking start? When and why did you begin cooking?
Cooking to me means feeding and nourishing. Not just to feed hunger, but to feed different individual tastes and nourish communal cravings. To feed both what’s needed and desired. I cannot pinpoint a particular moment that sparked my love for food, it somehow feels like I was born with that love and the multifaceted upbringing only fueled that love. In what I can only describe as a chaotic life, my love for food was the second purest thing I knew. I began cooking at an early age, actually, it was baking. My Godmother was a wedding cake maker, she lived in a compound across from us for a while and I remember I would sometimes help her to bake her cakes. I also later discovered an old recipe book that my mum and her sisters used as teenagers making and selling pastries after school to assist my grandparents to fund their education. My mum saw my interest in the cake recipes in that book and got me the pans and ingredients needed. After several practices with her, I eventually started making cupcakes religiously and even went as far as starting a business from it.
How do you interpret the concept of tradition in preparing food? Can a culinary tradition be contemporary? How?
The Concept of tradition can be interpreted in many ways, from the recipe passed down through generations, a specific technique or highlighting an ingredient. The latter is the one I find myself attuned to the most. My style of cooking is one that fuses not just cuisines but traditions and culture. Tradition is about longevity, often people mistake that as something old or in the past time, but today we create new traditions in different aspects of our lives simply by creating with longevity in mind. I like to carry old traditions into new recipes by means of an ingredient that tells a story of the past, present and possible future.
How do you interpret innovation in cooking? Can tradition and innovation be together in cooking? Why?
Piggybacking on my previous answer, innovative cooking is a form of contemporary cooking that adds something new to that which already exists or creates something completely new off of one’s own ideas. Thus I’d say absolutely YES. Tradition can be innovated by evoking a new idea. There are some traditions that hold negative aspects and as contemporary Africans, we still want to be able to celebrate our traditions and we can do so by reclaiming them through the addition of new ideas. That in itself is innovative. For example, many Nigerians and West Africans believe cooking with Maggi cubes is part of our tradition. However, Maggi cube is a 19th-century Swiss seasoning that was then introduced to many colonized countries across Asia and Africa in the 50s. Today there are many Nigerians that will tell you that a traditional Nigerian dish is incomplete without Maggi. Hence the simple decision to omit Maggi and remind ourselves that we as Africans cooked delicious dishes before we were introduced to Maggi is both simply innovative and a celebration of true tradition.
What principles inspire the choice of your ingredients? how do you combine tradition and innovation with respect to the choice of ingredients and the territory where you operate?
The principles that inspire my cooking are the same principles I used in my everyday life. Based on two biblical quotes “a simple meal with love is better than a feast where there is hatred” and “Beauty from ashes”. When choosing an ingredient, I think of what story the final dish should tell. It shouldn’t be one that is overcomplicated or mind-boggling but one that is simply fulfilling and satisfying. Additionally, it is not a requirement that the ingredients have to be luxurious, rather creating something delicious out of the basics, local availability and even sometimes the unwanted. I also like to choose ingredients that evoke love through nostalgia. Meat pie is a common meal amongst Nigerians and when I decided to put it on the menu of the Italian restaurant I work, I decided to highlight the use of “fassona meat”, which is loved meat from the Piedmont region. In this one dish, I am evoking love through nostalgia in different cultures (Nigeria and Italy), combining traditions and the simple presence of that dish on an Italian table is innovative.
How important is the relationship with your Nigerian origins in your cooking? As a chef do you feel you have a cultural heritage behind you that inspires your cooking? How do you perceive and use this cultural background?
Very important. My cooking tells a story of my love for Nigeria, celebrating its multiplexity in beauty, culture, and traditions whilst acknowledging its turmoil and strife. I am constantly inspired by Nigeria as a whole, my culinary creativity is deeply rooted in my southern Nigerian upbringing. My fondest memory as a child was walking down a path in the middle of a rubber plantation that led to the waterside of the surrounding river with my brother and my mum telling stories of life lessons. We always came back from this walk with a variety of fish and crustaceans. Memories such as this one are what drive me and keep me grounded in who I am as a chef.
And how important are your experiences in Italy and Europe in what and how you cook? When did you meet Italian cuisine?
I met true Italian cuisine when I enrolled in culinary school in London. Before then I had a love for the typical Italian food already because of the variety of restaurants London has to offer, but my first day of culinary arts class focused on a lot of Italian cooking basics. Our chef was Italian, so I wasn’t just learning food but also being given a peek into the Italian way. I then went on to work in an Italian restaurant that had a big kitchen with Italians from various regions. It was in that kitchen I fell in love with Tiramisu and was tasked to make it almost every day. Having been in living in Italy now for several years and experiencing true Italian and Mediterranean cooking I have a better understanding of the depth in which food plays a part in Italian and European culture. Even more, understanding the similarities and differences with the African food culture.
What is the role of a chef in today’s society?
The role of a chef is anything and everything the chef wants it to be and/or also what the chef involuntary signs up for based on the perception of their work. Sometimes chefs just want to be “chefs” -someone that cooks and serves delicious food. A chef can also intentionally or unintentionally become a philanthropist, an activist etc. Overall a chef in today’s society is an underrated and undervalued artist that can either choose to create, perform, or just be.
What are your goals and aspirations?
I have always dreamt of being able to have an Italian-Nigerian fine dining fusion restaurant in the heart of Milan. At the moment I am more focused on creating a sustainable work-life balance as a chef and truly owning my craft whilst giving myself the freedom to explore other paths.
Does it change or partly change the role of being a chef of African descent but with experience abroad as you are? Does cooking also have a cultural and political value for you? Political in the sense as a member of society: that you are a chef of African descent practising your art in Italy. What value does it have or could it have?
It does hold political value to me, especially as a black African woman in Italy at a time of high political tension. I am in some way working and walking against all odds. Crawling through racism, misogynism and elitism is like my daily bread. Its also why my motto is to “Break Global Culinary Boundaries”, I’m not just aiming to break the boundary of the food on a plate, but to use it as a medium to challenge stereotypes, soften hearts that have been saddened towards people like me and to exemplify the journey of our travelling culture in both the person and the food.
In Italian there is the concept: “we are what we eat”. If you had to choose a receipt to say what you are which one would you choose? And why? What does fusion cuisine mean to you? Why and how do you practise fusion cuisine? Could you illustrate a dish that you consider representative of food resulting from the encounter between Italian and Nigerian culinary traditions? Could you explain the reasons why do you choose it?
Seafood Banga Risotto – Banga is the local name for Palmnut in Nigeria. The palm nut tree is a plant of great value in the Niger Delta (The southernmost part of Nigeria). The Niger delta is also known for its riches in most of Nigeria’s natural resources, two of the popular food variety being palm oil (from the palm nut) and fresh seafood. A common dish in the Niger delta is Banga soup which can be made with various proteins but the most authentic version is the one made with mixed seafood. There is also a misconception that the palm nut derivative “palm oil” is bad for us as humans. Here in Italy, you’d even see some package labels saying “senza olio di Palma” (palm oil free) with pride because they know that the mass audience believes that palm oil is bad. When actually the reason why Europeans were originally advised to stay away from palm oil was because of the climate issues caused by deforestation and also the version of the oil that is used in western food production is the overly processed saturated version of palm oil. However palm oil in its purest form is both delicious and good for you, it is even used in holistic herbal medicine across Africa. So my Seafood Banga Risotto tells the story of my Niger delta Heritage, the true essence of the palm fruit, the authenticity of cooking Banga with seafood and a way to show Italians the real palm fruit.
Please share with us the recipe.
You can find it on my website. I share the link.
Are you practising your cuisine in Nigeria? Do you have plans in this regard?
At this point, I have no practice in Nigeria but I would love to do something specific in the Agricultural industry in the Niger Delta. – What are your plans for the future? I’ve been working on expanding my services as a chef outside the restaurant. It’s something I’ve been doing as a side hustle but it is recently becoming more. Additionally, I’m working on a range of products that include spices, teas and edible beauty sourced from Nigeria and made in Italy. I have also had this thought to build a network of black women across different professions in Italy because we have black women lawyers, event planners, business owners, art curators etc but we don’t know ourselves. I think such a network is needed to celebrate ourselves because the world won’t celebrate us
Is it possible to talk about a process of decolonizing about food? What tools and ways can be used to overcome stereotypes and Eurocentric readings of other culinary traditions?
I think the first step of any process towards talking about decolonizing in food is to first understanding the effect of colonization on the cuisines of both Africa and the African diaspora – How in spite of the dark situation, Africans were and are still able to create something beautiful; how a huge chunk of our heritage and natural process of evolution was stolen from us and is still being stolen from us. There’s no one person that has the answer to breaking stereotypes and the western view of us as Africans. The needed tools can only be developed through joint effort towards disarming a system that was structured to keep us in the position of a prey.
Could you elaborate on this thought of yours on the concept of longevity of tradition?
Google gives the definition of tradition as “the transmission of customs or beliefs from generation to generation, or the fact of being passed on in this way.” So what I mean by longevity of tradition is for example when creating a recipe to consider how it can be transmitted to younger generations while simultaneously being able to align it through either a specific ingredient, technique, or process to both the past, present and future (upcoming trends).
Could you tell us some similarities and differences between Nigerian and Italian cuisine and food cultures based on your experiences?
The first and most important similarity I noticed is the act of communal dining. Also the sacred love of olive oil in Italy is the same sacred love Nigerians have for palm oil. Additionally when I first moved to Florence, I remember going into the butchers and to my surprise there was beef tripe, a part of the meat that I now know after several years in Italy to be either loved or hated; this is the exact same sentiment in Nigeria. These are just a few examples.
