Memorial Day and the Work of One Mississippi Veteran

 Pig ear sandwiches, recipe and additional links below

My five year daughter asked me last night, "Dad why didn't we do more to honor those soldiers?" We had a picnic but for her their wasn't enough explicit acknowledgement or honor given to those who died to protect our liberties. Her question led me to talk about the work of Medger Evers. The Civil Rights movements in the U. S. south began after democratic struggles in Europe during the post-World War II era failed to carry over and improve conditions for Africans and African Americans. Both movements and in their various manifestations were rooted in part in the Indian Independence movement which stirred to action a new generation of black activist many of them World War II veterans. Medger Evers fought in France and earned the rank of sergeant during World War II. After the war, he returned to his home state of Mississippi, earned a college degree, entered the worked force, and became a civil rights activist. Evers went on to become Mississippi’s first NAACP field secretary setting up his office over the top a land mark eatery in Jackson, Mississippi called the Big Apple Inn where he also held meetings when he ran out of space to sit people in his office. The restaurant, which is still open, was started in 1939 by an immigrant from Mexico City named Juan “Big John” Mora (1890-1976) and it had two signature sandwiches—pig ear sandwiches and hot smoked sausage sandwiches (called smokes). Big John married an African American women and in 1939 he and his son Harold purchased an old grocery store on Farish Street for one hundred dollars. The two renovated store into a restaurant and opened it as the Big Apple Inn restaurant. Evers did not have adequate office space to hold meetings, and he would often hold them down stairs in Big John's where he would discuss civil rights organizing and protest strategies. When customers came in buy sandwiches and saw so many people meeting in the restaurant, they inquired what was going on. Customers liked what they heard, and joined the movement. “In fact they would be lined up at the [restaurant’s] door just to hear Medger’s strategy,” says Big John’s grandson Gene Lee, Sr. So the Big Apple represented a big part of the civil rights movement in Jackson providing a place where Evers could meet and discuss strategy in safety and it fed the civil rights revolution in Mississippi. WWII veteran and Ku Klux Klansmen Byron De La Beckwith assassinated WWII veteran and civil rights leader Medger Evers in front of Evers' Jackson home in 1963. In addition to the smoked sausage and big ear sandwiches dressed with slaw and mustard (which cost a dollar each) the menu also includes bologna sandwiches, tamales, and soul shine pizza! Here are recipes below based on the Big Apple Inn.  

Mississippi delta tamale recipe: http://www.tamaletrail.com/recipe_howto.shtml

Pig ear sandwich and the Big Apple Inn: http://www.ulikafoodblog.com/2009/11/smokes-ears.html

Pig ear sandwich recipe: http://hungrybrowser.com/phaedrus/m0104M10.htm#3

Looking For a Great Barbecue Sauce?: African Contributions to Southern Cuisine

South Carolina barbecue sauce, recipe below

A while back I saw an episode on Charleston South Carolina  http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Anthony_Bourdain/Episodes_Travel_Guides/Episode_South_Carolina on Anthony Bourdain’s foodways show No Reservations on the Travel Channel. This is a great show from my prospective as a food historian and guy who loves to travel. Bourdain is both a chef and excellent writer.  I was struck by the owner of a renowned barbecue joint and others that paid very little homage to African cooks and African plants that have shaped the local cuisine in and around Charleston. During the antebellum period both poor whites along with the planter class enjoyed the classic soul food dishes that enslaved African created. Africans taught themselves how to cook such dishes, prepared them for their masters, and, in Historian Eugene Genovese’s words, “contributed more to the diet of the poorer whites than the poorer whites ever had the chance to contribute to theirs.” As it related to barbecue, poor whites in antebellum South Carolina seldom had access to meat to barbecue “except they steal hogs which belong to the planters, or their negroes,” writes travel Frederick Law Olmsted who visited South Carolina in the 1850s. Former slave Louis Hughes had this to say about who makes the best barbecue in antebellum Virginia. “It was said that the slaves could barbecue meats best, and when the whites had barbecues slaves always did the cooking.” I suspect this was the case in South Carolina too. Here’s a great link that includes a South Carolina barbecue sauce recipe and much more below.

South Carolina barbecue sauce: http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/blog/2010/03/01/barbecue-style-pulled-pork-sliders-south-carolina-barbecue-sauce-and-kansas-city-sauce/

Look Back for the Best Barbecue Tips for Today

Old fashioned pit barbecue, basting sauce recipes below

Louis Hughes was born in Virginia, in 1832, near Charlottesville, Virginia where the University of Virginia is located. Is father was a white man and his mother black the slave of one John Martin. Hughes provides a detailed account of a barbecue that helps those serious about barbecuing today.  “Barbecue originally meant to dress and roast a hog whole,” says Hughes, but over time it came to mean cooking in a manner to feed a bunch of people. “A feast of this kind was always given to us, by Boss . . . . The method of cooking the meat was to dig a trench in the ground about six feet long and eighteen inches deep. This trench was filled with wood and bark which was set on fire, and, when it was burned to a great bed of coals, the hog was split through the back bone, and laid on poles which had been placed across the trench.” During the process of roasting the cooks basted the carcasses with a preparation furnished from the great house, consisting of butter, pepper, salt and vinegar, and this was continued until the meat was ready to serve. Here’s a link to basting sauces for your own barbecue.

Here are a slew of basting sauces for barbecuing: http://www.chefnorm.com/bastingsauces.html

Memorial Day Picnics In Croton in the Era of Black Power

Macaroni Salad, recipes below (photo from http://foodmuses.wordpress.com/)

As far back as I can remember, on summer holidays my mother would organize these “get togethers”/barbecues/parties/potlucks at our home in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. We had plenty of good U. S. and African food. Our family provided the chicken, hamburgers, and hot dogs to cook on the monstrous brick grill my dad made in the yard. The picnics often included as many as thirty or more people who came and went from noon until flyer fly dark set in. Good food, music, and people kept people coming back to these 1970s gatherings. My mother loved to cook and she loved to listen to the music of Maria Makeba http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP6CdNVzjC8&feature=related and Hugh Masekela http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKCk8o5xzaM&feature=related  among others. She also loved being around her family and people from the “mother land,” as she would say. Mom belonged to an organization called Friends of Africa (FOA) that exposed me at an early age to the Anti-apartheid movement http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rD6LxhZuuc. As a result of FOA our Labor Day gatherings included family and extended family; many of them Africans who came to attend U. S. colleges and universities. On 55 Batten Road, in Croton, African and African Americans mixed and mingled over barbecued chicken, macaroni salad (recipe below), corn bread, rice pudding, peach cobbler and pecan pie (recipe below). The conversations ranged from food and cooking explanations and comparisons, to U. S. and African politics in the era of Black Power. These multiethnic barbecues, the music, and conversations with people from Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, and Sierra Leon are among my most cherished food memories of my youth. Please share your family barbecue memories with me on the comment section of the blog.

Fred’s Macaroni Salad Recipe:

2 cans tuna fish

1 box elbow macaroni

½ to 1 cup each of diced celery, green and red peppers, carrots, and onions.

½ to 1 cup sweet pickle relish.

1 cup mayonnaise (I use soy or canola based mayonnaise)

2 diced hard boiled eggs are optional

Add salt, pepper, fresh parsley, and other favorite seasonings.

Another Macaroni Salad Recipe: http://foodmuses.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/cool-and-creamy-macaroni-salad/

Hudson Valley Foodways and recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=the+hudson+valley

The Secret History of Making Great Barbecued Ribs

New Orleans style barbecue ribs, recipe below

With memorial day weekend upon us, it seems only fitting to talk barbecue for the next couple of days. Eugene “Hot Sauce” Williams operated perhaps the best barbecue stands in 1950s Cleveland, Ohio. In 1920, Williams migrated from New Orleans to Chicago and from there to Cleveland. Williams returned to his native New Orleans around 1934, spending days “just drifting” among cooks in the Crescent city accumulating knowledge about how to make great barbecue ribs. He finally came across an older chief that shared his secret ingredient with Williams and his cooking techniques. Williams says that great ribs come from cooking them slowly over the right amount of heat and taking care to thoroughly cook them but not dry them out. Most credited the success of his barbecue stand to the secret way in which he flavored his ribs with “a dry spice powder and taste-tantalizing hot sauce.” Only Williams knew the formula for the powder, which he personally sprinkled on all his precooked meats. I suspect he used a variation on a New Orleans dry rub recipe like the one shown here below.

New Orleans dry rub barbecue recipe

Ingredients
½ cup paprika
½ cup garlic powder
¼ cup onion powder
3 tablespoons black pepper
2 teaspoons white pepper
2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
¼ cup dried thyme
1 tablespoon ground rosemary
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons sugar
Put all of the ingredients into a bowl and mix thoroughly.

Method
Before applying dry rub, remove the back thin membrane of the ribs so the spices and smoke can penetrate the meat. Rub in dry mixed spices or dry rub mixture by hand completely covering all sides of ribs patting in. This should be done several hours or even better the night before. Store the ribs in a sealed container keep refrigerated until ready to cook.

My Guatemalan kitchen: Give Them Pie!

Pineapple cherry pie, this and other pie recipes below (photo from http://www.oruntilgoldenbrown.com/)

I was single and had my own apartment as I conducted archival research at the AGCA in Guatemala City in 1997. After a long day working in the archives, I would go work out, then come home, shower, turn on the cassette player or radio, and cook for hours. The church I attended in Maryland had a service for its members attending college, serving in the military etc, in which they would send you a cassette of the Sunday sermon and Tuesday night bible study. My father would receive the tapes and then ship them to me in Guatemala City. Those tapes helped me stay connected with the congregation and an important part of my life back in the states. I listened to them for hours as cooked and relaxed in my Guatemalan Kitchen. I remember having a problem getting the archivist at the national archives in Guatemala to bring me out enough documents to keep me busy working. One of the many benefits of ADD/ADHD is the incredible energy you have that when focused gives you the ability to do more work than the average person. One particular archivist could be a real drag to deal with. One night while I was listening to a new batch of cassettes that had arrived, I heard my pastor talking about how to deal with difficult people in our lives from Proverbs 25:21-22. He talked about taking the high road and treating even ones enemy with great kindness. I did not view the archivist as enemy but she made miserable for us researchers. The message, which I listened to several times, inspired me to make a great big pineapple pie for the archivist and her colleagues. The fact is most them received insufficient compensation and appreciation for their work and thus felt little motivation to be agreeable or do anything extra on the job. So I wrapped the pie that I felt very proud off carefully and brought to work the next day. It caught the archivist in question and her colleagues by surprise. They felt valued and showed gratitude toward me. The remaining months I did research at the archives went smooth and I always had enough documents to keep me busy.

Pineapple cherry pie recipe: http://www.oruntilgoldenbrown.com/2011/04/recipes-gluten-free-cherry-pineapple.html

Pie and cobbler stories and recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=cobbler

Good Food’s Pie-Cast Chef Rick Bayless’ Peach Pie: http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/gf/gf100707piecast_rick_bayless

My book based on the research: http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=OPIEX001

Surviving Graduate School Series:

http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=surviving+graduate+school

My Guatemalan Kitchen: Developing My Pie Making Skills

Apple Pie, this and other pie recipes below

I really miss the experience of buying fresh pineapple, papaya, mangoes, bananas, and watermelon on market days in zone 1 in Guatemala City (Guate). The fruit tasted incredibly sweet and most of what I purchased farmers picked the morning of or the night before market day. Using the bakery in Rey Sol as my template http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=rey+sol, I began making all kinds of pies in my apartment using pie tins, cookie sheets, and a cast-iron skillet. I met a North American family working in Guate as missionaries who invited me over from dinner. From the wife I learned how easy it was to make pie crust from scratch and I have been making my ever since—margarine worked into your preferred flour (I like spelt flour), add some fiber to the mix to make Dr. Oz happy, and just enough iced water to hold it together. One of the keys is, don’t over handle the dough as you mix it together. Sometimes I add sugar to the mix depending on what kind of pie I am making. I almost all ways make a layered covered pie like the one pictured above because that’s the style at Rey Sol. I made all kinds of fruit, sweet potato, and meat pies. As I mentioned, I was vegan in those days. Rey Sol sold great quality soy milk, soy yogurt, and several types of vegan meats. I made my meat pies from the vegan meats I purchased at Rey Sol and fresh carrots, snap peas, onion, garlic, and potatoes from the open air market. The fruit in Guate grew so sweet that I didn’t need to add sugar to most of my fruit fillings. I ate pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and the extra pies I put in the freezer. Let me be clear, I made allot of bad pies and pie crust before I perfected the technique. Like anything in life, quality practice time makes you better in most situations. Even today, when I have not made a pie in while, they just are not as good and I have to keep working on it. More pie stories from Guate tomorrow.

Pie and cobbler stories and recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=cobbler

Good Food’s PieCast: Roxana Jullapat and Apple Pie at the Peninsula

http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/gf/gf100902piecast_roxana_julla

My book based on the research: http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=OPIEX001

Surviving Graduate School Series:

http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=surviving+graduate+school

Pinkster Celebration and Afro Dutch Foodways

Gingerbread muffin, recipe below

Pinkster is a Pentecost holiday celebrated seven weeks after Easter when the Holy Spirit began his ministry on earth as described in the first chapter of the book of Acts. First celebrated for several days in 1620, it represented a Holiday that Dutch settlers introduced to the Hudson Valley, Northern New Jersey and Western Long Island where they had the greatest concentration. Dutch settlers brought enslaved African to these regions from Africa and the Caribbean and introduced them to this Christian holiday which included parades and festivals. Overtime northern blacks co-opted Pinkster transforming it for their own needs such as a break from the harsh realities of slave labor and using it as an opportunity to both socialize and earn money from the sale of beer, gingerbread, and pies which Dutch, African, Native Americans enjoyed during the festival. Here is a gingerbread recipe from the Hudson Valley that seems most appropriate for this piece of culinary history.

Gingerbread recipe: http://www.all-creatures.org/mhvs/recipes-gingerbread.

Related Link: http://www.hudsonvalley.org/pinkster/index.html

My Guatemalan kitchen: Interpreting What You See

Baked Tilapia and other fish recipes below (image from http://gourmetgibbs.blogspot.com/)

Musing on my graduate school experience through the lens of foodhttp://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=graduate+school. I last talked about transitioning from a hotel to an apartment in Guatemala City in February of 1998 and stocking my kitchen. One of the keys to my productivity as a writer is designing a plan then working that plan. The dissertation process is designed to help one become a researcher and writer and I starting understanding that process in graduate. In Guatemala City was in the archival research phase and planned to be there for about three to six months requesting documents from the archivist at the national archives looking through them composing sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and ultimately a several hundred page dissertation. I find cooking to be similar. A cook develops a menu which is their plan. The next stage is going to market and digging up the best ingredients to make the varies components of a meal. The availability of fresh produce at a weekly open air market just blocks from my apartment stood as one of the best parts about living in Guatemala for me. As a cook I have a type of photographic memory in which I can see a dish and then I can recreate it in my kitchen substituting ingredients and reinterpreting recipes. After eating at Rey Sol for several weeks, I began to reinterpret many of their dishes and many others I had seen over the year in my Guatemala kitchen. A dish I made especially for my wife the other night that is a case in point. The original recipe called for spinach but I had a lot of unused asparagus in the freezer.

Baked Tilapia with olive oil, garlic, and Vidalia onions

Ingredients

4 to 6 pieces of Tilapia

1 bunch of asparagus

1 crushed garlic clove

½ a Vidalia onion chopped

2 tablespoons (or more) olive oil

Salt, pepper, thyme, and other desired seasonings

Method

Preheat the oven to 450. Put the asparagus in a salad bowl then pour a tablespoon of olive oil over it. Season the asparagus then place it on a cookie sheet spread with Pam etc. pour chopped onions and garlic over the asparagus. Put tilapia on plate and brush them with olive. Season them and put them over the asparagus and bake for 7 to 14 minutes depending on how you like them. I cook my well done because my wife likes her fish that way and crispy asparagus. Serve over rice. Serves 4 to 6 people.

Another Tilapia recipe: http://gourmetgibbs.blogspot.com/2010/05/lemon-butter-baked-tilapia.html

Fish related foodways stories and recipes and more: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?

Latin American Foodways From Brazil to Mexico

Turrón de Doña Pepa, recipe below

The following is a prerecorded radio interview I did on NPR Wisconsin Public Radio's show Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders. On Friday they feature a food show in which I talked about Latin American foodways. The show starts with a discussion about Peru's colonial history, slavery, and food then the host ask me how my interest in Latin American history began. (original air date October 8, 2010)

Listen: http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_101008k.cfm

Turrón de Doña Pepa recipe: http://yanuq.com/english/recipe.asp?idreceta=423

Kitchen Essentials in Guatemala City Part 2

Carrot cake, recipes below

Field Work at the National Archives in Guatemala City 1998: This part 2 of a discussion I started yesterday about stocking the small kitchen in my Guatemala City apartment. I finished buying pots and pans and next it was off to the closest grocery store in Zone1 to buy seasonings and spices. I loaded my cart with sea salt, black pepper, paprika, coriander, marjoram, vanilla extract, almond extract, sugar, and cinnamon. I also snapped up whole wheat flour and some brand. The owner of Rey Sol told me that they use it in all there baked goods. I use ground flax see now but I believe I found packaged oat bran there. I definitely received some puzzled looks as a tall African American male shopping for my kitchen in a space working class when occupied. Perhaps some worked as domestics for elite families throughout zone 1 and there were less well off moms and daughters shopping for their families, and the women employees of male owned stores. Female employees seemed puzzled asked where I could find various kitchen items in the store. And the women at the checkout lines and behind the registrars just about fell out when I pulled up with a cart full with enough stuff to start a kitchen show! I was thrilled like a kid on Christmas morning with a big smile on my face. Most of the women looked at me like, where is your wife or your mama? What they didn’t get was the fact that I was in my element and having a great time. Below are some carrot recipes. Carrot cake is a popular dessert in Guatemala. Next I talk about the cooking I did in my Guatemala City apartment.

Carrot cake: http://debishawcrossblog.com/archives/2498

Raw vegan carrot cake: http://dherbs.com/newyouwinner/2011/04/raw-vegan-carrot-cake-recipe/

Gluten free carrot cake: http://bakeeatrepeat.blogspot.com/2011/04/gluten-free-carrot-cake-with-cream.html

Vegan Carrot cake: http://hellyeahitsvegan.com/?p=1739

My book based on the research: http://www.upf.com/book.asp?id=OPIEX001

Surviving Graduate School Series:

http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=surviving+graduate+school

Kitchen Essentials in Guatemala City

Mango salsa and other recipes below

Field Work at the National Archives in Guatemala City 1998: Once I moved into my apartment in zone 1 I went shopping for essentials for small kitchen. If you live in an urban apartment in New York, Paris, Havana, or D.C. you know what I mean by a small kitchen. This was my first time stocking my own Kitchen because I always had a roommate. Like most kids, I helped myself to my parents extra stuff when I was in college. In grad school, I lived at my Cousin Katie’s house and she kitchen essentials and more! I hit the stores in Guatemala City comparing prices before purchasing a pressure cooker to make beans and greens, a baking sheet for making cookies, flat sheets pies, and baking and roasting vegetables. I also purchased a large cast-iron skillet with a cover which is one of the most versatile cooking items your small kitchen could have. These skillets are great for sautéing, frying, and baking. I used my for making vegetables, pancakes, rice, refried beans, and baking corn bread, biscuits, and pies http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=cast+iron+skillet. I bought a blender essential in my world for smoothies, red and green salsa, and tomato sauce for lasagna http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=lasagna. I stocked up on different sized metal mixing bowls for baking and making salads purchased a spatula, and a good old fashioned wooden spoon for a multitude of cooking and baking tasks http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=wooden+spoon+. More tomorrow on my trip to the grocery store in Guatemala City.

Mango salsa recipe: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/mango_salsa/

Feasting in Antigua, Guatemala: Pollo Pepían/Spiced Chicken

Pollo Pepían (spiced chicken), recipes below. Photo from (http://exilekiss.blogspot.com/)

Guest Blogger Bio: Blake Pattridge is Chair of the History and Society Division at Babson College. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American history from Tulane University in New Orleans. He is the author of Institution Building and State Formation in Nineteenth Century Latin America: The University of San Carlos, Guatemala (2004) http://www.peterlang.com/index.cfm?event=cmp.ccc.seitenstruktur.detailseiten&seitentyp=produkt&pk=45838.

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I have spent much time in Guatemala over the years, with my first visit to the beautiful country taking place in the summer of 1991 as a doctoral student. I stayed in Antigua Guatemala, a lovely colonial town with beautiful historic churches, ruins, and colonial edifices. There are many indigenous people who come to Antigua from surrounding pueblos to sell their wares to tourists, and the town’s parque central (central plaza) is usually bustling with commercial and entertainment activities. During my first visit, the family of a fellow graduate student took me to one of the town’s many popular restaurants, La Fonda de la Calle Real. I returned to this restaurant a handful of times that summer, and in subsequent visits found that it had moved to a new location providing it with much more space for customers. This new location had what I would describe as a quintessential Spanish colonial ambience. Upon entering through the huge wooden doors, one encountered a sense of tranquility and relative quiet that contrasted sharply with the noisy streets. Beautiful plants and flowers abundantly adorned the restaurant, and an open air courtyard gave the entire space a spacious feel. And perhaps most importantly of all, the menu had an array of classic Spanish and Guatemalan favorites. Among some of the local recipes were a Pollo Pepían (spiced chicken) dish and a Sopa de Pavo (turkey soup). The restaurant offered all sorts of meat dishes, usually accompanied by rice and beans and freshly made corn tortillas. One could order Guatemalan cervezas such as Gallo, or be treated to a fruit licuado made of some of the freshest fruits I have ever had. In sum, I used to love spending a tranquil Sunday afternoon at this restaurant enjoying some classic Spanish colonial fare with a local flavor. Here are the related recipes below.

Pollo Pepían: http://www.thegringochapin.com/2010/12/pepian-de-pollo-3.html

Sopa to Pavo: http://www.familycookbookproject.com/view_recipesite.asp?rid=246098&uid=1648&sid=3574

Series Surviving Graduate School: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=surviving+graduate+school