Jessica B. Harris on Soul Food

My recent trip to Sydney, where southern soul food is currently all the rage, inspired me to share this quote...

Fried chicken at Hartsyard, Sydney

"Soul food has been defined as the traditional African American food of the South as it has been served in black homes and restaurants around the country, but there is a wide-ranging disagreement on exactly what that food was. Was it solely the food of the plantation South that was fed to the enslaved: a diet of hog and hominy supplemented with whatever could be hunted or foraged or stolen to relieve its monotony? Was it the traditionallly less-noble parts of the pig that were fed to the enslaved, like the chitterlings and hog maws and pigs' feet, the taste for which had been carried to the North by those who left the South in search of jobs? Was it the foods that nourished those who danced at rent parties in Harlem and who went to work in the armament factories during World War II? Was it the fried chicken that was served by the waiter-carriers who hawked their wares at train stations in Virginia or the chicken that was packed in boxes and nourished those who migrated to Kansas and other parts of the West? Was it the smothered pork chop that turned up in the African American restaurants covered in rich brown gravy or the fluffy cornbread that accompanied it? 

Soul food it would seem depends on an ineffable quality. It is a combination of nostalgia for and pride in the food of those who came before ... In the 1960s, as the history of African Americans began to be rewritten with pride instead of with the shame that had previously accompanied the experience of disenfranchisement and enslavement, soul food was as much an affirmation as a diet. Eating neckbones and chitterlings, turnip greens and fried chicken, became a political statement for many" 

Harris, J.B. 2011. We Shall Not Be Moved. In H. Hughes, ed. Best Food Writing 2011. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 9-115.

Heston Blumenthal on cooking for friends

Gabriel Tate: Is the pressure greater on you when you cook for guests, or on them when they cook for you?

Heston Blumenthal: Me. I only realised this last year. Young chefs can be a bit cocky and criticise other people. For me, sitting round a table at someone's house and having someone cook for you - it's a real treat. I'm easy to cook for. But what happens if someone comes to my house and I just give them bolognese? They'll wonder why the can't eat the bowl.

Time Out interview

Jay Rayner on Balthazar

"The best dishes we tried were a seafood linguine with lots of roast garlic and bite and kick, and a crème brûlée. Mind you, if they couldn't knock out one of those – soft light crème, crisp-thin shell – it would be time for the pitchforks and burning stakes. The rest ran on an onomatopoeic scale from ho hum to meh."

Jay Rayner

Warren Belasco on the American food chain

"I tell students that eating is more than a private, physiological act. It connects us to people and places all over the world – past, present and future. As an example, I invite them to think about the simple act of toasting and eating a slice of packaged white bread. Growing that wheat helped some Midwestern farmers pay their bills while also polluting their water supply with fertilizers and pesticides, eroding their soil, and, if they used irrigation, lowering their region's water table. The land used to grow the wheat had been acquired – or seized – long ago from other living creatures, human or otherwise, and converted to growing a grass that had originated as a weed in the Middle East and had been gradually domesticated and improved by countless generations of gatherers, peasants, farmers, and, only just recently scientists. Turning wheat into bread required the coordinated efforts of numerous companies specializing in food transportation, storage, processing, and marketing, as well as others involved in manufacturing and selling farming equipment.

By extending the bread's shelf life, the plastic wrapping lowered costs and increased profits for corporate processors, distributors and supermarkets. That packaging also helped to put thousands of neighbourhood bakers out of business. Making the plastic from petrochemicals may have helped to foul Cancer Alley in Louisiana and, if the oil came from the Middle East, may have helped to pay for the reconstruction of Kuwait, which was destroyed several years ago by an Iraqi army also financed by petrochemical bread wrappers. The copper in the toaster and electrical wiring may have been mined during the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile or Mobutu's Zaire or Bruce Babbitt's Arizona. The electricity itself probably came from a power plant burning coal, a source of black lung, acid rain, and global warming. And so on... All of this – and more – was involved in making toast. And we have not even mentioned the butter and jam!"

Warren Belasco in The Cultural Politics of Food and Eating: A Reader (2005:217)

Diana Henry on preserving

"I am a home cook. I don't have masses of special equipment and I don't do things on a grand scale. Quite a lot of the literature that existed on preserving was off-putting. I didn't want to turn my garden shed into a smokery. I could never manage - and would never need - to cure a whole pig. Preserving looked as if it was either for elderly ladies in floral pinnies or or country-based downsizers with a vehicle big enough to transport several dead animals. I didn't come into either category."

Henry, D. (2012) Salt, Sugar, Smoke: How to Preserve Fruit, Vegetables, Meat and Fish. London: Mitchell Beazley. p. 6.