Christmas Foodway Series: Culinary Attractions During the Antebellum Period

Oxtail stew, recipes below

In the sugar producing region of antebellum Louisiana, customarily one wealthy planter hosted a Christmas barbecue in which they invited as much as “three to five hundred” enslaved Africans “from neighboring plantations to join his own on the occasion,” Solomon Northup tells us. A former slave in Louisiana, he explains they would come “on foot, in carts, on horseback, on mules, riding double and triple,” for the food and fellowship around a large table “spread in the open air, and loaded with varieties of meat and piles of vegetables.” Open pit barbecued meats cooked “in the shade of wide branching trees” proved to be the main culinary attraction of these rural integrated Christmas suppers. Enslaved Africans would dig a pit and fill it with wood “burned until it is filled with glowing coals, over which chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigs, and not [in]frequently the entire body of a wild ox [were] roasted.” In the Caribbean planters divided an ox among their slaves during the Christmas holiday along with “an extra allowance of yams, and flour or cornmeal, and a measure of rum,” observed one traveler. Oxtail remains a favorite Christmas dish among Jamaicans today. “Here we have it on the menu every day,” the Jamaican owner of a restaurant in the City Poughkeepsie told me. He added “back home it’s too expensive for most folks. So they only make it on holidays like Christmas.” Here are several oxtail stew recipes below.

West African oxtail stew http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Make-Traditional-Oxtail-Stew

South African oxtail stew: http://www.ehow.com/how_4802936_south-african-oxtail-stew.html

Southern oxtail stew: http://www.rumbameats.com/recipe.php?id=15&locale=en

Jamaican oxtail stew: http://foodjamaica.net/2008/04/17/oxtail-stew/

Spanish oxtail stew: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Spanish-Style-Oxtail-Stew/Detail.aspx