When I was in Djenné, Mali, during the terrible drought year of 1984, some of the food aid that arrived included cornmeal from the US. I had occasion to taste this in the form of tuwo (a stiff porridge made with the flour of either corn/maize or pearl millet, which is served with a sauce, typically made with okra or baobab leaves), and was struck by the difference in taste and color. The tuwo made with American corn was yellower and sweeter than that made with corn grown in that part of Africa. It reminded me of the corn in cornbread.
I mention this to underscore the fact that different varieties and provenances of the same food can have different taste. Turning to proso millet in the US, this grain is available from three different parts of the world: proso millet grown in North America (mainly the US), proso imported from China, and proso imported from India. Additionally, there is waxy or sticky proso available from the US and from China (as far as I know, this variety is not produced in India). In each case these are marketed under more than one commercial label. It is worth noting that one is unlikely to see all three in the same market - or at least I never have. Proso from the US is typically marketed simply as "millet," and sold in specialty markets like Whole Foods; proso from China (regular and waxy) is marketed in stores csaterining to East Asian cuisine (sometimes you'll see Korean labels, or multilingual including Vietnamese, for example); and proso from India is available in stores oriented to South Asian cuisine, typically labeled as "proso millet," and often with one or more names in Indian languages as well. So here's a question: Could we somehow arrange for a series of taste tests on proso from the US, Chna, and India, to see how diverse customers rate them? The information from such an experiement might open the way for US producers to market to ethnic makets. Don Osborn, PhD (East Lansing, MI, US) North American Millets Alliance PS- If US compannies marketing proso want to sell their product in stores specializing in East or South Asian products, they would probably want to modify their labeling to clarify the type of "millet" inside, in tems that diverse customers would recognize.. -- Collab mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
