Michael W. Twitty's Blog, page 5

In Food and Wine!

http://www.foodandwine.com/travel/michael-twitty-southern-food-cooking-gene

I’ve made the e-pages of Food and Wine! Please enjoy this piece by Andy Meek on #TheCookingGene and my vision for the future of Southern food by looking deeply at its past. I really appreciate everyone’s support. Please keep buying and talking and giving positive reviews!

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The Text of the Jacques Pepin Lecture at Boston University

Pepin Lecture

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The Cooking Gene is about my search for my food roots and family routes during the first 250 odd years of American history.   My book traces the history of African American foodways in its main crucible, slavery in the colonial and antebellum South, with deep roots in the civilizations of West and Central Africa.  From enslavement to emancipation, I put the microscope on myself to discern my own place in our shared history.  Who am I as an African American, a Jew, a gay man, the descendant of four centuries of Black Americans, and an avid, obsessive devotee of living history, the gastronomic craft and the history of Black cuisines, namely but not exclusively that developed by enslaved Blacks in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries—not just for themselves but for their slaveholders, who inevitably were also my Ancestors along with a trickle of others, including Southeastern indigenous nations.  Who owns Southern food and who created Southern food is a question that has mostly been in the mouths of those whose perspective has been one of privilege by position, authority by default and a history written by the victors in the centering of white supremacy. 

This is personal, I didn’t know who I was, where I came from, what our names were, why were here at all.  I have used food my whole life as the pathway into our collective and my distinct familial past.  We are here for a reason —-to make our way back and forge a path forward.  Sankofa—the ancient Akan philosophical idea from what is now Ghana—the guiding principle of my work, that going forward is blessed by looking backward and now is the only time to do it. 

I could be a white man telling this story.  I might be considered unbiased or heroic, even restorative by default, because I dared wade into the waters of Black guilt and white shame.  I am not a white man, and I realize that every time the word slavery enters my mouth I run the risk of being accused of being an instigator in the culture wars.  I realize that when others have cataloged and detailed slavery from the perspective of white slaveholder descendants their work is seen as careful detailing of human legacies, while I run the risk of denoting the trivial and unnecessary, especially in what amounts to fields notes of a journey to discover the story of our cuisine.  Recipes are valued over people, human lives are secondary to technique, flavor profiles, ingredients and innovations worthy of trend.  I comprehend that when I tell this story, I run the risk in this current America of being called a race bator, a social justice warrior gone awry, or at worst, in my opinion at least, the bearer of superfluous details in a narrative that would be better centered on white import than Black lives, stories, histories, cultures, identities or meaning.  Africa on the backburner, white saviors and soul food secrets to be appropriated or critiqued on the front, with our collective Black humanity up for appeal.

But neither am I free from critique from the Black mind and gaze.  Am I an Uncle Tom, or worse and Uncle Ruckus, hellbent on giving white people a fantasy of a time when they had total control? Do my interpretive clothes humiliate not just me but an entire group of people for whom racial uplift is goal number one? Does the food I cook engender our captivity, lack of self love, spurn for health and common sense and modernity? Or does it just sit there glaring at us, bubbling over with stereotypes? Am I emphasizing slavery over kingdoms, civilizations and an Afrofuturistic promised land where we can forget all of that and just move on?

Tonight, I have not come to batter you with a narrative of why I believe the story I tell in this book is important, I don’t need anyone’s validation to tell me my Ancestor’s lives matter or that their names matter or that my search to find them matters. This is not debateable. What is also not debatable is the fact we cannot sustain another 150 years of cold civil war.  It is not our destiny be beholden to arguments over flags and statues or live in a country where the context of those symbols is lived out in a constant cycle of law enforcement overreach, voter suppression and general distrust of our neighbors based on their phenotype or assumed identities.  My work is focused on bringing all of us to the table in a constructive and yet confrontational way.  To be the first Black cook in the colonial and antebellum Southern culinary tradition in the 21st century is itself a construction bearing the pressure of confrontation.  We will never be free of our inherited myths until we understand our unspoken truths, my purpose for cooking is to foment that understanding.

Food is not just something we consume. In the traditions of many pre-literate peoples the staples of our cuisines are family.  Food is inseparable from our lineages.  To my Igbo ancestors, the yam, a food central to the diet and spirituality is the product of splicing the first lineage and planting them in the ground.  The yam is not just food, it is family.  Sugarcane, the crop that ignited New World slavery is not just food, its seen as an ancestor.  Corn, our alma mater upon arrival in the early Southeast was the mother of the local First Nations. Taro, born in Southeast Asia and migrating to Africa and Polynesia about the same time, what we called elephant ear in South Carolina, was someone’s brother. 

Food and consumption is also a vehicle for the flow of history.  A thirsty man or woman in New Guinea discovered a grass full of sucrose heavy juice; if they hadn’t I wouldn’t be giving this lecture and you who are Black might not be here as well.  Our Ancestors were “seasoned,” in The West Indies, readied to produce wheat, corn, rice, sugar, cocoa, coffee, arrowroot, peanuts, and any number of other edible plantation crops from orchard fruit to cowpeas.  But most of all, we, the possessors of Black bodies were to quote one scholar, “delectable,” spoken about in terms with which one discourses on meat cuts throughout the literature of slavery, we walked onto slave ships terrified white cannibals would eat us, and we were partly right, the consumption of enslaved Africans was the largest forced migration in world history but beyond that in the United States we became the most valuable single commodity, more valuable than any tobacco, cotton or indigo, even as enslaved grown tobacco paid our debts to the French, enslaved grown wheat fed a starving revolutionary Europe and enslaved grown cotton alone constituted 2/3 of America’s 19th century economy.  Black history is a veritable dialectic of consumption and consumables in which the exploitation of our existence depends on the hunger people have for our culture, our labor, our bodies, our lives. 

Food is power and food has meaning.  The kulitch of a Cossack and the challah of resident of the Jewish shtetl may be very similar but the Cossack is conducting the pogrom and his bread is for the resurrection of a man Judaism was certainly man but not G-d.  Form and taste are not priorities over season and purpose. Just because oppressed and oppressor share similar foods does not mean we can create false equivalencies.  This red line is drawn through the entirety of the culinary experience—access to food, preparation of food, consumption of food, the economy      being full participants in the culinary marketplace.  In other words, can that enslaved person raise an animal, grow a garden, catch a fish, hunt an animal, Whether the food itself is inherently “Black,?” is not the issue, but rather how as the Black approach to food been defined by strictures, migration, changes in ecosystems and power systems.

So let’s talk about food. I wanted to write a work that would explain how the larger vernacular Soul Food came to be.  It depends on all of these parts and an acknowledgement that our culture was defined by its agency, its resistance to oppression, and its mnemonic ability to preserve the memory of African cultures and cuisines and their associated knowledge and lore.  Even though I have acknowledged that soul food is not slave food—I use Soul food to define the wider vernacular cuisine as well as the memory cuisine of the great  and great great grandchildren of the enslaved.  Our terminology is clear—we are speaking in terms of people who were enslaved not slaves—one is a condition and the other is an identity.

Imagine for a moment one recipe, just one.  Okra soup.  If you are in Senegambia you call it soupakanja, kanja is from Wolof and Fulani,  West Atlantic and kanjo in Mande for okra.  Okra as we know it is a merger of terms nkruma—in Twi, okwuru and okro in Igbo.  It is fevi in Fon, the language of the kingdom of Dahomey an empire that held sway over a port that exported no less than 1 million Africans to the New World, not the least of which was Haiti and Martinique and New Orleans .  There were African chefs in the French locales learning and mixing African and French culinary styles during the first 150 years of European engagement with the transatlantic slave trade.  It was no different that the interaction with the Portuguese.  The palate they were working with involved the foods and ingredients of five continents.  No place in the world had greater diversity of pantry than tropical West Africa where Africa, Asia and the Middle East, Europe, and North and South America came together.  By the time you hit Central Africa it is kingumbo, all of these names make it to the New World. 

But it was my grandmothers—sitting together, evicted by war, exiled by racism—making their mutual pots of okra soup that created Southern food.  There were European pots, Native American ingredients, but they had African hands and minds.  This culinary creole—the foodways of African America was about negotiation.  Receipt/or cook books give us a vote but not a veto—because their writers were not enslaved women.  We look at garden records, receipts for purchases, archaeological remains, oral histories, and examine the stories passed down to us for evidence, and more than anything else—we cook and test and test and cook until we can say with some degree of accuracy that region by region, soul by soul, name by name, this is how it was done and we know why.  Here are the practical reasons but here is what it did for the community. 

And yet the most important thing we have is our ability to draw from this history not so much technique and style and taste and all of the cosmetic elements of the gastronomic experience but the bottom line here is justice.  Justice to them, justice for ourselves and our neighbors and justice to future generations.  In a time when our multicultural discourse is more war than discourse we owe it to ourselves to pursue a cuisine, a gastronomic exploration based on justice, on fairness to the people of the past, respect for those here now, and concern and empathy for those to come.  We have to summon our best selves in this work, acknowledge our failings.  There is nothing that the American table cannot express, cannot articulate or clarify and it is our journey through this history, to understand, comprehend and make reconciliation that will be our cause for generations to come.

I want us to feel good about the country we can become if our demons are faced, I want us to rejoice not so much in America the legendary but in America, the purposeful and directed attempt to repair the world. I want a South that hungers not for statues but for souls at peace. Or country will and dies depend on us for a lasting justice. We are at this hour depending on ourselves and our knowledge of the past for a new glimpses of what we can be as a family of humans bound by a history with tangled roots leading to luxurious possibilities.

Thank you.

Whose Cuisine Is It Anyway? White or Black or Native? The Cooking Gene responds…

https://www.cooknscribble.com/posts/2017/10/13/the-cooking-gene-whose-cuisine-is-it-anyway

One of my favorite reviews because it comes from the heart. It is written by a white Southern writer, Patricia Haynes,  who knows her hometown of Richmond, Virginia and put her sense of place and heritage into this review. I love that she compared my grandmother’s fried apples to her own…she likes country sausage drippings for her own dish! There is so much to unpack in this review.

My favorite part: 

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Hey if you want to see what the good hype is about see here: 

Thank you everyone for your support!

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COLUMN: ‘The Cooking Gene’ enlightens on soul food, southern history, African American culture | Indiana Daily Student

http://www.idsnews.com/article/2017/10/column-the-cooking-gene-enlightens-on-soul-food-southern-history-african-american-culture

This was an awesome review that I’m happy to share with you. The quote below says a lot. 

[image error]The knowledge of our Ancestors and our stories is critical to the true history of our food. Writing about one’s genealogy is not easy but she got exactly why I did it. That meant a lot, it was a sign of a true critical reader who stuck with a dense text. 

Thank you for all the shares and retweets family! Enjoy The Cooking Gene. 

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Welcome to #TheCookingGene Journey: A Photo Essay with a Recipe

I started writing this book on paper plates and paper bags. 

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I walked around with an entire book in my head from my years.  Paula Deen happened, my response went viral, agents started calling and asking if I had a book in mind. Two years of journeying around the South, supported by Y’ALL

Kosher/Soul Collards

[image error]The Green Glaze, the most beautiful of American old variety collard greens. 

(partly based on Matt’s Four Pepper Collards, from The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen) 2013.

1 cup of red onion cut into thin slices

 page 24)

1 tsp of crushed ginger

1 teaspoon of kitchen pepper (see The Cooking Gene2 tablespoons of lime juice

1 teaspoon of smoked paprika

4 pounds of collards, stemmed, trimmed and cut into long thin strips.

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Raise the heat to medium high. Add the thin strips of collard green handful by handful, stirring and adjusting as necessary.  With each batch of 3 handfuls quick cook for about 5 minutes.  When all the collards have been incorporated, add the vegetable stock, allow the collards to come to a boil, but then lower the heat so that the pot settles into a slow bubble and add lime juice, coconut sugar and smoked paprika. 

 Cover and cook on a low simmer for 45 minutes.  Remove with a slotted spoon and serve over cooked rice or grits. 

Nigella!

Nothing much to see here except, NIGELLA LOVES MY BOOK!

FOODIE FANBOY EXPLOSION!

Southern Guide to Tashlich

Tashlich is an ancient symbolic ritual among Jews where we scatter crumbs from our pockets into a body of water with fish. As our friends below nibble it’s symbolizes parting ways with our sins. We say a few psalms, make personal commitments to change for the better and then shift to atonement in preparation for Yom Kippur.

If you are anywhere below the Mason-Dixon line, I invite you to a special Southern tashlich service. Bring your appropriate baked good tomorrow afternoon:

If you gossip too much: deep dish peach cobbler

If you are too affectionate and cause your partner to be late: spoonbread

If you are way too Lowcountry for your own good: rice waffles

If “it’s always complicated” and you have layers of issues: Smith Island cake

If you’re Always getting in trouble: Hot water cornbread

If you are too New Orleans for your own good: beignets

For bland sins: water challah

For really tasty sins: extra egg challah

For hardheadedness: beaten biscuits

For sins of cultural appropriation and overall racist b.s.: Aunt Jemima pancakes 

For sins that even G-d doesn’t understand: gluten free buttermilk biscuits 

For the sin of looking at somebody else’s form: Apple dumplings

For the sins of addiction: Krispy Kreme fresh off the conveyor belt

For the sins of going to funerals just for the food: caramel cake

For the sin of driving people crazy: pecan pie

For the sin of having bad taste in recipes: Frito pie

For the sin in having bad taste in presidents: Cheetoh pie 

For the regret over a Stein vote: Grasshopper pie

For the sin of always judging the hats ladies wear to services: lemon meringue pie

For the sin of being too Conch: key lime pie

For the sin of being too damn good: peanut pie

For the sin of being too eastern Kentucky for your own good: stack cake

For the sin of killing people with kindness: sweet potato pie

For the sin of writing this and laughing at my own jokes: cornbread

Happy Rosh Hashanah!

‘Cooking Gene’ Follows History of Food, Family | Atlanta Jewish Times

http://atlantajewishtimes.timesofisrael.com/cooking-gene-follows-history-of-food-family/

Some people just get it. 

I don’t know what to say other than you’re welcome.

COTTON IS NOT INHERENTLY RACIST.

I’m not even linking to the story because it’s that stupid. I can’t be bothered.

Hobby Lobby, which I would never patronize because of their stance on birth control, etc. sells decorative cotton. Once upon a time, so did I. Big deal. It’s not racist to sell cotton. Don’t make me clap it out. And the Nashville situation, nope, miss me with the outrage.

It’s a plant with a tortured history but it’s still beautiful dried and has been used for generations to decorate in the South during and after the autumn harvest.

When I grew and sold cotton it was exclusively bought by African Americans. I never once heard anyone chastise me for selling a racist product. Why? Because it’s one person’s uninformed opinion is getting racial flashpoint attention while the orchestrated plan to take away our voting rights, health care, civil liberties and freedom of speech are on the verge of success, but some y’all wanna gripe about decorative cotton.

We were growing and picking and spinning and weaving cotton long before our Ancestors ever heard of a white man. It’s a plant with African, American and Asian origins. I write about picking it in my book, The Cooking Gene, where I talk about our unique relationship to this plant and what it meant to our people’s history and cultural experience. Many people have no relationship to the material culture of our collective past. This harms us far more than some dead cellulose on a branch.

Symbolics over substance. Done. It’s over. Systemic racism is a lot harder to deal with but symbolic racism feels good when we beat it back. But the heads grow back like a hydra. It’s useless. And some of it isn’t racism, just perception. 

Statues falling while systems remain is not enough.

Racism is an evolving, invisible pathology, an immortal disease, symbolics come and go.

Sessions, Kobuch, Miller, Bannon and the like are far more dangerous than a dead branch with lint on it. 

That sugar on every table in virtually every restaurant in America has killed more Black people than cotton. From being the crop that sparked the slave trade to killing many of its workers within 7 years to diabetes today, sugar is racist AF compared to cotton. Sugar represents five centuries of inequality, but sugar and grits, right?

I don’t ever want to have to write anything that remotely sounds like I support Hobby Lobby in any matter ever again. And by the way, until you’ve done this for 16 hours…

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Keep your opinions to yourself.

By the way there are Black companies trying to keep Black farmers on ancestral land like http://www.blackcotton.us/ so check them out. Buy some cotton decorations from them.