Hidden Kitchens Folgen

Hidden Kitchens explores the world of Basque sheepherders in the American west and their outdoor, underground, one man, 2,000 sheep, two dog cooking traditions. Basques have been well known as sheepherders in the United States from as early as the 1850s. When there was a shortage of shepherds in the 1950s Basques were recruited from Spain and France to tend sheep throughout the western states. Within days of arriving in America these men, with little or no sheepherding background, found themselves working alone, with two dogs and 2,000 sheep, sleeping in canvas tents, walking hundreds of miles across the mountains, in search of food and pasture. They cooked underground using Dutch ovens to bake bread and stew lamb, or ate at boarding houses that popped up along the sheepherding trail. And in Boise, once a year, they feasted on chorizo and broad bean stew, while dancing to the Jota, at the Sheepherders' Ball.

A journey to kitchens hidden behind bars — that come and go with the Angola Prison Rodeo at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Each April and again in October the public is invited in to this maximum security prison to watch convicts ride wild horses and bulldog steers, before an arena full of thousands. Alongside this convict spectacle, dozens of inmate organizations sell down home southern food.

This episode of Hidden Kitchens stretches back some 3,000 years, from San Francisco, to India, to Persia. Niloufer Ichaporia King, author of My Bombay Kitchen, brings us into the ancient and disappearing world of Parsi cooking.