Powered by the mythology that has grown up around Southern food over the last several years, many voices claim ownership, hurling harsh accusations of cultural appropriation, and silencing and shaming contrary opinions. The argument is not easy to prove, as it remains hampered by a lack of statistics, contemporary documentation, and clear evidence of outright…
Category: African Cooking
African Cuisines: Cookbooks for Exploration and Discovery of Superb Flavors
Only one of this year’s new releases in print cookbooks covers the cooking of Africa, unless you count books about Moroccan cooking by Fatéma Hal and Z. Guinaudeau, as well as Kittee Berns’s Teff Love: Adventures in Vegan Ethiopian Cooking. The rest only come in Kindle editions, a medium which is not my first choice…
What is “American” Food?
Jean Hewitt, author of The New York Times Heritage Cookbook (1980), stated that “It is unfortunate that a foreign visitor can travel on our superhighways from coast to coast [about 1544 miles], Maine to Florida, and go away with the impression that Americans subsist largely on a diet of hot dogs, hamburgers and soggy French fries.” (p….
Peanuts and the Cooking of West Africa
Writers throw out the words “African cooking” all the time. I know. I have written same words, to my great embarrassment. But stop and think about something for a moment. The term “African cooking” is just as ridiculous as calling the cooking of Europe “European cooking,” lumping together the cuisine of France with that of…
Cassava, One Rugged World-Traveling Ingredient
Cassava, for me, remains the Sleeping Beauty of Latin American kitchens. I remember clearly the first time I ever ate cassava. I was sitting on a porch in a Paraguayan boarding house, torrential rain streaming hard off the thatched roof. I really didn’t know what I was doing there, on so many levels. Behind that wall of water, the cook – a…
Grits on the Menu: A Short Treatise on a Global Favorite
Big Hominy Grits (Photo credit: James Bridle) These days, when you drive through the endless piney woods of low-country Georgia and South Carolina, you will see fields of corn, and not so much cotton. And, if you’re lucky when you stop for breakfast, there will be grits on the menu. Not just any old grits,…
The Dangers of Nostalgia at the Stove: A Critique of Modern Food Writing
Is nostalgia dangerous? More to the point, is nostalgia a dangerous weapon when held in the hands of some food writers? I’ll confess to a salient fact: I’ve written about food through a thick lens of nostalgia, licking the pot of myth and stirring with the spoon of longing . I’ve cooked the iconic dishes of…
Thinking About Rice in America: The Black Rice Theory – Mysteries, Myths, and Misconceptions
Note: My point here, and elsewhere, on my blog and in my work, is to present information in as truthful a manner as I can, in order to raise questions and, hence, awareness. The truth is that there are more than ways than one to look at issues. Blindly accepting points of view only serves…
A Mess of Pottage and a Bite of Bitter Greens: A Brief Look at the Invisible Ethnicity of the English
And Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage. Genesis 25: 34 Pottage. Or if you prefer: Porridge. Potage. Stew. Gruel. Samp. Meat, vegetables, grain = basic ingredients of pottage. Whatever word you prefer, pottage signifies a dish of those foods in varying quantities. Sometimes this hodgepodge of ingredients is called a mess of lentils,…
