SIDES AND VEGETABLES

A Little Bit of This, a Little Bit of That

In 2004, a packet of National Park Service newsletters arrived in the mail for me from my uncle Thomas. The publications detailed the preservation activities of the descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas, one of the nation’s last black towns. Established in 1877 by emancipated families as part of the “colored exodus” from Kentucky and Tennessee, Nicodemus reminded Thomas of the rural life his mother, my paternal grandmother, carved out on the eastern edge of Los Angeles.

My grandmother’s husband descended from the “Exodusters” who were lured to Nicodemus by visions of a spacious frontier with rich land, game, and timber, a place to escape Southern oppression, a “Promised Land.” They found desolation at first—about three hundred settlers living primitively, in dugouts “like prairie dogs among the grasses of the plains.” In this barren, treeless dust bowl, the strong-willed settlers who stayed built homes, schools, churches, stores, postal services, hotels, and an ice cream parlor. They planted crops such as corn, millet, and sorghum; raised cattle and hogs; and established social services including a newspaper, a baseball team, and even literary and benefit societies. They named their new home after a New Testament character who personified freedom, tradition, and the chance to be “born again.” (Some have argued that the town could have been named in response to “Wake Nicodemus!,” a popular composition by abolitionist Henry Clay Work about a slave longing for freedom who wants to be reborn for the “great Jubilee.”)

How hard was it for a few families to transform the rugged frontier into a prosperous town? Very. And only with great determination did a handful of residents survive the town’s decline after it failed to attract a railroad line, and after the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl years. By the mid-1950s, Nicodemus’s population was down to just sixteen. Hoping to revive its wheat-producing heritage, five black farmers founded the Nicodemus Flour Co-Op in 2001, milling a whole white wheat product, Promised Land Flour. The same year, Angela Bates-Tompkins published Ernestine’s Bar-b-que Cook Book and Autobiography, an homage to her aunt and local restaurant owner, Ernestine Williams. Agriculture and cooking are traditions that help keep hope alive in Nicodemus.

Dad’s mother, “Mommie” as we called her, was also born in a black town, Boley, Oklahoma, initially occupied by freedmen. Uncle Thomas calculated that the memories and lessons my grandmother taught us while raising animals and growing produce among the thorns, cactus, and coyotes of Southern California; the preservation efforts in Nicodemus; and the family connection to this historic place would motivate me to want to get involved. They did.

For years, I have imagined restoring an old historic house as a nurturing space where young women would exchange cultural ideas, learn to cook from one another, and break down the barriers that divide us. Until Ernestine’s cookbook and that package from Uncle Thomas arrived, it never occurred to me that my dream wasn’t just about preserving food history and reconciliation; it was part of a multicultural inheritance rooted in perseverance.

With memories of the African marketplace, where vendors trade spices, nuts, and homemade foods, Colonial market women tried to keep ancestral customs alive. In market towns and, later, in free black settlements like Nicodemus, away from oppression, black folks exchanged ideas and mixed a little bit of this and a little bit of that from other ethnicities. A nuanced cuisine grew beyond the slave village and the borders of the Old South based upon regional ingredients and a melting-pot philosophy.

As Juliet E. K. Walker explained in The History of Black Business in America, “Market towns throughout the colonies, even the northern colonies, provided places where slaves could sell their goods—provision ground commodities, poultry and farm animals, processed food, herb-based medicinal products and goods produced from both household handicraft activities and by skilled artisans.”

Alethia Tanner demonstrated enterprising gardening and entrepreneurial skills when she purchased freedom for herself and nearly two dozen family members by selling fresh produce at a city market near “President’s square” (now Lafayette Park) in Washington, DC; Thomas Jefferson was one of her customers. And at New York City’s Catherine Fish Market, black men with “loads of cracked eggs, roots, berries, herbs, fish, clams, and oysters to sell for pocket change” danced in exchange for fresh fish or eels.

By the turn of the twentieth century, “Negro business districts” were popping up around the country to serve the needs of neighboring residents. Harlem markets were “culinary melting pots” where vendors peddled the fruits and vegetables of the African diaspora along with homemade foods. This observation appeared in a 1928 New York Times article: “Harlem is the cosmopolis of colored culture, of gaiety, of art, and the capital of Negro cookery. Harlem’s visitors come from the Southern United States, the West Indies, from South America and even from Africa. In what it eats, Harlem shows itself less a locality than an international rallying point…a haven where food had the odd psychology, where viands solace the mind as well as the body.”

The portraits of life out West, such as in Central California’s San Joaquin Valley, paint an even broader picture, not just of cultures coming together, but of new lives and communities being made through hard work and land ownership. In the place known today as “food basket for the world,” former servants proudly rebuilt their lives around agriculture. The land was cheap; ignorance, prejudice, poverty, and injustice were less severe. Some growers migrated from the South with a few seeds and “money enough to buy a pair of shoes,” and others were “native sons”; all were “pioneers in spirit and deeds, willing to toil and hustle” for their independence, Delilah Beasley wrote with conviction in The Negro Trail Blazers of California, a pioneering register of the black elite she compiled and published in 1915.

A colony of ranchers in Bowles, California, overcame labor restrictions and poverty by raising and marketing sugar beets, chickens, turkeys, ducks, and hogs; managing livery stables; planting barley; and raising racehorses and Belgian hares. They invested their earnings and developed irrigation systems; established churches, schools, and libraries; accumulated land; purchased beautiful modern homes and automobiles; and sent their kids to college.

Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Eason owned 18 acres, which they planted with peach orchards and vineyards for producing raisins; on 160 acres Mr. and Mrs. J. E. Abernathy planted peaches, grapes, and alfalfa, devoting 80 of those acres to pasture for a dairy farm; and Mr. and Mrs. Lee Crane operated a truck garden. Farther south, Little Liberia, a short-lived settlement located in Baja California, encouraged the “economic uplift, racial self-sufficiency and land accruement” promoted by Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey through citrus orchards, fruit groves, and livestock.

Such agricultural prosperity “spurred a variety of different recipes, visible in cookbooks, and gave more complex flavors to regional dishes,” Anne Yentsch explained in African American Foodways: Explorations of History & Culture. “No matter where one went, landowners had an abundance of bacon, fat, lard, butter, eggs, and cream.” Access to convenience foods, kitchen tools and appliances, and local produce, which varied by region, spurred a cook’s inventiveness: apples and wheat flour in the upland South; red and yellow plums, figs, dates, sweet oranges, sour oranges, grapes, pecans, and wild bananas near New Orleans; and along the Gulf Coast and in the Deep South, cabbage, rutabaga, turnips, onions, shallots, garlic, endive, mustard, radish, cauliflower, beets, cress, lettuce, parsley, leeks, English peas, and celery filled winter gardens.

Back in Nicodemus, agricultural adaptation and resilience mitigated the heartbreak of the 1930s and temporarily restored souls. Farmers replaced corn with more drought-resistant crops, such as wheat, sorghum, barley, and rye; seeds brought from Kentucky bloomed in gardens—lady peas, spring peas, black-eyed peas, crowder peas; foraging uncovered edible wild berries, currants, plums, wild lettuce (poke sallet), tomatoes, dandelions and other greens; the County Extension Service planted apple, peach, and pear trees; and teens participated in 4-H clubs. Ora Wellington Switzer, my step-great aunt, remembered foraging for wild foods: “We would have to go to the creek to find poke salad…. We use to have chokecherries down here on the river. We’d have to hunt for them.”

The smell of chicken frying wafted through the open windows of Julia’s Cafe, drawing hungry Nicodemus farmers and a few families across a dusty road, intoxicating nine-year-old Ernestine Williams during the 1940s. “Chub,” as Ernestine was lovingly known, nurtured her passion for the art of cooking while working at the home-style restaurant. She polished by hand the silver that was brought from Kentucky; pressed and folded the pristine damask tablecloths; and set the tables where home-cured ham, hot fried chicken, homemade bread, boiled potatoes, pickled beets, mashed potatoes and gravy, collard greens, potato salad, black-eyed peas, and green beans filled polished white enameled tin plates. One dish, Ernestine’s “Famous Bar-B-Q Baked Beans,” is still served today, prepared by Angela for kin of Nicodemus’s pioneer families attending homecoming on the last weekend in July.

Participation at the annual event, like the town’s population, has dwindled over the years, but Uncle Thomas and Angela are optimistic. More than three hundred descendants observed Nicodemus’s 140th anniversary in 2017. Buffalo Soldiers paraded. Travelers passed through. And a new generation found hope for a brighter future in the American West, and Ernestine’s good cooking.

Field Peas and Beans

“Most ethnic groups had a variation of beans stewed or baked with meat; the dish is directly descended from the bean and pea potages of England and Europe, in which soaked beans were cooked slowly at a low temperature, usually with a piece of salt meat.” The combination was generally associated with poverty, and the early bean dishes were savory and did not become sweet until the nineteenth century, when molasses entered the American diet, Sandra Oliver explained in Food in Colonial and Federal America.

Blending beans and peas with meat has a multiethnic lineage, as well. Several New World iterations of the West African mix of smoked fish or meat with vegetables (beans or peas), spices, and rice became a signature dish in the Caribbean diaspora: Barbados’s peas and rice and Jamaica’s rice and peas, Puerto Rico’s arroz con gandules and Cuba’s moros y cristianos, and congris, made with red beans and served in both Cuba and New Orleans, are just a few. The combination not only tastes good, it is good for you, too. When eaten with rice, beans form a complete protein, good for the body and the budget.

BAKED (BARBECUED) BEANS

SERVES 6 TO 8

Baked beans, a dish of navy beans stewed until richly glazed in a tomato sauce sweetened with molasses (and commonly salt pork or bacon), is generally associated with New England, as in Boston baked beans. It’s been said the dish comes from Native Americans, but scholars have argued that “New England sea captains brought the idea home with them from Africa,” where baked beans, called “skanah,” had long been a Sabbath tradition among North African and Spanish Jews, according to John F. Mariani’s Encyclopedia of American Food & Drink.

The dish has certainly found a home throughout the United States, using various bean types. Along the way, African American cooks made it their own—dried beans, soaked overnight and cooked, or canned, made savory with salt pork or bacon, sweetened with molasses and brown sugar, and spiced with prepared or dry mustard, ground spices—baked long and slow, up to four hours. Ernestine Williams’s “Famous Bar-B-Q Baked Beans,” published in the cookbook of recipes from her restaurant in Nicodemus, Kansas, is a just-right combination of canned pork ’n’ beans, brown and/or white sugar, ground cinnamon, flour, and…Ernestine’s Bar-B-Q Sauce.

I didn’t have any of Ernestine’s secret sauce, so instead I scaled back the sauce from Chicken Thighs and BBQ Beans from chef Todd Richards’s Soul: A Chef’s Culinary Evolution in 150 Recipes, replacing his browned chicken thighs with the customary pork. To turn the dish into a meal unto itself, as Richards does, caramelize the thighs in the same pan you’re going to cook the beans in for a full-flavored dish.

6 slices bacon

1 cup minced onion

½ cup minced green bell pepper

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 cup packed dark brown sugar

½ cup molasses

½ cup ketchup or tomato sauce

2 tablespoons yellow mustard

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

1 tablespoon liquid hickory smoke (optional)

½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

¼ teaspoon black pepper

2 teaspoons salt, or to taste

1 pound cooked navy beans, plus 3 cups cooking liquid, or 3 (15.5-ounce) cans, undrained

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.

2. Cut 3 slices of the bacon into 1-inch strips. In a skillet, cook the cut bacon until browned and crisp. Use a slotted spoon to remove to paper towels to drain.

3. In the same pan, sauté the onion, bell pepper, and garlic over medium heat until tender and the onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Stir in the brown sugar, molasses, ketchup, mustard, vinegar, liquid smoke (if using), pepper flakes, black pepper, and salt. Mix well. Cook over medium-low heat until the sugar is dissolved, about 1½ minutes.

4. In a large bowl, combine the beans, their liquid, the sauce, and the cooked bacon. Pour into a 13 × 9-inch baking dish or a 3-quart casserole. Place the remaining 3 slices of bacon on top of the beans. Cover and bake for 45 minutes. Uncover, increase the oven temperature to 425°F, and bake for 15 minutes more to brown the bacon slices.

BLACK-EYED PEAS AND RICE

SERVES 8

Watch Night Service is a gathering of the faithful to bring the New Year in with spirituals, prayers, and testimony. The celebration began on “Freedom’s Eve,” December 31, 1862, when the enslaved gathered in churches to await the news that the Emancipation Proclamation had set them free. With the news came shouts of jubilation and gratitude; today the service includes reflection, praise, and worship to God for His provision and protection.

Folklore in the Penn School & Sea Islands Heritage Cookbook described the Carolina Lowcountry tradition this way: “Early on New Year’s Eve, the pots begin to cook, as the meal for New Year’s day must be done by Midnight. The menu for New Year’s day is a simple one: Hoppin’ John, collard greens with hog jowls, and ribs for a side dish. Hoppin’ John, or brown field peas cooked with rice, is eaten for good luck throughout the year. The collard greens represent dollar bills. It is said the more one eats, the more luck and money one will have.”

This adaptation of Hoppin’ John appeared in Aunt Julia’s Cook Book, a collection of Atlantic Coast recipes published in the 1930s by the Standard Oil Company.

¾ pound salt pork or bacon, cut into ¼-inch dice

1 cup chopped onion

2 large garlic cloves, minced

8 cups Chicken Stock (this page)

1 pound dried black-eyed peas, picked over for stones, rinsed, soaked in water overnight, and drained

½ cup diced (¼ inch) ham

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 cup long-grain rice

1. In a large saucepan, sauté the salt pork over medium-high heat until crisp and the fat is rendered. Add the onion and garlic and cook until just translucent, about 3 minutes. Stir in the chicken stock, soaked peas, ham, salt, black pepper, and pepper flakes. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover, and simmer over medium-low heat until tender, about 1 hour.

2. Taste and season with more salt as desired. Stir in the rice. Cover and return the pot to a simmer over high heat. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer, cover, and cook until the rice is tender, about 20 minutes longer. Remove from the heat and let stand, covered, 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork before serving.

PLANTATION BEAN POT

Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook: A Treasury of Gourmet Recipes from Victorian America, Helen Holdredge, 1970

Use 2 quarts of fresh, black-eyed peas. Soak them overnight in salted water to overcome any dryness. In the morning place the peas in a large roaster, preferably iron. Add ¾ of a pound of salt pork, cut into several pieces. Cover the peas with a liquid mixture which is ½ water and ½ claret. Tie into a (cheesecloth) sack containing leaves of marjoram, thyme, laurel, and flowers of papayas, 3 cloves and 4 black peppers. Start in a hot oven until heated, then cook over slow heat. The liquid will boil away. As it does, add dry white wine. Before removing from the heat add 1 water glass of strong coffee. Remove from heat and add 2 tablespoonsful of brown sugar and ¼ cup of brandy. The dish will take about 6 hours to cook.

LOUISIANA RED BEANS AND RICE

SERVES 8

In a story that inspired the title of her book, A Date with a Dish, Freda DeKnight recalled that Louis Armstrong, the “modern Gabriel,” loved spicy foods and was known for a signature salutation: “Red beans and ricely yours.” She captured his sentiments in a short story, “The Man, the Horn and Red Beans”: “My favorite of all dishes (when I’m not on my diet and watching my calories) is just plain ham hocks and red beans,” Armstrong said. “Old man, season them well! Add the right spices at the right time, and man, you have a ‘Date with a Dish’ that’s just about the greatest.”

There was a time when a leftover ham bone from Sunday dinner made Monday red beans and rice day, but Louis Armstrong was a man on the move who cooked and ate in different cities all the time. Ham hocks helped him keep the tradition alive.

The size and type of chile pepper you use will determine how much spice is in the dish. If you like it hot, select a larger pepper, or choose Scotch bonnet, a high scorer on the Scoville scale, which measures a pepper’s burn.

2 tablespoons bacon drippings or vegetable or olive oil

1 small fresh red chile pepper, minced

1 cup diced onion

½ cup diced red bell pepper

½ cup diced celery

1½ tablespoons minced garlic (5 to 6 cloves)

1 pound dried small red or kidney beans, picked over for stones, rinsed, soaked in water overnight, and drained

1 bay leaf

1 pound smoked ham hocks or 1 baked ham bone

1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

½ teaspoon black pepper

½ cup minced parsley

½ cup minced green onions

Freshly cooked rice, for serving

1. In a skillet, heat the bacon fat over medium-high heat. Add the chile pepper, onion, bell pepper, celery, and garlic and sauté, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 6 minutes.

2. In a medium pot, combine 8 cups water, the sautéed vegetables, drained beans, bay leaf, and ham hocks. Stir to mix well. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 2 hours. Season with the salt and pepper and continue to cook until the beans are tender, about 1 hour longer. Remove and discard the bay leaf.

3. Remove the ham hocks or ham bone from the beans to a cutting board. When cool enough to handle, use a sharp knife to remove the meat from the bone and coarsely chop the meat (discard any skin, fat, and bones). Stir the meat, parsley, and green onions into the beans, taste and adjust seasonings with salt and pepper. Serve the beans and ham over hot cooked rice.

VARIATION

To make soulful red beans and rice as chef Austin Leslie does in the Chez Helene: House of Good Food Cookbook, substitute picked pork rib tips for the ham hocks, and stir in ½ cup butter before serving.

Rice and Pilau

Rice pilau is a signature dish of the Carolina Lowcountry, influenced by Arab rice pilaf, accented with fresh herbs, spices, citrus juice, nuts, parsley, yogurt, or fruit. Often spelled purlow, perlu, or perloo, the dish was one of several rice plantation creations bondservants devised to deal with a standard ration of cracked rice, which they boiled with salt pork, fish, or game and vegetables, according to historian Charles Joyner.

White women writing cookbooks in the early twentieth century praised the region’s black men and women for their knowledge and skill with pilau and other rice dishes. Blacks were so deeply entrenched in the rice culture of the Lowcountry that historical organizations in 1930s Charleston hired locals to demonstrate traditional African American folkways, including methods of flailing and husking rice, and a businessman marketed sweetgrass baskets as “handmade artifacts of slavery,” Marcie Cohen Ferris explained in The Edible South: The Power of Food and the Making of an American Region.

As part of the West African technique of rice harvest and preparation, rice grains were pounded with a wooden mortar and pestle and tossed into the air or dropped from one wide coiled sweetgrass “fanner” basket to another to separate rice grains from their husks. “The resulting rice, scrubbed golden white through abrasion, contained whole and broken grains, with germ and flecks of bran intact. Its flavor and texture were exquisite,” said Glenn Roberts, who markets Carolina Gold Rice and other heirloom grains through Anson Mills. This tradition is preserved by generations of Gullah-Geechee artisans; they are a people who descend from enslaved Africans who were isolated on the Sea Islands of Georgia and the Carolinas, and who retained much of their native culture in a unique language and way of cooking.

RED RICE

SERVES 4

Over time, a dish of long-grain rice simmered in a tomato broth has been known as Savannah Red Rice, Gullah Rice, or Mulatto Rice—“supposedly because its color resembles the skin tone of persons of mixed African, white, and Native American blood,” John T. Edge explained in the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Foodways.

The Savannah Cookbook, a 1930s collection of Lowcountry recipes that includes ones from the region’s black cooks, characterized mulatto rice disparagingly as “the very chic name given to rice with a touch of the tarbrush.” By contrast, African Americans believed a well-made bowl of mulatto rice displayed dignity and a connection to the Motherland and the Welcome table.

Pheoby Watson beamed with pride when she presented a heaping bowl of mulatto rice as a homecoming meal for Janie upon her return to Eatonville in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. (Eatonville is the historic black town featured in this and Hurston’s other stories.) And Helen Mendes, in her 1971 collection of African and African-imbued soul foods, The African Heritage Cookbook, portrayed Gullah Rice as a modern version of an old African dish “consisting of rice, nuts, herbs, and oil.” Pistachio nuts add a buttery crunch in her version. As red rice migrated West, it also adopted a few Spanish influences, including green bell pepper and a hint of cumin.

This recipe is one I reworked by seasoning the rice with minced fresh garlic and a dash of sugar. As you make yours, though, feel free to adapt it in any of the ways cooks have adapted it over the centuries—with aromatic vegetables and fresh herbs such as red bell pepper, celery, basil, or thyme.

3 slices bacon, diced, or 3 tablespoons butter

½ cup finely diced onion

1 teaspoon minced garlic (1 clove)

1 cup long-grain rice

1 (6-ounce) can tomato paste

1 teaspoon sugar (optional)

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

1 bay leaf

2 cups Chicken Stock (this page) or water

1. If using bacon, sauté in a heavy saucepan over medium heat until crisp and the fat is rendered, 5 to 7 minutes. Remove the bacon to paper towels to drain. If using butter, simply heat in the pan over medium heat until melted.

2. Add the onion to the pan and sauté until translucent, about 2 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook 1 minute longer. Stir in the rice and cook until the rice is no longer translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste, sugar (if using), salt, pepper, bay leaf, and chicken stock. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer until the rice is tender, 20 to 25 minutes, stirring halfway through. Let stand at least 5 minutes when done. Remove and discard the bay leaf. Fluff with a fork before serving.

3. If you used bacon, sprinkle the rice with the bacon pieces. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.

VARIATION

SPANISH RICE
Stir in ⅓ cup minced green bell pepper with the onion and garlic, a pinch of cumin with the seasonings, and reduce the tomato paste to 3 tablespoons.

OKRA PILAU

SERVES 2 TO 4

Sally Washington was an old-fashioned “Negro” cook, whose cooking, according to the authors of Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking, “was of a kind to make one speculate as to whether she was a genius in her own right or whether Charleston was gifted by the gods.” Okra Pilau was one of her specialties. Washington’s was a four-ingredient dish of ingenuity—bacon, rice, okra, and water. To dazzle guests, cooks may also add tomatoes, onions, and garlic. Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor stirred in shrimp just to mix things up a bit.

You can call this nimble dish Limpin’ Susan, if you like; Verta says it’s a “relative” of Hoppin’ John. And just to show you how recipes change as they migrate, celebrity caterer, soul cook, and author Bob Jeffries used neither okra nor bacon, swapping in red beans and salt pork.

The touch of garlic turns up the flavor a bit. The addition of chicken stock is also mine. Double the recipe to feed a crowd.

3 thick-cut slices bacon, cut into ¼-inch dice

2 cups sliced (½-inch) fresh okra

½ cup chopped onion

1 teaspoon minced garlic (1 clove)

1 cup long-grain rice (preferably Carolina Gold)

2 cups Chicken Stock (this page)

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

1. In a skillet with a tight-fitting lid, cook the bacon over medium heat until crisp, 5 to 7 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to remove the bacon from the pan and drain on paper towels.

2. Add the okra to the pan and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the onion and garlic. Cook and stir over medium heat until softened, about 3 minutes. Stir in the rice and sauté until the onion is lightly browned, about 3 minutes more. Stir in the chicken stock, salt, and pepper and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring to loosen any browned bits in the bottom of the pan.

3. Reduce the heat to the lowest temperature possible, cover the pan, and cook until the rice is tender and cooked through, about 20 minutes. During the last 5 minutes of cooking time, use a fork to stir the bacon into the rice. Fluff lightly with a fork to serve.

BOILED RICE

New Orleans Cookbook, Lena Richard, 1939

1 cup rice

4 cups water

1 tablespoon salt

Wash rice and rub well between hands. Drop into salted boiling water and boil rapidly, uncovered, for fifteen to twenty minutes until kernels are cooked through. Put rice in a colander and pour boiling water over it to remove loose starch and separate grains. Drain well and place in a slow oven with the door open until grains are thoroughly separated and dry, or about twenty minutes.

JAMBALAYA

SERVES 12

“The name jambalaya is pure Louisiana Creole: jamb comes from the French word for ham, ala is French or Acadian and means ‘of’ or ‘with,’ and ya is an African word for rice. According to folklorist Rebecca Henry, it has also been called ‘long gravy’ because of its versatility in stretching any combination of ham, sausage, chicken, seafood, and vegetables into a rice-filling meal,” Heidi Haughy Cusick explained in Soul and Spice: African Cooking in the Americas.

Some chefs never put rice in their jambalaya sauce, they serve it over rice, while others make a quick sauce and add leftover rice for a casserole that can be heated in the oven.

When Creole chef and cookbook author Austin Leslie introduced New Orleans haute cuisine and his special fried chicken recipe to diners at the restaurant Chez Helene, he created a hybrid Creole-soul food restaurant that was world class. In his 1984 recipe collection, Chez Helene: House of Good Food Cookbook, his jambalaya featured subtle celery, shrimp stock, and a prodigious amount of sausage and ham. For my version, I double the characteristic Louisiana punch of green peppers and call for more chicken stock. I also use a parched-rice technique to keep the grains separate (which I learned from a Creole chef in Los Angeles) for a dish that is both hearty in satisfaction and light in texture.

2 cups long-grain rice

½ cup finely diced salt pork

1½ cups chopped onions

1 cup chopped green bell pepper

3 garlic cloves, minced

½ cup chopped green onions, white part only

1 pound smoked sausage (andouille), cut into ½-inch-thick coins

½ cup diced (½ inch) ham

2 cups diced tomatoes

4 cups Chicken Stock (this page)

1½ cups diced (½ inch) cooked chicken

1 tablespoon dried thyme

2 bay leaves

½ teaspoon paprika

¼ teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

½ pound small shrimp, peeled and deveined

Cayenne pepper

2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a 15 × 9-inch rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Pour the rice onto the baking sheet in a single layer. Parch in the oven, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Set aside.

3. In a large, heavy ovenproof pot or Dutch oven, sauté the salt pork over medium heat until the fat is rendered and the pork is lightly browned. Use a slotted spoon to remove the pork to paper towels to drain.

4. Add the onions and bell pepper to the fat in the pot and cook over medium-low heat until starting to soften, about 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic, green onions, sausage, and ham and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender and the meat is lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes and chicken stock and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes. Stir in the parched rice, chicken, thyme, bay leaves, paprika, pepper, and salt.

5. Transfer to the oven and bake, uncovered, for 20 minutes. Stir in the shrimp and bake until the rice is tender and the shrimp are pink. Remove and discard the bay leaves. Season to taste with salt and cayenne, sprinkle with parsley, and serve.

RICE AND PEAS WITH COCONUT

SERVES 6 TO 8

Rice and peas is Jamaica’s “coat of arms” in cooking, and it usually means small red beans (peas) and rice simmered with coconut, often also seasoned with a hint of thyme, bay, and cinnamon. Rather than red beans, you can also try a mix of red peas and gungo (pigeon peas or gandules), or use frozen green peas or limas for a change of pace. If you are concerned that the coconut milk will overpower the beans, don’t be. The milk adds a creamy quality to the dish, and the taste is subtle and mild. It’s my new favorite.

1 cup dried small red beans, picked over for stones, rinsed, soaked in water overnight, and drained

1 large onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 small dried red chile pepper, left whole

½ teaspoon dried thyme

1 bay leaf

1 cinnamon stick

1 tablespoon butter or oil

1 (13.5-ounce) can coconut milk

1 quart Chicken Stock (this page)

2 cups long-grain rice

Salt and black pepper

1. In a large saucepan, combine the beans, onion, garlic, chile pepper, thyme, bay leaf, cinnamon, butter, coconut milk, and chicken stock. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the beans are just tender, about 1¼ hours.

2. Place the rice in a bowl and rinse under cool running water until the water is clear. Drain the rice well. Stir the rice into the beans and cook over low heat, covered, until the rice is tender and most of the liquid is absorbed, 20 to 30 minutes longer.

3. Discard the chile pepper, bay leaf, and cinnamon stick, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

RIZ ISLE BREVELLE (RED RICE CROQUETTES)

Melrose Plantation Cookbook, Francois Mignon and Clementine Hunter, 1956

Wash one-half cup of raw rice and drain well. Place three pints of salted water in a stewpan. Set over fire and bring to a fast boil. Dash in the rice. Boil for ten minutes and then drain. Prepare a cup of tomato juice seasoned with one-fourth teaspoon salt, pinch of pepper, and dessert spoon of sugar. Heat this and pour over the rice. Cook about ten minutes more or until rice is tender. Take from the fire and add one tablespoon of the butter, one teaspoon of onion juice. Whip in the beaten yolks of three eggs. Then stir in two tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese. Set the mixture, in the stewpan, in a pan of boiling water and stir over the fire for several minutes. Then remove from heat and allow to cool. Make into croquettes. Beat the yolk of an egg and add one tablespoon of milk. Spread cracker crumbs on a platter. Dip the croquettes in the egg yolk, then roll in cracker crumbs. Chill the croquettes for an hour. Then fry in hot, deep vegetable oil. Drain and serve.

BAKED MACARONI AND CHEESE

SERVES 8 TO 10

In Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, James Beard Award winner Adrian Miller asked, “How did macaroni and cheese get so black?” The answer: James Hemings.

Hemings was an enslaved chef in Thomas Jefferson’s home who mastered the sophisticated techniques of French classical cooking in Paris, including the operation of a “maccaroni” press. As Monticello’s chef de cuisine, Hemings handwrote his recipes; the ones whose records have survived include fried potatoes (French fries), burnt cream (crème brûlée), and “Nouilles a maccaroni” (macaroni noodles). It’s known that he prepared a “macaroni pie” for a White House dinner in 1802. The macaroni recipe turns up topped with grated cheese following its publication in The Virginia Housewife published in 1845 by Mary Randolph, a Jefferson relative.

But that was just the beginning. Black chefs continued to adapt macaroni and cheese for their menus. In 1911, chef Rufus Estes of the Pullman railroad layered cooked macaroni, cheese, melted butter, salt, and black pepper in a baking pan, then poured milk over it all before baking. In her 1912 cookbook, the Kentucky Cook Book: Easy and Simple for Any Cook, by a Colored Woman, Mrs. W. T. Hayes spotlighted two African American culinary practices—croquette making and frying—in her macaroni croquettes, a special-occasion dish. And of course, today, mac and cheese is still a staple on soul food and holiday menus.

This mac and cheese resembles the one Texas caterer Bess Gant rolled up in ham jackets, made of thin slices of ham, like crêpes, in 1947. If you’re so inclined, feel free to add chunks of ham, cooked shrimp, or lobster.

Softened butter, for the baking dish

1 pound elbow macaroni

2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

2 cups shredded Jack cheese

1 stick (4 ounces) butter, melted

½ cup sour cream

3 large eggs, well beaten

1 (12-ounce) can evaporated milk

½ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

¼ teaspoon white pepper

⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper

Paprika

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Generously butter a 13 × 9-inch baking dish.

2. Bring a large pasta pot or saucepan of generously salted water to a boil. Add the macaroni and cook until al dente. Drain.

3. In a large bowl, combine the Cheddar and Jack cheeses. Measure out 1 cup of the cheese mixture and set aside for the top of the dish. Layer the remaining combined cheeses and macaroni in the buttered baking dish, beginning and ending with the macaroni.

4. In a medium bowl, whisk together the melted butter, sour cream, eggs, evaporated milk, ½ teaspoon salt (or to taste), white pepper, and cayenne. Pour the cream sauce over the macaroni and cheese. Top with the reserved 1 cup cheese and sprinkle generously with paprika. Place the dish on a rimmed baking pan to catch any juices that spill over.

5. Bake until the cheese is bubbling and the top is browned and crusty, 30 to 45 minutes. Remove from oven and let stand 10 minutes before serving.

MACARONI CROQUETTES, CHEESE SAUCE

The Kentucky Cook Book: Easy and Simple for Any Cook, by a Colored Woman, Mrs. W. T. Hayes, 1912

For the croquettes take enough cold boiled macaroni to make 2 cups when cut into small pieces. Add to this 1 teaspoon lemon juice, ½ teaspoon of onion juice, a little celery salt and seasoning to taste. Mix with 1 cup of white sauce made of 2 tablespoons of butter, 2 tablespoons of flour, seasoning, and one cup of boiling milk. Let the mixture cool. Form in cone shaped croquettes, roll in egg and bread crumbs and fry in deep fat till a very light brown. Stick a small spray of parsley in the top of each croquette. Cheese Sauce: To 1 cup of white sauce add ½ cup grated cheese and 1 tablespoon of chopped walnut meats.

Cornbread Dressing

Cornbread dressing is Southern; it is also African. Just ask culinary historian Michael Twitty. It descends from a memory dish some of the enslaved called kush (also spelled cush), made from cooked cornmeal mush or crumbled cornbread. The one-pot meal reminded West African captives of kusha, a couscous-like dish of steamed or boiled grains of millet or sorghum, Twitty explained in his James Beard Award–winning memoir, The Cooking Gene.

Kush became a darling of Louisiana Cajuns, who Twitty said “adopted many of the Senegambian people’s foodways, including okra, rice, the liberal use of hot pepper, and a breakfast cornmeal preparation they came to know as ‘couche couche,’ eaten with milk and cane syrup.”

Twitty unearthed memories of both dishes in the Slave Narratives, a Federal Writers’ Project, that between 1936 and 1938 collected interviews with the formerly enslaved. Anna Wright of North Carolina remembered: “Kush was cornbread, cooked on de big griddle mashed up with raw onions an’ ham gravy poured over hit…de old southern way of makin’ baked chicken dressin’…wuz made from soft cornbread wid some bacon grease, onions, black pepper an’ boiled eggs.”

Julius Nelson, also of North Carolina, described kush as a “good supper dish…made outin’ meal, onions, salt, pepper, grease an’ water.”

While the WPA was conducting interviews, Arturo Schomburg suggested that cakes, cookies, and puddings concocted from leftover bread, biscuit, wafer, and cornbread crumbs exemplified efficiency cooking, and that many of these dishes should be credited to creative black cooks. Regional cookbooks being written by white women at the time did occasionally do that.

CORNBREAD DRESSING

SERVES 12 TO 16

The authors of Two Hundred Years of Charleston Cooking offered high praise for the cornbread dressing created by Sally Washington and gubernatorial butler William Deas. This recipe reminds me of the cornbread dressing I grew up on and still serve at Thanksgiving. I’ve offered a few more details than the dish recorded on behalf of Deas, whom the authors call “one of the great cooks of the world.”

During the busy holiday season, you can prepare it ahead, which allows the flavors to mingle. I bake the Extra-Light Buttermilk Cornbread (this page) several days before putting the dressing together, crumble it, and store it tightly covered. Stale or dried leftover cornbread is sometimes suggested, but I’m not a fan. Once assembled, I cover the casserole dish tightly with plastic wrap and store it in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours. Simply bring the dressing to room temperature and remove the plastic to bake it. I pour stock into the dish just before it goes into the oven for moist, rich flavor. For smaller gatherings, cut this recipe in half; it makes enough dressing for second helpings.

Softened butter, for the baking pan

Double recipe Extra-Light Buttermilk Cornbread (this page), crumbled

1½ cups dried bread crumbs, toasted

2½ teaspoons dried sage

2 teaspoons dried thyme

1 teaspoon poultry seasoning

½ teaspoon dried marjoram

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 stick (4 ounces) butter

1 cup finely diced onion

⅓ cup finely diced green bell pepper

⅓ cup finely diced celery

2 teaspoons minced garlic

3 large eggs, beaten

2 cups turkey or chicken stock

Giblet Gravy (this page) or Chile-Pecan Sauce (this page), for serving

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Generously butter a deep 13 × 9-inch baking pan.

2. In a large bowl, stir together the cornbread crumbles, bread crumbs, sage, thyme, poultry seasoning, marjoram, salt, black pepper, and cayenne.

3. In a large skillet, heat the butter over medium-high heat. Add the onion, bell pepper, and celery and sauté until softened, 7 to 10 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook 30 seconds longer. Cool slightly. Gently stir the vegetables into the cornbread mixture, then stir in the eggs. (At this point, the dish may be refrigerated for later baking; just let it come to room temperature before baking.)

4. Drizzle the turkey stock over the cornbread mixture, tossing with a fork until the mixture is just moistened. Spoon the dressing into the baking pan and cover with foil. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove the foil, rotate the pan, and bake until hot, set, and crusty, about 30 minutes longer.

5. Serve with either giblet gravy or chile-pecan sauce.

Summer Garden Vegetables

I love the handed-down garden tradition that ties self-sufficiency and self-determination together with fresh vegetables—from the so-called yam gardens some captive women hid behind plantation flower beds to protect them from the overseer; to George Washington Carver’s “moveable school,” a horse-drawn vehicle called a Jesup Agricultural Wagon, designed so Tuskegee’s faculty could take their healthy-eating teaching into the community; to truck gardens, 4-H clubs, and the urban farm my mother nurtured in our city backyard so that fresh organic produce was always at hand.

I thought of all of this while ferreting out recipes for mid-twentieth-century garden vegetable recipes in black cookbooks as suggested by the long, long list of dishes in Arturo Schomburg’s African American cookbook proposal.

The recipes I encountered sounded wonderful, but there were just too many to include here: scalloped, as in anything one could braise in a cream sauce and perch on toast; pickled into relish; pannéd, meaning to dust with bread crumbs and fry; French-fried everything—from eggplant to beets; vegetables filled with stuffings made of other vegetables, meat, and rice; plus creatively titled specialties like cabbage pudding, potato puffs (which resembled the frozen food phenomenon Tater Tots), and turnips buttered à la “Kingston.”

Fast-forward to the soul food era of the 1960s, and the vegetable recipe choices surged even more. I could easily have written an entire book based around summer crops alone—corn, beans, tomatoes, okra, veggies for the salad bowl, herbs, and such. Instead, I grouped together and updated the time-honored preparations, exalting my favorites.

MAQUE CHOUX (FRIED CORN WITH GREEN PEPPERS)

SERVES 2 TO 4

The 2000 publication of Food for the Soul: A Texas Expatriate Nurtures Her Culinary Roots in Paris accomplished two goals for its author Monique Wells. Collecting the recipes resolved her—and other Parisian African Americans’—hankering for a taste of home, and sharing lovely, seasonal dishes like maque choux (adapted here) opened the eyes of elite French cooks to the flavors of the American South and Southwest. This led noted French chef Alain Ducasse to write Wells’s preface, lauding generations of black cooks who, like Monique, dedicated themselves to uplifting the image of soul food.

3 to 4 ears corn, shucked

2 tablespoons butter

½ cup finely diced onion

½ cup finely diced green bell pepper

½ teaspoon minced garlic

¼ teaspoon dried thyme

½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

⅛ teaspoon black pepper, or to taste

½ teaspoon salt, or to taste

½ teaspoon sugar (optional)

¾ cup heavy whipping cream or half-and-half

1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley

2 tablespoons minced green onions

1. Use a sharp knife to cut the kernels off the corn cobs, then turn the knife and use the dull side to scrape the cob down to release any remaining bits of corn and corn milk.

2. In a heavy skillet, heat the butter over medium-high heat until melted and sizzling. Add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic and sauté until softened, about 3 minutes. Stir in the thyme, red pepper flakes, black pepper, salt, sugar (if using), and corn. Cook, stirring, until the corn is cooked through, about 5 minutes. Add the cream and cook 5 minutes more to thicken. Stir in the parsley and green onions. Taste and adjust seasoning with more salt and pepper.

STEWED FRESH CORN

Soul Food Cookery, Inez Yeargan Kaiser, 1968

corn on cob

milk

butter

salt

pepper

flour

CUT……corn from cob, cutting twice.

ADD……milk, butter, salt and pepper.

SLOWLY……stir in flour.

COOK……over low heat until gravy thickens and corn is cooked.

CORN PUDDING

SERVES 6

Corn pudding is a way for families to enjoy corn in a lush custard. Served as a savory side dish for roast beef, or slightly sweeter with pork or ham, it is customary at Thanksgiving. In Rebecca West’s recipe collection, it’s referred to as Corn Soufflé, which gives you a sense of how refined and light it can be.

Carla Hall is a celebrity chef—she was a finalist on Top Chef and hosted The Chew on daytime television for many years—who has dedicated her career to spinning the beloved flavors of home into stunning new dishes with global appeal. Of all the techniques I discovered in recipe books to ensure this pudding is light and fluffy—from folding stiffly beaten egg whites into the mix, baking the corn pudding in a water bath, and underbaking the mixture so that it has a jiggly center when removed from the oven—I like the ideas in Carla’s Comfort Foods best. Hers gets a flavor boost from a little cornmeal, a quick browning in a hot oven, and a midbake stir. (Carolyn Quick Tillery’s A Taste of Freedom: A Cookbook with Recipes and Remembrances from the Hampton Institute bound the pudding with cornmeal alone.)

To serve the dish during winter, do what farm cooks who canned their own stewed corn did: Replace flavorless out-of-season fresh corn with canned cream-style corn for a super soft custard.

Softened butter, for the baking dish

3 large eggs, separated

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

½ cup all-purpose flour

¼ cup stone-ground cornmeal

3 cups whole milk

1 cup heavy whipping cream

4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter, melted

1 tablespoon minced onion

3 cups fresh corn kernels

1. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Generously butter a 3-quart shallow baking dish.

2. In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks until they are light and form a ribbon. Gradually whisk in the sugar 1 tablespoon at a time, then add the salt. Whisk in the flour, cornmeal, milk, cream, and melted butter. Stir in the onion until well blended.

3. In a very clean bowl, with a whisk or hand mixer (or in a stand mixer), whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the beaten whites into the yolk mixture. Pour this into the buttered dish. Scatter the corn evenly over the top.

4. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the top of the pudding is lightly browned. Remove from the oven, stir with a fork to mix in the browned crust, then return to the oven. Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F and continue baking until the pudding is just set, about 20 minutes more.

GREEN BEANS AMANDINE

SERVES 4 TO 6

In 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama did something unthinkable to the White House’s South Lawn: She turned it into a kitchen garden. A year later, I was blessed to be among seven hundred chefs from around the country invited to tour the garden, as part of her healthy kids initiative, Chefs Move! to Schools. She shared inspirational stories about her struggles, joys, and worries as a novice gardener in a cookbook, American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America.

The recipes in the book appear as healthier alternatives to some heritage dishes, such as the Old South’s string beans braised in a smoky pork stock until they were so tender you could mash them with a fork. These days, when I serve green beans, they go to the table with a slight crunch, from blanching in boiling water, and garnished with something fresh—garlic sautéed in browned butter, cooked minced red bell peppers, or nuts, as with this interpretation of an almond-studded classic, green beans amandine.

Green beans are versatile: You can cook them to your own desired doneness. And, if you like crunchy beans or less garlic, no problem. Cooking teacher Mrs. T. P. (Sarah Helen) Mahammitt gave no amounts for the ingredients in her version of the dish in her 1939 cookbook, Recipes and Domestic Service: The Mahammitt School of Cookery, encouraging students to engage their senses when cooking: “It’s completely up to your tastes.”

Salt

1½ pounds French green beans (haricots verts), trimmed

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

1 teaspoon minced garlic or shallots

½ teaspoon paprika

Black pepper

½ cup slivered almonds, toasted

1 tablespoon minced fresh parsley

1. Set up a large bowl of ice and water. In a large skillet, bring a couple cups of well-salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the beans and cook until they turn bright green and tender-crisp, 3 to 4 minutes (or longer, to your desired tenderness, adding water if necessary), shaking the pan occasionally to cook evenly. Drain the beans and plunge them into the bowl of ice water to stop them from cooking further. Drain again and set aside or refrigerate until ready to cook, if making ahead.

2. In the same skillet, heat the oil and butter over medium-high heat. Add the garlic and sauté until tender, about 30 seconds. Return the beans to the pan. Season with the paprika and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring the pan occasionally, to heat through. Serve garnished with the almonds and parsley.

STRING BEANS À LA CREOLE

SERVES 6

Green beans steeped in Southwestern flavors are an unusual but appropriate use of the term à la Creole, meaning “of mixed heritage.” This dish is a quick adaptation of Bertha Turner’s 1910 book, The Federation Cook Book: A Collection of Tested Recipes, Contributed by the Colored Women of the State of California. She poached her beans in a broth laced with mild green chiles, then simmered them with tomatoes and more chiles.

Salt

1½ pounds green beans, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces

2 tablespoons bacon drippings or vegetable or olive oil

1 cup diced onion

1 teaspoon minced garlic

1 (10-ounce) can diced tomatoes and green chiles (such as Ro-Tel)

¼ teaspoon smoked paprika

Black pepper

1. Set up a large bowl of ice and water. In a large skillet, bring a couple cups of well-salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the beans and cook until they turn bright green and tender-crisp, 3 to 4 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally. Plunge the beans in the ice water to stop them from cooking further. Drain and set aside.

2. In the same skillet, heat the bacon fat over medium-high heat. When hot, sauté the onion and garlic until translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and chiles, paprika, and beans. Season with salt and pepper and continue to cook 5 to 10 minutes, or to desired tenderness.

SPICY SAUTÉED OKRA AND TOMATOES

SERVES 4

Some cooks avoid okra because of its natural sliminess. Others have found workarounds, recommending that okra be prepared whole or dredged in flour or cornmeal, or blanched briefly before use. The mucilage seems to be minimized when cooked hot and fast and combined with tomatoes.

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 slices bacon, diced

1 cup chopped onion

1 tablespoon minced garlic (3 to 4 cloves)

1 pound fresh okra, trimmed and cut into ¼-inch slices

1 cup chopped fresh tomatoes

½ cup Chicken Stock (this page)

½ teaspoon salt, or to taste

¼ to ½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, to taste

Black pepper

Freshly cooked rice, for serving

1. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the bacon and, once it has rendered its fat and is just starting to crisp, stir in the onion and cook until translucent, 2 to 4 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook 30 seconds longer. Add the okra and sauté for 2 minutes, until the okra begins to soften.

2. Stir in the tomatoes, chicken stock, salt, and red pepper flakes. Bring to a simmer, partially cover, and cook, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes, until the okra is tender. Do not overcook the okra or it will be too soft. Season one more time with salt and pepper, if desired. Serve with hot rice.

BRAISED CELERY

SERVES 4 TO 8

I created this dish one Easter Sunday, with memories of a dish served at Mary Mac’s Tea Room in Atlanta still on my lips and recipes published in 1912 by S. Thomas Bivins on my mind. Bivins wrote a massive work of more than six hundred recipes, including his take on the stewed celery dish known in fine-dining restaurants as Celery Victor.

I sautéed the celery in drippings left over from roasting our holiday leg of lamb and garnished the dish with sliced almonds, Monticello-style (one of the fancy upgrades under James Hemings’s watch). I also followed Edna Lewis’s lead: She steeped celery in beef broth and butter and served it sprinkled with chopped fresh parsley.

Give the dish body, just as chef S. Thomas Bivins did, with beurre manié (butter and flour rubbed together)—a French technique you can use at the last minute to thicken most any dish. It’s a delicate alternative to the custom of smothering vegetables in a roux-based gravy.

1 tablespoon reserved meat drippings or olive oil

2 small bunches celery (about 2 pounds), trimmed and cut into 3-inch pieces

½ cup coarsely chopped onion

2 cups Chicken Stock (this page)

Pinch of crushed red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

Pinch of ground or freshly grated nutmeg (optional)

1 tablespoon butter, cut into small dice

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

¼ cup heavy whipping cream

Black pepper

1. In a Dutch oven, heat the meat drippings or olive oil over medium heat. When hot, add the celery and onion and sauté 10 to 12 minutes, until softened. Add the chicken stock, red pepper flakes, salt, and nutmeg (if using). Simmer until the celery is tender, about 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, on a work surface, use the side of a knife or your fingertips to rub together the butter and flour until well mixed, resembling a smooth, thick paste.

3. Whisk the butter-flour mixture into the celery, whisking until completely dissolved. Stir in the cream. Simmer, uncovered, until thickened, 2 to 3 minutes more. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper, and serve.

BRAISED SUMMER SQUASH WITH ONIONS

SERVES 4

Creative cooks have myriad ideas for dealing with the squash that can overrun the summer garden. Two of the most common are squash baked in a cheesy casserole topped with bread crumbs and squash pan-fried with onions.

The butter/oil/rosemary mix in Maya Angelou’s 2004 cookbook, Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes, is a refreshing alternative to classic smothered squash seasoned with bacon drippings. Other black cookbooks have offered their own variations, stirring in diced green pepper, chopped shrimp, or curry powder, but Angelou’s suggestion of rosemary adds a deep herbal flavor that is unforgettable.

2 pounds yellow summer squash

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil

1 cup thinly sliced onion

1 teaspoon minced garlic

¾ teaspoon salt, or to taste

¼ teaspoon black pepper

¼ teaspoon dried rosemary or ½ teaspoon chopped fresh

2 tablespoons minced chives

1. Use a mandoline or a sharp knife to cut the squash into ¼-inch-thick slices. In a large skillet, heat the butter and oil over medium-high heat until hot. Add the onion and garlic and sauté until the onion is translucent, about 2 minutes. Add the squash, salt, black pepper, and rosemary and sauté over medium heat, 2 to 3 minutes until fragrant, stirring occasionally, adding up to 2 tablespoons water as needed to prevent sticking.

2. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover, and cook, turning frequently, until the squash is very tender, about 30 minutes. Garnish with the chives and serve.

Roots and Tubers

While researching potato recipes in African American cookbooks I encountered root vegetables of every kind—boiled and fried; scooped with a melon baller, poached in water, and then browned all over in butter; boiled and mashed to a puree; shaped into croquettes and fried.

It didn’t take long to realize that black chefs have been adept at turning ordinary boiled vegetables into something decadent and silky with little more than stock, butter, and milk or cream, but vegetable mashes are pure African, too—the Kenyan dish irio (a corn, potato, and bean mash) comes to mind.

Root vegetables are delicious when they are cut into a small dice and tossed with olive oil before roasting in a hot oven until the edges are slightly browned and crisp. This method concentrates the vegetables’ naturally sweet juices, preserving their nutritious goodness.

MASHED TURNIPS AND CARROTS WITH RUM

SERVES 4 TO 6

Old-school caterer Jessie Payne cut root vegetables decoratively using a melon baller, then sautéed them in butter and served them attractively in cups cut from sweet green bell peppers in her 1955 cookbook, Paynie’s Parties.

You, too, can broaden the appeal of turnips or rutabagas, which are underappreciated and sweet, by whipping them with carrots, onions, and a splash of rum. This dish was inspired by a recipe in Norma Jean and Carole Darden’s Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine. If you choose to add the rum, do so gradually, to your own tastes.

½ pound turnips (or rutabaga), peeled, trimmed, and quartered

1 pound carrots, trimmed and halved lengthwise

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter

¼ cup chopped onion

1 to 2 tablespoons heavy cream, to taste

1 tablespoon rum (optional)

Black pepper (optional)

1. In a medium saucepan, combine 2 cups water, the turnips, carrots, sugar, honey, and salt. The water will not cover the vegetables. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce the heat to a simmer and cook the vegetables, covered, for 15 minutes. Pierce with a fork to test doneness, then continue to cook to your preferred degree of doneness, up to 15 minutes more, adding water as needed to prevent sticking and to keep the vegetables steaming. (The more tender the vegetables, the smoother the mash will be, but don’t overcook them totally or the mash will be watery.)

2. Drain the vegetables in a colander, reserving the cooking water. Mash the vegetables with a spoon, ricer, or food mill, or in a food processor, until smooth.

3. In the same saucepan, heat the butter over medium-high heat. Add the onion and sauté until translucent, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the onions to the turnips and carrots and blend well, adding cream as desired and enough reserved cooking water or rum (if using) to adjust the consistency and flavor to your liking. Taste to adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.

PUREED PARSNIPS

SERVES 4 TO 6

In B. Smith Cooks Southern-Style, former model, restaurateur, and chef Barbara (B.) Smith showed her fondness for parsnips, a humble, sweet, carrot-like root: “With a hint of sweetness and a pinch of spice, parsnips can be boiled, steamed, roasted, braised, or mashed.” But it was Pullman Railroad chef Rufus Estes’s Parsnip Puree, published in Good Things to Eat, as Suggested by Rufus in 1911, that is behind this recipe. Chef Estes mashed the cooked parsnips and fried them as fritters, or he served them simply, flavored by stock instead of water, milk, or cream. The butter is nonnegotiable.

2 pounds parsnips, peeled and cut into ½-inch-thick slices

2 to 3 cups Chicken Stock (this page)

4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

1 tablespoon heavy whipping cream

Minced fresh chives (optional)

1. In a large saucepan, combine the parsnips and enough chicken stock to cover. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, then reduce the heat, cover, and simmer until very tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Drain in a colander, reserving the stock.

2. Return the parsnips to the pan. Add the butter, salt, pepper, and cream and mash them with the back of a wooden spoon or a vegetable masher, adding enough reserved stock to make a smooth puree. (Or puree in a blender or food processor.) Cook over low heat to warm through. Taste to adjust seasonings. Garnish with chives, if desired.

PARSNIP BALLS

Recipes and Domestic Service: The Mahammit School of Cookery, Mrs. T. P. (Sarah Helen) Mahammit, 1939

6 parsnips

1 tbsp. butter

½ tsp. salt

white pepper

1 egg

Cook parsnips and mash. Season with butter, salt, pepper, and 1 egg yolk. When cold, roll in balls. Dip in egg white and crumbs. Fry in deep fat.

BAKED PARSNIP

¾ cup bread crumbs

2 cups parsnip puree

1 tbsp. grated onion

½ cup very rich milk

2 tbsp. butter

salt and pepper

Boil parsnips, peel and put through a coarse sieve. Season this puree with salt and pepper to taste and put in the bottom of a baking dish. Add the grated onion. Sift crumbs. Put the fine crumbs over the parsnips onion, and pour over all the milk to which has been added one tablespoon of the butter melted. Melt the remaining tablespoon of butter in a small pan and with this blend the coarse crumbs which were left after the sifting. Dress the top of the dish with these and bake in oven at 400 degrees F., for about half an hour.

BEETS ÉTOUFFÉE

SERVES 4

This recipe is a mash-up of inspiration taken from recipes for sweet-and-sour beets, “Harvard” beets, and beets with onions and cream. It is cleverly disguised by the name of the revered rural Louisiana dish, étouffée, which generally means meats smothered in a dark, red-brown gravy, and it was originally created by Ida Guillory in Cookin’ with Queen Ida: “Bon Temps” Creole Recipes (and Stories) from the Queen of Zydeco Music.

I updated the savory dish by layering on pungent garlic and ginger and tossing tart green apples into the mix for variety.

1 tablespoon butter

1 cup thinly sliced red onion

1 garlic clove, minced

1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger

3 cups beets, peeled and cut in ¼-inch matchsticks

1 small tart green apple, peeled and cut in ¼-inch matchsticks

¼ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

½ cup seasoned rice or cider vinegar

¼ teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest

½ teaspoon fresh lemon juice

1. In a large skillet, heat the butter over medium heat until sizzling. Add the onion and sauté until it begins to get translucent, about 2 minutes. Stir in the garlic and ginger and cook 30 seconds more. Stir in the beets and apple and toss gently to coat with the aromatics. Add ½ cup water, the salt, sugar, and vinegar. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium-low, cover, and cook until the beets are fork-tender, about 20 minutes. (For very tender beets, cook 10 minutes longer, adding up to ¼ cup additional water to prevent sticking.)

2. Stir in the lemon zest and juice and let cool slightly. Serve warm.

Going to the Sweet Potato Bank

Sweet potatoes were a dietary staple for South Carolina’s bondservants, its field workers and hunters. Sallie Ann Robinson, the Gullah-Geechee griot, wrote of this in her poignant record of life in the Carolina Sea Islands, Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way: “Grandmomma always grew a big field of sweet potato vines. When we dug the sweet potatoes right after the first frost in the late fall, we separated out the small tubers for seed to be planted in the spring and ‘banked’ both them and the eating sweet potatoes in the special, tin-roofed, A-frame shed. Sweet potatoes don’t keep well in a refrigerator or at room temperature, and when any part of one rots, the flavor of the whole tuber is spoiled. The banking kept them cool, but not cold, moist but not wet, and away from varmints.”

Formerly enslaved black people interviewed in the 1930s described intense love for sweet potatoes roasted in ashes, which brings out the natural sweetness of the tuber. Field workers carried “baked sweet ‘tadas’—with their skins serving as a natural wrapper—in their pockets or aprons for a midday meal.”

So why do we add sugar, molasses, maple syrup, or fruit juice to a luscious vegetable already sweet as the first kiss? William Ed Grimé might have discovered the answer in a cooking method described by a French observer: “The negros’ who make sugar do not fail to throw their potatoes in the sirup pot, where they let them cook for a half hour.”

From this ancestry, sweet potatoes are enjoyed in many forms, of course, and America’s spiced yam balls, sweet potato pones, puffs, and croquettes are descendants of African fufu and Caribbean batata—pounded yuca, yams, or sweet potatoes. Dr. George Washington Carver was a champion of sweet potatoes for their consistent yields in the fields and their nutritive value at home. In his bulletins, he suggested several options for stuffing fried sweet potato puffs with minced meat or nuts. He also created a highly spiced, doughnut-shaped treat he called “puffers.” Some domestic cooks and caterers tucked a marshmallow inside of sweet potato fritters.

Sweet potato casserole and candied yams became soul food classics, upgrades from the old days when cooks roasted possum or shoats with plain sweet potatoes or pounded them into pones and baked. Later, sliced potatoes and apples poached in a glaze of sugar and spices were beautiful and delicious. In some kitchens, corn syrup and marshmallows or a crown of praline topping nudged mashed sweet potatoes, sometimes called “compote,” toward dessert.

SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE

SERVES 6 TO 8

In most of the recipes I encountered for sweet potato casserole, the praline topping was like candy, sweet enough to set your teeth on edge, a throwback to the days when crushed pineapple or marshmallows uplifted basic grated sweet potato pone and molasses. But not quite so with Bob Jeffries, who tweaked his grandmother’s recipes to suit more modern tastes, making this dish slightly less sweet.

Butter, for greasing the dish

½ cup light brown sugar, packed

¼ cup all-purpose flour

2 cups chopped toasted pecans

1 cup melted butter

3 cups cooked mashed sweet potatoes

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs, beaten

⅓ cup evaporated or whole milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a 2-quart baking dish with butter.

2. In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, flour, pecans, and ½ cup of the melted butter. Set aside.

3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the sweet potatoes on medium speed until light. Beat in the remaining ½ cup butter, the granulated sugar, eggs, milk, vanilla, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Pour the mixture into the baking dish. Sprinkle with praline topping. Bake until the top is browned and firm, 30 to 35 minutes.

CROQUETTES

How the Farmer Can Save His Sweet Potatoes: And Ways of Preparing Them for the Table, Bulletin No. 38, George Washington Carver, 1936

Take two cupfuls of mashed, boiled, steamed or baked sweet potatoes; add the beaten yolks of two eggs and season to taste; stir over the fire until the mass pulls from the sides of the pan. When cold, form into small croquettes, roll in egg and bread crumbs, and fry in hot lard to amber color. Serve on napkins.

SWEET POTATO BALLS

Prepare the same as for croquettes, make into balls and enclose within the center of minced meat.

GLACE, NO. 1

Boil and cut in halves medium-sized sweet potatoes, lay evenly in braising pan, baste with syrup and butter warmed together, sprinkle lightly with brown sugar, put in hot oven until brown, and serve in the syrup.

GLACE, NO. 2

Cut in slices 1–2 inch thick, wash and place in deep sauce pan; spread with butter; season with a little grated nutmeg and salt; moisten with broth or water, cover and let simmer over a slow fire for three-fourths of an hour, turning the slices so that they will glace on both sides. Serve with drawn butter or other sauce.

A Mess o’ Greens

Whole Foods Market caused quite a stir in 2014 when the health food superstore declared “collard greens the new kale” and tweeted a recipe for sautéed collards garnished with peanuts. I admit I had to laugh. It reminded me of the author’s words in A Good Heart and a Light Hand: Ruth L. Gaskins’ Collection of Traditional Negro Recipes: “It’s amazing to us to think that anyone could grow up without greens, but every time we shop in the supermarket, White women ask in surprise, ‘What in the world do you do with those things?’”

For many on Twitter, this recipe was a bridge too far. “For other people collards are a trend—for us they are a tradition,” food writer and historian Michael Twitty said at the time. But it’s also fair to ask: What is that tradition? In this case it may have been the peanuts that shocked people. But there is also an impression that old-fashioned, Southern, or country-style greens must be boiled to death to be authentic soul food. Any other way, and you might as well just designate the dish #fakesoul. That notion, though, hasn’t always been set in stone.

Descendants of the African diaspora have always prepared cultivated and wild greens by myriad methods. Here is what Frankie Field had to say in The Chef, published by the City Federation of Colored Women’s Clubs of Tulsa in 1944: “Select the best vegetables. Pick carefully, wash thoroughly and cook over a low flame, only water that clings to the leaves. Cook until tender as wanted. Never over-cook. When using meat to season greens, cook the meat until well-done, leaving only a small amount of water with meat, then add greens and cook for a short time, or until done.”

With those words in mind, I tweaked the recipe for sautéed greens so they cook quickly and their bright color and firm texture are preserved. The unexpected addition to our holiday dinner table thrilled my niece Aliya the year she turned vegetarian.

COLLARD GREENS WITH CORNMEAL DUMPLINGS

SERVES 6

Cornmeal dumplings dropped into a bubbling pot of turnip greens, collards, or cabbage will remind some of African fufu, the pones made from pounded yam, cassava, or potato flour—or their contemporary adaptations featuring cream of wheat, farina, or even instant potato flakes. This is a totemic soul food dish—greens simmered long and slow until quite tender, though young greens cook in half the time. Choose a state of doneness that best suits your tastes and your collards.

I like the way this poem by Aneb Kgositsile, which I first saw in The African American Heritage Cookbook: Traditional Recipes and Fond Remembrances from Alabama’s Renowned Tuskegee Institute (2001), honors the memory of the dish:

Collards and cornbread,

communion meal of

daily resurrection.

I ate the survival leaf as I stood at

the field’s edge,

soaking its cure through pores

and spirit.

1½ quarts Smoky Soul Stock (recipe follows)

½ cup chopped onion

1 garlic clove, minced

1 pound collard greens

2 small dried red chile peppers or 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

¾ teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

Black pepper

½ cup all-purpose flour

1½ cups coarsely ground cornmeal

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons butter

1. In a saucepan, bring the stock, onion, and garlic to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat, cover, and simmer while preparing the greens.

2. Thoroughly wash the greens and trim away the stems, if desired. Discard the stems or coarsely chop. Stack 2 or 3 leaves on a cutting board and roll tightly into a log. Slice the greens crosswise into ¼-inch-wide ribbons. Place the greens and the chiles in the broth and return to a simmer. Cook, covered, about 1½ hours for very tender greens; you may cook them for less if you have young greens or prefer greens with more chew. Season to taste with salt and black pepper. Spoon out ½ cup of the potlikker and set aside.

3. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, baking powder, sugar, and ¾ teaspoon salt. In a small saucepan, melt the butter. Add the reserved potlikker, and heat to just below boiling. Remove the potlikker mixture from the heat and whisk it into the dry ingredients. Let stand 5 minutes. When cool enough to handle, use wet fingertips to shape the dough into 6 dumplings.

4. During the last 15 minutes of the collards’ cooking time, carefully drop the cornmeal dumplings into the pot with the greens, making sure the dumplings rest in the potlikker. Cover the pot and simmer until the dumplings are cooked through, 10 to 15 minutes.

5. Serve greens and dumplings in bowls with plenty of potlikker.

SMOKY SOUL STOCK

MAKES ABOUT 2 QUARTS

2 smoked ham hocks or 2 smoked turkey wings

2 medium onions, quartered

4 celery stalks, including leaves, halved

2 carrots, trimmed and quartered

2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

½ teaspoon black peppercorns

2 bay leaves

1. In a large heavy stockpot, bring 3 quarts water, the smoked meat, onions, celery, carrots, garlic, peppercorns, and bay leaves to a boil. Reduce the heat, and simmer, partially covered, until the flavors are well blended, about 2 hours. The broth develops stronger flavor the longer you let it simmer.

2. Remove the meat from the broth. When cool enough to handle, pull the meat off the bones (discard the skin, fat, and bones). Chop the meat and reserve for another use. Use a fine-mesh sieve to strain the stock. Refrigerate the stock until the fat floats to the top. Use a slotted spoon to skim off the fat and discard. Store the stock tightly covered in the freezer.

SAUTÉED GREENS

SERVES 4

Inspired by the Brazilian style in which couve (greens) are sautéed raw, this brightly colored dish comes in handy when chard, beet greens, spinach, and tender sweet potato greens turn up at the farmers’ market. My addition of vinegar and maple syrup comes by way of Ruth Gaskins and the singer Isaac Hayes.

2 pounds mixed greens (mustard or turnip greens, spinach, chard, arugula, baby kale, or young collards)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup chopped onion

2 garlic cloves, minced

½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

1 tablespoon maple syrup (optional)

Salt and black pepper

1. Wash the greens, removing the stems and thick midribs. (Or keep them and slice them thinly.) Stack 2 or 3 leaves, roll tightly into a log and slice it into ¼-inch-wide ribbons. Repeat with the rest of the greens.

2. In a large heavy skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and sauté until translucent, 2 to 4 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Add half the greens and sauté until limp, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the remaining greens and cook until tender, 7 to 8 minutes more (or less, if using tender greens). Stir in the red pepper flakes, vinegar, and maple syrup (if using). Season to taste with salt and black pepper. Increase the heat to medium-high and cook, stirring, until the flavors come together and the greens are cooked to your desired doneness.