“Scientists say all humans are 99.99 percent genomically identical, but it’s that tiny 0.01 percent difference that can be used to pick us apart by ethnicity or race and biogeographical region. But how do you unscramble a scrambled egg?” (pg.119)
This week I continued The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty. After these chapters I have decided to put the book down for a few weeks to explore other texts, before returning to it at the end of the quarter. As much as I am enjoying it I want to make sure I make it to everything else on my list.
Chapter seven, “White Man in the Woodpile” is Twitty’s exploration of his white ancestors and living relatives. He details his trip from Washington to what remains of Oak Forest plantation in North Carolina, the ownership of which Twitty had traced back to his fifth-great grandfather, a white slaveowner named William Bellamy. Twitty reflects on the grounds and the way of life that would have existed in the 1840’s when he believed his ancestor lived, using the probate record to learn about the livestock, crops, and four dozen enslaved people that once resided in Oak Forest. What struck me most was the way in which all evidence of the slave cabins had been hidden, not only the cabins themselves were gone but Twitty describes the foundations as being removed also leaving nothing “to look at, meditate over, or imagine life in.” (pg.104)
The other stories in this chapter detail other circumstances of a similar theme, as Twitty explores the white members of his and other family’s ancestry and the historical trauma surrounding why they are there. While he makes a point to discuss sexual abuse amongst all genders, Twitty spends much time reflecting on the gendered aspects of sexual abuse in African-American family trees and the trauma and stigma surrounding black women and sex. I don’t want to go into too much detail but it was a difficult yet powerful read that I would recommend if you feel safe to do so.
“I have often wondered whether the white people who know we are kin actually see us as family. It’s critical for me to think about the possibilities of every Southern white family connected to African Americans on DNA tests truly reaching out and vice versa, to create a dialogue. Would we be better off if we embraced this complexity and death with our pain or shame? Would we finally be Americans or Southerners or both if we truly understood how impenetrably connected we actually are? Is it too late? Maybe I’ll just invite everybody to dinner one day and find out.” (pg.116)
I don’t have much to say on chapter eight, I found it mildly interesting but it was a lot about DNA and how the DNA testing process works. I did enjoy learning about Twitty’s experience with it and how he was able to use it to determine maternal and paternal relatives and geographical history. I would definitely take a DNA test if possible, I think it would be a great addition to my ILC work but I would need to look into getting a grant of some kind to cover it and I’m not sure if that’s the kind of thing they give grants for.
Chapter nine, Sweet Tooth, details the journey of sugar across the world and its impacts on food consumption, global economies, and slavery. Highlighted within these lessons is the foodscape of the Caribbean and the enslaved people who resided on the islands colonized by the French and British. Some of the foods I knew such as allspice, plantains, parrot, allspice, yams, musk melons, watermelons, crabs, shrimp, turkey, oranges, and coconuts. Other dishes such as “duckanoo”,“dokono” and “tum-tum” I had to look up. Twitty discusses how the influence of the Caribbean reached the U.S through French colonization, and the influx in sugarcane farmed by enslaved people in Louisiana following the Haitian revolution against enslavement by the French.
Twitty dedicates several pages to quotes from Solomon Northup, author of Twelve Years a Slave. These quotes detail the processing of sugarcane so create the sugar syrup, as done by enslaved people across the world. Twitty then explains that this way of processing sugar cane was created by the son of a white plantation owner and a free woman of color, and never received his due credit for his creations, as Twitty puts it “Norbert Rillieux is the household name that never was.”(pg.154)
I really enjoyed Twitty’s focus on molasses later in the chapter, he starts with a story about being gifted a jar of sorghum molasses by his grandfather as a child before explaining the sugar cane belt and sorghum cane belts of the southern U.S and how each region would make molasses differently according to the location and time of year. Twitty traveled to a Mennonite farm in Tennessee where a farmer allowed him to watch him make sorghum molasses. I really loved reliving his experience through his writing, he described the air as “like being in a taffy sauna, very sexy for a bear who appreciates sweets” (pg.157) and even better the sorghum poured over pound cake “It is sexy, it is overkill, it is soul-making, it was so good I bought more and ate them before G-d gave me two more days of life”. (pg.157)
Writing Prompt #1 Write about a food or meal you make that makes you feel more connected to one of your important identities or relationships. Are the ingredients significant or sentimental in any way?
Shepards pie appeared somewhere in the United Kingdom in the 18th century, and I have known it my whole life. It is one of my favorite things so make and women in my family have been making it for me for as long as I can remember. There are small changes to the recipe family to family but this is my general recipe. You start by sauteing a minced onion until translucent and then adding in your ground meat, traditionally it should be lamb but some people will use beef. Once browned throw in minced garlic, rosemary, thyme, frozen peas, and diced carrot. Allow to combine for a minute Add tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce, red wine if you have some and red wine vinegar if you don’t (not too much!) Cook down for a minute, add chicken stock and cook down again. Season to taste. You’ll pour that into an oven-safe dish and make fluffy mashed potatoes with salt, pepper, milk, butter, cheese and two egg yolks mixed in to lay on top. Create straight parallel grooves on your mashed potato crust and sprinkle with more cheese.
Place in the oven at 400 degrees for 19-21 minutes. Once baked, the mashed potatoes and cheese will form a golden crust on top of the filling and the vegetables and meat will be soft and flavorful. Your silver wear will make a scraping sound if run along the top and you should hear a muted crunch when you break the surface. One year when we decided to have Christmas dinner on the 26th, our family unanimously agreed to Shepard’s pie for Christmas day dinner. The best part is you can cover and freeze it to defrost later!
Ground lamb is available in America it’s just less common and a lot more expensive. It’s definitely one of the things I miss, lamb chops are killer, and a comforting lamb Shepard’s pie can heal the soul like you wouldn’t believe. It’s one of the only things I came to college knowing how to cook, I learned how to make it the summer between 11th and 12th grade for the end-of-season bike coach party, but I don’t make it as much as I should. It’s one of those things that is so stereotypically English but I can’t really argue with it, and I wouldn’t want to to be honest, it’s delicious. My grandmother has her own recipe that adds one more key ingredient and I won’t lie it’s delicious but it’s pretty much sacrilege so I won’t be revealing what it is.
Writing Prompt #2 Write about a food or meal you learned to make or add to your diet because of a preference or important identity of someone in your life. Does this food or its ingredients have significance now that it did not previously?
My best friend likes a lot of the stuff I cook, but they become a drooling-from-the-mouth, heart-eyes cartoon when I talk about pot roast. My mother never called what she made “pot-roast” but I remember her making stews similar to what I make now, usually in the slow cooker, and I’ll admit that I wasn’t a fan of many of her slow-cooker recipes. I didn’t particularly want to make pot roast the first time I did, but I find so much joy in cooking for people, especially Kristopher, that I was willing to make an exception this one time. I had decided to make it in one pot style, searing my meat and cooking it low and slow in an enameled cast iron dutch oven pot.
The night before I salted my chuck roast all over and sealed it tightly in a ziplock to marinate until 1 pm the next day when I would take it out and set it on the counter to drop in temperature while I roughly chop an onion, create a pile of minced garlic and a shot stack of halved garlic cloves, and heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in my pot. I sear each side of the meat for a few minutes and it creates a beautiful golden-brown crust, sometimes I pull off a corner and give it a little taste, the crunchy edges are delicious. I take out the roast and set it on the cutting board, and I cook the onions and garlic in the drippings for a few minutes before adding in tomato paste and cooking that down too (I think too many people forget to cook down the tomato paste but it’s a really important step for getting that rich flavor). Add the roast back in on top of the onions and pour in beef stock and red wine or a splash or red wine vinegar, leaving at least two to three inches of the roast exposed. Cover with the lid and place in a 300-degree oven for two hours.
Right before those two hours are up you will want to wash and evenly chop your potatoes. Pealing them is totally up to you, I prefer skin on but Kristopher likes skin off so that’s what I tend to do. Peal and chop carrots into baby carrot size or just grab a handful of baby carrots, as well as some whole cloves of garlic. Remove the pot from the oven, being careful not to get a face full of steam when you remove the lid, and drop in the potatoes, carrots, and garlic. You still want the roast to have at least two inches exposed so push veggies under the roast if you need. Taste the broth and season to your liking, I usually use onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, oregano, salt, pepper, bay leaves, rosemary, and thyme. You can also add more red wine vinegar or other base liquids if you need just be aware of not drowning your roast.
Put the roast back in the oven for another 2-3 hours, the meat should fall apart and the potatoes should be fork-tender. The broth will be a variation of red, orange, or brown depending on how you seasoned, and you can either eat the broth as is or strain the meat and veggies out and reduce to create a gravy. You can thicken the gravy with flour or a cornstarch slurry, but letting it simmer on high heat should do the job just fine too. The larger pieces of garlic will become soft squishy bombs of garlic marinated in other flavors and the onions will become soft and slurpable. If you can’t tell by now, I have changed my mind on pot roast. The ingredients are simple, the cooking process is simple, the flavors are simple, yet it is still hearty and bold. It was the first thing on my list to cook when fall came and started to cool our apartment down, I missed it’s comfort and its strength but there is a reason stronger than that. My reason for learning to cook pot roast is with me for another pot roast season, and seeing them anticipate and enjoy my cooking tastes better than any meal I have ever made.
Developing my Personal Menu
This week I continued to brainstorm meals from my past and present, as well as making a rough draft of what my menu would look like and beginning a rough draft of the writing. I don’t actually think this is the story I want to start on but it was good writing practice and I think I will use parts of it later on in the section. I expanded my list to include foods I cook regularly or have cooked regularly while at college, and I spoke to my grandmother about foods my sister and I liked as children which I have to the list in their own section.
My goal is to have selected my final menu items by the end of week 5 so that I can focus on my writing, cook through at least one item from each menu section, and format my menu and picture to my liking before my final presentation. The foods listed right now are all definitely options but I know there are a few changes I want to make after speaking to my family, and I think using this last bit of time to really think about and notice my cooking and eating habits right now will be really valuable.