How an African Legume Became a Migration Metaphor

How an African Legume Became a Migration Metaphor

Chef Saif Rahman, who recently opened Peregrine restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina, grew up in the northeastern Bangladesh city of Sylhet, known for its verdant, terraced tea farms. He remembers a childhood frolicking in landscapes lush with edible crops. There, purple blossoms dotted fields of peas—not the green pebbles in your freezer section. These were cowpeas, cousins to the black-eyed peas commonly eaten in the American South. Rahman re…