(theme music) ♪ ♪ ♪ > Hello, I'm Beryl Dakers, and I'd like to welcome you to a special edition of Art's The Thing .

In 1970, this book Vibration Cooking: or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl , caused ripples in the world of cooking.

We are all of us, in a way, fascinated somewhat by the art of cooking and our roles, either as preparers or partakers to food.

So tonight, Art's The Thing invites you to take a culinary adventure with our guest, Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor.

Now, for those of you who do not know her, Vertamae is a poet, writer, actress, contemporary philosopher and culinary historian.

A native South Carolinian, she is an independent producer for National Public Radio's All Things Considered and a contributing editor for Essence magazine.

She also writes for such publications as The New York Times , The Village Voice , The Washington Post , and Ebony magazine, to name a few.

Enough of who she is, however.

Come along, meet Vertamae and friends as they take us into a culinary adventure of black food lore.

Guest> "When black people on the plantations would kill hogs, the plantation owners got the meat.

The ham bones went to the slaves for cooking, and they were passed around their quarters and back again."

Douglas Quimby, Sea Island folk singer.

Guest 2> "Soul food is compassion food.

Greens from the root.

Meat near the vitals and the marrow.

Soul food is culinary genius.

Applied to overlooked odds and ends and leftovers."

Princess Pamela.

Vertamae> African-American cookery is not topsy.

It didn't just grow out of odds and ends or leftovers, any more than peaches just grew on a watermelon vine.

In my extensive culinary investigations and historical research of black culture, I haven't found a reference to cooks, slave or free who passed bones from pot to pot.

There are no Emancipation Jubilee verses, such as ♪ No more passing the bone ♪ for me ♪ or ♪ No more chitlins for me ♪ And the folk rhyme "Hambone" doesn't have any obvious culinary nuances.

♪ Hambone, Hambone ♪ where you been?

♪ (rhythmic clapping) ♪ Around the world ♪ and I'm going again.

♪ (rhythmic clapping) ♪ Hambone, Hambone ♪ what'd you do?

♪ (rhythmic clapping) ♪ I got a chance ♪ and away I flew .

♪ (rhythmic clapping) ♪ Hambone, Hambone ♪ where'd you stay?

♪ (rhythmic clapping) ♪ I met a pretty girl ♪ and couldn't get away.

♪ (rhythmic clapping) Certainly, African-American cooks, depending on the, their circumstances, use leftovers, odds and ends.

However, to define Black American cookery as such is a gross rank crock of beans.

(jazz music begins) ♪ Like jazz, African-American cookery is an art form that was created in the Southland.

It is perhaps the most outstanding ethnic cuisine in America.

It was created almost without European influence.

The history of African-American cooking, uniquely called "soul food," is unique.

(drumming begins) And unprecedented culinary tale that began many centuries ago in the land of cassava, calabashes, cowrie shells, ivory, gold, palm oil, and wild watermelons.

Where the sea and the rivers were full of scaled and shellfish.

The forests abundant with large and small game.

Where night was the only winter the people knew, and the sound of the drum was always heard.

(drumming continues) It was a land of many gods, kingdoms, queens, warriors, weavers and workers of magic.

There were kola and groundnuts, grape and breadfruits, sweet and sour sauce, palm hearts, spices of every kind, and a dizzying array of greens, including one called "soko yokoto," meaning make husband robust and fresh.

Many sesame seeds were bearers of good luck, and the Baobab tree was righteous.

Vitamin rich Baobab leaves were cooked flesh of the fruit eaten raw.

Seeds of the Baobab were made into a tea and placed under the tongue to quench thirst.

And a hollowed Baobab made a hut.

Pepper was the spice of life.

Indeed, it was the spice of the land.

The west coast was called "the pepper coast" in honor of the grains of paradise.

A popular proverb said, "The man who eats no pepper is weak."

♪ Life was celebrated daily in art, music and dance.

The people offered food to their ancestors and gods.

Drank palm wine and sang praise songs for such a splendid homeland.

And then the Holocaust struck.

A pillage was upon them.

In villages throughout the land people came up missing.

The king is not on his stool.

The queen is gone.

The warrior's gone.

The dancer's gone.

The magic worker is gone.

The holy man's vanished.

A young bride went to fill her calabash with water and disappeared.

A drummer out to get wood for a drum was never seen again.

The captured ones were taken to the sea and put aboard ships.

As the ships left the shore.

The reality of their situation overtook them.

They did not want to leave their homeland.

They cried out in deep despair and regret at being torn from their country.

They rode the turbulent seas, shackled spoon fashion in the hull of the ship.

And with mournful melancholy voices howled, Thomas> "Yemaya!

Yemaya!"

Vertamae> Yemaya, Goddess of the sea.

Thomas> "Yemaya!"

Vertamae> By the time they reached the New World, over half of the estimated 10 million captured Africans had been claimed by Yemaya and the sea.

(jazz music) Those who reached the strange world were sold and told by strange people in a strange language, "Cook."

Imagine, a kidnapped Dahomey queen in the kitchen of Mount Vernon.

A Senegambian king preparing she-crab soup in Charleston.

A Hausa holy man serving ham at Monticello.

A Mandingo drummer serving mint juleps in Kentucky.

A Guinea dancer in the cookhouse of Tuckahoe, a plantation in Virginia.

While some of the foods in the new land were familiar, there were many foods the Africans would never eat again.

Who knows the food memories of the king, or what was on the holy man's mind, or of the drummer, slaving in a place with no palm oil or drum?

Who knows what was on the mind of the dancer racing hot food along the batter express, a plantation term for the path leading from the cookhouse to the big house.

And why, every time she moved the benne seed cakes from the oven, the queen fumbled.

(drumming begins) ♪ In the land of the Magnolias, did the Africans long for the Baobab and other foods of their homeland, like the Israelites in the wilderness, longed for the foods of Egypt?

♪ Guest> "Think of it.

In Egypt, we had fish for the asking.

Cucumbers and watermelons, leeks and onions and garlic.

Now our throats are parched.

There is nothing wherever we look except this manna."

"Book of Numbers Chapter 11: verses five and six."

(jazz music) Vertamae> Cuisines like music start from the people.

And for centuries, the people who stirred the pots of the South were Africans.

The tastes and talents of Congo, Angola, Yorubaland, Mali, Zanzibar and other African countries and peoples mingled in the New World.

That culinary legacy lives today, especially in Southern cooking.

It is apparent in methods of preparation and many of the most popular foods and dishes of the South.

Consider that spiny pod of a vegetable from the Nile Delta, who became a star in the Mississippi Delta, and the main ingredient in a stew that bears her African name.

I'm talking about gumbo, aka "gombo" okworo, known as "okra" in the USA.

Rice came to the colonies in the late 17th and 18th century.

But legend is that a bag of rice seed was given to the Governor of South Carolina in Charles Town by a sea captain after his storm wrecked vessel was repaired.

While the date is uncertain for sure the rice seed was from Madagascar.

Peanuts came to North America during the slave trade after having traveled from South America in an earlier century.

Peanut seeds have been unearthed in Peruvian tombs and found growing wild in Brazil.

Leading us to believe they are native to South America.

They were, however, paramount in African cooking by the time of the slave trade.

Goober, a derivative of "nguba," is one of the very few African words in the American language.

Perhaps, there is some kind of culinary exoneration in the fact that it was Afro-American George Washington Carver who found 105 ways to use goobers.

(drumming) Hot pepper is a mainstay of Southern cooking and West Africa.

Slavers used the peppers to season food during the slave trade.

They believed it prevented dysentery.

Watermelon, queen of Southern fruits, is Africa's most celebrated culinary immigrant.

They are an ancient fruit found wild at home in Central Africa.

The list of well known delectables with African ancestry is long and includes Carolina Perlou, Louisiana Jambalaya two dishes that are very close kin to Liberian jollof rice.

Fried corn cakes called "hushpuppies" in Savannah are identical to fried corn cakes called "akamu" in Lagos.

Now, it's traditional on New Year's Day for Southerners to observe the custom of eating a dish called "Hoppin' John."

In some families, children actually hop around the table before eating.

The origin of the custom is not known.

One story is that the dish was named for a servant with a limp.

Another is that it was named for the sound the peas and the rice made cooking in the pot.

Black-eyed peas are commonly used in Hoppin' John, but some Southerners insist that a true Hoppin' John can only be made with cowpeas.

Black-eyed peas are members of the cowpea family.

Cowpeas were brought to America from Africa and was a food well known to the slaves.

Like sesame seeds, they were believed to be bearers of good luck and used often in religious ceremonies.

Now, this is what I believe to be the real story of why Southerners eat Hoppin' John on New Year's Day.

New Year's Day was called "Heartbreak Day" by the slaves, because it's signaled the end of the week long holiday most masters allowed for Christmas.

I think the slaves experienced a culinary flashback and remembered the magical qualities attributed to cowpeas, then decided that Heartbreak Day was a good day to cook up a mess of peas.

The folk custom spread from the cabin to the big house, from the country to town throughout the South until today.

Now, the fact that it took 248 years for their luck to change doesn't necessarily mean that cowpeas don't have magical powers.

Remember, it takes a long time for old foods to grow in new places you know, different soil, different climatic conditions, etc.

A plantation rhyme... ♪ Those black-eyed peas ♪ is lucky ♪ ♪ when ate ♪ on New Year's Day ♪ ♪ You always have ♪ sweet potatoes and possum ♪ ♪ Come your way ♪ Southerners are crazy about possum.

Solomon Northup, a free man sold into slavery wrote, Guest 2> "The flesh of the coon is palatable, but verily there is nothing in all butcherdom so delicious as a roasted possum."

Vertamae> Possum and taters is one of the South's most beloved creations.

Emma Virgil, a former slave and judge recalled fixin' possum and taters.

"Ma was sick in bed and some mens had been out possum hunting."

She said "I would just have to cook them possums," she told me to "fix them" and she said, "fix them with potatoes and plenty butter and red pepper."

Then she looked at me right hard and said "that they had better be just right."

Guest 2> "Well, possum meat's so nice and sweet.

Carve into the heart.

You'll always find it good to eat.

Carve into the heart, carve that possum.

Carve that possum chillun'.

Carve that possum.

Oh, carve into the heart The way to cook the possum nice, carve into the heart.

First pot boiling, stir'em twice carve into the heart.

Then lay sweet taters in the pan.

Carve into the heart.

Nothing beats that in the land.

Carve into the heart."

Vertamae> Let's go back to the leftover cuisine theory.

Favorite slave dishes were fried rabbit, squirrel pie with dumplings, roasted chicken and hogs.

The ingredients for these recipes were procured the best way they could be by the slaves.

They were not usually given to them by a master.

Occasionally, on big times, holidays like weddings, Christmas, 4th of July, slaves did receive extra food and leftovers.

But for the most part, what master gave them were rations or a whippin'.

To supplement their meager diet, slaves hunted, raised, or stole animals.

One former slave recalled...

Guest 2> "We stole so many chickens that if a chicken would see a darky he'd run straight to the house."

Vertamae> While some slave owners admitted that the stealing was caused by underfeeding, many felt that blacks stole by nature.

William D. Valentine of North Carolina said, "There is one fact incident to Negro slaves, they will steal."

However, Josephine Howard of Texas, saw it another way.

"They always done tell us it am wrong to lie and steal, but why did white folks steal my mammy and her mammy?"

Many slave owners allowed the slaves to have gardens.

In Roll Jordan Roll: The World the Slaves Made , Eugene D. Genovese wrote, "From the 18th century onward, many slaves had a better diet than rural whites because they made an effort to raise vegetables.

What an effort that was.

Working from sunup to sundown.

Working the gardens by the light of the moon or the frying pan.

On moonless nights, they would light the frying pans of grease and place them on tree stumps to provide gardening light.

The slaves grew cabbage, mustards, turnips, okra, and collards.

Cornmeal ash cakes and hoe cakes were great accompaniments with the garden vegetables.

Ash cakes were cooked in ashes, a cornmeal and water mixture wrapped in a cabbage leaf and put in hot ashes to cook.

West African style cooking.

Hoe cakes were made for the midday meal from a stiff batter of cornmeal, water and sometimes pork drippings that were shaped in the flat cake and baked on a hoe in the fields.

Later, it was made in iron skillets and eaten any time.

Biscuits are southern classics, an internationally known bread.

Beaten biscuits are the supreme biscuits.

If slavery had not existed, it is doubtful if they would have been created.

The dough for the biscuits was placed in a wooden board, called a "biscuit block," and beaten with the flat iron or the side of a hatchet until they blistered.

The purpose was to incorporate air into the mixture, this was before the invention of baking powder, making the biscuits light.

For every day eaten 300 whacks on the dough would do, but if company was coming, the dough had to be beaten at least 500 times.

This beating, of course, was done by the Africans.

There is a strong taste of racism in the melting pot.

(drumming) No other cuisine has been as maligned as African-American cuisine.

There are more white lies about black cooking than fish in the bayou.

There is much we do not know about the black culinary past, that raises many questions.

Is it true that Mammy Pleasant had one brown eye, one blue eye, and culinary power so great she could make a pot boil without fire?

How did two of Thomas Jefferson's slaves manage to learn French cooking without reading Julia Child?

Did African born Lucy Terry, famous for her ballad about a 1746 Indian raid, attend the annual All Day Pinkster Day Jamborees held on the Boston Commons?

If so, what delectables did she bring?

What seasonings did fur trading expedition guide and cook Jim Pierce use in his beavertail ragus?

And what was the favorite African Tex-Mex dish served in the African community on the Texas Plains in 1792.

How much was the cuisine in the black settlement along Florida's river influenced by the Seminoles Indians?

Alas, the answers to these questions are speculation and loss history.

But we do know, black folks are some cooking people.

We have cooked for ourselves and others since America was America and before it was America.

Who knows the culinary influence Blackamore settler Abraham Pearse had on the pilgrims in the colony of Plymouth.

We have cooked in private homes, restaurants, kitchenettes, apartments, boats, boarding houses, whore houses, the White House, hotels, and resorts.

Indeed, it was at his inn near a fashionable Saratoga resort that chef Hiram S. Thomas, grandfather of Marion, Mrs. Eubie Blake, created the Saratoga chip.

Later called the "potato chip."

We've cooked for aristocrats, bureaucrats, Dixiecrats, Wasps, Jews and other ethnic groups and each other.

We've cooked on everything standing still and moving.

Made hot gumbos and cold aspics on steamships up and down the Mississippi.

Sizzle steaks to mouthwatering goodness on trains up and down the eastern seaboard.

Baked hoe cakes on the blade of a hoe in the field, and baked beaten biscuits in the big house.

Simmered savory prairie stews on fires fueled with dried buffalo droppings.

And turned butter by the dashing of the covered wagon, on the westward track.

We've dished up pinto beans and served coffee in chuckwagons on the roundups and the Goodnight-Loving Trails.

Barbecued ribs for holidays, deviled eggs for birthday parties, big meetings at the church and Tupperware parties.

Fixed a mess of greens and pans of baked macaroni for wakes, and fried chicken for everything.

We have cooked through slavery and freedom, the Great Migration, the Great Depression, land and sea, war and peace.

Cyrus Bustill carried freshly baked bread to George Washington's troops at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War.

Bustill was born a slave, learned baking, bought his freedom, and went into business in Philadelphia.

His great-great-granddaughter, Maria Louisa, was the mother of Paul Robeson.

And does anybody remember Pearl Harbor hero mess boy Dorie Miller?

Alas, dear viewer, if the truth be told, I am probably responsible for one little white lie about African-American cooking.

Early one cold New York morning a few years ago with at least 25 pressing personal problems, working on my mind and last nerve.

I went to the greengrocer on Upper Broadway to buy some collard greens.

Now, for many people, the remedy for what ails you is a pot of chicken soup.

For me, a pot of greens from the cooking to the eating, from the ritual of cleaning them to handling each leaf personally folding them one into the other, cutting them up, inhaling their earthy fragrance as they cook, tasting their natural goodness and drinking them, nutritious juice fondly called "pot liquor."

Greens are rich in vitamins, making pot liquor the only liquor that's good for you.

Well... so I was standing in the checkout line holding my bouquet of collards, minding my business, anxious to get home and put on my therapeutic pot of greens.

An elderly white lady interrupted my thoughts.

"How do you make them?"

She said.

"Huh?"

"How do you make those things?"

"You mean these collards?"

"Oh, is that what you call them?"

"How do you make them?"

Before I could answer, she went on to say that for years she'd seen collards around and wondered "how you people make them?"

It was the "you people."

On any other day I might have let it pass, but on this day the "you people" was the straw that broke the camel's back.

So when she asked me again, "Tell me, darling, how do you people make them?"

I told her, "Salad."

"Salad?

I thought you cooked it."

"No, ma'am, salad."

"What kind of dressing?"

"Italian."

"Okay, I'll try it tonight."

A black woman standing behind me heard the whole thing.

She didn't say anything, but when I left, she rolled her eyes.

I had the feeling she'd set the woman straight.

I hope so.

I've often felt guilty thinking of that woman.

(upbeat jazz music) Foods, like jeans, pocketbooks, luggage, sheets, and most things in our society are seen the status symbols.

Because African-American cooking has been presented as a low down, get down cookery, one of the first things and upwardly mobile black does is to stop eating black.

You are what you eat collard greens, grits, black eyed peas, and other foods traditionally associated with African-American cooking are not considered vit on vittles.

"I don't cook collards because they stink up the house when they're cooking."

"We eat, frozen collards occasionally."

"They don't sell collards in our neighborhood."

Langston Hughes has a poem, "In the pot behind the paper doors in the old coal stove What's cooking?

What's smelling, Leontyne?

Lieder, lovely Lieder And a leaf of collard green, Lovely Lieder Leontyne" ♪ Grits, if eaten at all, is at brunch.

A fabulous Craig Claiborne cheese grits souffle recipe from the New York Times .

In the 1980s, there are thousands of blacks who will still not eat watermelon in public.

The stereotype of a grinning darky eating a slice of watermelon is still a wounding image.

Hopefully, in private, those who don't in public follow Jean Toomer's advice in "Blue Meridian."

"But, we must keep, keep the watermelon, he moaned.

Oh Lord, this bale will break me.

But we must keep, keep the watermelon."

But my favorite must still be the poetry of the greens.

"Cutting Greens" by Lucille Clifton.

"Curling them around I hold their bodies in obscene embrace thinking of everything but kinship.

Collards and kale strains, strain against each other away from my kissmaking hand and the iron bedpot.

The pot is black, my hand, and just for a minute the greens reel under the knife and the kitchen twists stark on its spine and I taste in my natural appetite the bond of live things everywhere."

(slow jazz music) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪