Foodways Art and Images Series Part 6

Harriet Ross Colquitt’s The Savannah Cookbook first published in 1933

Harriet Ross Colquitt wrote The Savannah Cookbook using the oral histories of black domestics in and around low country Savannah, Georgia. These were largely women who were what Vertamae Grosvenor calls, vibration cooks who did not measure ingredient used with traditional instruments such as a ½ teaspoon, 1 tablespoon, ¼ or 1 and ½ cups etc. Instead that depended on years of practice and apprenticeships as young folk following the great cooks in families, churches, and clubs around kitchens and fellowship halls. They watched, practiced and made many mistakes thus developing a cooks intuition about what to add and how much to make a dish come out just right. Like the best artist, improvisation for such cooks was a way of life using ingredients in season and abundance and substituting what they had on hand for what they needed. Colquitt writes, getting a recipe and the method used to make a dish from an African American cook in Savannah “is rather like trying to write down the music to the spirituals which they sing—for all good old-timers (and new-timers, too, for that matter) cook “by ear,” and it is hard to bring them down to earth when they begin to improvise.” They are both vague in saying “a little of dis and a little of dat,” and they “are extremely modest about their accomplishments,” she concludes. Below is a recipe from The Savannah Cookbook that Colquitt gathered and deciphered

Savannah Red Rice Recipe

Ingredients

1 cup onion, chopped

1 cup bell pepper, chopped

2 tablespoons vegan butter

1 cup sausage or vegetarian sausage

1 can crushed tomatoes with juice

1 tablespoon hot sauce

1 cup tomato sauce

1 cup water

3 vegetable bouillon cubes

Salt and pepper

1 cup uncooked brown or white rice

Method

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a saucepan melt the butter over medium heat and sauté the onion, pepper, and sausage until everything is lightly browned. Add the tomatoes, hot sauce, tomato sauce, water and bouillon cubes. Season the mix with salt and pepper as needed. Stir in the rice. Pour everything into a greased casserole dish and bake, uncovered, for 45 minutes.

Vegan Savannah red rice: http://www.recipezaar.com/Savannah-Red-Rice-218552

Foodways Art and Images Series Part 6

Migration Scene

When World War I started in Europe in 1914 the price of food in the southern United States and Caribbean increased and a business depression occurred that lasted until the summer of 1915. In addition, agricultural dislocation in the South and Caribbean led to low demand for agricultural workers. There was also a demand for labor with higher wages offered in the U. S. North and Midwest, South America, and Mesoamerica (including Central America and Mexico). In U. S. south regions and the Caribbean racist public officials shamefully mistreated blacks too. By 1917, thousands of southerners and people from the Caribbean migrated to the U. S. North and Midwest, the Panama Canal Zone, sugar, banana, mahogany, and cacao plantations in Cuba, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Central America, and oil fields in Venezuela and Mexico. Many migrants traveled by rail and steamboat as employers desperate for laborers provided free passage. Blacks accustomed to confronting racist policies while traveling acquired the habit of packing food for travel on trains and steamboats in empty shoe boxes stuffed with cold sandwiches, fried chicken, slices of buttered bread, hard-boiled eggs, a little paper of salt and pepper, fruit, and a slice of cake. Here are two red velvet cake recipes one traditional and the other vegan.

Red velvet cake recipe with great photos: http://pinchmysalt.com/2008/11/10/red-velvet-cake-recipe/

Vegan red velvet cake recipe: http://www.thedailygreen.com/healthy-eating/recipes/vegan-red-velvet-cake-with-buttercream-frosting

Foodways Art and Images Series Part 4

The Pepper-Pot Woman at the Philadelphia Market by painter John Lewis Krimmel

“The negro-woman lamented the ravages of the fever, because it prevented the sale of her pepper-pot,” wrote a traveler in 1803. The Philadelphia recipe for pepper pot called for herbs, onions, potatoes, and okra seasoned with pieces of smoked meat (recipe below). Like the image from yesterday post, this piece of art depicts the seminal role of female African entrepreneurs in colonial America. African women came from a tradition in which they controlled local markets and the sale of produce, grains, and herbs as well as prepared foods. This was particularly the case in around port cities in West and Central Africa bustling with hundreds of people involved in the sale and trade of salt, slaves, guns, and kola nuts among other commodities. In Africa men carried out long distance trade but women dominated local trade. In the Americas this tradition continued—most often enslaved African men carried on long distance trade particularly running teams of mules loaded with goods between one colonial city and another and as sailors on merchant ships. Enslaved African women worked for white masters who sent them out as food venders selling candies, pastries, and bowls of a delicious piping out one pot meal like pepper-pot. Masters mandated that say 25 cents of every dollar the slave earned she could keep. Here are links to pepper-pot recipes, one traditional and the other vegetarian:

Traditional Pepper-Pot Recipe: http://www.globalgourmet.com/destinations/caribbean/pepprpot.html
Vegetarian Pepper-Pot Recipe: http://gourmetcaravan.blogspot.com/2010/11/pepperpot-stew-with-spillers-dumplings.html

Foodways Art and Images Series Part 3

Fruit vendor selling plantains and nineteenth Brazil

What I love most about this photo is its universality. Like rice, plantains are one of the plants that historically has been enjoyed in many different cultures. This scene of a woman selling plantains could be nineteenth century West or Central Africa, Brazil, Columbia, Venezuela, Panama, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Barbados, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Curaçao, Guyana, or Mexico and the man could be a variety of shades and it would still look natural. Plantains are indigenous to India; Asian traders introduced them to Africa during the Christian era, and Africans introduced them to the Americas during the Atlantic slave trade. African cooks gradually made green and ripe yellow plantains a staple across Africa and tropical regions of the Africa making breads, fritters, drinks, sliced deep fried treats, and fufu out of them. Plantains became one of the first foods planted in subsistence gardens, distributed as rations in some places, and sold as both produce and street foods in ports like Cartagena, Vera Cruz, Havana, Kingston, and Port-au-prince. Here are some plantains recipes below.

Plantain recipes from Africa and the Americas: http://www.grabemsnacks.com/plantain-recipes.html#pr

Foodways Art and Images Series Part 2

Curry chicken rundown, recipes below (food photo http://gotnomilk.wordpress.com/)

The survival of African wedding traditions and cookery depended on the region of the Americas to which enslaved Africans disembarked. Those who lived and worked in the Caribbean did so as a black majority with greater opportunities to continue African traditions and foodways. Most slaves conducted their weddings and receptions in and around their slave quarters with and without the consent of their masters. In the Caribbean British laws did not recognize slave marriages but enslaved Africans held weddings anyway followed by receptions full of good music and food. A travel account from 1790 informs us that the cooks for a black ball in the British West Indies prepared “a number of pots, some of which are good and savory; chiefly their swine, poultry, salt beef, pork, herrings, and vegetables with roasted, barbecued, and fricasseed” meats. The recipe described above sound like a one pot Caribbean rundown recipe, below are several you can try.

Curry Chicken rundown recipe: http://gotnomilk.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/curry-chicken-rundown/

Curry Crab rundown recipe: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/curry-crab-rundown

Vegan rundown recipe: http://www.vegan-food.net/recipe/774/Jamaican-Yam-Run-Down-Casserole/

Rice and Beans/Peas and Rice Series Part 6

Jamaican rice and peas, recipe below (Photo http://www.ricardobook.co.uk/default.asp)

During antebellum period, Jamaica represented what historians Franklin Knight calls an exploitation society colony—the British made no attempt to populate the island with a British settlers or recreate British culture on the island. Instead the imported large numbers of enslaved Africans as their labor force and producers of food for the few white who ran the islands sugar industry. The majority of the imported slaves came from West Africa’s rice coat. In Jamaica, planters supplied slaves with weekly rations of salted fish and slaves agitated for the right to have and maintain small parcels of land as subsistence farms. Enslaved Africans in Jamaica raised among other items fowl, pigs, they also sowed, coconuts, rice, kidney beans, and gungo beans also called pigeon peas. Note: some use red kidney beans the way cooks in New Orleans use kidney beans in their red beans and rice. Over the years rice and peas, historically made with freshly cracked opened coconuts and milk extracted from the meat of the coconut. The rice and peas are seasoned with thyme, allspice, garlic, salt, pepper, scallions, and they are simmered in coconut milk until done. Vegans beware, some cooks had meat to the pot as seasoning. Traditionally Jamaican cooked made it on Sundays serving it with a variety of milks. Today it’s eaten on any day at various meals and it’s one of Jamaica’s signature dishes. Here are some recipes below.

Jamaican rice and peas: http://www.jamaican-traditions.com/jamaican-rice-and-peas.html

Vegan rice and peas: http://www.ivu.org/recipes/latinam/jamaican-rice.html

Rice and Beans/Peas and Rice Series Part 6

Hoppin’ John, recipes below

I am in the midst of a series on one of the kitchen’s dynamic duos in all of its marvelous variations around the world—rice and beans/peas and rice. From the rice producing regions of West Africa, to slave ships, to the rice plantations of low country Georgia and South Carolina came the dish that we call today Hoppin’ John. This dish is made from black-eyed peas (cowpeas common in Igboland in West Africa) that enslaved African brought over with them during the slave trade and planted in their subsistence gardens. Enslaved African in low country Georgia and South Carolina came from a region between Cape Verde and the Gold Coast known as the rice coast because the societies there cultivated so much rice also grew rice in their gardens. It was rice coast Africans who introduced rice growing and cooking techniques to a largely British master class struggling to find viable cash crop from which to increase their capital investments in the early colonial south. Over time rice became a lucrative cash crop and masters started distributing cracked and poor quality rice to enslaved Africans as part of their rations along with salt pork. African cooks added subsistence garden vegetables and herbs like red and green peppers, onions, and basil and created Hoppin’ John. Below are Hoppin’ John recipes.

Traditional hoppin’ John: http://blog.syracuse.com/entertainment/2009/12/hoppin_john_a_traditional_dish.html

Vegan hoppin’ John: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/recipe.php?recipeId=406

Rice and Beans/Peas and Rice Series Part 4

Brazilian rice and beans/feijoada, recipes below

Brazil received the largest amount of enslaved African during the Atlantic slave trade. For example, between the 1620 and 1700 enslavers imported about 500,000 to 600,000 slaves from Africa. Pernambuco represented one of Brazil’s two principal sugar-producing regions along with Bahia and Recife was Brazil’s most important sugar port and the commercial hub of Pernambuco. “The slaves which are usually brought to Pernambuco are known under the names Angola, Congo, Rebolo [Guinea], Anjico [no clue], Gabon, and Mozambique,” observed the explorer Henry Koster in 1817. Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888 and it has the largest population in the Americas of people of African descent. Enslaved African women introduced rice and beans dishes to Brazil. The most popular became known as feijoada dish African women made with rations they received from their owners and the food they produced in gardens near their slave quarters. Feijoada is made from black beans, rice, and beef. Speaking of the popularity of the dish, one traveler to Brazil in the nineteenth century noted that there was “no house so rich as to exclude” feijoada from their table. Today it’s Brazil national dish!

Feijoada recipe on video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGhqEmAa3qM
Traditional feijoada recipe: http://www.maria-brazil.org/feijoada.htm
Vegan feijoada recipe: http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipes/10331?section=19

Rice and Beans/Peas and Rice Series Part 3

Pea, Broad bean and Mint Risotto with Seared Salmon, recipe below. Photo from (Rhi’s Foodie World)

Sources tell us that 1/3 of all enslaved African died during the middle passage. Those in charge of the voyages did take measures to insure the survival of their profitable human cargo. This included procuring traditional foods such as rice and beans that enslaved Africans would eat and African women to work in the ships kitchen to prepare cheap but nutritious meals. “The diet of the Negroes on board is a sort of pulp, composed o[f] rice and horse [fava or broad]-beans, with yams, boiled and thickened to a proper consistency, which is called a Dab-a-Dab, sometimes with meat in it, to this there is added a sauce, called flabber-sauce by the sailors,” says a source dated 1788. “This food is accounted more salutary [healthy] and nearer to their accustomed way of feeding than salt flesh [likely salted fish].” Fava beans with rice were both cheap and nutritious but fava beans did not seem to be a West or Central African staple. References today point to recipes from North Africa and the Middle East. Fava beans are one of my favorite beans that can be prepared in a number of delicious ways including simply as rice and beans.

Here are nine fava bean recipes: http://www.seasonalchef.com/recipe0506b.htm

Pea, Broad bean and Mint Risotto with Seared Salmon: http://rhisfoodieworld.wordpress.com/2010/05/31/pea-broad-bean-and-mint-risotto-with-seared-salmon/

Dampokhtack/Persian rice and beans: http://cookingupastorminateacup.blogspot.com/2010/06/dampokhtack-persian-steamed-rice-with.html

Rice and Beans/Peas and Rice Series Part I

Waakye (rice and beans) with fried red snapper and plantain, served with a rich tomato gravy plus hot Ghanaian pepper sauce called shito(photo of from Aku's Kitchen, 5938 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia) recipes below

While attending a conference last week at the Schomburg Research Center in Harlem, a colleague and I got to talking about my food and history blog. She suggested that do a series on rice and beans/peas and rice within Africa and the African Diaspora and variations that exist among this dynamic duo. “In all rice lands such as Africa, rice dishes have long existed,” writes the pioneering food historian Karen Hess. “Everywhere slave traders imported Africans in large numbers—Cuba, Brazil, and South Carolina—the African developed a regionally distinctive rice and beans dishes.” Slaveholders supported its development because rice and beans “provided their slaves with a cheap, filling, nutritious food, food for which the supplies could be grown by the slaves on a sustenance basis,” concludes Hess. Over the next couple of days I going to do a series of post on the topic starting today with the documentary history I have on Africa. Pieter de Marees’ history of Guinea published in 1602 provides one of the earliest detailed travel accounts of pre-colonial Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, and Gabon. He tells us that African societies in these regions (Akan, Aja, Yoruba, and Igbo) cultivated “many kinds of Beans and Peas, including a kind similar to Turkish Beans.” He goes on to say that this Turkish bean was “purplish and are very good and fatty. They cook them in Palm Oil, producing an excellent food, which is very nutritious.” Below are recipes for waakye/rice and beans, the national dish of Ghana.

Waakye/ Ghana Style Rice and Beans: http://www.africanfoods.co.uk/waakye.html

Vegan version of Waakye/Ghana Style Rice and Beans: http://veganfootprints.blogspot.com/2008/06/ghana-style-rice-and-beans.html

Aku's Kitchen in Philly: http://www.akuskitchen.com/Contact.html

The Rent Party: A Slice of Harlem Food History

Blueberry crumb pie, recipes below

I’ve been in New York City attending The State of African American and African Diaspora Studies Conference at the Schomburg Center for Research in Harlem. It’s been a great event and my time here reminds of Harlem food history. To make ends meet during the Depression, African Americans turned to strategies like throwing rent parties. On a Saturday night, one could always find buffet-flats, rent parties, whist parties, and dances, where, for a small fee, one could purchase down-home food and dance to good music. Langston Hughes recalled:

The Saturday night rent parties that I attended were often more amusing than any night club, in small apartments where God knows who lived—because the guests seldom did—but where the piano would often be augmented by a guitar, or an odd cornet, or somebody with a pair of drums walking in off the street. And where awful bootleg whiskey and good fried fish or steaming chitterling were sold at very low prices.

The family in need got the word out and then went to work preparing food for the party. Meanwhile, residents in the surrounding area scrounged enough money to buy a plate of food and prevent someone from being evicted.For very little money you could get homemade pie, greens, and fried chicken, or fish, or some part of the hog. On my first night in town, I had an incredible slice of blueberry crumb pie with this great pie crust that was sweet but not too sweet and crunchy; here are some recipes for it.

Blueberry crumb pie recipe: http://www.gretchencooks.com/recipes/1046_Blueberry_Crumb_Pie

Oprah’s Blueberry crumb pie recipe: http://www.oprah.com/food/Blueberry-Crumb-Pie

Vegan Blueberry apricot cobbler: http://www.wellsphere.com/healthy-eating-article/cobbleriffic-vegan-blueberry-apricot-cobbler/744193

Food and New Year’s Resolutions Series: Part 3 Dr. Fulton

Spicy Buffalo tempeh sandwich, recipes below

A 1999 obituary published in the Chicago Tribune described Dr. Alvenia Moody Fulton as “a woman who could soothe the ills” of neighbors and friends in the poor South Side of Chicago neighborhood “with a cleansing mix of herbs and other natural ingredients.” It went on to say that Fulton “touted the healing powers of raw foods, juices and fasting as the path to healthier living.” Fulton, however, is not well known as a pioneer in the holistic health movement that championed herbal remedies, whole grains, unprocessed foods, juicing, and vegetarianism. Fulton felt a call to serve the people in the impoverished South Side of Chicago and she spent her entire professional career working in a drug-infested, dangerous neighborhood. But the criminals protected and looked out for her. The word on the South Side was leave that old lady alone,” she cares about us. In 1958 she became founder and director of the Fultonia Health and Fasting Institute and eventually opened Fultonia’s, a combination health food store, restaurant, and herbal pharmacy at 65th and Eberhardt on Chicago’s South Side. She later relocated to 53rd Street. Fulton’s restaurant had a full menu that included soups, vegetarian chili, brown rice, vegetables, all varieties of fruit and vegetable juices, and whole-grain breads and cakes. Fulton was pioneer that introduced many “to the concept of food as medicine,” writes actress and activist Ruby Dee who knew Fulton well. Here are some recipes below from a great new website that features the kind of recipes that Dr. Fulton celebrated.

Wonderful recipes to start your New Year: http://byanygreensnecessary.com/category/recipes/

Close as I could get Spicy Buffalo tempeh sandwich recipe: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=1321104

Food and New Year’s Resolutions Series: Food Rebels

Quiche, recipes below 

With the New Year here, folks are much more open about taking a critical look at what they eat. The final chapter of my book Hog Hominy and the epilogue does just that http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/tableOfContents. In the 1960s and 1970s several debates developed over eating soul food. Some African-American intellectuals like Amiri Baraka argued that soul food was a unique part of black culture that should be celebrated. Food writers like Craig Claiborne insisted that soul food was a southern regional food that belonged to southerners. And three groups of African Americans I call “food rebels” argued that soul food is nothing to be celebrated or guarded as our own because it was killing black folk. In the chapter titled Food Rebels, I argue that the Nation of Islam (which Malcolm X once belonged) advocates of natural-food diets, and college-and university-educated African Americans called for eating healthier; that’s why I offer both traditional and vegan recipes on my food and history blog. A recipe below for spinach quiche caught my eye because my brother Marshall (named after Thurgood Marshall) makes a mean quiche. Ok I am inspired to make my first one and here are slew of great recipes below. If you have an heirloom quiche recipe please share it and its history.


Nation of Islam Recipes: http://www.seventhfam.com/scmhwc/ourfamily/vegetarian.htm. 

Caramelized onion quiche: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/caramelized_onion_quiche/

Spinach quiche with onion Jam: http://shesinthekitchen.blogspot.com/2008/08/unexpected-company-spinach-quiche-with.html

Mushroom quiche: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/mushroom_quiche/

Vegan mushroom quiche: http://kblog.lunchboxbunch.com/2009/06/vegan-tofu-quiche-mushrooms-scallions.html

Best vegan quiche ever: http://eatmorevegies.blogspot.com/2010/11/best-vegan-quiche-ever.html

Food and New Year’s Resolutions Series

Stuffed candied mini pumpkins, recipe below

My father once told me that as a toddler, he and I gained so much weight that he put both of us on a diet. I mention this because it New Year’s resolution time again when folks try and lose weight. North Americans are historically more overweight than residents of any other nation in the world; African-American eating habits are just as problematic as the eating habits of other ethnic groups within the United States. According to Joan B. Lewis, a member of the American Dietitian Association and a registered dietitian with more than forty years of experience, historically, most of the eating patterns that you see among Americans are “sugar, salt, fat, you know fatty products, a whole lot of fried stuff, a whole lot of pork products, a whole lot of fast food, no vegetables, no fruit, [and generally] no good wholesome things.” Lewis goes on to say that, over the last eight to ten years, the younger generation has “leaned heavily” on “vegetarian items. It was a blessing in disguise” because those that do are consuming less fat and reducing their chance of obesity and risk factors for high blood pressure and diabetes. If you must make a New Year’s resolution, commit to making it a habit to eat more vegetables and fruits. Here is a stuffed candied mini pumpkins recipe that my friends and family say is sensational.

Stuffed Candied Pumpkins

Ingredients

Syrup

2 cups sugar or sugar

3 cups water or more

¼ cup of diced crystallized ginger

1/4 cup lemon juice

6 mini pumpkins

Filling

2 cups quick oats

Sweeten to taste with sugar

½ cup of diced crystallized ginger

½ cup of raisins

½ cup to cup of margarine

½ to 1 cup of sweetened coconut flakes

Ground cinnamon, cloves, and Jamaican spice to taste

Optional: sliced almonds or pecan pieces and dried fruit

Method

Syrup—cut the tops off the pumpkins and gut them (save the seeds and roast themhttp://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=pumpkin+seeds). In a large heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine sugar, 3 cups water, ginger, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil over high heat; reduce heat to medium-high. Bring to a boil and continue to stir; reduced the heat so it simmers and place the gutted pumpkins in the sauce pan and cover. Let simmer until they turn color and get soft but can still be moved without breaking apart—about 20 minutes. Filling—in a mixing bowl mix all the dry ingredients and then had enough melted margarine so that the mix is damp but not soaked. Had raisins (nuts and dried applies are optional), ginger, and ground spices to taste and mix. Pre-heat the oven to 350 and remove the pumpkins from the sauce pan and let them cool for 5 minutes. Stuff the cooled pumpkins with the filling which is essentially a brown betty mixture (http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=brown+betty) and bake on a cookie sheet until golden orange—about 45 minutes to one hour. Remove from the oven and drench them in the syrup from the sauce pan so the pumpkin becomes completely saturated with the lemon ginger syrup. Let them cool before serving. These are great as a meal or dessert at anytime during the day.

Getting Over the Fear of Cooking This Year

Homemade pizza, recipes below

Last night I made New York style thin crust and Chicago deep dish pizza at home using 99 cent bags of whole wheat dough from Trader Joe’s and mozzarella cheese from Costco; they turned out really good. The experience left me thinking about how easy and inexpensive it was to make pizza. Why have I been paying up to $20 for a large pizza with as little as two toppings that doesn't taste good! Because like me, many people have a fear of cooking and that fear becomes more intense when it comes to dishes like pizza which seem too hard and mysterious to make. This revelation made me think of Mrs. Vasta. During my senior year in High School back on Croton-on-Hudson in New York's Hudson Valley. In 1980 and 81, classmate Joe Vasta and I became very good friends because we had a mutual love for the game of lacrosse which bordered on fanatical and we both loved good food. On Friday nights his mom made homemade pizza and when you walked into the house the wonderful aroma of baking pizzas was unforgettable. Mrs. Vasta made great pizza! But what’s interesting is that she grew up in an Irish American family in Croton and thus she had to learn to make pizza as a new bride. She married Joe’s dad Salvatore Vasta, a warm working class Italian American who loved his heritage and its food. Mr. Vasta must have grew up eating homemade pizza in his home and wanted that experience for his children too. Mrs. Vasta understood that and learned how to cook Italian food for her very large family as an expression of love. The experience of eating Mrs. Vasta homemade pizza back in the 1980s, planted a seed in my mind that I wanted to do the same for my family. Last night I solved the pizza mystery (it’s really not a mystery, it’s getting passed the fear of failure) and I am own my way to developing a new family tradition that I hope to pass on to my two children. Mrs. Vasta, thank you for inviting me into your home and for your culinary inspiration. Below are some pizza recipes that I hope will inspire you.

New York style thin crust pizza recipe: http://1700milesofcooking.wordpress.com/2007/08/11/nearly-perfect-pizza/

Chicago style deep dish pizza recipe: http://www.theworldwidegourmet.com/recipes/pizza-chicago/