Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New Stand Studios in Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Joined as usual with Nastasia the Hammer Lopez, although she's still in California chilling. How are you doing, Stas? I'm good.
How are you? Doing well. You decided not to fly home in the uh in the snowstorm? Decided that would be a bad idea, huh? Yeah.
Plus, I had COVID during Christmas, so it's nice to see my family. Yeah. You did have the COVID Christmas, the the uh the most enjoyable Omicron solo Christmas. Uh we got uh, of course, uh John behind me. How are you doing, John?
Doing great, thanks. Everything good? Yep, everything's great. Were you back in New York City or you uh you in Connecticut? No, no, back in New York.
Okay, listen, I have another hot dog. We can talk about it in a in a minute. I have another hot dog to add to the list of hot dogs. Someday, by the way, Joe Hazen in the booth, how you doing, Joe? I'm doing great.
How are you guys? Doing well. And in our roving, I'm just gonna call Jack a roving booth from now on because I never know where the hell he is. He's either California, Mexico, Long Island. You're in Mexico now, right, Jack?
Mexico, probably for the last time. So there's life, there's hope. Not ever, but I mean for the last time. For now at least. You know what?
I do go to places at this point, and I'm like, I will never be here again. I do that now. Like it, like it's weird, it's weird. It is weird. It'd be like, even places I like, I'm like, I will never be here again.
You know what I'm saying? Anyway. Or when I meet somebody somewhere like here, I'm like, I'll never see you again, probably ever. Yeah. For me, most of the time, that's good.
You know what I mean? It's not that I don't like people, but it's just like a lot to try to to to try to maintain, you know? Anyway, uh Patreon, uh, people who are listening live, calling your questions to 917-410 1507. That's 917-410-1507. If you don't know what Patreon is, or you're not a Patreon member, uh, go look us up, right?
Right, John? Yep. And remember, Patreon listeners get 20% off the book of the week at Kitchen Arts and Letters. This week's book's gonna be High on the Hog by Jessica Harris. So go check it out, Kitchen Arts and Letters.
Let me introduce who I have with us. Uh uh, I've known I've known her a long time. I don't think she's been on the maybe she's been on the show a long time ago. But we have with us today a special guest, Dr. Jessica Harris.
Hello. Hi, how are you? Doing well, doing well. So she's here. I just I just figured I'd usually uh I rant for about 15 minutes before I even get around to introducing the guests, but I figure let's just have you in here so that you can feel free to chime in at any point.
Rant along with me. Yeah, rant along, rant along with me. Okay. So uh so you know, I'll just introduce who, you know, in case you don't know uh who she is, um she was a professor at uh Queen's College for eight, you know, what like a long time? How long?
Uh half a century. Yeah. And started writing books at some point in the 80s. Correct. Yeah.
And has how many books have you written so far? Uh written 12. Written, edited, translated, whatever, 18. So a few. And uh the first book, uh the first book of yours that um I bought was uh The Africa Cookbook, which I think was uh in the the mid-90s.
Yeah. That was in the 90s. Yeah, and uh at the time uh it was the almost only non-colonially colonial focused book on uh on other than northern African fruit uh that I ha could find that I could get. So what's it like being a pioneer in that field? Just means I'm old.
Just means I'm old. You know, I mean the thing is that you know, you do what you do and you I who knew, pioneer. What the heck? Um, you know, I I had written about other things. Basically, I was sort of tracing a culinary curve from the African continent through to the so-called new world.
And um, you know, the editor finally said, Okay, let's do it. So it's like, okay, Africa it is. So there it was. Right. And then 10, 15 years, you many books in between.
Uh 10, 15 years after that, you wrote uh a book which has now been turned into a Netflix series, High on the Hog, right? And so uh I think a lot of people who maybe didn't know you before know you because of uh High on the Hog. So kind of what's that been like to have this book that you wrote like, you know, it's a decade ago. Yeah, yeah. It's a decade.
Actually, it's 11 years ago now. So what's it like to have a book that you wrote back then hit so hard now? That's gotta be, I guess, gratifying, but like it's weird. It's it's deeply weird. I mean, it's first of all, I tend to not read my books after I write them.
So people will now tell me things that it's like, oh, did I say oh, okay, I guess I did. All right, well, who knew? Um it's um it's interesting. It's it's deeply gratifying in in many ways, all of the kind of wonderful things that people are saying, certainly about the show, and equally about the book. Um, it's surprising.
You know, I've become this person that I kind of look around and go, who the heck is she? You know? Um, but it's it's very interesting. Right. I mean, you've been named to a time's 100 most influential people.
I mean, it's amazing. I mean I think it's great. That's wacko. I think it's fantastic. Straight up wacko.
Yeah, everybody that knows you already like, you know, knows that you should be up on those lists like since forever ago. You know what I mean? But it's uh it's so funny because everybody, like if if you go around in the kind of uh food world, you're kind of one of those you're one of those people that I don't know, everybody respects. It's weird. It's like it's kind of like uh, and people don't want to say no to you.
Like when we went to you told me, yeah. Yeah, we told well, you know, you told me to go to uh Dukey Chase's last time I was in uh New Orleans. And because uh, you know, you spend part of your time in New Orleans, part of your time in Brooklyn, part of your time in Martha's Vineyard, right? Right. That's not a bad way to be.
I'm not complaining. Not a bad way to be. So you you told you sent me there, uh, and you said I needed to talk to them about cocktails, and you told them that they needed to talk to me, and both of us were like, I don't know, but she told us that we needed to talk to each other, so here we are, because like everyone just listens to what you say. You know what it is? Was it a good conversation?
Oh, it's great. There you go. By the way, that I think I told you the uh uh the recipe, the printed recipe for their shrimp clements so is inaccurate because uh uh they do something different to the shrimp clements so there. To me, that was the It's those old pots. Yeah, to me that was the that was the money dish, and not even just the shrimp, it's the butter.
It's yeah, it's the butter, it's the garlic. It's I've naturally never tasted it because I'm allergic to shrimp, but I do know that it is the dish that you know, the late and sainted Leah Chase would send out when she wanted to send somebody something special. She'd always send the shrimp clemence. So it's always what I say, go have. Yeah, I uh I tried making it according to the published, and there's two or three published recipes from them, you know, or because she uh she used to make it on uh when she used to do the rounds of the talk shows or something.
That was one of the things not the same. I mean, like the I'm pretty good at hitting a recipe, like if I'm following the recipe, not the same. You say it's the pots. I well, I mean, I think, you know, there is that thing that in in uh well, happy new year, by the way. It's lunar new year.
So there is that thing that uh Grace uh Young has informed me about that's called the walk hand, which is the hand of the cook in the dish. You know, no matter how accurate the recipe is, you don't get the hand of the cook in the dish. And that may just be something as simple as knowing a smell and doing something when the smell occurs, or turning the spoon one way and then another way, and then you know, you know all of those kinds of technical scientific things, but there are all of those little tiny things that you can't encapsulate in a recipe. Right. This is why, like, even like uh it's better.
I mean, I shouldn't say this because I'm trying to write a book now and I want people to buy it. But uh the nice thing about YouTube is you can physically watch what people do. Yeah. And I always say it's better to watch a cook in many ways and to listen to them because Well, I mean, and and sometimes the cook doesn't even know it. I think most of the time.
You know, the cook doesn't know it. It's something that happens automatically, that unless something goes ping and you know, sort of sets it off in their memory, they don't even think about it. And those are the imponderables. I hate writing recipes, you know. I need to stop saying that because I am actually working on a cookbook too.
But recipes we have come to think of it as being, you know, like blueprints for a house. If you move this wall, the house will fall. It's like, no. No, it won't. You know, the house will still stand, and it might be a better house for you if you do it the way you think it should be.
So uh I also have this problem with recipes, right? Because we're both gonna talk ourselves out of these cookbooks. So let's not go quite down there. No, but I mean it's like the issue is right that it's like uh people want recipes, and I get that, but it it's more like the structure of how to think. I w I'd rather just talk to people about you know how how to think about a certain process or how to you know what I mean, or well, if you think of old cookbooks, old cookbooks made assumptions about people knowing how to cook.
And so they didn't say you've got to do this and wait for 50 cook until done. Yeah. You know, not 15 minutes or until this or until you know, we have dumbed down our cooks. But people hate that in recipes. They hate it.
You know what I mean? Like, so like like literally, John, right or wrong. My what I always tell people, Stas, you back me up, is like how long how much should I add? The right amount. Yeah, exactly.
Enough. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Enough. How threatened to write a cookbook that just has ingredients.
Not even measures, just ingredients. Well, this is why I feel that people before you should attend okay. Look, sometimes you can't help it. No, but baking is something else now. I'm talking, I'm talking cooking, not baking.
But you should have a target. I always say this a lot. You should taste something before you attempt to make it, unless there is no other choice. You know what I'm saying? If you're if you're trying to make something specific.
If you just want to make something delicious, then sure, read the body. Do what you want to do. Do what you do, read the bones of a recipe, make it your own. But if you're trying to make something, you should taste the target before you I don't know what you're getting at. You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, I know. Uh so speaking of target, uh, so I uh have something for us to taste that's outside of the realm of what we uh normally uh do. Uh so what do you normally do? We don't normally eat things. So I was in California.
I took my first trip since COVID. You? Yeah, yeah, I have for work. What happened? Okay, so I'll okay.
So I was supposed to press up. I was supposed to go to uh I was supposed to go to an event that got canceled because that got omacroned out. By the way, you know who else is allergic to shrimp, speaking of great minds, uh are allergic alike is uh McGee can't have shrimp. Harold McGee. Yeah, can't have can't have any crustaceans.
So, you know. Oh, okay. Well, I've always loved him. Another reason to love him. Yeah, yeah.
You know what he's he's considering well, he's not. I I I'm trying to get him to consider taking the shots. You know, I used to be allergic to cherries, and now like I'm back to being cherry-proof because I've been but of course are you cherry proof or are you just cherry resistant? Resistant, cherry efficient now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Uh anyway, I don't know if they can do it with with crustaceans, but anyway, because they are delicious. Although I have to say, have you always been allergic? I think it's an adult onset for me. I vaguely remember peeling and maybe eating shrimp as a child. But um Peeling shrimp's no fun.
Uh it wasn't a problem. I was a kid. I had little tiny fingers. Getting that little black vein out was fine. It was an adventure.
Are you okay with crayfish powder, like in small amounts? Uh so it makes it difficult for a lot of students. It's iodine, and so I'm very careful. And and you know, I mean, and particularly in Asian restaurants where there's a lot of fish sauce that may have oysters and stuff, I pay attention. Uh-huh.
So uh so anyway, I'm in California, and the one day I'm supposed to fly back is the day we have the snowstorm here, right? So like my flight gets canceled, and you know, thanks, no thanks, Delta, Delta hosed me. I got on a jet blue flight. Did you know they have a category of flight that you're not allowed to have a check bag on? It's like it's like that's that, you know, the the super is super super savor.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's like A B C D E, and then like right before they shut the door, they're like, and group F. Yeah. Group Q. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That that was me. So, but thankfully uh Nastasia found it for me. Otherwise I would have been hosed. Cause I'm one of those guys, I just want to get back. I just want to get back.
You're ready to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to get back. So, like, you know, my choice was hang out in, you know, beautiful San Francisco. I know Stas has her issues with San Francisco, right, Stas?
Oh, I thought you didn't like it either. I like San Francisco. I just there's aspects of it. Like, why can't I go? Why aren't there 24-hour stores in San Francisco?
Like it's not New York. Do you know that right now in San Francisco, like it's a new thing that people get on social media and say we're gonna go break into XYZ store? And so all of the fancy stores have 24-hour security guards outside of them. Yeah, I do know. I read about that.
Yeah. It's bananas. So I'm out there, so like, you know, I get there and I'm still on New York Time. So I get up at five in the morning and I'm thirsty as hell. I am thirsty as hell.
And I know people are gonna say, oh, what a douche, what a douche. I think that's as strong as I can go, right? In a family show. That's enough. Yeah.
So, but I uh seltzer water. I want seltzer. I just want bubbly water, all right? I just want it. I'm 50.
I want my water the way I want it. I've earned it. So anyway, so like I'm like, I'm gonna go outside and I'm gonna get it. Nope. Walked an hour, and I have not felt in physical danger in an American city the way I felt walking in some parts of San Francisco since the 80s.
It was cra it's crazy over there. I'm not gonna say anything, but anyway. I know some places you can visit that you feel physical danger. So let's just draw the draw the veil of discretion over that before we get all right, you know, sort of x'ed off of all tourist offices. Yeah, yeah.
But it was uh, but you know, look, that's when it's you know in the middle of the mor, yeah, early, early, early in the morning. But I'm just surprised at how it shuts down that city. I love you, San Francisco, but why do you shut down? I guess that's why we're the city that never sleeps. That's it.
Do you know that only like 20 minutes outside or half hour outside of San Francisco, they have redwoods. It's so beautiful there. All right, anyway. So I get so jet blue is like, hell with it. I'm gonna fly back to New York, even in a snowstorm.
We get almost all the way, but of course, the folks at JFK, even though the snow stopped, hadn't swept the runway clean yet. So we couldn't land, and they divert us to of all places, Buffalo. So I'm in the airport. Yeah, well, as well. So I'm in Buffalo, in the airport, and they don't let me out of the airport.
But one of the things I've always wanted to try in Buffalo is this stuff they have called sponge candy. I know it. I love it. It's amazing. I'll eat it all.
Here's a well, take so I have I have a couple darks and mostly milk. So like take some and then pass them around so that John and Joe can have it. It's kind of well, so what they do is so it's for you guys might know it as honeycomb candy, but the difference is in Buffalo they uh in Buffalo they uh they add some gelatin to it, so the bubbles are real small. So most honeycomb candy, the bubbles are kind of all different size, because you cook sugar and and syrup until it gets, you know, up to kind of hard crack stage, and then you put the baking soda in and poops. Yeah, and then they cut it into a block with a saw, and then they dip it in chocolate.
But they add gelatin to this one before they add the baking soda. And so what that does is it creates a real fine texture on it. And I've always wanted to have sponge candy. So thank you, Storm. Now I got to have the sponge candy.
And who knew? Because you could have come by my house. I order honeycomb. It's just it's a candy from my childhood. There used to be a shop on the vineyard called Darling's Candy Store, and they used to sell it as molasses puff.
And as molasses Puff, it wasn't chocolate covered. It was just the sponge. And it was absolutely amazing. And it's been one of those tastes of my childhood for forever. So about five years ago, maybe ten, I actually found it in London.
I think it may be a British thing that's come over. Um, but I found it in London where they call it honeycomb. And you can go into the, you know, those massive candy stores that they have in London. So you can go and buy it by the ounces or whatever. So I would always come home with a suitcase packed full of honeycomb.
But about, well, since COVID, uh, I, you know, on the net at midnight or one o'clock, cuz what else am I gonna do except shop? And there it is. Honeycomb. So I've I've ordered it. In fact, there's some that's going to be delivered today or tomorrow.
Well, tell me what you think of the tell me what you think of the Buffalo version. It tastes like a crunchy bar. It's really good. Yeah, right. Only this one I think is older than the Crunchy Bar.
I think Buffalo started making it in the 40s, I think. I don't I don't know. But delicious, thank you. But someday I'm gonna get to go back to Buffalo because I want to try their beef on WEC. I've never had that either.
I don't know that either. But this one I do know. It's lovely. Thank you. Nice.
So, you know, it's good news to gain diverted, right, John? Yes. Yes. A couple times. So uh, and just so people, you know, you don't only write cookbooks or books about food, you also write about cocktails.
Mm-hmm. Right. And then in 2017, which I can't believe this is the maybe I have not seen you, obviously, I haven't seen hardly anyone, but I haven't seen you since the pandemic. So in my mind, your your memoir is still a recent thing. Even though that was uh four or four years ago now that it came out.
Um you have uh a uh a memoir where it is uh my soul looks back and it's it's music paired with like chunks of your life and kind of the amazing people that you've kind of hung around with. So that's another aspect of Jessica Harris people need to look at. Um but there's a new book that I didn't even know was out that uh I looked at and I want to talk to you about before we talk about the Museum of Food and Drink, which is kind of why we brought you here today. Uh not for myself. Well, for what you have done.
Sure, sure backstroke. I love it when you do it in homework. Come on, walking backwards, back in that one off. Vintage Postcards from the African world, uh, in the dignity of their work and the joy of their play. Uh a book came out, I guess right mid.
Middle of the pandemic. May of 2020. So I looked at this book and I kind of just want you to talk about it a little bit because it's kind of amazing. It's first of all, there's this word that I didn't even know existed, deleteologist. Mm-hmm.
I am a deleteologist. Do you know what that is, John? Don't look at my don't look at my notes. Do you know what that is? I did not know until I looked at your notes.
Oh, you cheating. Well, I can see it right here. But you're from Belgium, which is one of the play yes, if I'm correct, no? My dad is from Belgium. Your dad is from Belgium.
But I mean, so um Deltaologist is one who collects postcards. And some of the great well, some of one of the things that started me on my postcard journey, if you will, is the um flea market at Sablon in Brussels. Okay. So that hence that was the Belgian reference. But um so I collect postcards.
I specifically collect, well, I collect a lot of different areas, but the book is about cards that I collect about um early images, and when I say early, some of the oldest postcards go back to the turn of the 20th century. So very, very 1904, 1890s, the end of 1890s, um about Africans and Africans in diaspora and food. And that means everything from growing it to, you know, serving it to processing it to eating it, and then celebrations. So that's a a bulk of the collection. I mean, what's kind of amazing to me about it, so it's uh, you know, for those of you that you know go take a look at it, but it's uh there's uh there's an essay about it, or like, you know, and then like just a bunch of amazing images as well.
And I think what's kind of I don't know, it's just such a you wouldn't expect it just saying what the book is, but the richness it's there, all the layers that and the different ways you can approach the images. Yeah, that's the thing that's so much fun about postcards because they're they're so layered. You can, I mean, I've had people who are dress historians who have written to me to say, oh my god, what a resource for anybody that's working on costume. I have people who are looking at tools and just some of the tools, some of the old mortars. There is one where a woman has a particular kind of hoe that is, you know, sort of native, if you will, to the African continent.
They're all of these kinds of layers on which you can look at things. They're they're really snapshots of a moment in time, and as such, they're kind of fun. I mean, you know, you I always wonder, what were the people thinking. Some of them were posed, clearly posed. Some of them are um are mislabeled.
I mean, there's a whole set that were done by a Frenchman named Fartier. And Fartier was actually an ethnographer, large quotation marks around that word, um, who was in Western Africa at the turn of in the very early 20th century, um, who took pictures. But he took pictures all over the place that then became postcards. He he had there's a whole collection of his, I think they have some at the University of Oh gosh. Midwest somewhere.
Um, and um, and they're they're just extraordinary. But as they became postcards, some of them are mislabeled. Right, so it's like one like says it's in Dakar, but it's Benin's. You can begin to sort of see all of those, all of those things. And then if you juxtapose the cards, you can see things, you know, oh wow, that's a basket, and that's the same basket in South Carolina, you know, kind of thing.
So you can see things like that. But equally you can sort of you get the colonial eye as well, because who's taking these pictures? And who's consuming them, yeah. And who were they taken for? And you know, so there's so many layers and levels on which you can look at them.
They're kind of fun. Right, trying to see the person behind the pose behind the eye that it was intended for. But then uh then you can just turn all that off and and like like I'm trying to understand how the agriculture works. I'm looking at the size of those damn oysters. Right, or the size of the the fish.
Yeah, oh my gosh, the fish, and they say, you know, nobody's catching fish that size anymore. What about the coconuts? Either those are the tiniest people on earth or like John, like right with those are water coconuts, right? They were like this big around. Wow.
Yeah, there's some, yeah, I mean, they're they're pretty amazing. Like people can't, I know I'm on radio, I hold my hands out here. People are really gonna see that. Yeah. Big.
Big. Yeah. Big. Anyway, so like I think it's definitely uh a book people should check out. Well, thank you.
Um yeah, it's such un it's just unusual. It's also like uh what's nice about it is um yeah, you're trying to find like the people behind I know it's just like I say, a lot of layers with which to to look in and uh who is it? Was it uh who is it that talked about uh pictures pictures being um about death? Is it Bart? Is that Roland Bart?
I think so. Anyway, damn defined though. I was thinking I was only a French major, I have no idea. I think it wasn't it? I think so.
It's been a while since I read that. Uh but just uh like so like that's how I grew up kind of like the philosophy of uh photography as uh photography as form of death because you're looking into someone who's static and stasis is death, right? So it's like and you're looking in there, but you can tell that they were alive. It's kind of an amazing thing. Yeah, you know, I mean, and one of the cards specifically that calls to mind is there is a card of a woman who was an ex slave, you know, somebody who had been enslaved, actually standing on the auction block on which she had been sold when she was five.
And so you want to talk about layers and levels and just everything that's encapsulated in that. Yeah, with the price tag. Well, and then you've got the well, in the captioning you've got the amount because I think she w it was fifteen thousand dollars or fifteen hundred. Yeah, fifteen hundred dollars. Yeah.
And that's that's just so horrific and uh it's unspeakable. And it's that's in New Orleans. And yep. And uh the the image is so compelling that I went and looked up that hotel, and as you rightly point out, it's the old uh St. Louis Hotel.
It I guess got destroyed in a hurricane and they rebuilt it in a similar fashion. But it's like those things that just make you go, ooh, you know, it's it's there's there's a lot. I mean, there's there's more to postcards than most folks think. Or like just wish you were here. The look uh look in that kid's eyes who's delivering meals that like those.
Yeah, as you say, an adorable boy, but like, man, those eyes. Yeah, what has he seen? Yeah. And of course, now dead. Obviously, no, all of them.
Yeah. All of all of them, because the postcards date unless they were absolute infants. None of the cards are later than the nineteen thirties. No. And you have, I think, one or two, I can't remember where you have the the hand tinted version and the black and white version.
Yeah, to see how people tinted them. And unfortunately, what what I didn't get to show a lot was some of the comments on the back. Oh. Okay. Sometimes you get to see, you know, the sender commenting on the card.
You know. And were they mostly white folks sending the cards? Pretty much uh, you know, I would say ninety-nine percent. Yeah. Yeah.
You can't always tell. Right, right. But you get that sense. Because remember that back then, postcard, you know, there was no Snapchat. There was no, you know, whatever you you're using, that's this instant communication.
So postcards were a little bit of that. It was quicker than a letter. You didn't have to write a letter. Right. Less formal.
Less formal. And, you know, certainly something that was public because the mailman could read it. Right. You know, as well. So that you get a whole nother sense of how how people so one of them says, you know, won't be on the morning train coming later, you know, kind of thing.
Um, so they didn't go necessarily quite that rapidly, but they were a way of of communicating, you know, things that might otherwise, you know, nowadays you'd call, you'd send a text, you'd do whatever. Even in the 70s, though, I love postcards. Yeah. I used to love them. Yeah.
I'll tell you a quick story because I'm gonna get in trouble. But I used to work for the I worked for the post office as a casual employee when I was in college in the summertime. Very casual. Although it's a cra that's a it's a cruddy job. They really uh anyway, uh, it's good if you can get in the postal union.
If you're a casual worker, not so much. Uh but the um I remember once I was like, you would have all these catalogs come in, right? So I would see, I would see, so when Publishers Clearinghouse sends you the envelope and it's like, you know, you may have won, I would see the entire town. I would like put all of those, you may have. They may have worked.
May have. Didn't may have. Anyway, so I remember I was reading someone's catalog once, and I just I just planted maybe 200 of these catalogs, you know. And uh the guy's like, That's somebody's mail, you're committing a federal offense. I was like, really, dude?
Really? So it's like you're saying, you know, the mail, the you know, the the carrier can read that the postcard, and yeah, they frown on it, but come on, we look at that stuff. Well, of course. I mean, you know, it's there. It's it's you know, you putting it in the box.
You can't help but read it. Yeah. The guy, the guy who he wasn't super mad at me, but he was the Nixie clerk. You know about Nixie clerks? No.
In every zip code, there's at least one person whose job it is to figure out completely undeliverable stuff. And that's the person who knows the most. People who work at the post office, at least they used to, have a surprising amount of knowledge about who you are and where you live and who's in your Yeah, yeah. And so the Nixie clerk is the person who knows the most. So when something's just like scratched across and like it comes into that post office, they're the ones who figure out how to get it to you.
Or not. Or not. If they're good, they get it to you. And if they if they don't, uh, they don't. All right.
So now, uh, I have I have John's gonna get bent at me. Let's talk about the Museum of Food and Drink. So I don't know how long ago it was. Well, I mean, since basically since forever, you know, I've wanted to have you uh work with the Museum of Food and Drink Um on a project, and then is it what is it, four years ago now? Three.
Oh, it's longer than four. I think it's your fault. Yes, yes. Uh no, but I mean, in terms of just the current exhibition. No, it's longer than four, I think.
Remember we was that first meeting. We lost two for COVID. Yeah, and then it took us a while to do that. And then there were at least two years before we ran into COVID. So it's probably five, five, maybe six.
Uh all right. So uh and thus do we age. Yeah. Uh right. And people, for those of you, it gets it gets worse.
Time runs faster. It's like so weird. You'd think it would run slower. My grandfather used to say that. It's like, you know, he I never knew him, but my mother always quoted him as saying, you know, as you get older, it just moves faster.
It moves. Remember when it used to take forever to get to Christmas? I know. Now you blink and it's Christmas again. Remember Christmas morning?
How messed up that was? Even waiting that like 45 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.
But let me digress. Yes. So uh we knew that we wanted to get you in. And so we had done a couple exhibitions. Uh well, you know, a million years ago, I did something on country ham.
Then we did um we did flavor and then uh which is Oh, before flavor, the puffing gun. Oh, the puffing gun, which was supposed to we wanted to do all of cereal, but I we couldn't do cereal because we didn't have the money. So we just took one component of the cereal exhibition, which was the puffing gun. So we did the puffing gun. Uh then we did, you know, flavor, which was about kind of the the birth of the flavor industry and how you know your tongue and your palate works.
Then we did Chow, which was um uh, you know, how did it come to pass that uh how did the Chinese American restaurant come to pass? Because it's kind of an amazing story. Uh and then we said, okay, uh we want, you know, we want you to come in and we want to figure out what kind of story we should tell about uh uh black food in America or the contribution of uh African Americans to uh American food waste. And so we're like, well, that's we can't that's not us, right? What we have is an apparatus or uh, you know, uh, you know, we have a vehicle, right?
A thing, the museum, and there was only one person on earth. I swear, there's only one person on earth who I was like, I think it goes back to what I said earlier is that people may disagree with you, but they're gonna but they're gonna think but they're gonna defer to you. You know what I mean? Right, there's relatively well. There's a level of respect that only you can get.
And so we got an amaz how many people did we have on that initial meeting that you ran? Oh, it was about 30, I think. 30, maybe 40, I don't know, but it was it was a sizable number. And an impressive group. Yeah, it was like we sort of rounded up the usual suspects and dug up some that folks hadn't thought of.
Yes. Do you want to talk about kind of like how you conceptualized what the because it you know, from us from a museum standpoint, for those of you that don't know, like I'm uh on the board of the museum on the founder. Let's talk about conceptualizing a museum. People who just sort of say, and let there be museum, that would be Dave. Yeah, right.
So uh well, so the the issue is the hard part about an ex uh exhibition, any exhibition, is you have finite space. So you gotta you gotta pair this the story you're trying to tell down into kind of the space that you know is allotted to you and the budget that you have. And then when you when you're tackling a story that's so giant, the main problem, the main problem becomes what what are you going to say with this space allotted? And so to me, like how um you know, you and the group of advisors came up with a story. Maybe if you want to talk about that a little bit, because I thought it was kind of an interesting process.
Wow, well, it was it was certainly crazy, and it was all very discursive. I mean, it a lot of it came out in in just plain conversation talking. I mean, the centerpiece of the exhibit as now is a legacy quilt. I mean, it's there are several centerpieces, but the the sort of entry, wow, oh my lord, what is this and what are we learning? Is um a legacy quilt.
And I remember we were just riffing one day sitting around a table, and I said, you know, I've always thought that a quilt is important. And you were the one that said, yes. We are going to do a quilt. A quilt. Now what can we do with the quilt?
And so we ended up with a legacy quilt where we've kind of encapsulated 400 plus years of African Americans and food in this country. By the way, I think that the title of the show is sort of informational and and you know, sort of a little, you know, not necessarily argumentative, but uh, you know, it there are people who will raise eyebrows. And the title is African slash American, making the nations table. So the idea of it, the backstory, if you will, is the absolute foundational role that African Americans had in the creation, not just of African American food, but of American food. And so that's that's kind of what we started from.
That was the matrix. Once we all agreed that we agreed on that, then it wasn't it was it was difficult, but it wasn't impossible because it's like, okay, how are we gonna try to break it down? How are we gonna try to look at this? How are we gonna try to make this into something that we can actually handle? Because it is enormous.
And, you know, it's like, how do you eat an elephant? One piece at a time. So it was about trying to figure out how to come up with those pieces. And so eventually we kind of wrestled ourselves and, you know, whoever else wanted to join in the mud fight, down to four basic buckets, if you will, for want of a better way. And they are agriculture.
And agriculture would take in absolutely everything from the work that the enslaved did, the know-how that they brought to that work, which is extraordinary that we don't always think of. But equally, um, the botany, the animal husbandry, all of those things fall in that. And so we do that and we center it pretty much around rice. And rice because rice was so transformational in the Carolinas. So that's that's one bucket.
Then we move on to culinary arts. So when you start to talk about culinary arts, then you get all of those hands in the kitchen. You get all of those African Americans during the period of enslavement who worked both, well, certainly during the period of enslavement, who worked unpaid, unheralded, and for the most part unknown, but who fixed food for everybody, including those who were fixing the food of the founding fathers. So you get um Hercules Posey, you get James Hemings, you get all of those people, as well as all of the people who followed them, all the way up through Downing, who had an oyster refectory, all the way through people today, you know, and I'm not gonna name names because I'll forget somebody and then I'll be pillowed, and you know it won't be pretty. But um Yeah, we what up talk a little bit maybe about the because I think this is what this is the key insight is that it's not just the things that you think about.
No, it's not. Yeah, it's like uh the outsized contributions that uh, you know, that were made to hospitality in general. Exactly. Well, I mean, I think now if anybody's seen the Netflix series based on my book, uh High on the Hog. Again, I'll say it, I'll say it again.
You know what that series needed is more Jessica Harris. So I'm gonna say it again. Well, bless you, bless you. From your mouth to God's ear, my dear. Um, but I think that one of the things that, you know, just basic stuff.
If you look in, I think it's episode two, mac and cheese. For the Lord's sakes, no, I'm not trying to say that African Americans invented mac and cheese, because we didn't. But we certainly popularized it, and we popularized it through Jefferson, and it was James Hemings through Jefferson that popularized mac and cheese, which now is there's nothing more American. It's kind of a crazy recipe they used in that episode. Do you see it?
Do you have you tried that recipe? I have not, but the idea of butter, how bad could it be? Yeah, but she cooks it in milk, yeah? And then and then like she just layers like the cheese in between the stuff, doesn't make it into a sauce. So it's unlike any mac and cheese that I've ever had a lot of butter.
Yeah, a lot of butter, and but it's not the Bechamel. It's not the Bechamel that you think of, but it's another way of doing a kind of Bechamel if you think about it. Yeah, no, it's just but but I mean, and I think that's part of it as well, because then you start to think about remember how they cooked. You know, is this the way that you can do it if you are hearth cooking when you can't really stand there and stare at the bechamel? You know, when you can't make that sauce that way.
Yes, uh Hemings was one of the people who brought, I think one of the early potager, I call it a potager, everybody else calls it a stew-hole stove, but brought one of those back when he came back along with the copper pots to use on it. So he was one of the first who began to move away from hearth cooking into that kind of place where you are regulating flame and and being more able to make that bechamel the way we know now, but otherwise you couldn't. So that that recipe of necessity speaks to not only time, but also manner of cooking. So that that cooking it in milk and sliding those bits of butter in would have had to do with how it was cooked as much as with what was being cooked. So they're all of those things that you learn, and of course the fact that it's it's you know, it's mac and cheese in my kitchen.
I think the thing that people most comment on in my kitchen, I have a box of the brand mac and cheese, the blue box with my face on it, because I did some consulting work for the company and they gifted everybody that consulted with boxes of mac and cheese with our faces on them. It is the thing that is most commented on in my kitchen, you know, and their beard awards and book covers and pretty good art and all kinds of stuff. But people walk in and it's like, oh, oh my god, you're on a mac and cheese box. I mean, somebody, I think the first time I heard anybody say, Oh my god, you're such a baller, it's like, I'm a what? You know.
And that's kind of how the mac and cheese box did it. Well, you know, like I I don't know anyone that didn't. Unless you're allergic to dairy or gluten, I don't know anyone that hasn't had that. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, no, exactly.
Sooner or later you got it. Unless uh no, no, my mother never used the box. My mother always made her own. But uh she like the tiny elbows still? Yeah.
I like the tiny elbows. I'm not talking against the tiny elbows. What else would you use? I don't know, but I do all kinds of horrible things that you would get mad at. Probably.
I like to put some peas in with it. You know what? No one because I know, bro. Anathema. I know, I know.
Not all the time. And you had mentioned mushrooms and color creams. So bad, bad, bad. I will ask, I'll ask this question then. People ask some questions.
Hold a second. Uh this is Devin wrote in on the Patreon. Question for Dr. Harris. For cooking collards, you do you trim, you trim out all how much do you trim out of the central stock in collars when you when you do this?
I trim out probably more than most folks. I am a wasteful collared person, but I save them and then do a vegetable broth that I can use for other things. I never done that. Good. The boss?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I trim a lot out too because I don't like that stock. Uh yeah, I don't either. You know, I I keep the stalk in the little ones. Otherwise, I basically take out that whole that whole rib.
Are you a ripper or a cut? I'm a ripper. Yeah. Well, I'm a ripper and a I'm a ripper and a tearer. Yeah.
I don't cut them. Oh, you don't cut? Cut. No, I'm not. If I'm doing a Brazilian style, I'm a ripper, I roll them up, and then I cut them as the French would say, on chiffonade.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's what I do. I I I cut, I I lay them flat, cut the rib out, then roll them ba ba ba ba. Is that bad? Am I doing it wrong?
No, just not color. Uh-huh. That's all. I mean, I um I rip them. I then, well, first I let let's let's get basic now.
Cause they can be dirty. First, I soak them in water. Then I drain them, then I soak them in water again. Then I rip the ribs out, then I tear them, then they go in pot. Uh and uh okay, so Devin wants to know your meat of choice.
In in the in the in the in the liquid for the for the color. Swine. Any kind? Um you hawk person. Hawks are great.
Hawks are wonderful, but uh sometimes I'm lazy and it's bacon. Yeah. You know, I just I want pig and smoke. And then uh turkey, I guess turkey neck's fine. As long as it's smoked, right?
Beef beef bones, nah, right? I mean, I think here's here's the thing. I think one loves what one is used to. I am used to pig and smoke. Um, but there are generations of people who are used to turkey necks, turkey wings.
I just am not used to them. Um, that used to be that they were so, you know, they were being proclaimed as being healthier. You know, it's nitrites. It's the same, you know. You you're getting the bad stuff from the smoke, not from the meat necessarily.
I don't mind any of that bad stuff because uh as long as you are enjoying your food, I think it reduces your stress level and therefore increases. It can't be bad. Yeah. Okay, you are you ready? Speaking of can't be bad, are you ready to get mad?
He wants to know whether you put mushrooms. Now, listen, I'm assuming he means just a jack the umami, but wants to know if you put mushrooms in your collards. Or yes, no. He says yes, no. Um you you can't even speak.
You are so upset. Hey, is there is there a box that says hell no? Yeah. Um I think you do what you do. I'm not saying he's wrong.
I'm just saying it ain't mine. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, it it could be interesting. It could be unusual.
Um I mean, the nice thing about mushrooms, right? If you like mushrooms in that situation, is that much like greens, they can't really be overcooked as long as you don't dry them out. Right, right. No, I I mean I I like mushrooms. Mushrooms are.
But I don't necessarily think of mushrooms in my greens. You know, because you can I've known people who've done cornmeal dumplings in their greens. Really? Mm-hmm. Cornmeal dumplings are interesting.
Like like uh like puffy or like dense cornmeal, like uh like what size? Like what are we talking about? Small, small little dumplings that are just kind of dropped in and cook in in the pot liquor. And then do they how dr how dry do you like to take it down? Oh no, no, no, no, no.
I I need some pot liquor. All right. You know, there there is liquid. And uh I guess into and this is is is another question in for you, and we can fold this into the agriculture section of the uh of the exhibition if you want. But uh Monty Zukoski wants to hear you talk a little bit about okra.
Okay. And was it what was it you wrote way back in the day wherever Where Okra points its green nose Africa has been. Yeah. Or it's green tip or something to that general thing. Um, yeah, okra or us.
I love okra. Uh I think again, referencing that aforementioned Netflix thing, uh, okra's on my stationery. I um I just, I mean, it is so here's a word I probably overuse, totemic for Africa and the food of Africa and the survivals of the food of the African continent, that it is just sort of interesting to find where it isn't. Uh certainly it's it's throughout Southern United States, not necessarily the Northern United States, except via the Great Migrations and stuff. Um you get into the Caribbean and you've got all of the Sopa de Kimbombos, you've got all Sopa de Malandron in the the Dominican Republic, you've got um Kiambo, which is an okra soupy stew in Curaçao, you've got uh the Kalaloos that sometimes have okra with them.
You've got all of those kinds of levels and layers. You get into South America, you've got Brazilian Caruru, you've got all kinds of things there. I remember being absolutely astounded. I was once invited to Peru. Who knew?
Um, but Peru for African American History Month in Peru. Who really knew? Yeah, I've never been, so on my list. Yeah, it's definitely worth worth going. It's extraordinary.
Um and uh an incredible food nation. I mean, so much going on. But um I spoke for a um a culinary school and I asked uh if they knew okra. They didn't. I was astounded.
I was absolutely astounded. Now, I don't know if it was just because I was in Lima, and maybe if I had been closer to the coast or closer to other well, Lima's on the coast. Yeah, the other coast. Yeah, which coast. Um but I mean, if I'd been closer to a real sort of African American community, maybe they would have known.
But nobody, nobody, nobody knew. I met an incredible woman who has since died, may she rest in peace, named Virginia Izquierdo. And we exchanged cookbooks. I had at that point a book called The Welcome Table, which was my African American food book. And she had a book on the cooking of black Peru.
And so we exchanged cookbooks, but not a hint of okra. So it was just that was amazing. I mean, there's no reason you can't grow it there, right? Well, no, it it clearly could grow. I mean, they've got so many microclimates.
They've got everything from, you know, papayas to apples. They got, you know, they grow pretty much anything. Do you love papaya? I don't love papaya. I don't dislike papaya.
Here's one that surprises people. I don't particularly like ripe mangoes. Really? Mouthfeel thing. Huh.
Because it makes it tingly in the mouth? No, no, no, no, no. I just it's something about them. I don't like I don't mind the taste. Yeah, question.
Is it worse if it's fibery or worse if it's the non-fiber kind? It's not even that. I just don't. There's something about the mouthfeel of them I don't like. I don't like melon.
Except why. I like I like green mangoes. Like in a salad or just in general? In general. I mean, I'm one of those people that could probably cut them up, eat them with a dash of hot sauce or some salt or something like that.
But I also like green peaches. You know, I don't necessarily like ripe peaches. What do you do with a green peach? Same like you would do with green mango? Yeah, exactly.
Cut it up and eat it. I mean, it's a taste that I somehow or other I think I remember my father liking green peaches, you know. So I'm always looking, I'm you know, I'm the one at the vegetable stand that's looking for the hard ones. I like tart I like tart fruit a lot too. Yeah.
Uh but let me ask you, go back to okra for one second. So, you know, whenever I whenever I buy it, I'm sitting there squeezing it so I don't get the woody ones. Is there anything you can do to a woody okra? Uh, throw it out. There's nothing you can I don't think that yeah, no, no, it's not they've they've let it grow too long.
They've let it grow too long and it's two and a half minutes before it goes to seed. And it just can't be fixed, huh? I don't think so. I don't know how to fix it. People when you go to the package, if you shop in a place at like New York where they don't grow that stuff, squeeze those things that they feel like wood, they are.
Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah. Oh man. Now, do you like preparations where they don't develop the the thickening properties?
Like, for instance, like whole pickled or whole fried or like whole whole in a chip. Anyway, well, I mean, you know, okra, one of the things about okra is the more you cut it, the more it exudes its mucilaginous properties. Um, but I think the thing with okra is um I like it every way. I mean, I'm not necessarily a partisan to some of the West African dishes where it comes in kind of ropes of uh ex exudation or whatever you call it. How do you make it that mucy?
Just a lot of it? You cut it. There are there are some recipes in um in Candomble houses. Candomblé is Afro-Bayan religion. And a lot of the recipes are actually traditional, and traditional in the sense that they are not even written down.
They are just passed by oral tradition, and there's certainly one which goes, you know, take a hundred okra pods, cut each pod essentially a hundred times, but I mean, you know, and then cut those a hundred times. So you're getting something that is just slime, for want of a better word. And that's how you get that sort of rope. So another slimy thing, uh sassafras leaves, aka filet. Yeah.
So why don't you talk to me a little bit about like uh filet versus okra, maybe together? Like why would like how did that come to be a place that had okra down there, you know, for to thicken things? Like, how did they also come to use filet? I actually I I like chewing on sassafra. I like to say, like, whenever I see a sassafras tree, they're small, scrubby trees, I I pick up one of those mitten-shaped leaves and I chew on it because I like that texture in my mouth.
Do you know Melochia? Melochia is North African, it's a green and it does that same kind of slime thing. Um, so um, you know, I keep thinking Hank Williams, jambalaya crawfish pie and a filae gumbo. Um, but there used to be a distinction between filet gumbos and feve gumbos. Fevi gumbos being kind of okra gumbos and filee gumbos being gumbos that are thickened with filet.
Um there used to be uh saying that um that you basically didn't put filet in an okra gumbo because it would over thicken it, but I've seen people do it. So I mean, I think they're just those distinctions. There are sassafras based gumbos, or gumbos that are thickened with sassafras, and then there are okra gumbos. And you know, people. I am not to the gumbo born.
Okay, and I contend that unless you are to the gumbo born, you should probably shut up about it after a certain point. So this may be the point at which I shut up about it. Because somebody will call in and go, she's wrong. And they'd be right, because everybody's gumbo is the gumbo that their grandma made. So, one more filee question that's not gumbo related than.
Well, I guess they all are, because what else do people really use it for? Uh I wonder why we don't we have so much sassafras around here. Why don't we use it? Why don't we use it up here? Um, I guess because the whole idea of, well, the filae is basically a Choctaw thing, if I'm not mistaken, and the Choctaws aren't up here.
Huh. And we just never figured out how to use it. We just made like syrups out of the out of the uh roots, but never figured out how to use a leaves. Dumb butts, we're dumb butts. Well, we we have our own uh sort of lacune.
Yes. Uh let me Well, we wait, wait, wait. Just just to get you back on target, because we are now going wild and off in It's all cooking related, it is, it is, but we've only done two of the four things of the exhibit. We've got two more to go. Hold on, I got one more agriculture question in for you.
Okay. All right. So this is it came in. Uh he didn't know he was gonna uh ask for you. Nicholas asked this.
Um so there's he says there's an Amazonian cassava uh preparation. You know, I did not realize that even though cassava is uh South American, you know, that's where the you know d domesticated, uh, that Nigeria now makes more cassava than anyone else on Earth. Probably it's one of those things that back and forth, back and forth. It went to um Africa, to the continent, specifically Central and Western Africa, where it actually supplanted the traditional yam. And so it's now used more commonly and more frequently.
And people sometimes prefer it to the traditional yam, which if I remember correctly, you know, remember that gray hair, I'm old, I may forget things. But which somehow or other is not necessarily a good thing because nutritionally it is not as good, if you will, as the traditional yam. So cassava is an emptier tuber, if you will, in terms of its nutritional value. That I don't know. I know that it, you know, whereas you can cook and eat a yam, if you do that to a cassava, do it to the wrong cassava, cyanide.
Yeah, you know, I've never really cooked a lot of cassava. What's cool about it is how it peels, how you can peel a cassava, pop that pop the outside off of it. But um, so anyway, uh there's an Amazonian cassava product that I've never heard of. I thought I'd heard of it called I'm gonna I'm just gonna mutilate the pronunciation for you. Niapia, right?
Which I don't know, but it's a slow reduction of fermented cassava juice with uh chili is cooked for a long time until it turns black and thick with a lot of umami notes, and to me that sounds like Kazareep. Uh which you know what? I've never had it on its own. I've never I've had things cooked with it, but I've never had it on its own. Nicholas wants to know, do I think this process could be due to some specific fungus, bacteria or mold native to the Amazon that breaks starch similar to aspergillis.
I tried to replicate it but couldn't get to the same point before it dried out, and locals can't really explain what's happening in the process because it's such a traditional method. Uh my impression, I don't know, you know, I'll let you talk about it, especially about that. You're not gonna let me talk because I don't know, Jack. Well, no, but you know about this next thing, but cause uh in the Beyond the Jack that's on the ring. Right.
And beyond gumbo, you uh well, we'll get into it, but so uh I think the trick with it is is uh you have to grade it. So you look up look up Casareep production in there's also in Brazil, I think they call it something like Tukupi or something. Tukupi. Yeah. Uh so you you have to grade it.
It i it's a byproduct of starch manufacturer. So you got a great amount of. Well, there used to be uh a kind of long sock like thing that you'd have to squeeze it through. Yeah, like a big basket. Kind of yeah, like a big basket, but one of those baskets that gets tighter as you squeeze it.
So you'd have to squeeze the pulp of the uh cassava through. If I recall, and I haven't done any research on this in decades, but originally it was chewed to process it. Chewed and then spat out, and then that was part of the process too. I believe it. The ones I which in which case amylase enzymes would break down some of the stuff.
Well, there you go. But I also looked up uh the nutritional compounds of the juice. So like like look, wet starches are wet process. That's why they're not like, you know, and then they have the bagas, which is left over in the in the sock, whatever its name is. They let the starch settle out.
Maybe that's not what you're doing. And then they have that the juice is mostly stuff that's soluble. So they reduce the ever loving hell out of it. And and I think it just turns uh like uh brown and black because of the reducing sugars. And I know certain of the uh bitter cassavas have a yellow juice anyway, uh, because of uh beta carotene.
That's probably gonna add to it too. But uh I wanted to bring this up for you specifically because uh Kazareep is of course the you know one of the signature ingredients in um in pepper pot. Well in Guyanese pepper pepper pot. South American pepper pot. How does that relate to Philadelphia pepper pot?
And what's the whole story with there? Oh pepper pot is interesting because there seems to be a north-south confusion. Um a confusion that um the Guyanese pepper pot is a rich, dense brown stew. The Jamaican pepper pot is something that's a little bit more like kalaloo, that is a kind of okra-based thickened stew. So it's not quite the same thing.
The I would say Northern Caribbean, Jamaican, arguably even Tobago and well, it's called Kalaloo and Tobago, it's called pepper pot in Jamaica. Um, that dish is what we kind of see as what was then sold on the streets of Philly in the 19th century as Philadelphia gumbo. That is in fact pepper pot. And that's as we know-based, right? Tripe-based, yeah.
Yeah. Tripe peppers, I think okra even, I'm not positive, but I think there may be some. It depends on recipes. It used to be back in the day you would go to the old bookbinders in Philly, and bookbinder's restaurant would have pepper pot, and that would be what you would go. Sometimes I think it even had maybe turtle, but I could be confusing things.
But it was it was a thick, soupy stew. And actually there's some illustrations from old Harper's Magazine, Harper's Weekly. Uh, there's one that has the street vendors, and there is the African American woman selling, and she is the pepper pot vendor. So it was that kind of thing. It was sometimes served on the streets of Philly with what were transcribed as frufre dumplings, but which were probably fufu dumplings.
And uh do people, if it came via Jamaica, do they I know that they have things in Jamaica they just call food. Is food just uh a uh a a change in word of foo foo to food? No. Like the dumplings. No, no, no, no.
Food is something different, nah. So that that's a whole nother rabbit hole we could go down, but let's let's not. Um, but I think that the idea of um of that Philadelphia thing, the fufu dumplings, people tend to forget that Philly was, as was New York, in fact, very much a Creole city. They were port cities, and they were port cities during the certainly colonial and federal period, the colonial period, particularly when it was the northern colonies and the Caribbean colonies. So there was a lot of back and forth stuff.
You could get plantains in Philly in the 19th century, you know. You couldn't necessarily get them in New York in in general compass until very, very much later. So there was that kind of trade that would have brought it up. And I'm saying Jamaica, but not necessarily only Jamaica, and possibly not even Jamaica, maybe another place in the Caribbean. But Jamaica was the reference for that North South pepper pot thing.
All right, so now I apologize for t make taking you on my tangents, but let's get to the we missed three three things. In the three remaining minutes? No, so okay, we get brewing and distilling, and that's something about which you have a few small things to say. Yes, exactly. And then we get commerce, and that is also something about which you had a few small things to say in the terms of our refrigerated trucks.
I know. And you know what? Those those morons, I hate to say this, uh, but I wanted to get one of those reefer truck um. Well, maybe if you want to tell the story real quick, but like I wanted to get one of those original reefer trucks, uh, you know, um units. Because they're not that big.
And, you know, the entire our entire coal chain is based on this discover, not well, this invention of, you know, they the mobile, like mechanically refrigerated boxcar, which he also, those reefer units he also invented. Give us the he. Give us the he. Oh my God. You've just erased all of the names from my head.
You've even erased the name of the company because I'm so mad that they wouldn't give us the the unit. Don't look at me. Oh my god, John, his name is Frederick McKinley Jones. Uh, Freddy Jones. In 1939, patents this stuff, but the main units are coming up after the war, isn't that accurate?
Yes. And it's uh carrier, but not carrier, it's uh who the heck is it? Thermal King. No, it's coming back, but I'm so mad at them because I was like, yo, Thermal King, give me not give me, loan us a reefer unit because this is an invention that literally has changed all all of our lives. American food.
Well, not only international food, everybody that eats something that comes in a refrigerated truck. African American hand behind that. Yeah. Yeah. Uh like a kind of a, I don't know what you call like a multiple inventor.
Whatever, like it, but he, you know, he was a guy that was just uh knew how to make things and invent things. And um the company, and um I'm erasing again because I'm still so mad at them, Thermal King, who is still the company to this day that makes the the most of those units. I was like, yo, I know you have one. Take a deep breath. I was like, why don't you why aren't you interested in this?
Why aren't you interested in this story? Like, why aren't you interested in this story? You know what I mean? Like, I don't know, whatever. But I could I couldn't couldn't get anything out of them.
Uh and well, we before you go, and I know I'm gonna run you over a little bit, and I know Patreon people, there's a couple of qu unrelated, not unrelated, that's a wrong way to say it, but a couple of questions that uh I'll get to uh next week, right, John? Yep. Okay. Uh so I didn't forget about you. Um, but we gotta talk about this ebony test kitchen, a kitchen that you saw when so we have the the the quilt which we had, and you know, which you know is your idea to say, hey, listen, we don't want to look like we're just cherry picking.
We want to show that this is huge thing that we can't possibly talk about in the space allotted, right? So there's the quilt. Then we have a couple of stories that we talk about in those five categories in the main uh exhibition, and then it all gets tied together in this amazing kitchen, the ebony test kitchen. You want to like uh you you know, you experienced it in the real life. Absolutely.
I'm friendly with Charlotte Lyons, who for about 25 years was the um head of or the food editor for Ebony. So she worked out of the test kitchen, and it was one of those things where you would come up in the elevator in the ebony building and you'd look and there's a little kind of peephole pathway kind of thing, and inside it's day glow orange. It is so of the period. I mean, any of you that are familiar with Laugh In on the TV show, it's that aesthetic. It is the 60s, the 70s, it is all of that.
But what's so extraordinary about it is it is the place from which so many recipes were disseminated, from which uh so many African Americans learned not only to cook, but also had an outlook to the world where they could see not just the food of perhaps their individual home, be it Mississippi, Virginia, or San Francisco, but where they could see a world where they could see food of the Caribbean, where they could see food from the continent itself, and certainly as Ebony grew more and more sophisticated in in passing years, that that world got larger and larger. And so the ebony test kitchen is a perfect way to end, if you will, because it it then takes the focus of the four buckets for want of a better term. There is also a fifth path, which is the path of migration, and it takes that path of migration and takes it out into the world again, so that it's really kind of a perfect way to end the exhibit because you get to go through it, get to watch it move, and then get to see how it got taken to the world. What was it like there? How is it different working in that environment with that kind of vibe as opposed to um other publications at the at the time?
Like was it just a different feeling? I think it was. I mean, I think even today, if you look at um at high on the hog, I'm sorry to keep referencing it, but the whole idea of working with a group of what people are now calling black creatives, um gave a kind of different feel to it. I was the travel editor for Essence back in the day. And I didn't even realize it.
But the bottom line is as you do that, as you as you realize this sort of camaraderie, this kind of ability to speak in a shorthand, where you don't necessarily have to give the the backstory, and you don't necessarily have to do the justification of I want to do this because, where people kind of get the because and where you can move forward with it. Um it's a different way of being. So I mean, I think that was very much a part of Ebony as well as it was of Essence, as well as it was of Black Enterprise back in those days. And they own Jet too, right? Yeah, well.
There were, you know, it was Johnson Publishing Company. It wasn't just Ebony. So and uh John, I don't know if you want to John, you had didn't you had to truck it here from Chicago, right? I did, yes. Weren't you gonna give a shout out to the uh you're doing uh something with uh with the Illinois Preservation?
Wednesday, February 23rd at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, I'm gonna be doing a uh Zoom talk with Landmarks, Illinois, about uh the whole Ebony Tusk catch, and I'll be joined by former Ebony Food Editor uh Charlotte Draper there as well, and we'll be speaking with Lisa DiCiara, and I'll post a link about that on Instagram for anyone who's interested. And when is the exhibit opening at the uh at the Africa Center? The exhibit is at the top of Museum Mile. Uh it's called Again, African slash American Making the Nation's Table.
Concept. If you haven't listened to anything else we said, just go see it. Just go see the exhibition. When is it open? It's gonna run from February 23rd through June 19th at the Africa Center at Alico Dungote Hall.
All right. And uh oh, we were gonna I know that we've had to scale back. We're still doing something about another concept you wanted to put into it on the on the way out, the shoebox lunch. You want to say anything about it? Or I know that we've had to scale.
I know, I know, but I mean, you know, I've I've now taken to saying COVID willing. Yeah, uh COVID was not willing. Um, but the idea to end was going to be to end with communal conversations around some of the foods that had been inspired by this history. Uh now there will be takeout boxes available by uh varying African American chefs, including Carla Hall, Adrian Cheatham, Chris Scott, Kwame Onwachi, and Tanya Holland. So you'll be able to purchase and take away a shoebox lunch.
And the whole idea of the shoebox lunch is shoeboxes were kind of used in the Great Migration by any number of families. There was a classic shoebox lunch that was taken on trips on um trains, specifically because you never knew when you'd be able to stop and where you'd be able to find and get food, so you can't traveled with your food. Yeah, where where you'd be welcome to purchase. Exactly. Yeah.
Uh so go see it. Uh we're super excited. Thank you so much, uh, Dr. Jessica Harris for coming on. Thank you for having me.
Uh it's great. You know, you know, obviously you're welcome anytime. Love having you. And we can talk like we'll get more uh arguments going about different oh yeah mushrooms and the greens. Oh my god yeah come on man Devin man what are you doing Devin is enjoying his greens leave him alone all right we'll do cooking issues take care of the
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