Barbecue and Intellectual Property Rights

South Carolina barbecue sauce, recipe below

In watching food shows today on the south it is hard to watch business owners of restaurants, particularly barbecue joints, brag about their famed food products while also stealing the intellectual property rights of African American cooks. In Historian Eugene Genovese’s words, Africans  in the antebellum south “contributed more to the diet of the poorer whites than the poorer whites ever had the chance to contribute to theirs.” In addition, the majority of white elites depended on African Americans cooks for their daily and special occasion food included barbecue. Poor whites in antebellum South Carolina seldom had access to meat to barbecue “except they steal hogs which belong to the planters, or their negroes,” writes travel Frederick Law Olmsted who visited South Carolina in the 1850s. It's about time some of these folks writing cook books and interviewed on television start paying homage to the originators of those barbecuing techniques and basting and sauce recipes that have made them wealthy and famous today. 

South Carolina Barbecue Sauce: http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/blog/2010/03/01/barbecue-style-pulled-pork-sliders-south-carolina-barbecue-sauce-and-kansas-city-sauce/

More Barbecue Stories and Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=barbecue

Anthony Bourdain’s Charleston South Carolina show: [Watch Now] http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Anthony_Bourdain/Episodes_Travel_Guides/Episode_South_Carolina

Juneteenth Through the Lens of Food

Emancipation Day Parade, Richmond, Virginia, 1905, related recipes below 

The following is a prerecorded radio interview done on Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders.  

Juneteenth celebrations commemorate June 19, 1865 when the Emancipation Proclamation was finally enforced in the state of Texas, two and a half years after Abe Lincoln made his famous decree. We talk with professor and food writer Frederick Douglass Opie about the celebratory foods of Juneteenth, as well as the rich history of soul food in the United States and the many foods of the African Diaspora.

Guest

• Frederick Douglass Opie, author of Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America
• Fabu Carter-Brisco, Madison Poet-laureate, Organizer of the Heritage Tent at the Madison Juneteenth Celebration

Listen Now : http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_100618k.cfm

Juneteenth Stories and Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Juneteenth

Southern Cookery During the Great Depression

Brown Betty and ice cream, recipe below  

Singer, composer, and civil rights activist Eunice Kathleen Waymon aka Nina Simone (1933-2003) was born and raised in Tyron, North Carolina during the Great Depression.  She says most of what she remembers from the very earliest part of her life “is tied up with food and music.” Her mother would stretch the family budget with beans, rice, and brown Betty. Her mother made Brown Betty with fruit from the family garden. “We were poor for a long time but I can’t remember ever going hungry, not once.” Brown Betty is traditional southern recipe that easy to make and great for breakfast or desert later in the day. 

Traditional Brown Betty Recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Apple-Brown-Betty-106204

Vegan Brown Betty Recipe: http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=14007.0

Nina Simone Stories and Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Simone

Weddings Through the Lens of Food Part 2

Jollof rice recipes below

Historically, a week before the day of a wedding in many parts of rural West Africa, the bride’s family organizes a family meeting to solicit contribution for the wedding feast. Some contributed palm oil, rice, fish, and firewood. But the message is clear; the bride’s family had the charge of providing great food on the wedding day for their guest and especially the groom’s family. Here is a recipe for jollof rice which made all over West Africa.

Jollof Rice Recipe:

Ingredients
Oil for frying (palm or regular vegetable oil)
1 chicken
1 or 2 finely chopped onions
salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper according to taste
Flavoring:
chopped chili pepper
2 or 3 crushed cloves of garlic
bay leaf
curry powder
2 cups of chicken or beef stock or Maggi cubes or vegan substitutes
3 ripe tomatoes, chopped
bell pepper or sweet green pepper, chopped
green peas or string beans
(carrots/cabbage chopped)
four cups rice
4 tbsp can tomato paste
2 tbsp dried shrimp or crayfish or vegan substitute
Garnishes: fresh parsley and cilantro chopped and lettuce shredded

Method
Heat oil and brown chicken or fish. Remove the meat and add the onions, the salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic, bay leaf and curry in the oil. Fry for a moment and add vegetables. Fry the mixture until the onions become tender. Add the stock and the chicken and boil for about 20 minutes. Then add the dried shrimps/crayfish and the chili and bring to boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Put the rice in a separate saucepan. Add water and tomato paste. Cover and cook for about 20 minutes until the rice is done (add warm water or broth if necessary). Adjust seasoning. Serve with garnishes according to taste.

Vegetarian-jollof-rice recipe: http://www.food.com/recipe/vegetarian-jollof-rice-401724

Wedding Stories and Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Wedding+and+Food+Series

Rice and Beans and Peas and Rice Stories: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=rice+and+beans

African Foodways and Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/2013/03/this-weeks-best-foodways-and-food_16.html

Weddings Through the Lens of Food Part 1

Killing the fatted calf for a marriage feast in 1900 Palestine (Courtesy of U. S. Library of Congress)

Historically most people gorged on large amounts of meat, typically barbecued meat, and splurged on rich desserts on special occasions like a wedding. First only elites could afford to eat that way on a daily basis and second one needed additional time and small army of cooks to prepare such foods. Most people around the world worked 6 days a week and reheated leftovers or consumed small portions of bread, beans, rice, along with fruits and vegetables if they could grow or purchase them. Thus, good eating became associated with a wedding day in which an entire community celebrated a neighbors special occasion and enjoyed a rare feast and access to abundance of meats and sweets.

Cakes Stories and Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Cakes

Ice Cream Series with Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Ice+Cream+Series

Wedding Stories and Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Wedding+and+Food+Series

Feeding the Revolution in Mississippi

Civil rights activist Medger Evers 

50 years ago this week, an assassin's bullet killed civil rights activist Medger Evers in Jackson Mississippi.  The pace of the civil rights movement accelerated with the return of World War II soldiers like Evers who fought in France and earned the rank of sergeant during the war. He returned to his home state of Mississippi where he went on to become Mississippi’s first NAACP field secretary setting up his office in Jackson over the top of the Big Apple Inn restaurant. Still open today, Juan “Big John” Mora (1890-1976) opened it back in 1939. He was an immigrant from Mexico City who married a black women in Jackson. Mora's developed a pig ear sandwich, hot smoked sausage sandwich (called smokes), and tamales that became a hit. Evers did not have adequate office space to hold meetings, and he would often hold them down stairs in Big John's where he would discuss civil rights organizing and protest strategies. When customers came in they liked what they heard, and joined the movement. “In fact they would be lined up at the [restaurant’s] door just to hear Medger’s strategy,” says Big John’s grandson Gene Lee, Sr. 

Author and Activist on Medgar Evers: [Listen Now 47 min 6 sec] http://onpoint.wbur.org/2013/06/10/medgar-evers

Documentary Film on the Big Apple Inn: [Watch Now 20 min 9 sec] http://southernfoodways.org/documentary/film/smoke_ears.html

Jackson, Mississippi Stories and Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Jackson%2C+Mississippi

Freedom Summer and Foodways in the Mississippi Delta

Mississippi Delta tamale

Freedom Summer in Mississippi began in 1964, just one year after the assassination of Medgar Evers. It became one of the most important initiatives of the Civil rights movement. Robert (Bob) Moses orchestrated the movement. But in contrast to the movie The Help, which shows black women as pawns, African American women like Fannie Lou Hammer played important leadership roles at the local level in McComb, Mississippi where Freedom Summer began. The goal of Freedom Summer was to combat African American disenfranchisement and the barring of blacks from participating in the state Democratic Party and to defeat the white racist members of the regular Democratic Party. Those who attempted to register to vote often lost their jobs and experienced physical violence and or police harassment. Black and white college students from northern institutions served as volunteers during Freedom Summer. One little known tradition in the Mississippi Delta has been African American entrepreneurs who have sold tamales for a living. 

Hear Fannie Lou at 1964 National Democratic Party Convention [Listen Now 8 min 11 sec]  http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/sayitplain/flhamer.html

Mississippi Delta Tamale Recipe: http://www.tamaletrail.com/recipe_howto.shtml

Mississippi Tamale Documentary Film: [Watch Now 5 min] http://southernfoodways.org/documentary/film/e_scott.html

Series on The Help: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=The+Help

Cooking is Like Research and Wriring

Baked Tilapia Recipes below (image from http://gourmetgibbs.blogspot.com/) caption

In the mid 1990s I did about six months of research and writing in Guatemala working on my second book, a social history of the railroad and banana industry called Black Labor in Caribbean Guatemala. I also did allot of cooking. I find cooking similar to doing research and writing. A cook develops a plan and executes it. The availability of fresh produce at a weekly open air market just blocks from my apartment stood as one of the best parts about living in Guatemala. As a cook I have a type of photographic memory in which I can see a dish and then I can recreate it in my kitchen substituting ingredients and reinterpreting recipes.  A dish I made especially for my wife the other night is a case in point. The original recipe called for spinach but I had a lot of unused asparagus in the freezer.

Baked Tilapia Recipe

Ingredients

4 to 6 pieces of Tilapia

1 bunch of asparagus

1 crushed garlic clove

½ a Vidalia onion chopped

2 tablespoons (or more) olive oil

Salt, pepper, thyme, and other desired seasonings

Method

Preheat the oven to 450. Put the asparagus in a salad bowl then pour a tablespoon of olive oil over it. Season the asparagus then place it on a cookie sheet spread with Pam etc. pour chopped onions and garlic over the asparagus. Put tilapia on plate and brush them with olive. Season them and put them over the asparagus and bake for 7 to 14 minutes depending on how you like them. I cook my well done because my wife likes her fish that way and crispy asparagus. Serve over rice. Serves 4 to 6 people.

Guatemala Stories and Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Guatemala+

Food and 1492 Part 2

Shrimp, Okra, and Tomato Sauté recipe below 

Tomatoes originated in Central America but Iberians introduced them to Europe and Africa in the early sixteenth century as part of the Colombian exchange that occurred after 1492. Europeans first used them ornamental purposes while Africans cooks gradually exhibited a love for using them for seasoning sauces, stews, and soups. It was not until later that Europeans started cooking with them because they believed tomatoes would poison them. During the Atlantic slave trade Europeans introduced tomato plants to Louisiana which it quickly became a staple in local cookery in and around New Orleans. As a port city, New Orleans saw a steady of influx of enslaved Africans imported directly from West and Central Africa as well as indirectly from the Caribbean and the Mississippi Delta.  Enslaved Africans grew tomatoes in their subsistence gardens along with other produce, much of from Africa, to supplement to their diet. 

Shrimp, Okra, and Tomato Sauté History and Related Recipe:  http://www.foodasalens.com/2011/03/culinary-celebration-of-womens-history_04.html 

Colombian Exchange Stories & Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Colombian+exchange+

 

Food and 1492 Part 1

Curau or Brazilian corn pudding, this and other recipes below

“Food must also be considered among the major recreations of Bahía,” says Vera Kelsey about Brazil’s most African influenced region where Yoruba culture from West Africa is clearly seen in the region's music and food. A trained sociologist and writer, Kelsey (1891-1961) traveled extensively in Central and South America in the 1940s and published several books on Brazil. “And here particularly are served the rich dishes imported long ago from Portugal’s cuisine, and many more of African origin,” Kelsey writes. In the first chapter of my book Hog and Hominy I talk about foods like corn that became part of the Colombian exchange that began after 1492. By the sixteenth century Africans introduced corn to their fields and tables. 

Curau/ Brazilian Corn Pudding Recipe:

Ingredients

10 medium size ears, cleaned and washed
2 quarts of milk or soy milk
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1 pinch of salt
1 cup of coconut milk
2 tbsp of butter or vegan margarine
cinnamon to taste

Method

Grate the corn ears inside a large glass bowl, using a cheese grater. Make sure you get as much as you can off of each ear and put them aside. Mix the milk with the grated corn. Dip each ear into the milk and use a paring knife to squeeze out as much of the corn starch as you can from them. Use a strainer to separate the liquid from the grated corn. In a large, heavy saucepan add the sugar to the liquid and start cooking over medium heat, stirring constantly until it starts to thicken. Add the coconut milk. Continue to cook, stirring, and test the cream by dropping a 1/2 teaspoonful onto a plate. When it cools it should have the consistency of Jello. Stir in the margarine, mix well. Pour onto a decorative pie server. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Cool or refrigerate before serving.

Colombian Exchange Stories & Recipes: http://www.foodasalens.com/search?q=Colombian+exchange+

Brazil: A Racial Paradise? (PBS Full Length Episode): http://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/featured/black-in-latin-america-full-episode-brazil-a-racial-paradise/224/