Christmas Holidays and Banana Pudding in Retrospective

The Portuguese traveler Manuel Gonzales ventured through Great Britain during Christmas time in 1788. He found a “variety of puddings" and some other items the most conspicuous among British Christmas dishes. As North American we have a British culinary footprint that continues to shape the foods we make and eat during the Christmas holidays. But two other cultures have also shaped the Christmas foods that we eat. If you have southern roots like my family when you think of a holiday pudding, you might think about rice and or banana pudding. Both are creolized southern dishes. Southeast Asians introduced bananas and new species of rice to West Africans before the start of the Atlantic slave trade and African cooks made milk based puddings before coming to the Americas. Rice pudding showed up first in the slave quarters of the rice producing regions of low country South Carolina and Georgia. Later the United Fruit Company of Boston first started importing bananas to New Orleans, Mobile, Alabama, and Galveston, Texas at the turn of the century. Thereafter southerners started making rich and delicious banana pudding. Who came up with the idea of baking it with vanilla wafers on top? I still need to answer that question. In short, the banana and rice pudding my southern ancestors made in Virginia and North Carolina developed from three old world culinary traditions—South East Asian, British, and African.


The Best Banana Pudding Recipe: http://www.texascooking.com/features/apr99bestbanana.htm

Christmas Celebrations and Food for the First Africans in the Americas

Photo of curry goat served with a salad, rice and peas, and fried plantains, a classic Jamaican dish with African influences for the Christmas season. Recipe below

Enslaved Africans in the Americas celebrated the Christmas holiday in an intuitive way that I argue scholars have not previously noted. For example, in his 1841 trip through the Niger River region William Allen found that the Brass people, associated in some way with the people of Benin, celebrated the “Marocho” at the completion of the sowing season “which occurs about our Christmas period of the year,” writes Allen. He adds it is the “greatest religious festival” with a weeklong of feasting on goat and poultry dishes as well as a steady succession of “dancing, singing, and firing of muskets.” In short, Africans from the Niger River region I insist came predisposed to celebrating with special occasion foods, music, and dance at the Christmas time of the year similar to their European masters. The description of the goat eaten during the Marocho in the Niger River region leads me to theorize perhaps that’s where creolized (something new made from two different older and separate components) dishes like curry goat became a part of special occasion food in the English speaking Caribbean. Africans introduced goat culinary culture to the region from Africa and the English introduced curry to the region from their colonial holdings in East Asia. The photo above is indicative of African influences from the fried plantains, rice and peas, and the curry goat which is a spicy one pot dish--this what one found and still finds in many parts of West and Central Africa. Here’s a curry goat recipe: http://recipes.caribseek.com/Jamaica/curry-goat.shtml

Series on An Historical and Culinary Look at Christmas

Photo: Bowl of Turkey Soup. Below is a link to a host of recipes for leftover Thanksgiving turkey.

As with many other ethnic groups, Christmas for African Americans has traditionally been a very special holiday centered on an abundance of rich food. What is interesting is how enslaved Africans in North America and the Caribbean appropriated the tradition of celebrating English holidays like Christmas for their own special occasions. They “greatly plundered” their masters’ supplies of “poultry,” for holiday meals. A nineteenth-century diary entry describes how one slave brought a turkey, another bought a pie and pudding or tartlet, and a third bought French preserves. As I did with Thanksgiving, from now until December 25, I am going to provide photos, history, and recipes from my research on African American foodways (traditions, habits, and culinary customs adapted) related to Christmas and food. By the way I cooked my first turkey using a recipe that called for brining my 99 cent per pound Costco bird. Brining reduced the cooking time to about 2 hours and the well seasoned meat from the brining turned out moist and practically melted in your mouth, so my wife and guest told me. Like everything else there is wide range of what you can pay for a turkey. For example, I saw a person selling free range turkeys at a Farmers Market for $5.00 per pound. I also hear of place who had lines of people waiting to buy $100 cooked jerked turkeys. My Costco brined turkey is another example of a recession buster. And because we have a bunch leftover, let me recommend some recipes for leftover turkey. Happy Holiday and hit the gym.

Turkey Leftover Recipes: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/turkey_leftovers/

A Sweet Christmas Day Recession Buster

If your southern, African American, or grew up on a farm, you more then likely had sweet potato pie as one of your many Thanksgiving Day desserts. This year I made my pie from sweet potatoes and a left over Halloween pumpkin. It represented a recession bluster that saved made lots of money and according to my guest it tasted sensational. I never told them that it was a hybrid pie. You make it almost the same way as a regular sweet potato pie but you use both baked sweet potatoes and baked pumpkin. Here’s a tip I learned from tasting a pie someone made this year for a Thanksgiving Day feast in my son’s elementary school; I found that my pie came out better this year with a little extra freshly ground nutmeg added to the recipe. Pie make nice Christmas gifts and it great to have around with you have guest over the holidays.

Fred's Sweet Potato Pumpkin Pie Recipe

Ingredients:
2 cups baked organic sweet potatoes and 2 cups baked pumpkin

2 large eggs or egg substitutes
1 cup of the thickets best tasting vanilla soy milk

1-2 cups unprocessed sugar
2 Tablespoons of lemon juice
Dash of cinnamon

Extra couple of dashes of nutmeg
Dash of vanilla extract

Directions:
Mix the ingredients into a sweet potato/pumpkin purée add milk as needed to make a smooth but thick filling. Bake in a pie crust shell (remember add a little fiber to your crust recipe/http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/perfect_pie_crust/) at 375 degrees on lowest rack for 50 minutes, until filling has set. Cool on rack for one hour. Then transfer to refrigerator and chill completely.

My Bizarre Thanksgiving Day Memory

Photo of a Fried Rabbit Dish

My first Thanksgiving at my Cousin Katie’s house up in Syracuse back in the early 1970s was like a scene from one of my favorite foodie shows Bizarre Food on the Travel Channel. I must have been around twelve at the time, but I still remember that in addition to the Thanksgiving regulars at most African American tables—turkey, yams, collards, cornbread stuffing, Mac and cheese etc—Cousin Katie served fried rabbit that year. Most members of my mom’s side of the family—no matter their age would agree that hands down Cousin Katie was perhaps one of the best soul food cooks in the family. But she also had a reputation for cooking road kill like raccoons and rabbits that she saw freshly killed on interstate 81. Yes wild game has a long history with black folk. That's why when you had Thanksgiving at Cousin Katie’s house you never knew what you were eating but she seasoned and cooked it to a soulful perfection. Here is a recipe from my book Hog and Hominy Soul Food From Africa to America http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/excerpt.


Wild Hare in Tomato Sauce
1 young rabbit, cup of
Flour for dredging
Salt and black pepper to taste
Bacon fat
4 scallions with tops, cut up
2 gloves garlic, crushed
Sprig Fresh parsley
4 tbs. Butter
2 tbs. Worcestershire sauce
2 cups tomato juice
½ cup milk
1 tsp. sweet basil

Roll rabbit pieces in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. Brown in bacon fat. Make a sauce with sliced scallions, crushed garlic, parsley, butter, salt, Worcestershire sauce, tomato juice, milk, and basil, Pour over the rabbit while still hot. Cook 2 hours in a covered pan, remove lid and cook 15 to 20 minutes, reducing the sauce. You can thicken sauce with a little cornmeal mixed in water if it is thin.

Venison and Cauliflower Recipes for Thanksgiving

I will never forget the time our family had thanksgiving dinner at my Cousin Katie’s house up in Syracuse. I must have been around twelve at the time. I recall we were driving down Borden Avenue where she lived and passed a home with what looked like a freshly shot and gutted buck with four points hanging from the second floor of a neighbor’s house. Evidently the proud hunting family planned on fresh venison on the Thanksgiving table. I mention this because I learned over the years that folks in Central New York loved to eat wild game. Most often we associate venison with Native American culinary traditions which is true. But I also came across several sources that indicate that in 17th through 19th century Ibo people in West Africa regularly ate roasted venison on special occasions. Cousin Katie passed on about 4 years ago. But as we will see tomorrow, the women loved to cook wild game. Here is a venison restaurant in her honor that would be great if the hunter in your family or among your friends is coming home with a deer this Thanksgiving. I also got a request for a cauliflower recipe for Thanksgiving from a high school friend. I provided a link to multiple cauliflower recipes below.

Roasted Venison Recipe:

http://www.venisonrecipes.net/roast-venison.html

Cauliflower recipes:
http://www.thatsmyhome.com/farmers/cauliflower-recipes.htm

Pecan Pie is a Relatively New Thanksgiving Day Tradition

The Thanksgiving table is never considered complete if you can’t fill up a least one separate table with food. In most families, older female relatives with family recipes passed down from one generation to the next in their heads start cooking several days before Thanksgiving, starting with cakes and pies. One of my favorite is pecan pie. Native Americans gave the pecan its name; they knew and enjoyed them and introduced them to European settlers and the first Africans in North America. Pecans and pecan pies did not become popular in the south until the mid-20^th century when farmers began cultivating a domesticated and improved pecan plant. Below is a family pecan pie recipe one of my Marist students shared with me. Make a point this Thanksgiving of writing down family recipes for safe keeps. A good recipe is a family heirloom that should be both treasured and documented for the next generation.

Aunt Nancy’s Pecan Pie Recipe (with my suggested substitutes):

3 eggs slightly beaten (or egg substitute)

1 cup sugar

1 cup Karo (light) syrup

2 tbsp melted butter (substitute a vegan margarine, there are some great ones out there)

1 tsp vanilla

1 & ¼ cup pecan halves

Stir list ingredients together, and then mix in pecans. Pour into 9 inch pie crust and bake at 350 for 50-55 minutes. Let cool to room temperature then refrigerate before serving.