Interview (Chef Marvin Woods)

Look Who’s Talking Too

Chef Marvin Woods, host of Turner South’s Home Plate recently opened a restaurant in Charlotte called, Woods on South. He’s a southern boy from up north who has a love affair with food. Two his books are, Home Plate Cooking, everyday southern cuisine with a fresh twist, and, The New Low-Country Cooking, 125 recipes for coastal southern cooking with innovative style. He has studied Southern cuisine, and is continually building upon his knowledge.

Q. How would you define the food at Woods on South?

CW. Carolina Cuisine. Carolina cuisine is a cross between slow food and seasonal food found in the Carolinas. I would say that 85% of the menu features food found in the Carolinas.

Q. How has African cuisine, or Southern Soul food influenced your menu, or has it.?

CW. First of all, I don’t get into the whole soul food conversation. I don’t really think soul food really means what a lot of people think it means. When you travel outside this country, not matter what country you go to…every country has a soul food. Nine times out of ten when people refer to soul food, they mean food that has been prepared in the south, but that doesn’t have any legs. With that being said, there’s a direct influence from African culture and Caribbean culture, and the African American culture in American cuisine…There are things that are in the American diet that is a direct derivative of African culture. Gumbo is one of those dishes; eggplant; rice; the true yam is indigenous to Africa. So you have those just to name a few in terms of ingredients, and then you have the way the food is prepared and also the palate of the food. You know, in African and in the Caribbean there’s always been a spice in something. So that is a direct influence from Africa and again, going back to the fact that there was slavery in this country and people of color were preparing the food and had to eat the food and they were talking the scraps that were left of the table and had to make their meals from that.

Q. Besides that idea of the term ‘soul food’, are there any other misconceptions that you’ve seen as far as African American influence in foods?

CW. Yeah, for sure. Gumbo. Most people think gumbo comes from New Orleans. This goes back to the lack of knowledge and where things originally come from. Gumbo is a word that comes from an African dialect. It is a dish that comes from a dish cooked in one pot and it has okra in it. It didn’t start in New Orleans, it started in Africa. Africans actually brought pods over here and planted them. One of the other things I tell people all the times is that gumbo was made in the low-country before it was made in New Orleans.

Q. Carolina low-country?

CW. Yep.

Q. At Woods on South, is there any one dish that you would recommend, or do they all hold equal value?

CW. I was personally involved with every dish. I eat there on a regular basis; I talk to guests on a regular basis. Guests often ask me what do I like the best on the menu, and I always answer that question with, “If you have nine kids and somebody walked up to you and asks which is your favorite kid, what are you going to tell them?”…It’s my menu, it’s my creation, it’s on the menu for a reason. How am I going to put something on the menu that I don’t believe in, that I don’t love?

Interview (Chef Pearson)

Look Who's Talking

The first interview is with Chef Pearson of Johnson & Wales, Charlotte. Based on his travels and experience, he was the perfect choice to discuss the African influence. With his knowledge of world cuisines, he offered a wealth of information on the subject. It is important to include this interview in it entirety because Chef Pearson offered a different approach to the idea of the African influence. His premise is that technique (the one pot cooking) their biggest influence.

Chef Pearson:
The African influence on American food is purely out of a bad situation. It comes out of slavery and the situation was that wealthy white people…well wealthy people in general have a tendency to not want to do dirty work. So anything that they didn’t want to do, they’ve always gone out and found a group of people that couldn’t defend themselves and weren’t educated enough to understand what was going on. Basically South Africa was already European occupied and they wanted to keep their Africans there to do their work. Primarily from North Africa and put them into jobs that nobody wanted to do especially dangerous, dirty work. Especially in the kitchen, they weren’t even connected to houses at the time. Then we said to them here’s some food and a pot and they had to cook or suffer the consequences. The thing about Africa, it’s not a lack of food, well there may be a lack of food in some areas, but it’s mostly a lack of water. The people were nomadic. They basically acted like a herd of animals; the animals would travel to find the water. That’s what the people did. They were large groups; large families traveled together…they all stuck together, aunts, uncles, grandparents… Being large groups they would travel with only with what they could carry. The basic style of cooking in Africa was one pot. In the United States we can take one chicken and cut it into eight pieces and serve four people, but in Africa you have to take one chicken and serve forty people. So they would cut it up into small pieces, they would braise and stew everything, so that whole one pot cooking is directly from Africa. So the biggest contribution that the Africans made was the one pot cooking. So the slaves were put into a position where they had to cook, so they fall back on what they did while they were in Africa, and that’s how they cook. Now, we take that and look at what their true contribution was and it wasn’t food, it was purely technique…of course there’re some things like okra, that is indigenous to Africa; the slaves brought that over in their pockets and planted it behind their quarters and it started growing and they began to incorporate it in their diet. They didn’t bring a whole lot of them in, they didn’t have much. It wasn’t that their food made their contribution so significant; it was the fact that they were cooking the food. We can look back and we can trace different things that have become very popular now and that are directly a part of Africa. There was a large slave population in the south. If you go to Charleston, the dish you’ll see in just about every restaurant is shrimp and grits. That is a dish that came from the Gullah community, but they didn’t eat shrimp. Shrimp was expensive then. They used flat fish that the white slave owners didn’t want to eat because they were too boney. And so they would process the grits and the slave owners got the fine grits and that’s what the wealthy people ate and the grits that came off the sides that were called stone ground or hominy grits is what the
African community got. So they go home and cook these grits and roll the fish in cornmeal and salt…and they would take the old tomatoes and smash them and make a tomato sauce. So the shrimp and grits evolved from the Gullah dish, but they didn’t want to fool with boney fish. The original jambalaya is jollof rice and it basically the same thing except in Africa they used some fish products because they had it…when they came to the United States, they had the tomatoes, the shrimp, okra and other items that became incorporated in the dish…still the one pot idea. It’s all about poverty and making it into something that people will always like to eat. I can go to region in the U.S. and find a soul food restaurant.

Basically the one pot cooking was Africa’s major contribution to American cuisine. African influence has been incorporated into the fabric of American cooking.

Works Cited

"A History of Soul Food." Soul Food. 5 11 2007 http://www.foxhome.com/soulfood/index_frames.html.
Danforth, Randi, Peter Feierabend and Gary Chassman. Culinaria the United State: A Culinary
Discovery. New York: Konemann Publishers, 1998.
Diet of African Americans. 30 10 2007 Americans-Diet-of.html>
Harber, Randall H. "Just what is Southern food--and where is it going?" 1 December 2000.
CNN.com. 11 December 2007 http://archives.cnn.com/2000/FOOD/news/12/01/foodways/index.html.
Holloway, Joseph E., Ph. D. "African Crops and Slave Cuisine." Slavery in America. 16 10 2007 http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/history/hs_es_cuisine.htm.
Stow, Josie and Jan Baldwin. The African Kitchen. New York: Interlink Books, 2005.
"United States: African American Foodways." Scribner Library of Daily Life Encyclopedia of
Food and Culture. Ed. Solomon H. Katz. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2003. 425-434.
What We Eat: African Influence. Perf. Burt Wolf. Prod. Acorn. American Public Television,
2002.

Glossary of Slave Foods

Cala: Sweetened rice cake, African in origin, served with morning café au lait, formerly sold by black women in the French Quarter of New Orleans. In Georgia, this sweetened rice cake was called saraka.

Coffee: Word derived from Kaffa, region in Ethiopia.

Cowpeas: Black-eyed peas. Used in the southern U.S. by both blacks and whites. Travelled from Africa to North America in holds of slave ships as food for the cargoes.

www.all-creatures.org

Fufu: Called “turn meal and flour” in South Carolina. A mixture of cornmeal and flour is poured into a pot of boiling water. From this fufu mixture, enslaved Africans made “hot cakes” in the fields, which were sometimes called ashcakes or hoecakes. These evolved into “pancakes” and “hotwater cornbread”. Also a common food throughout Africa and the New World consisting of yams, plantains, cassava roots (tapioca, manioc), Indian corn, pepper and okra.
Goober: Bantu word for peanut.
Grits: Enslaved Africans took hominy (the hulled dried kernels of Indian corn) and made grits by grinding the corn hauls and cooking them.
www.ansonmills.com

Guinea Corn: Also called sorghum and millet.
Gunger Cake: Gingerbread, which is a dark molasses cake flavored with the powdered root of the ginger plant, is thought to have originated in the Congo and been carried to North America by enslaved Africans.
Hop’n johns: Traditional West African dish of black-eyed peas and rice cooked together. It is common in Black southern cuisine.
Okra: Originated in what geo-botanists call the Abyssinian (Ethiopian) center of human food zones. It has become the essential ingredient of Louisiana gumbo.

www.grow.ars.information.ca

Peanut Oil: First introduced by enslaved Africans in the American South, especially in deep-fat frying, a cooking style that originated in western and central Africa.
Kola: Trees were native to western Sudan, and their fruit, the Kola nut, became the principle ingredient used in making modern cola drinks. During the slave trade, kola nuts were given enslaved Africans to suppress their hunger and thirst. They were used also as a medicine of sorts.
Rice: In 1685 indigenous varieties of rice were imported from Madagascar to South Carolina. Some historians contend that enslaved Africans first showed white Americans how to cultivate rice. By 1740, rice had become a major staple in the South Carolina farming and slave-based economy.
www.assocgroup.trustpass.alibaba.com

Sesame: Also known as benne seed. Brought over by West Africans. Slaves raised large crops of sesame, being fond of the plant’s nutritious seeds for making soups and puddings. They also used the sesame oil for cooking and light8ing lamps within private estates as well as on the public roads.

Junteenth

Juneteenth (19 June 1865) is one of the oldest-known celebrations to commemorate the end of enslavement. It is celebrated primarily in Texas as that was the day many enslaved Texans learned that they had been freed. Numerous tales attempt to explain the two-year delay between Abraham Lincoln’s Executive Order 1 January 1863 and the day the Texans heard the news. Many continue to make the annual pilgrimage to Galveston, the city where General Gordon Granger of the Union made t he freedom announcement, to celebrate the day. While not as popular as Kwanzaa, Juneteenth is celebrated by African Americans throughout the United States with numerous cultural events. Because of its Texas roots, most menus for the event include barbecue spare ribs or chicken. William Wiggins recorded that his first Juneteenth celebrations included many foods familiar to African American southerners, “platter of barbecued chicken, long link sausages and brisket-sized chunks of beef, bowls of steaming brown beans seasoned with hunks of jowl bacon, a cold apple, lettuce, and mayonnaise salad, trays of white ‘store-bought’ bread, frosty pitcher of red lemonade, jugs of homemade blackberry wine, and a pan of peach cobbler”.

Foods Accessible to Slaves: The African American Traditional Core Diet

Meats, Poultry, and Seafood

Pork Extremities
Chicken Extremities
wings, necks, back, and feet
Chicken Organs
livers and gizzards
Wild Game
rabbits, squirrels, deer, and
opossums
Seafood
dried and salted herring;
freshwater fish, such as trout,
catfish, kingfish, croaker, black
and red drum, and flounder;
and shellfish, such as crabs,
clams, and mussels

Vegetables, Legumes, Tubers, and Grains

Green Vegetables
okra; collard, mustard, and
turnip greens; poke salad,
cabbages; and pumpkins
Legumes
cowpeas and lima beans
Tubers
white potatoes, sweet potatoes,
onions, and turnips
Grains
rice, corn, and wheat
Wild Berries

Breads, Sweets, and Beverages

Breads
cornbread and biscuits
Desserts
sweet breads made with
molasses or honey
Beverages
buttermilk and teas made from
roots and herbs, such as
sassafras
(United States: African American Foodways)

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

The African diet made a dramatic change once the slaves left home. Though it may be difficult to believe, but the diet of African slaves were more nutritious than the slave masters. The owner’s diets consisted mostly of fatty foods, sweets, and alcohol which made them lethargic. The meals of slaves consisted mostly of vegetables and no alcohol because they needed to be strong in order to work the fields. As the African began to assimilate in to American culture, they made do with what they had. No longer were they privy to the fresh vegetables they had in Africa, but they made good use of the throwaway foods of the plantation kitchens (tops of turnips and beets and dandelions). They began cooking with collards, kale, cress, mustard and pokewee (A History of Soul Food).
Some slaves were allowed to plant their own gardens. They also received rations from the masters. Some accounts say it was weekly, and others say monthly. Nevertheless, they received corn meal, a few pounds of meat and black molasses, not nearly enough to make a filling meal. They used onions, garlic, thyme, peppers, and bay leaf to make each bite tasty and palatable.
The slaves’ diet made another evolution once they began cooking in the big house. With an assortment of ingredients at their fingertips and a “well-tuned African palate”, the slave cooks would prepare delicious meals for their masters. Southern cooking took on a whole new meaning; fried chicken, sweet potatoes (which replaced the African yam), was being served alongside of boiled white potato. “Regional foods like apples, peaches and berries, nuts and grains, soon became puddings and pies.”

Coming to America

During the slave trade, slaves were taken mostly from West Africa and the coast. According to Jessica Harris, “Peculiar as it may sound, slave traders really understood African cultures – especially West African. If you read slave ship logs, you realize the captains knew that people from one region of Africa ate yams and would not eat rice and so, in their own self-interest, they brought on board foods the slaves would eat. The healthier a slave looked at auction, the higher the price he or she could garner” (Wolf). Slaves were also given an occasional piece of fruit. In an attempt to fill their stomachs, a “slabber” sauce made from old beef, rotten fish and salt was poured over rice and beans. Another story is of Africans hiding seeds (watermelon, okra, and sesame) in their ears, clothes and hair. Although this could be true, the former is more likely (A History of Soul Food).

The last remnant of home on this treacherous journey was the meals they received from their captors. Alexander Falconbridge, and English doctor who made several voyages on board slave ships, describes a typical meal in his 1788 narrative Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa: The diet of the Negroes while on board, consists chiefly of horsebeans [fava beans] boiled to the consistence of a pulp; boiled yams and rice and sometimes a small quantity of beef and pork. They [(the sailors] sometime make use of a sauce composed of palm-oil mixed with flour, water and red peppers, which the sailors call slabber-sauce. Yams are the favorite food of the Eboe or Bight Negroes, and rice or corn of those from the Gold and Windward Coasts; each preferring the produce of their native soil (Stow and Baldwin).

Foods that were brought over to the New World due to the slave trade would forever become linked to the enslavement of Africans. “For example, slaves ate yams, peanuts, corn, and rice during the middle passage (see figure 1). Citrus fruits, like limes and lemons, hot malegueta peppers, herbs, and spices were provisioned during the middle passage for medicinal purposes. West African or Gold Coast slaves, who had centuries of experience, cultivated rice in the lowlands of South Carolina and Georgia. Sugar cane traveled the circuitous route North Africa to Spain, Portugal, Madeira, the Canary Islands, Santo Domingo, and finally to Louisiana in 1751” by way of Columbus (United States: African American Foodways).


Figure 1

http://www.waywelivednc.com/maps/historical/middle-passage.htm

Out of Africa

African cuisine is peppered with influences from across the globe as well as indigenous crops. The peanut, for example were transplanted into Africa by way of South America (Holloway). Arab traders introduced the banana to Africa (Wolf). Crops such as okra, rice, watermelon, sesame (also known as benne seed), kola, coffee, yams, leafy greens, etc. are indigenous to Africa. Africans utilized such methods as boiling, steaming (using leaves as a steamer), roasting, smoking, drying meats, and stewing. Basic ingredients in African cooking include African spinach or morongo (this term refers to the leaves of many edible plants), buttermilk, chilis, mealies or corn (mealie is the African word for maize), peanuts or groundnuts, pineapples, plantains and bananas, pumpkins and squashes, spices, and sweet potatoes (Stow and Baldwin).
Though seafood was often used in stews, the average African diet was largely vegetarian. They used salt as a preservative, and pepper and other spices, along with okra were used as seasoning. Research shows that most tribal Africans used basically similar simple cooking techniques. Earthenware, squashes, and gourds were used as eating and cooking utensils. Palm oil or vegetable butters were often used to fry foods. Nuts and seeds were used as thickening agents, and some ingredients were smoked for flavoring. Fritters and rice dishes were also common in African cooking (A History of Soul Food).

Definition of Southern Cuisine

To begin, let’s define Southern Soul food. Southern cuisine has many categories; Cajun, Louisiana Creole, Tex-Mex, Floribbean, Appalachian Mountain, Carolina Lowcountry (also known as Gullah or Geechee), and Soul food. Influences come from Native American, British, Irish, French, Spanish, and African cuisines. The culinary south includes states south of the Mason-Dixon Line easterly to the states of Texas. The definition for soul food is not so concise. The term “soul food” means different things to different people. In her book, Black Hunger, Doris Witt reasons that the “soul of the food loosely refers to the foods origin in Africa”. (Diet of African Americans). It also refers to a “soothing, comfort that brings back warm memories of family dinners”. In America, it usually implies African American cuisine (A History of Soul Food). In the 1960s African American cooks were seeking an identity, and decided that “soul food” was best because “soul” entails a natural expressiveness. We will therefore define soul food as “Southern food with an accent that is spicier, saltier, and sweeter” (Danforth, Feierabend and Chassman). Now that we’ve defined Southern Soul food, let’s take a quick look at African cuisine.

This chart from cultural geographer

Richard Pillsbury depicts the grits line

extending around Gainesville, Florida

west to parts of Texas and north

into Virginia (Harber)

Thesis

The rich flavors of Southern cuisine are only surpassed by its rich heritage. With roots heavily grounded in African cuisine, Southern Soul food has evolved from the "slave's table" to the "master's table," from the peasent class to the masses across all regions of the USA.