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 5

A Southern Barbecue, a wood engraving from a sketch by Horace Bradley, published in Harper's Weekly, July 1887.

“My great-great-great grandfather came from North Carolina. His grandson, my great-great uncle George Catchings, had an elaborate marinade and slow cooked the meat (beef, chicken and goat) on a chicken wire covered pit. He was the absolute best barbecue man in Copiah County, Mississippi,” writes Willie Thigpen. He’s comment on a post I did on barbecue reminds me of the wood engraving from a sketch of a late nineteenth century Southern barbecue scene. In my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/tableOfContents, I show that barbecuing has a long history and association with people of African descent dating back to African foodways. What’s interesting is in Africa, young women did labor extensive barbecue cooking using all kinds of meats that males hunted and trapped. However, in the antebellum south barbecue and other forms of outdoor cooking became male dominated crafts. Also interesting is the fact that, like religious revivals, and harvest festivals during the antebellum period, barbecues were integrated events in the south and ones in which the elites and commoners might interact. Enslaved Africans did the labor involved in barbecuing. They prepared and barbecued meats over a very hot open pit which most often took hours if not a day when one barbecued a whole hog, and they served the food to whites first. After slavery, catering barbecues for white elites hosting holiday barbecues, weddings, and other special events, became a lucrative business for some African Americans in the south and after they migrated to places like New York and Chicago. Below is great Mississippi barbecue link that offers allot of great cooking tips.

Mississippi barbecue: http://nmisscommentor.com/food/mississippi-barbecue-est-omnis-divisa-in-partes-tres/

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/

Foodways Art and Images Series

Fishpot of split bamboo, Brailsford, Jamaica, circa 1808 to 1816

Starting a new series today on Art and Foodways; Foodways is the study of how recipes, cooking and eating methods and traditions develop over time. Above is an drawing of a Jamaican women with a bowl made from bamboo full of fish in Jamaica. Mande speakers (identified in the primary sources used here as Mandingo and Mandinka) lived in the geographic area of the present-day countries of Burkina Faso, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, and Ghana, among others. They were largely subsistence farmers but those who lived in the vicinity of the large rivers worked chiefly in fishing. The culinary transition to slavery in Jamaica for the Mande and other West and Central Africans was not as difficult for a people cooking with similar ingredients in Africa before captivity. In Jamaica, planters supplied slaves with weekly rations of salt cod but slaves also made time to fish and negotiated access to small parcels of land set aside to cultivate produce. For years Jamaican cooks have made a variety of fish dishes from salted cod, red snapper, porgies, and mullet.

Jamaican escovitch fish recipe: http://www.burdenclothing.com/pages/blog/2009/08/02/cook-this-escovitch-fish/

Ackee, codfish, and callaloo recipe: http://www.thedowntownfoodie.com/2010/09/cod-salted-fishwith-callalol-and-ackee.html

Ackee and codfish with fried dumplings: http://www.jehancancook.com/?p=1679

Crabbing in the Chesapeake in Antebellum America

Jumbo lump meat crab cake from Faidleys Seafood in Lexington Market, recipes below (Photo Frederick Douglass Opie)

I was in Baltimore over the weekend to attend an US Lacrosse board meeting and annual convention. When I found out that the convention center was blocks from Lexington Market, I made a bee-line for Faidleys Seafood to get one of their famous lump meat crab cakes. This is a sensational crab cake that was well worth the five block walk on a cold January day. Historically crabs have always been accessible to poor folks and the rich. How the crab arrived in ones kitchen, who cleaned, prepared, and served it at one's table served as an important indicators of one's status, power, and income. As a food source crab was versatile as well as tasty as made into crab cakes and crab bisques among other dishes. During the antebellum period the great majority of enslaved Africans in the Chesapeake region might have starved if they did not supplement the niggardly allotment of rations that masters distributed to their slaves. As a result most enslaved folk foraged for berries, herbs, mushrooms, hunted for small game like rabbits, squirrels, and muskrats and went fishing and crabbing. This was done in the evening after working in the fields or days off on Sundays and holidays.

Maryland jumbo Lump meat crab cake recipe: http://www.grouprecipes.com/41224/maryland-jumbo-lump-crab-cakes.html

Crab bisque recipe: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/crab_bisque/

Rice and Beans/Peas and Rice Series: Part 6 of 6

Moors and Christians, recipes below (photo http://www.bradleyhawks.com/)

The Moors introduced rice culture and a number of spices and herbs obtained through the Arabian spice trade into Spanish cookery during their occupation of Spain from 711 to 1492. The Moorish preference for cooking with liberal amounts of onions, garlic, and spices has shaped the Latin American rice and beans dish known as Moros y cristianos (Moors and Christians). The black beans represent the Moors and the white rice represents the Christians. Even the name of the dish speaks to Latin America’s Moorish/African culinary heritage from Spain. Prepared similar to Jamaican peas and rice, Moros and Cristianos is seasoned with thyme, oregano, coconut milk, chicken broth or bouillon, cilantro, parsley, bell peppers, celery, red onion, tomato sauce, and garlic. Here are some recipes for the dish which is very popular in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.

Moors and Christians recipes:

http://recipes.aarp.org/recipes/moors-and-christians

http://armidacooks.blogspot.com/2007/04/moros-y-cristianos-cuban-style-black.html

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 5

Red beans and rice

I want to return to the series I started on rice and beans/peas and rice before the MLK holiday. My last related post was on Brazilian feijoada, today let’s turn to New Orleans’ red beans and rice. 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. Tradition has it that black domestics in the crescent city served it on Mondays because historically that was the day they did laundry soiled from the week before. Cooks used leftover meat scraps and vegetables from Sunday dinner to season the red beans. Large pots of beans seasoned with scraps of meat herbs and spices to taste sat slow cooking for hours at the back of the stove while women completed the labor intensive job cleaning laundry by hand before the advent of the washing machine and indoor plumbing. Like many popular dishes associated with a city, region, and or country, black female entrepreneurs developed the dish and made it popular selling it as street vendors on and the around the bustling docks of New Orleans. Today rice and beans, served in a variety ways, is on the menu of most New Orleans restaurants be they white table cloth establishments or mom and pop joints.

New Orleans Red Beans and Rice recipe: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=257296

Vegan New Orleans Red Beans and Rice recipe: http://myveggiekitchen.blogspot.com/2009/01/new-orleans-red-beans-and-rice.html

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