THE AFRO-ASIAN FLAVOR PROFILE WHERE THE Africa Diaspora MEETS THE Silk Road

by Alexander Smalls

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For centuries the institution of the African slave trade throughout Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and South America helped build the agricultural and industrial revolution in an expanding world of exploration and civilization. African people labored in the fields and kitchens creating the foundation of this new world while developing a new cooking expression wherever they found themselves. They were resilient people working the land, farming, creating a legacy of food preparation and hospitality throughout the world, infusing African traditions and history in every dish along the way.

In search of the authentic roots of the African bounty, I have dedicated much of my professional curiosity, passion, and intellectual thrust, as well as my cooking skills, to educating myself and those who regard the treasure trove of this great cooking through my many restaurants, my catering event company, Smalls and Company, and dinners hosted in my New York apartment over the years. My convictions as an ambassador for the foods of the African diaspora began, in earnest, with my days as chef and restaurateur at this beloved dowtown restaurant Cafe Beulah. My years of research, travel, and scholarship hopefully merit consideration in the company of respected culinary historians. Women like Toni Tipton-Martin, the author of the book The Jemima Code, which the New York Times asked me to write about for the Book Review. And educator and author Jessica Harris, a friend and scholar who mirrors my commitment and enthusiasm in her many books, speeches, and activism on the subject. These ladies give me permission and strength. I’m inspired and emboldened by them, as I am by the many African-American chefs, cooks, and hospitality workers who toil in the field and on whose shoulders I stand.

Slavery? Nobody wanted to own it. The enslavers made us embarrassed that we were slaves. The enslavers didn’t want to talk about it because of how it made them feel. And so because we don’t like to talk about slavery in the United States, if not the world, we reduced the culinary contribution of African-heritage people to the extraordinarily flimsy rubric of “soul food,” which, to my mind, represents a small fraction of our enormous contribution to global cooking. I felt, from my earliest days in the culinary community, a commitment to uncover and illuminate the story of how Africa has shaped our dining traditions and what our African and African-American ancestors truly gifted the world.

Slaves were the
culinary game changers.
There, we’ve said it.

Through slavery, Africa changed the global culinary conversation. Because African slaves built, through their labor and their farming skills, the agricultural platform for every country they went to. They took their seeds, their ingredients, and their cooking techniques and changed how the world, across five continents—Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America—ate. But to justify slavery, slaves were categorized not as human, but as cattle, and were treated as such. In some parts of the United States, through the 1940s, African Americans were still categorized as livestock.

I wanted to allow myself to run freely under the umbrella of the diaspora. It was important for me to find the silver lining and the positivity of African cultural expression that could only come out of the ills of slavery: that was the culinary trail. It was important to me to give voice to these extraordinarily persecuted and mistreated people—my ancestors. I come from a people whose unsung contributions to the culinary world were realized through their hard work, creativity, imagination, determination, and endurance. These are the people whose harvests and culinary talents set the American table: then, now, and for years to come.

This is the food of survival and imagination, the celebration of life being a gift even when times are tough and of the promise that each new day offers. Resilient African people worked the land, farming and creating a legacy of food preparation and hospitality throughout the world while infusing African traditions and history into every dish.

The Afro-Asian-American profile first started to take root in my childhood. I grew up in Spartanburg, South Carolina, but because my family was from the Lowcountry—Charleston, Beaufort, and the Gullah islands—the food references of my life strongly came from this area, largely influenced by West Africa because it was one of the largest slave ports in the New World. West Africa influenced the cooking there, along with the French Creole and the Far East. You hear chefs talk about fusion cooking all the time. This was the original fusion: fusion as a result of migrating people.

But don’t call it soul food. Don’t call it soul food! That’s always been a rallying cry for me. The idea that black folks who cook are only making soul food is frightening. What we have to say is much bigger than that. It’s our job to expand the conversation.

The Chinese and Vietnamese migrated to western Africa in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They brought rice and noodles. Now western Africa is the second largest rice-consuming region in the world, after China. We’re not even talking about the whole continent of Africa. We’re talking about western Africa. Jessica Harris writes in Zester Daily:

Wherever okra points its green tip, Africa has been, and the trail of trade evidenced by the presence of the pod is formidable. It turns up in the cooking of North Africa and the Middle East, where it is known as Bamia or bamya. It makes a savored curry in India, where it is called bhindi in Hindi. It is known as lady’s fingers by those of more colonial persuasion. It’s known as jiao dou in Chinese and kacang bendi in Malay. Spain takes its word for the pod from the Bantu languages of Central Africa and calls it quingombo or ginbombo, and the Brazilian variant quiabo seems to derive from the same origins. Our American use of the word okra comes from the Igbo language of Nigeria, where the plant is referred to as okuru. It is the French word for okra that takes us to the heart of the matter in Louisiana, because it also harks back to the Bantu languages, but simply uses the final two syllables calling the mucilaginous pod gombo.

Speaking of gumbo, we all love gumbo. But it didn’t start in New Orleans or South Carolina. It started in Senegal, and slaves brought it with them when they migrated. Culinary game changers.

Brazil enters the conversation through dishes like feijoada and moqueca. Our versions of those dishes pay tribute to the African people of Bahia in Brazil, who worked the sugar plantations that provided the economic foundation for prosperity in South America.

We talk about slavery and migration a lot because for us, it’s our living history. We wouldn’t have felt the importance and intensity of purpose for this food if our personal commitment to celebrating the legacy of the diaspora didn’t run so deep. My restaurant teams have always mirrored our beliefs and our misson. We are a rainbow of African, African American, Latin, Tibetan, Chinese, Caribbean, and Indian … as well as European. The Cecil’s team was the Mexican kid who’s been with us from the beginning and has really come into his own. Tiffany, chef de cuisine, an amazing cook, worked with April Bloomfield at the Spotted Pig and has contributed to our success in an invaluable way. Tiffany’s love for Indian food brought these flavorful techniques of Indian cooking and style uptown. Our runners were from West Africa, and they appreciated working for a restaurant that elevates Africa’s culinary traditions. Our staff says it again and again: “I never thought I’d work at a restaurant where I could be proud that the foods of my heritage were served in such an elegant and celebrated way.”

My vision for Afro-Asian-American cooking and the passion we’ve poured into this book is very simple: I want to explore the history and the culture of the foods of Africa and their intersection throughout the world … one plate at a time.

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1 • Hibiscus

2 • Turmeric

3 • Cinnamon

4 • Coriander seeds

5 • Sesame

6 • Pink peppercorns

7 • Aleppo pepper

8 • Szechuan peppercorns

9 • Nutmeg

10 • Ginger

11 • Curry powder

12 • Black cardamom

13 • Allspice

14 • Smoked salt

15 • Green cardamom

16 • Mustard seed