A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: Peru

Peruvian Olluquito con Charqui, recipe below

In the Indigenous societies of the Andes, women planted and harvested the fields and prepared the food. Men hunted animals and raised like stock including alpaca and llama. The women would slaughter the animals and prepare it for eating. Pre-Columbian Inca women developed dishes using a cured, salted, and dehydrated meat they called charqui. The English word Jerky comes from the Andean word charqui. The women would salt cure the meat and dry it in the hot sun and freezing cold for about a month and thereby increasing its longevity. In pre-Colombian Africa, Mande women made jerked salted and dried meat in the sun in a similar way. From the Jerked meat Andean women made a soup called Olluquito con charqui made with ollucos (a yellow Andean tuber), traditionally women used slices of jerked alpaca and llama, but today its more often made with jerked beef, and served with rice.

Olluquito con Charqui Recipe

Ingredients
4 ysp oil
1 tsp cayenne pepper
¼ kg “charqui” or jerked meat/vegan substitute
1 kg ollucos chopped in fine strips
½ cup onion
Chopped parsley
2 garlic cloves
Salt and pepper
ground chilly

Method

Shred and fry pre-soaked/hydrated Charqui. After browned, remove, and in the same oil fry onions, garlic, chilly and cayenne pepper. Add ollucos (soaked for 1 hour with salt). Cover the pot and cook at low heat. Sprinkle with parsley. Serve with white rice. Makes eight servings

Annual Lima Food Festival video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZj0lNzmlkE

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: African Survivals

Chicken and dumplings, recipes below

Today let’s explore women's history through chicken dumpling (also spelled “Chicken ’n’ Dumplings). Sources reveal that West African women prepared chicken together with collard greens and dumplings many centuries ago. The tradition survived the Atlantic slave trade, slavery, and sharecropping with mention of it in the oral histories I conducted while researching my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/webFeatures. For example, Ruth Thorpe Miller’s mother from Savannah made chicken ’n’ dumplings long after migrating to Harlem in the 1920s. Maggie White from Windsor, North Carolina migrated to Ossining, New York, in Westchester County, 30 minutes north of New York City. During the Great Depression she kept her “big boned” children filled with chicken ’n’ dumplings during the holidays. As a child in in 1940s Alabama, Joyce White recalls the smell of her mother cooking Chicken ’n’ Dumplings, “which was made with a big hen.” Here are some Chicken ’n’ Dumpling recipes below.

Savannah Chicken and dumplings: http://community.tasteofhome.com/forums/t/110783.aspx

Vegan chicken and dumplings: http://kathrynlovett.com/2010/10/26/monday-vegan-chicken-and-dumplings/

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: Norma Darden & Vertamae Grosvenor

Norma Darden (left) co-owner of the Harlem eateries Spoonbread Too: Miss Mamie's and Miss Maude's, recipe link below

I was in Harlem yesterday shooting an episode of a NYC Media series called Appetite City hosted by former New York Times food critique William Grimes. We shot the episode at Miss Maude's Spoonbread Too located at547 Lenox Ave in Harlem. The series will air this coming August of on NYC Media’s cable station. Ms. Norma Garden, a former fashion model, owns the restaurant and she was there and graciously signed a copy of her book and served up some great cake. Her sister Carole Darden is the chief baker of the restaurants. As part of my Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series I offer the following prerecorded interview with Ms. Darden and Vertmae Grosvenor on NPR’s Talk of the Nation. The link to the show includes some fine recipes too.

Listen: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=971241

Guest:

• Vertamae Grosvenor, NPR contributor and author several cook books/food anthropologies
• Norma Jean Darden, co-author of Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine: Recipes and Reminiscences from a Black Family and the owner with her sister Carole Darden of Spoonbread Too: Miss Mamie's and Miss Maude's located in Harlem.

Related Links:

· William Grimes: http://www.nypl.org/audiovideo/appetite-city-culinary-history-new-york

· Review of Miss Maude’s: http://nymag.com/listings/restaurant/miss-maudes-spoonbread-too/

· NYC Media: http://www.nyc.gov/html/media/html/nyc_media_shows/list.shtml

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: Alabama

Benne Seed Wafers, history and ingredients below

In 1895 and 1896 African-American farmers in the vicinity of Tuskegee, Alabama, generally worked “about seven and a half months during the year” according to researchers from the U. S. Department of Agriculture. “The rest of the time,” says one researcher, “is devoted to visiting, social life, revivals, [and] other religious exercises . . . .” During the “laying-by time,” while the crops were maturing, African-American farmers near Tuskegee held “bush meetings,” revivals, and visited friends for sometimes a whole week at a time. Women served guest something to eat and drink like Benne Seed Wafers and some iced tea. Africans brought Benne (the Bantu word for sesame) seeds to the Americas from sub-Saharan Africa in the 17th century during the Atlantic slave trade. It is one of the oldest cultivated crops grown for its mild nutty-taste, enslaved Africans planted this versatile plant around the borders of their gardens in Alabama and other parts of the South. Benne is high in protein, has no cholesterol and is rich in calcium, iron, zinc, and vitamins B and E.


Benne Seed Wafer Recipe

Ingredients
1 cup sesame seeds
4 tablespoons of butter (or butter substitute) softened
1 cup light brown sugar
1 egg (or egg substitute) beaten
¾ cup spelt flour (or all purpose flour)
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
1/3 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp baking powder
1 tsp fresh orange juice
¼ tsp grated orange peel
½ tsp vanilla extract

Method
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a heavy skillet, toast seeds over low heat until golden brown then transfer to place to cool. With an electric blender, cream butter and sugar together and mix in eggs, flour, salt, spices, and baking powder to form a soft dough. Drop with a teaspoon onto a well-greased cookie pan, far enough apart to allow spreading while baking. Bake for 10-15 minutes then allow wafers to cool before serving makes 2 dozen.

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: Brazil

Acarajé Vender in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, recipes below

The origins of Brazil’s popular fast foods date back to the African slave trade. By the 1620s “Brazil absorbed a migration of some 500,000 to 600,000 slaves from Africa up to 1700” write historians Herbert Klein and Ben Vinson. Although they were enslaved people, Afro-Brazilian women entrepreneurs sold prepared foods such as acarajé, on the streets of Bahia and Rio. Originally a popular West African dish, particularly in Senegal, Nigeria, and Ghana, Afro-Brazilian women street venders continue to sell acarajé long after the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888. Acarajé is a black-eyed pea cake fried in dendê oil (palm oil) and split open like a hot-dog bun served stuffed with vatapá and caruru– spicy sauces made from shrimp, cashews, palm oil and other ingredients. As I talk about in my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy, black-eye peas came from Africa where they are known as cow peas. Here are two recipes for acarajé, one traditional and the other vegan:

Traditional acarajé recipe: http://www.whats4eats.com/appetizers/akkra-recipe

Vegan acarajé recipe: http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Acaraj%C3%A9

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: The Women of Cloverdale, Virginia

Hot cross buns, recipe included

My Grandmother Lucy Opie was one of many women who migrated from Cloverdale, Virginia to North Tarrytown in the late 1920s or the early 1930s. In North Tarrytown, the majority of the southern-born migrant women came from Virginia, followed by North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, and Maryland, in descending amounts. Most of them rented homes, creating a black enclave in the Valley Street section of town. They worked predominately at private homes for white residents as cooks, live-in domestic servants, and laundresses. Lucy Opie did domestic work, particularly cooking. A superb cook, she prepared traditional southern dishes. What was unique about her cooking, according to her daughter Dorothy Opie, was, “the first ingredient she put in was a piece of love, stirred it up.” She was an excellent baker, often preparing biscuits, pies, and an Easter time favorite I grew up eating at Grandma's house—hot cross buns!

Hot cross bun recipe: http://www.dltk-holidays.com/easter/hotcrossbuns.htm

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: Africa

Photo from http://blog.worldvision.org.uk/, fish recipes below

Enslaved African women from many different culinary traditions entered the Americas starting in the sixteenth century. Mande women also identified in primary sources as Mandingo and Mandinka women 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 came from largely agrarian societies but those who lived in the vicinity of the large rivers worked chiefly wish fish. Men fished and the women helped prepared them for sale and ran local fish markets. Pounding the entire fish in a wooden mortar as they came out of the water and exposing them to dry in the sun represented the most common way of preparing them for sale. Fish could be purchased in a variety of ways including fresh caught or preserved in salt. Here are a number of fish recipes from Africa and different parts of the Americas that seems most appropriate during the Lenten season.

African fish stew recipe

Ingredients

Use dried or fresh fish (sea bass, croakers, porgies or rock)
Vegetable oil
Green bell pepper
Onion
4 ripe tomatoes diced or 1 can of crushed who tomatoes

Thyme
Salt
Black pepper

Method

Use dried fish that needs to be soaked overnight to hydrate or cut up, season, and fry fish. Sauté onions and green bell peppers in a skillet. Remove mixture from skillet and add to fish in saucepan. Add tomatoes and stir. Sprinkle thyme, salt, and black pepper to taste. Cover; simmer for about 15 minutes. Serve with rice or cassava, serves 4.

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

Fish and grits recipe: http://www.esquire.com/features/guy-food/fish-and-grits-recipe-ll-0309

Encebollado de pescado récipe: http://laylita.com/recipes/2008/03/01/encebollado-de-pescado-or-tuna-soup/

Moroccan-Salmon recipe: http://www.oprah.com/food/Moroccan-Salmon-with-Cabbage-and-Couscous

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: Women in the Culinary World

Georgia Gilmore of the Montgomery Improvement Association's 1954 bus strike in Montgomery, Alabama

The following is a prerecorded interview I did for a special edition of the Philadelphia National Public Radio’s A Chief’s Table:

Women in the culinary world

It's women's history month and on today's show we'll talk to many women who have made accomplishments in the culinary world. We'll visit with restaurateur Lidia Bastianich about changes in Italian cuisine and Carol Shelton reveals what it took to become a female wine maker. We'll also talk to a woman who invented a meatless version of that pork product, scrapple. Later, Dr. Fredrick Douglass Opie on the contributions of African American women. Plus Giuliano Hazan on quick pasta dishes, saving money at the grocery store and news about women's heart health.
Listen now: http://www.whyy.org/91FM/chef/201003.html

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: Grandma

Southern Corn bread, recipe below

My maternal Grandmother, Luesta Duers, was the grand matriarch of my family. Here home in Ossining, New York served at the meeting place for her family and extended family including all my cousins from New York, New Jersey, and Baltimore. A native of Windsor, North Carolina, the story goes Grandma originally left Windsor to earn a teacher’s certificate at North Carolina Normal School for teachers. She dropped out of school, eloped, and migrated with her husband to Philadelphia. Apparently a sister sent word to her and her other sister Maggie that she had jobs lined up for them in Ossining. Grandma was the upstairs maid and my great aunt Bertha was downstairs, they all did domestic work. For allot of women of the 1940s and 1950s, especially black women, those were the jobs available to them. It was my grandmother, the former domestic servant, who when she heard I needed one, used some of her savings to purchase my first laptop computer when I entered a doctoral program in history at Syracuse University in the early 1990s. Like many women of her generation, Grandma lived frugally and invested in the education of their children and grandchildren. I heard film maker Spike Lee share a similar story; his maternal grandmother from Georgia, who was an educator, saved her money and paid for most if not all of his Morehouse College Education. Like Spike I’m northern born with a southern grandmother. In the North, cooks continued the southern tradition of regularly baking corn bread, but for some unknown reason it took on a distinctively sweeter taste. Southerners dismissed the sweeter northern interpretation of corn bread as unfit for consumption. However, over time, the corn bread of newcomers from the South became more northern in style, just like the migrants themselves. My grandmother retained the tradition of making un-sweet corn bread and here is a recipe similar to hers.

Southern Country Cornbread
2 cups of buttermilk (or 2 cups of vanilla soymilk)
½ teaspoon of baking soda dissolved in a tablespoon of hot water
2 large eggs
¾ cup corn, canola or vegetable oil
Mix eggs and milk together
Sift in 2 cups of corn meal with a teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of baking powder or use self-rising cornmeal (I add just a little high source of fiber, just a little!)
Mix ingredients and if you’re northerner like me add a ¼ cup of sugar
Spray hot biscuit pan (or cast Iron skillet like I like to use) with nonstick cooking spray
Preheat oven at 425 then turn down to 375 and bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown
Brush with melted butter when done and enjoy!

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: Palmares

Capoeira or the Dance of War by Johann Moritz Rugendas 1835, recipes below

People of African descent established maroon communities throughout the Americas in which runaways lived like pirates. In early America, Pirate ships and maroon communities served as the two most egalitarian institutions in early America because one’s gender, race, class, did not limit one’s upward mobility. Women played a critical role in maroons throughout the Americas particularly holding leadership position as compared to life in the male dominated European controlled colonial societies. In Pernambuco, the largest slave holding region of Brazil before the abolishment of slavery in 1888, Palmares or Quilombo dos Palmares, there were a number of sovereign multiethnic communities. Like most maroon communities, Palmares were nestled in the rugged terrain and its residents gained a reputation for their rebellious attitude toward the colonial power structure. Elites living in nearby communities expressed a constant fear of the thousands of armed largely African residents; Palmares like other maroons contained mulattos and other multiethnic residents including renegade European and Native Americans fleeing political persecution and or exploitative labor relations. Armed with bow and arrows, spears, and machetes, maroons attacked and plundered Portuguese settlements for food stores and staples and they repelled attempts to destroy them until their demise in 1695.

Brazilian recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=slavery+in+brazil

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells, lots of recipes below

Ida B. Wells served as one of the founding members of the Niagara Movement and later the NAACP in 1909. Born in 1862 in Mississippi, her parents who were slaves died along with a younger sibling when Wells was fourteen. Well continued her education at Rust College before moving to Memphis where she worked as a school teacher and raised her younger sisters with the help of an aunt. In 1884 she brought a suit against a Memphis railroad company for violation of the 1875 Civil Rights Act banning discrimination on the basis of race in public transportation. The case went to the U. S. Supreme Court before Well’s lost. The experience launched a career in journalism as request for her personal account poured in from newspaper editors. In 1889 she became a partner in the paper Free Speech and Headlight. So what’s the food angle? In 1892 Well’s three friends—Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart operated the People's Grocery Company that took customers white owned grocery stores in Memphis. In response the latter group tried to attack the People's Grocery Company but Moss, McDowell, and Stewart fought back shooting one of the assailants. Local officials arrested and jailed Well’s friends. Thereafter a lynch mob broke into the jail and killed the three men before the start of a trail. Wells interviewed the three men in jail and did further investigations which she published in her paper Free Speech and Headlight. African American newspapers across the country republished her articles. Threats on her life in Memphis led her to migrate to Chicago where she continued her anti-lynching activism and where she started several progressive organizations. Well’s spent the majority of her life in Chicago, I some related stories with recipes below.

Chicago related stories with recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=chicago

Related link: http://www.duke.edu/~ldbaker/classes/AAIH/caaih/ibwells/ibwbkgrd.html

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: Queen of Creole Cuisine

Leah Chase above and stuff crab recipe below

Jazz musician Edgar “Dooky” Chase and his wife started a corner sandwich stand in the historic Treme neighborhood in 1936 during the Depression. By 1941, Dooky Chase became a local bar and grill selling typical down-home New Orleans food across the street from its original stand location. Chase spent more time working on his music career while his wife and later his son, Dooky Jr., helped grow the business. In 1946 Dooky Jr. married Leah Chase, a native of Madison, Louisiana. Leah added Creole family recipes to the original Dooky Chase menu that attracted patrons of all colors despite Jim Crow Laws. “I'd worked in some of the finest restaurants in the French Quarter and . . . I had one dream: to make this a truly fine restaurant for black people and to raise the standards of the whole community,” says Leah Chase known to many as “Queen of Creole Cuisine.” In the 1940s and 50s the restaurant served Count Basie, Sarah Vaughn, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, and Cab Calloway who came to play in New Orleans segregated venues for white patrons but Jim Crow laws prohibited them from eat in such places. “There was no other place to go, really,” recalls Leah Chase, so word of mouth led them to Dooky Chase. “Sarah used to order our stuffed crabs, and Lena, she likes our fried chicken,” remembers Leah Chase. Here’s a New Orleans stuff crab recipe below with some of my healthier eating interpretations.

Sarah Vaughn’s Favorite New Orleans stuff crab recipe

Ingredients
1 1/2 ounces I can’t believe it’s not butter
4 1/2 ounces chopped onion
1 1/2 ounces chopped bell pepper
1 ounce celery
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon garlic
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
6 1/2 ounces claw crab meat (or vegan substitute)
1/2 teaspoon parsley
1 1/2 to 2 ounces bread crumbs
1 ounce chopped green onions

Method
Sauté onions, bell peppers, and celery until half done. Add garlic salt and cayenne and sauté until vegetables are translucent. Add claw meat, bread crumbs, parsley and green onions. Mix thoroughly and stuff accordingly. Recommended baked but some served it fried

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: Angustias Farrera

La Negra Negustias is a little known novel by the Mexican author Francisco Rojas González about la coronela Angustias Farrera, a Afro Mexican mulatto women who served as a colonel under Emiliano Zapata during the Mexican Revolution (1910-1916). Published in 1944, I came across the novel in a book store of the Fondo de Cultura Economica while studying in Guadalajara, Mexico in the early 1990s; González is a native of Guadalajara. I also came a across a film version of the novel while in graduate school at Syracuse University. The novel is notable because it delves into the African presence in Mexico outside of traditional Afro Mexican communities in places like La Costa Chica in the state of Guerrero, the resistance of the young and attractive Angustias to the traditional roles of women in rural Mexican society, and the conditions in rural societies that led peasant farmers and agricultural workers to take up arms against Mexico’s landed oligarchy and the dictator Porfirio Diaz. The novel also discusses the sexism and racism that Angustias had to overcome as she rose up through the ranks of the revolutionary army and how she gained the respect of the soldiers under her authority. Thus the book is provides an interesting alternative to paternalistic view of women in Mexican literature as subservient dutiful wives, domestic servants, mothers who raise children and cook great food. What also remains a mystery to me is how this winner of the Mexican National Price in Literature remains virtually unknown to many academics who study the African presence in Mexico and the Mexican Revolution. Here are some Mexican recipes and related links to this post.

Mexican history and recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=mexico

Related link on Francisco Rojas González: http://www.tower.com/la-negra-angustias-francisco-rojas-gonzalez-paperback/wapi/112428697

Laura Kanost, "Viewing the Afro-Mexican Female Revolutionary: Fransico Rojas Gonzalelz's La Negra Angustias": http://www.jstor.org/stable/25758234

A Culinary Celebration of Women’s History Month Series: Aretha Franklin

Shrimp and grits and other recipes below

We call James Brown the God Father of Soul, Gladys Knight the Empress of Soul and Aretha Franklin the Queen of Soul. Born in 1942 in Memphis Tennessee, Franklin migrated with family first to Buffalo, New York, and then to Detroit Michigan where her father the Reverend C. L. Franklin served as the pastor of a Baptist Church. Her parents split up in Buffalo and her mother died when she was ten; Franklin’s grandmother raised her in Detroit’s motor city whose auto industry attracted thousands of southern migrants. Franklin grew up singing in her father’s church and recorded her first album in 1961. In 1987, Franklin became the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with 20 number 1 Bill Board chart R & B hit singles and 20 Grammy awards. But before she became a cross over celebrity, Franlkin started singing on the Chitlin Circuit in the early 1960s. A string of black-owned honky-tonks, nightclubs, and theaters, the circuit weaved throughout the Southeast and Midwest and included Paschal’s Carousel Lounge in Atlanta, Chicago’s Regal Theater; The Royal in Baltimore; and New York’s Apollo Theater to name just a few places. Entertainers called it the Chitlin’ Circuit because some club owners sold soul food dishes out of their kitchens and eateries opened nearby some of these venues. In my book Hog Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/tableOfContents I talk about One of Aretha Franklin’s favorite eateries, Kelly’s restaurant in Atlantic City. Franklin loved Kelly’s hot sauced wings and grits. Here are some grits and pozole recipes below.

Shrimp and Grits: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=443571

Vegetarian Menudo: http://recipes.chef2chef.net/recipe-archive/56/299250.shtml

Vegetarian Pozole: http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/soup/recipe-vegetarian-posole-075578

Garlic cheese grits: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=853994