Brazilian Gumbo

Carurú is a delicious and vitamin rich Bahian gumbo, this and other recipes below

Lets continue our travels through Brazil as part of celebrating Hispanic Heritage month through the prism of food and history. The noted Brazilian historian Gilberto Freyre argues that enslaved Afro Brazilian women enriched Brazilian foodways with the introduction of African ingredients such as peanuts, peppers, okra, yarbs, inexpensive, calcium rich, and easy to grow greens leafy vegetables, palm or dendê oil, and coconut milk. The yarbs provide a rich source of fiber and vitamins that cleansed the colon. Afro Brazilian women cooks also used an abundance of vitamin C rich pepper, vitamin A rich coconut milk, and vitamin E rich palm oil which they used in making soups. Hence the palm oil, coconut milk, and pepper provided liberal amounts of vitamin C, A, and E. Carurú is an example of a Bahian gumbo dish containing many of these African introduced ingredients listed above: “‘Carurú’ is a dish eaten by the blacks, but is much esteemed by the whites, and is, to my taste, very delicious," writes traveler to Brazil James Wetherell in 1860. Here is a traditional Carurú recipe that can be adapted to make a vegetarian version.

Traditional Carurú Recipe: http://flavorsofbrazil.blogspot.com/2009/10/recipe-caruru.html

Hispanic Heritage Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Brazil: A Racial Paradise? (PBS Full Length Episode): http://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/featured/black-in-latin-america-full-episode-brazil-a-racial-paradise/224/

Dutch Brazil, 1640-1649

Moqueca (fish stew), rice, and manioc meal. This and other recipes below

I have been traveling across different regions of Hispanic America looking at different time periods and delving into Hispanic Heritage through the lens of food. What societies grow, cook, and consume is loaded with history, geography, migration stories, empire building, and cultural exchange. Certainly that's the case with the Brazilian dish moqueca featured above. Between 1640 and 1649, the Dutch controlled Portugal’s African settlements and its most important sugar producing region in southern Brazil. Dutchman Johan Nieuhoff worked for the Dutch East Indies and Dutch West Indies Companies spending nine years in Brazil. “The most universal food of the Brazilians,” is manioc or cassava meal, he writes in the 1640s. He adds they also feast upon seasoned crabs and craw-fish either boiled or roasted. “Small fish” they wrap and cook in banana leaves. Here are two Brazilian fish recipes that’s reminiscent of Niehoff’s account. The ingredients for Moqueca, a Bahian fish stew below, are transnational with plants from Asia, Africa, and America. It includes shrimp originally from China, garlic which are from South western Asia, onions from Iran, fish from the Americas (kingfish, mackerel or bluefish), lemon and lime from Asia, black pepper from India, tomatoes from the Americas, coconut from South America and or Asia, cayenne paper from Mesoamerica, and palm oil from Africa. Here is the recipe below:

Moqueca Bahian fish stew recipe: http://events.nytimes.com/recipes/12100/1990/09/26/Moqueca-Bahian-fish-stew/recipe.html

Hispanic Heritage Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Brazil: A Racial Paradise? (PBS Full Length Episode): http://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/featured/black-in-latin-america-full-episode-brazil-a-racial-paradise/224/

Crazy for Coconut in Brazil

Beijinhos de Coco (Coconut Kisses) this and other recipes below

As part of Hispanic Heritage month I want to talk about dulceras who were largely enslaved women who sold sweets in urban centers. One saw enslaved Afro Brazilian women hawking sweet on the streets of Rio and Bahia in Brazil. In the intersections of the main streets along the walls in lower town of Bahia there “fruit-sellers, venders of sausages, black-puddings, fried fish, oil, and sugar cakes,” writes the British traveler Maria Graham in the 1820s. Speaking now of Rio she goes on to say, “and for dainties [sugary deserts], from the noble to the slave, sweetmeats of every description, from the most delicate preserves and candies to the coarsest preparations” made with coconut “are swallowed wholesale.” One see’s similar scenes in sugar based plantation societies throughout the Americas with African American women making sugar based sweets out of the most plentiful and inexpensive ingredients they have on hand such as nuts and coconut. Here is a recipe for a Brazilian street venders product made with grated coconut, which is indigenous to South America, called Beijinhos de Coco or coconut kisses.

Beijinhos de Coco recipe

Ingredients

A can of sweetened condensed milk (vegans, I substitute plant based products for this and the other ingredients in this recipe)
2 egg yolks
1 tbsp butter or margarine
1 lb freshly grated coconut
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

Mix all the ingredients together completely. Cook using a heavy saucepan and keep stirring until you see the bottom of the pan. Pour into a plate and let it cool completely. Grease your hands then make small balls, roll them in sugar and put them on small pieces of wax paper. Recipes makes 30 kisses.

Here is related link: http://www.thecapitolbaker.com/2010/08/coconut-laddoos.html

Hispanic Heritage Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Brazil: A Racial Paradise? (PBS Full Length Episode): http://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/featured/black-in-latin-america-full-episode-brazil-a-racial-paradise/224/

Peruvian Foodways

Aji de Gallina, A Peruvian spicy creamed chicken dish, this and other recipes below

We are in Hispanic Heritage Month and I am doing a related series. The last couple of days I've focused on the Andean region. Long before Francisco Pizarro and his band of Spanish conquistadors arrived in Peru, Inca women shaped the foodways of the Andean region from modern-day Peru, Ecuador, western and south central Bolivia, northern Chile, northwest Argentina and southern Colombia. With the Spanish conquest of the Incan empire in 1532, the material food culture Inca women had to trade in markets and prepare as food increased particularly with the addition of new domesticated animals such as Guinea fowl from Africa and other imported species. While the typical chicken did not exist in Peru until after the conquest, Inca women did prepare a poultry dish with a local variety called the hualpa. Below is a traditional Andean poultry and rice recipe the Inca named after the last Inca leader Atahualpa. It’s made with thin roasted chicken strips covered in a creamy yellow spicy sauce and served over rice. Vegans there are plenty of vegan poultry substitutes you can use to make this recipe.

Aji de Gallina/Peruvian spicy creamed chicken recipe:

http://latinamericaforless.com/blog/2010/02/09/peru-travel-guide-aji-de-gallina-recipe/

Africans in Mexico and Peru Video:  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/featured/full-episode-mexico-peru/227/

Hispanic Heritage Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Ecuadorian Foodways

Encebelloado de pescado, this and other recipes below

Speaking of indigenous foodways in Guayaquil, Ecuador in early 1700s, Captain Jorge Juan Antonio De Ulloa of the Spanish Navy writes, “The first course consists of different kind of sweetmeats, the second of high-seasoned ragouts; and thus they continue to serve up an alternative succession of sweet and high seasoned dishes . . . The coasts and neighboring ports abound in very delicious fish, [which] . . . constitute a considerable part of the food of the inhabitants of Guayaquil.” One finds “very large and fine lobsters, of which they make delicious ragouts,” which they season . . . with Guinea pepper, which, though small, is so very strong” says the Captain. He adds, the “person, not accustomed to it, suffers either way. If they eat, their mouths seem in a flame; if they forbear, they must endure hunger, they have to overcome their aversion to this seasoning; after which they think the Guinea pepper the finest ingredient in the world for [seasoning] their food. Here is a recipe for encebollado de pescado, a popular fresh tuna soup made with cassava, olive oil, onions, garlic, cilantro, and limes from Guayaquil.

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

Africans in Mexico and Peru Video:  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/featured/full-episode-mexico-peru/227/

Hispanic Heritage Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Jerked Meat and the Inca

Peruvian Olluquito con Charqui, this and other recipes below

As part of my for Hispanic History Month series let's talk about the Inca today. 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, slated, 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. 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. Jerking meat (salting and drying it in the sun) to conserve it has a long history and that extends around the globe. Growing up in New York's majestic Hudson Valley region in the 1960s and 70s I loved buying Slim Jims-a long piece of jerked beef with salt and spices that tasted delicious at the corner store across the street from the rear of the then JFK little league baseball field. Adolph Levis invented the Slim Jim in 1928 and later sold its rights to the General Mills foods company for around 20 million dollars in the late 1960s.

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

BBC Radio Food Program on Preserving Meat: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/foodprog/foodprog_20110314-1630a.mp3

Hispanic History Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Mexican Soul Food

Mole-Plobano served over chicken with Spanish rice and fried plantains, this and other mole recipes below (photo from http://casitamex.com/) Click to enlarge.

Mole, is a quintessential fusion Mexican dish with elements from the Americas, Asia, and Africa. The term mole comes from the Nahua word mblli, which mean sauce. Indigenous people had been cooking and preparing drinks with cacao and peppers for many years and over time they developed mole. In fact Aztec oligarchs received cacao as tribute form the groups who the conquered and cultivate it as part of their subsistence crops. The labor intensive rich spicy chocolate sauce most often contains spices native to Asia such as cloves, cinnamon, and pepper along with other ingredients. Mexican cooks most often serve mole dishes garnished with sesame seeds which are indigenous to Africa. The seeds arrived in Mexico via the Atlantic slave trade and the same is true with plantains and rice. Iberians imported large numbers of Africans to during the colonial period to work in the mining industry and plantations and as domestic servants. African influence is perhaps most pronounced in Mexican cuisine particularly the use of rice and plantains. The state of Vera Cruz served as the principal port of entry for enslaved Africans into Mexico and has the PBS video shows below African retentions remain strong in Mexican cuisine. Until the 1950s a class prejudice existed against indigenous foods like Mole and until then it was largely a soul food like dish that the poor ate. It was only several decades after the Mexican revolution that folklorists began to chronicle oral recipes for dishes like mole from rural areas, that these recipes became the core of Mexico’s national cuisine. Here are links to various mole recipes including vegan selections and other related links.

Moles recipes: http://allrecipes.com/recipes/world-cuisine/latin-america/mexico/mole-recipes/ViewAll.aspx

Vegan mole recipe: http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=8746.0

Africans in Mexico and Peru Video:  http://www.pbs.org/wnet/black-in-latin-america/featured/full-episode-mexico-peru/227/

Hispanic History Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Food and Power in the Aztec Empire

Spicy Mexican corn bread, recipes below

As part of my Hispanic History month series I want to talk about the Aztec. The Aztec empire covered the most of the region of the contemporary republic of Mexico to parts of Guatemala. The Aztec were the most powerful political force in Mesoamerica before the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century. As proud imperialist, the Aztec were far from egalitarian. In terms of food, they forced groups they conquered, most of which were agriculturalist, to pay tribute, some of it in food staples such as corn and hot peppers. In addition in most societies, the most powerful eat the best sources of food that the less powerful grow, catch, and prepare for them. In most instances, the more powerful one is the further they are from the food production and preparation process and spaces such as fields, rivers, markets, and kitchens. That rang true of the elites that ruled the Aztec empire. Commoner women in the empire controlled local food markets where they bartered and negotiated with the servants and slaves of the nobility. The people of Mesoamerica in ancient times were often called the people of maize (corn). This is because they ate and drink it had just about every meal. Mexican corn bread I really like, particularly the way Mexican cooks add fresh vegetables including chilies. Here’s a great corn bread recipe.

Spicy Mexican Cornbread Recipe:

Ingredients:
2 eggs, lightly beaten
¼ cup olive or canola oil
1 cup buttermilk
¼ cup or more of heavy cream
1 1/2 cups shredded cheese
1 large diced onion
1 cup fresh steamed corn
¼ cup diced green chillies
¼ cup diced red chillies
1 cup cornmeal (self-rising if available)
1/2 cup self-rising flour
¼ cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder (if self-rising flour is not available)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda (if self-rising flour is not available)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Method:
Preheat oven to 350°. In large bowl combine eggs, corn oil, and buttermilk. Add shredded cheese, corn, onions, and chillies. Mix well. In small bowl mix together corn meal, flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Slowly add dry ingredients to egg and corn mixture. Pour into greased cast iron skillet bake for 30 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Best served warm.

For Gluten Free folks: http://www.gluten-free-around-the-world.com/gluten-free-bread.html#corn

Hispanic History Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

Colonial Mexico City

Nopalitos with tomatoes and onions, this and other recipes below

As part of my Hispanic History month series lets turn to Mexico City one of my favorite places for great food. In colonial Mexico City indigenous women gradually shaped the cookery and preferences of Iberian owned homes and eateries. This happened despite the attempt of Iberian born wives to teach their Indian cooks how to prepare meals according to Spanish culinary styles. In Mexico City the women servants who cooked for elite families slipped local ingredients like tomatoes into Spanish recipes believing no one would notice any difference in taste. However, Spanish women realized the change but also recognized that it “turned out much cheaper [and easier] to feed everyone” in a large household on meals made with available and less expensive local ingredients than scarce and expensive imported ones from Spain. In short, the culinary and economic savvy of Indigenous women, some free and some enslaved, resulted in the transformation that occurred in the diet of new arrivals from Europe. Here is a traditional Mexican recipe that illustrates the influence of indigenous women on Mexican cuisine. It's also a great recipe for all those tomatoes your garden is producing. You can most likely find the necessary ingredients from Mexico for this recipe in stores near Mexican American communities and or international markets like the great one they have in around most cities.

Nopalitos with tomatoes and onions recipe: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/nopalitos_with_tomatoes_and_onions/

Hispanic History Month Series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=Hispanic+History+Month+Series

The Creolization of Food in the Caribbean

Candied yam empanada, recipe below

As part of my Hispanic History Month series I want to talk about creolization in the Spanish speaking Caribbean. The study of creolization is tracing the origins and mixture of culture in this case foodways (food culture and history including growing, cooking and eating techniques). Creolization in the colonial period meant a dish developed in the New World out of the contact most often between Europeans, African, and Native Americans, the free and enslaved, and the oppressor and the oppressed.  I use recipes as a window into the creolization of foodways in Iberian America. Spaniards were the first Europeans wealthy enough to afford the importation of enslaved African laborers from West and Central Africa. Anthropologist Sidney Mintz’s conservative estimate is that “nine and one-half million enslaved Africans reached the Americas. Nearly a third—about 2.6 million reached” Cuba and other Caribbean islands. Enslaved African women infused Cuba with various aspects of African foodways including the use plants popular in Africa like yams. Spanish slave holders in Cuba and the Dominican Republic rationed yams (and sweet potatoes) to slaves because, unlike white or Irish potatoes, they kept for a long time. Slaves who did not receive the tubers as rations cultivated them in truck gardens. Afro Cuban women roasted them, used them in one pot meals, and used them to make bake goods. Thus yams represented a continuation of an African tradition in which yams were regularly eaten as fufu among the Ibo and Hausa of West Africa. Here is an inexpensive candied orange yam empanada recipe that cost as little as $7.00 to make 

Candied Orange Yam Empanadas Recipe 

Empanadas 
1 c Goya Masarepa (use the yellow, not white!) 
1/2 t salt 
1½ c warm water 
1 T vegetable oil 
About 4 c cooking oil for frying 

Candied Yams 
2 medium yams 
1/2 jar of orange marmalade (with rinds) 
1 c firmly packed dark brown sugar 
1 c orange juice 
¼ t ground nutmeg 
½ t ground cinnamon 

Additional Necessities 
1 sandwich size plastic bag, sides cut open 
Wooden cutting board 
Smooth bottomed juice or water glass 

Method 
Peel and cut the yams into 2” cubes. Toss lightly with oil and roast in a preheated 400° oven for about 20 minutes or until the yams become slightly tender. Remove from oven and set aside. In a large saucepan combine the orange juice, orange marmalade, and brown sugar and bring to a low simmer, making sure the sugar has completely dissolved. Add the roasted yams to the syrup and simmer over low heat for about 15 minutes. 

To prepare the empanadas, spoon about 1/3 of the yams into a bowl along with plenty of syrup. Mash with a fork until almost smooth, adding more syrup if the yams are too dry. Follow the above procedure for shaping the empanadas, this time using the candied orange yam filling. Fry as instructed above and drain on a plate lined with paper towels. Serve with a side of extra syrup, garnish with orange zest. Makes 12 to 15 mini empanadas and about 1 cup extra yams & syrup. Recipe from: http://www.poorgirleatswell.com/2009/11/foodbuzz-24-24-24-after-thanksgiving.html

Moorish Influences on Hispanic Foodways

Moroccan-Salmon with sweet and spicy barbecue sauce, recipe below

It is Hispanic Heritage Month and I doing a related series. Between 1450 and 1600, the Portuguese built trading posts on the West coast of Africa and slave labor sugar plantations on the African island of São Tomé in the Gulf of Guinea. By the sixteenth century, the Spanish had established settlements in the Americas. We know that Iberians arrived in Africa and the Americas with the cross in one hand and the sword in the other; but they introduced more than their religious practices and the repression of indigenous peoples where they conquered and colonized. Colonization meant the introduction of new foods. Many of the innovations in African and American foodways, particularly the introduction of exotic ingredients from the East, occurred as a result of 800 years of North African colonial rule on the Iberian Peninsula after the Moors seized power there in 711 A.D. In the first chapter of my book Hog and Hominy (http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/webFeatures) I talk about how the Moors introduced a number of spices and herbs obtained through the Arabian spice trade into Iberian cookery. Moorish seasoning techniques called for using sugar, spices, and herbs to enhance, not dominate the flavor of vegetables, poultry, red meat, and fish. These spices and cooking philosophies of Moorish and Iberian origins became important to Latin American cookery. Moorish seasoning techniques directly influenced Iberian cookery from 711 to 1491 A.D. Here is a link to an incredible North African sweet and spicy barbecue sauce served with salmon.

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

Bananas, Asia, Africa, and Iberian America

Bananas vender in India above and banana muffins, this and recipes below 

As part of Hispanic history month lets talk about one of my children's favorite fruits. Banana and plantains are indigenous to India. We know that Asian traders introduced them to the Island of Madagascar off the coast of Africa during the Christian era and from there they spread to the mainland of Africa where cooks gradually made them a staple across West and Central Africa. African cooks used them in a variety of ways including steaming, boiling, grilling, and frying them.  It was after living in Mexico and Guatemala that learned that there so many varieties of bananas that other people around the world eat. One also learns that here in North America if you are fortunate to live in place that has a large population of immigrants from tropical regions of world and local grocery stores and bodegas stock red and yellow, short, and fat, and long and finger size bananas. My children always ask me where these different species come from and if they can try them. Now here is the Hispanic History month link, Centuries ago the Portuguese introduced bananas from Africa first to Brazil during the Atlantic slave trade. They used them as provisions on slave ships that carried slaves to Brazil and thereafter the Spanish did the same with cargoes of slaves sailing for Panama and Mexico. Bananas naturally became one of the staples foods for all sectors of society in South, Central America, and Mexico by the 16^th century. But it was not until the late 19^th century that the United Fruit Company of Boston began importing them through New Orleans, Mobil, and Galveston. Below is banana muffin recipe that I am baking for my children’s breakfast this morning. These guy love banana muffins and they are a great way to teach history too.

Banana muffin recipe: http://www.thecleaneatingmama.com/2010/03/vegan-banana-bread-muffins.html

Banana bread recipes: http://www.mybananabreadrecipes.com/

Pork-mania in Iberian America

Caribbean Mafongo, recipes below 

As part of Hispanic Heritage Month, I will be sharing stories on the Caribbean, mainland Latin America, and various Latin American diasporas in places like New York City and my home region, the Hudson Valley just North of the Big Apple. As a college professor, I've been teaching Latin American history courses for more than ten years and I've published extensively on Central America. What follows are my musing on Hispanic foodways from written sources, oral histories, and my own field work in  Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Columbia. Today let's start discussion in the Caribbean. When the Spanish started establishing settlements in the Caribbean, they imported large numbers of domesticated pigs which quickly became the center of the regions culinary culture. Enslaved West and Central African came later and with them plantains and dishes like mafongo. The recipe calls for using pounded green plantains in a parallel way to West African make foo foo. Hispanic Caribbean cooks most often make mofongo from fried green plantains mashed together with garlic, olive oil, a broth, and some kind of fried pork. Below find traditional and vegan mofongo recipes.

Traditional Mofongo Recipe
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/01/dining/011mrex.html

Vegan Mofongo Video Recipe
http://veganricans.blogspot.com/2008/11/vegan-mofongo-w-fried-tempeh.html

Malcolm X The Gardener

(photo from http://afoodiesquest.blogspot.com/)

This and other recipes below (Photo from http://www.ccrecipe.com/)

Lansing Michigan 1930s: “The bulk of the Negroes were either on Welfare, or W. P. A. or they starved. [W]e were much better off then most of the town Negroes. The reason was we raised much of our own food out there in the country where we were. Not only did we have our big garden, but we raised chickens. . . I loved [having my own garden plot] and took care of it well. I loved especially to grow peas. I was proud when we had them on our table. I would pull out the grass in my garden by hand when the first little blades came up. . . . And sometimes when I had everything straight and clean for my things to grow, I would lay down on my back between two rows and I would gaze up in the blue sky at the clouds moving and think all kinds of things.” (Malcolm X) During the Depression, many struggling families like that of Malcolm X had to eat almost like vegetarians, surviving on vegetables grown in expanded family gardens. Many turned to the New Deal relief programs started after Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932. Federal food relief came in many forms-emergency food stations, surplus food distribution programs, soup kitchens, breadlines, and relief gardens. I love the above passage from the Autobiography of Malcolm X because it delves into Malcolm most don't know. The guy loved gardening and the more I’ve read about him, the more I would argue that Malcolm was a foodie. However what is interesting is that he became the spokesmen of the Nation of Islam an organization that championed black economic independence, ethnic pride, Islam, and condemned the peas from Malcolm's childhood garden. For example the organizations leader Elijah Muhammad, who wrote two books, How to Eat to Live, volumes I and II, published in 1967 and 1972 argued that “Peas, collard greens, turnip greens, sweet potatoes and white potatoes are very cheaply raised foods [boldfaced in the original text] [that] . . . southern slave masters used . . . to feed the slaves, and still advise the consumption of them.”  Today most health care professionals and nutritionist would encourage folks to consume more of what Mr. Muhammad condemned slave food particularly when eaten out of your own garden and void of the ham hocks as seasoning.  Here are some good tasting heart healthy related recipes below and more Malcolm foodie stories.

Sugar snap pea pasta: http://www.ccrecipe.com/2132/quick-meals/sugar-snap-pea-pasta.html

Fusion Pea recipe: http://afoodiesquest.blogspot.com/2011/04/peas-please.html

A Split-pea soup recipe for Malcolm’s childhood reflection: http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/vegetarian-split-pea-soup-recipe.html

More post on Malcolm X with recipes: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=malcolm

"Something You don’t Hear Talked About": Race Relations and Food in the Depression Era South

A slice of sweet potato pie, this and other recipes below

As part of my fall gardening series I want to continue to share from the interview I did with artist and educator Dr. David Driskell. As mentioned in an earlier post, Driskell was born in 1931 and grew up in the Foote Hill, Blue Ridge region of the Appalachian Mountains in Rutherford County, North Carolina. As he gave me a tour of his garden which includes allot of the food plants his family raised in North Carolina. In speaking about his childhood and race relations he said in Rutherford County, North Carolina blacks and whites lived “side by side our property was continues with [whites]. . . it was something you don’t hear written about or talked about. But everybody had to be depended on each other.” With that in mind, I asked him a question that I’ve wrestled with in my study of American foodways: were you all as black and white southerners eating differently?  Referring to “dinner on the grounds,” a communal meal a rural church, he said, “I don’t think we were eating differently, I think we were eating the same thing [often the produce from the garden] in some cases . . . the sweet potatoes, the sweet potato pie, greens, white potatoes, potato salad all those kind of things. . . . I suspect we had some dishes that they didn’t have without our aid. Very seldom did I know of them making sweet potato pie and things like that, they would get someone to come in and do it for them. . . My mother would often go up and cook things for [our white neighbors] the Elliots . . .  as a way of making money [preparing] a pie, cake, or fried chicken.” I have more from Dr. Driskell tomorrow. Here a pie recipe that goes well with this story and this time of the year.

Sweet potato pie story and recipe: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2011/04/easter-history-and-food-series-chris.html

Dr. David Driskell: http://www.visionaryproject.com/driskelldavid/


More pie stories and recipes:

 http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-guatemalan-kitchen-give-them-pie.html

http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-guatremalan-kitchen-developing-my.html 

http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/2011/04/historic-poems-and-food-series-rhubarb.html

Possession of Okra While Shopping White Up North

Fried okra, this and other recipes below

Last week I delivered a paper titled “Juke Joints, Rum Shops, and Honky-Tonks:  The Politics of Leisure in Agrarian Societies,” at Program in Agrarian Studies Colloquium at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. The night before my talk I had the pleasure of sitting next to Yale History Professor Glenda Gilmore, a white southerner born and raised in North Carolina. Glenda shared a very interesting okra story that in part addresses a question I’ve raised in my work on food history. Is there any difference between how white and black southerners have eaten over the years? Glenda attended undergrad, graduate school, and taught in the Carolinas until taking her current job in The History Department at Yale in 1994. Like New York City, New Haven has a sizeable population of African Americans that migrated to the city from the south between the 1940s and the 1960s, many of them from the Carolinas and Virginia. One day Glenda picked some okra to cook for dinner in the produce section of a New Haven super market and noticed an older black women puzzled by her selection of this very southern food plant, which by the way comes from Africa. “The women followed me around the supermarket to the checkout counter,” says Glenda understanding right away what was going and chuckling on the inside about being tailed for possession of okra while shopping white. Then the women’s curiosity got the best of her and at the checkout line she asked Glenda, “Accuse me, but what are you going to do with that?” pointing to the okra. Glenda had not spoken until then, and she replied with in a deep but natural Carolina accent, “I am going to do the same thing you are going to do,” and smiled. When the African American women heard her southern accent, she understood and the two of them smiled, then laughed out loud and bonded over their mutual love of okra. Here is typical southern way to cook okra from your garden, farmers market, or grocery store below as well as other recipes. My daughter just reminded me how much she and her older brother love when I cook southern fried okra.

Southern fried okra recipe: http://www.olsouthrecipes.com/okra.html

 Okra recipes:

African okra recipes: http://www.ifood.tv/network/african_okra/recipes

Indian okra recipes: http://indianfood.about.com/od/vegetarianrecipes/tp/bhindirecipes.htm

Southern okra recipes: http://southernfood.about.com/library/weekly/aa081401b.htm

Sweetest okra recipe (vegan): http://vegweb.com/index.php?topic=10974.0

My gardening series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=gardening+series

Eating From One's Garden in Brazil

A vegetable rich Bahian gumbo full of vitamins, recipe below

The noted Brazilian historian Gilberto Freyre argues that enslaved Afro Brazilian women enriched Brazilian foodways with the introduction of African ingredients such as peanuts, peppers, okra, yarbs which are inexpensive, calcium rich, and easy to grow greens leafy vegetables, palm or dendê oil, and coconut milk. The yarbs provide a rich source of fiber and vitamins that cleansed the colon. Afro Brazilian women cooks also used an abundance of vitamin C rich pepper, vitamin A rich coconut milk, and vitamin E rich palm oil which they used in making soups. Hence the palm oil, coconut milk, and pepper provided liberal amounts of vitamin C, A, and E. Carurú is an example of a Bahian gumbo dish containing many of these African introduced ingredients listed above: “‘Carurú’ is a dish eaten by the blacks, but is much esteemed by the whites, and is, to my taste, very delicious," writes traveler to Brazil James Wetherell in 1860. Here is a traditional Carurú recipe that can be adapted to make a vegetarian version.


Traditional Carurú Recipe: http://flavorsofbrazil.blogspot.com/2009/10/recipe-caruru.html


My gardening series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=gardening+series


Radio Interview on Hispanic Foodways, Listen: http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_101008k.cfm

Gardening Alabama Style to Fend off the Recession

recipe for grilled peaches below 

A handful of southerners went through the Depression without the need for government relief. One was civil rights leader Ralph David Abernathy, who recalled his childhood as the son of an independent black farmer in Marengo County, Alabama, about ninety miles southwest of Montgomery. At this time of the year as a child he and his family would be busy in the family subsistence garden planting “corn, beets, tomatoes, black-eyed peas, beans, Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, okra, collard greens, turnips, mustard greens,” and the family orchard “peaches, plums, pears, figs, and apples.” Consequently, Ralph Abernathy recalls, “Everything I learned about the Great Depression was from a college textbook.” Peaches are in season. Some folks grow them in their yard and you can also get them on the cheap now at many local farmers markets. I came across a website that provides “three ways to enjoy ripe local peaches on the BBQ.” Now that’s really thinking outside the box and a great example of soul food: inexpensive great tasting food made easily with what you have on hand in abundance.


Grilled peach recipes: http://hubpages.com/hub/Grilled_peaches_Three_ways_to_enjoy_ripe_local_peaches_on_the_BBQ

My gardening series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=gardening+series

Back to School Series: HBCU Food and Jim Crow

Southern chicken and rice soup, recipe below

In the midst of a series on school food based on oral histories I did for research on my book Hog and Hominy. Several theories explain why African American students have historically complained about the food at Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Most college students white or black complain now and then about college cafeteria food. The chief complaint of HBCU students was the bland taste of the food and repetitive menu. Southern students were raised on elaborately seasoned traditional down home food, food that far different than the cuisine that black students with parents native to the north or acculturated to the north grew up on. A lot of the complaints of southern students at HBCUs were related to school funding. Students wanted more variety in cafeteria menus but college budgets were quite restricting. As Lamenta Watkins Crouch a 1970 Virginia State alum recalled, “If there was chicken and vegetables served one day, we knew there was going to be chicken vegetable soup the next day.” Most scholars accept the argument that HBCU’s like other colleges and universities, before the end of Jim Crow customs and traditions, depended on government funding but do to racist state legislators they received far less than white institutions in their same state. As a result HBCU administrators had to use leftovers in soups and stews to reduce their expenditures. Here are some recipes that go well with this post: 

Southern chicken and rice soup recipe: http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Southern-Chicken-Rice-Soup

Vegetarian chicken and rice soup recipe: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=576785

My back to school series: http://frederickdouglassopie.blogspot.com/search?q=back+to+school+series

Earth Eats Radio podcast and blog series on back to school:

• http://indianapublicmedia.org/eartheats/school-part-1-start-day/
• http://indianapublicmedia.org/eartheats/school-part-2-good-food-campus/