To learn the local customs, ‘eat their bread’

 

Urban chef Chris Scott (shown above) is as much of a storyteller as he is a culinary guy. He celebrates his African-American culture through food. He’s been associated with the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City, teaching a “cornbread curriculum.”

His introductory lecture begins: “If you want to know about a group of people or their culture, eat their bread.”

“No American food has more historical and cultural connections than corn,” Scott said, “from Native Americans to the Pilgrims to us today. No single food native to America has become more essential to the survival of so many different nationalities around the globe.”

 

“Cornbread and its variations were here in the Americas” from the very beginning. “Cornbread is the product of making something beautiful out of humble ingredients. In ancient times, having corn was like having gold,” Scott claimed.

“Most American families, regardless of background, have a recipe for cornbread. It’s normally one that’s been passed down from aunts and grandmothers, scribbled on the back of a postcard or an old, tattered napkin. To me, those are the love letters of generations past that tell a defined story of who we are and speak to our culture in little ways.”

 

“If you are from the Appalachians, then you might tend to prepare your cornbread in a very old-fashioned manner with no leaveners, using simply ground corn, hot water and lard. The luxury of having butter, buttermilk, sugar, honey, baking powder or baking soda usually indicated that you had money,” Scott said.

“Decoding a simple family cornbread recipe can tell the underlying story of where you come from.”

Scott’s ambition is to introduce Southern-style soul food into northern markets. One such venture paid tribute to the role of the “birdman,” the person on the plantation “who tended to the fowl, built the coop, gave eggs to the community, kept feathers to make blankets and pillows. Legally, black people weren’t allowed to own livestock, but chickens were considered vermin. We took advantage of the loophole,” Scott said.

“We owned chickens: raised them, cooked them, figured out how to make them delicious. After emancipation, we sold the birds, as well as our aptitude for animal husbandry. For our ancestors this wasn’t just food: it was a path out of poverty. It’s a story of resilience.”

 

Scott said his aunt Sarah Mae was the baker in the family. “Her cakes and pies were to-die-for. She was always in the kitchen preparing something. She was never one to give exact measurements, but instead, never tired of giving you the play-by-play of how an ingredient needed to be dealt with in order to gain the best result.”

Someone who loves to talk about, cook and eat cornbread is Michael Twitty of Washington, D.C. (shown below), creator of the “Afroculinaria” blog. He told Kathleen Purvis of The Charlotte Observer:

 

“What we call cornbread today, puffy and leavened with egg, was corn pone. It originated with British colonists who adapted their baking to meal ground from white corn. But it wasn’t sweet. Most people in the South, from white farmers to slaves, made multiple forms of cornmeal breads – baked corn pones, skillet-baked Johnny cakes, ash cakes and hoe cakes. Whatever they made, they kept a syrup bottle on the table, usually cane syrup or sorghum molasses, to pour on it.”

There was no need to put sugar in the cornbread recipe. “It was a valuable commodity,” Twitty said. People put molasses on everything. “That was the poor man’s condiment. Quick energy, quick carbohydrates and a source of iron in the diet.”