Know the food, know the people

Black restaurant week does not necessarily mean soul food. Black chefs can be ‘food forward’ as any other chef and maybe more. We, as a people, have had a long history in America and other colonized countries and had to learn and prepare the foods of other races. We also had to create something out of the undesirable parts of animals that the white culture considered garbage for our own survival. Black people not only survived off of this rejected food, we turned it into culinary magic. Hog heads became a gelatinous loaf of bits of meat, spices, and the meats natural gelatin that was sliced for sandwiches, called hog head cheese. 

I watched my grandmother make this time-consuming sandwich meat, adding her specific spices. When ready she would slice the meat and lay on toasted homemade bread, mustard, slice of sweet onion and salt and pepper. For us kids maybe a fresh slice of tomato she grew and lettuce.

We ate neck bones, ox tails stewed in a spicy tomato gravy and Carolina rice. So many cheap and undesirable parts of the animals that my great-grandmother and grandmother used created five-star meals for my siblings and I. Now these meats, like everything else, has been claimed by the dominant culture and has been priced out of the black cultures availability or you can’t even find them in our communities. 

One item of which I have scanned most of Kansas City for is crowder peas or field peas. My grandfather made these for me every time we visited on Sundays. This was high eating food to me because I only got the dish at my grandfather’s house. My grandparents were farmers and gathers and used most of what grow up around them or what they could grow. I only ate crowder peas at my grandfather’s because my grandmother was a black-eyed pea person. So, on those high Sunday meals at grandpa’s we would have crowder peas, okra and ham stew, sweet cornbread, and butter milk. It might not sound like much to you but the balance of flavor is the genius of any cooking. My grandfather also made sweet potato cobbler and I have never seen anyone else make it or known anyone that has even heard of it. 

I want to encourage you to not just eat black food during Black Restaurant Week from some of America’s greatest cuisine but to do it regularly. We have been reinventing food for 400 years and you should find out what you're missing. From slave food to black southern food, vegan, fusion, Caribbean, and everything in between. 

Eat, be well and love the people.