Setting The Table

Episode 6

The Future of Black Food

Aaron Hutcherson:

My name is Aaron Hutcherson. I'm a food writer and recipe developer with The Washington Post. Thinking about what Black food is, my first thought is any food that has been touched by Black hands. So any specific ingredients or cuisines. Of course, there is a stereotype of fried chicken and collard greens and mac and cheese and all that stuff, but I think especially today, it's so easy to find Black chefs and other food people that are so well-versed in a variety of cultures' cuisine. But it seems that... This could just be my own impression and beliefs, but whenever Black people do touch food and put their stamp on it, there's just a certain something extra in there. A certain oomph that sets it apart. It doesn't have to say that it's super spicy or anything like that, but Black food tends to make a statement. It can be a subtle statement. It can be an over the top statement. There is a statement and a reason and an intention behind Black food.

Aaron Hutcherson:

I think that the majority of the discourse around Black food up until now has been about claiming the history, which I think is important because we need that to lay that foundation of what's to come, but there are also people out there that are thinking about what's next. Yes, this is what we've done up until now and this is how integral we've been in American food, but we also need to have an eye on the future and talk about what's to come and what's next. I think it's great to have people doing both things at the same time. I always want more. I want more for us. I want more of us in the room. I want more of us creating our own rooms. Because the breath and depth of Black food is incalculable.

Deb Freeman:

Welcome to Setting the Table, a podcast about Black cuisine and foodways. I'm Deb Freeman. I'm a writer that focuses on African American foodways and the impact those foodways have on how we cook and eat today. On this episode, we continue our exploration of soul food by hearing from chefs who are putting their own spin on it and giving us a glimpse on what the future of Black food looks like. Our first guest is a chef who's made his name remixing the classics. The best analogy I can come up with is when Sean Combs... well, back when he was called Puff Daddy... took classic R&B records and created remixes on Bad Boy Records in the '90s. This guy is doing the same thing, but with food.

Scotty Scott:

My name is Scotty Scott. I am a social media video food guy. I create recipes. I'm just excited to do anything and everything involving food and culture.

Deb Freeman:

Scotty is a personal chef and digital creator through his social media platform, Cook Drank Eat, where he shares recipes of his unique takes on his favorite dishes, including soul food classics.

Scotty Scott:

When I first started doing this, in terms of the social media aspect, I really wanted to make it my own. I was like, man, when I do this, it's got to be real. It's got to be me. It's got to be whatever I want to do. And so I'm just out here trying to put my own spin on things. I'm a little weird in that I don't watch cooking shows because I don't want to be influenced by them, so to speak. I figure if I make a recipe... Pretty much everything's already been done before, but if I haven't seen it, then it's mine. So I can stand on that. And so I'm just always trying to have something fresh and something new. One of my favorite things to do is really just go to the supermarket, see what's new, see what's fresh, see what I haven't tried before, and just see what I can do with it and put my own spin on it.

Deb Freeman:

When I started following him on Twitter, I instantly gravitated towards his videos because they were out-of-the-box while being accessible to the everyday chef and that's not an easy thing to do. The success and popularity of his recipes led to him getting a cookbook deal. I got my copy a couple weeks ago and it's a gem. Trust me, you're going want to have this in your kitchen.

Scotty Scott:

So the cookbook is called, Fix Me a Plate. Somebody asked me, "Where'd you come up with that?" The approach I take with my social media and my pictures, I want you to feel at home. I want you to feel like you're in my kitchen, you smell the food cooking, you smell what I've got going on there, and you've asked me to fix you a plate of what I'm making. And so the cookbook dives into some of the recipes I grew up eating, some of the recipes I learned throughout my adulthood, and then it's going to also show you some of the new ways you can remix recipes. I mean, one of my favorite things about the book is that it's probably about four or five different recipes that start off as one thing and then turn into three separate new recipes for you. Because I understand that people don't always have the time to sit over a stove making gumbo for five hours. So in the book you'll see where you can make something and it can turn into something the next day and something different the next day.

Deb Freeman:

Of course, writing a cookbook is a daunting task for any chef. This was especially true for Scotty who is known for his more creative takes on beloved dishes.

Scotty Scott:

When they first approached me about doing the cookbook, I was a bit apprehensive, to be honest with you, just because I don't specialize in soul food. I grew up eating soul food, I cook soul food, but it's not only the thing that I do. And I'm not a food historian. Soul food for me... As many ethnic cuisines are, it's very important to our culture and to the Black culture and to the Black history. Especially around that time, there was a bit of a reckoning going on with George Floyd and everything, and so I wanted to make sure I was able to do it justice. And so I had to have the traditional recipes in there. They said nobody wants to hear fusion, which I understand that, but I had to have some recipes in there to let people know this is what I do. I create my own stuff. This is where my heart is. When I'm in the kitchen, I'm just trying to create. And so the remix is my opportunity to show people what I create.

Deb Freeman:

Even as Scotty is remixing the classics, you can tell that he's passionate about the food. I mean, how could he not be? Like so many African American chefs, Scotty grew up surrounded by soul food.

Scotty Scott:

That's where it all began. That's where my love of cooking began. Most of the things we ate when it was big family gatherings was... It was soul food. It was macaroni and cheese. It was greens. It was everything that came with it. That's where everything began for me. I mentioned this in one of my posts is that sweet potato pie, which for me, I call the transcendental sweet potato pie. I've converted pumpkin eaters over to my sweet potato pie.

Deb Freeman:

That's not easy.

Scotty Scott:

It's not easy. No, no. I mean, it all began with sweet potato pie, really, for me, and my supreme confidence in making that, not from what I had done on my own, but it's my grandmother's recipe. And so to have those handwritten recipes and be able to remember sitting in the kitchen and watching them make it and remember sitting around the family table and everybody enjoying it and bringing me back to my roots in that sense. I wish I had more, to be honest with you. It's one of those things where, especially as a young adult in my 20s, I didn't really care about that. It wasn't until my mother's health started failing, and we're trying to take care of her and going through all of her stuff, that you really realize what you have. And so it's extremely important.

Scotty Scott:

My mother taught at the Board of Education for Detroit for 40 years and I have recipes that she's written down on her notepad from work. She's talking on the phone to somebody and she's transcribing it. The sweet potato pie recipe is written on the back of an envelope. It's those things that... It puts you in the moment. It takes you back. I mean, it's written in cursive, some of them. It's a tangible connection to the past that you're able to put forth into present day. My grandmother probably made this sweet potato pie literally like 100 years ago. So somebody now that's eating it, they're able to taste what she had in her own kitchen in Savannah, Georgia that long ago.

Deb Freeman:

Passing down recipes is so incredibly important. I'm fortunate enough that I sat with my nana in the kitchen often enough to make many of her dishes. But one thing I wish I could replicate is her cornbread. She didn't write down her recipe. I've been trying for years to get mine to taste like hers and have never succeeded. But back to Scotty. I was interested to hear more about his thoughts on how soul food is seen today and where it's going.

Scotty Scott:

I mean, soul food to me is anything coming out of the African diaspora using the same ingredients and techniques. So, that can be whatever. I don't think you should limit yourself into what the traditional box of soul food is. Because if you're talking about soul food, we've talking about things that are being handed down from generations, right? Techniques that have been handed down for generations. So does that stop at a certain place in time? It continues on.When I was trying to explain it to somebody in my book, in terms of what I felt about my food, they were like, "Well, it's elevated soul food." I was like, "Well, no, because then that's disparaging to soul food."

Scotty Scott:

I mean, some of these techniques that are used, I have not mastered the techniques. The way of cooking rice to make sure that each grain is separated... It's done over an open fire. I mean, I have not mastered it at all by any means. And so if you say "elevated soul food," then it seems to kind of disparage soul food. To me, soul food is anything that you're using the certain tools, techniques, ingredients, forethought, is soul food. Because otherwise you're going to be stuck in a rut. You're going to be stuck with the same however many dishes and it's just not going to be able to grow.

Scotty Scott:

I think people are doing some amazing stuff. Knowing where your food comes, growing your own food, creating from that, I think those things all together are really going to help push us in a new direction as far as soul food is concerned. I think that helps people realize how serious people are about their craft and their livelihood. It's not just frying up some fish. I mean, nothing's wrong with fried fish. I might have some fried fish on Friday, actually. But point being is that when people see that you're passionate about something and they realize the effort that you put into it, they appreciate that.

Scotty Scott:

So I think that's one thing that's helping move into the future is that people realize, man, these people, they're doing some incredible stuff. They're doing stuff I hadn't thought about. They're doing stuff that I can't do, basically. Because when you realize that certain techniques are more difficult than others, even though they might not be a traditional French technique or whatever you want to call it... A technique is a technique and, if you can't perfect that, that's impressive. So I think the more you dive deep into it, the more you pour into it, the more people are going to appreciate it. The more they're going to be accepting of it being more than just your typical five soul food dishes.

Deb Freeman:

Of course, because Scotty is playing around with dishes that have a deep legacy in our community, sometimes his creations don't go over as well with some traditionalists. But that doesn't bother him at all.

Scotty Scott:

So one of my favorites... and part of the remix is when I was starting off with a lot of this, I was a single man. And so if I cook up a big old pot of gumbo, I got to eat on that thing for five days. I'm trying to figure out how can I repurpose this? How can I not make it boring? And so one of my favorites is red beans and rice. So I start off with a big old pot of red beans and rice. It's delicious. It's got sausage, it's got smoked meats in there, all that good stuff. One of my favorite things to do with it is to make hummus. And so I'll put that in the food processor, add a little lemon juice to brighten it up, a little bit of fried garlic, and then sprinkle a little bit of cayenne on top.

Scotty Scott:

And so I'm serving that as an appetizer with normal hummus, some naan or some veggies, or something like that. And they're like, "Yeah, boy, this ain't no soul food. This is not soul food, boy. I'm just telling you. It's cold. You know what I mean? Like, it's not soul food." I'm like, "But it started off... This is red bean and rice. This is exactly the same thing." Ain't no rice and it's a little bit of lemon juice, but I get that. Soul food has a connotation, not just a derogatory, but it has one that's going to be comforting. It has that feeling to it. So if you have that in mind and you're walking away with some carrots and some pureed beans, I can understand that. But hopefully, that's what soul food is in the future. I mean, like I said, it started off as about Southern as you can get. Red beans and rice. It's just finished off as something new and something different

Deb Freeman:

Through talking with Scotty. I began and to think about the possibility of soul food beyond the tried and true recipes we're all familiar with. So what happens when chefs push past those boundaries to create something new altogether. To continue our exploration into the future of soul food, I spoke with a chef who's looking at Black food from a fine dining perspective.

Adrienne Cheatham:

My name is Adrienne Cheatham. I am the chef and founder of the Sunday Best popup series here in Harlem and the forthcoming cookbook of the same name, Sunday Best. I would describe my food and how I cook as modern American or new American. To me, you can't have American cuisine without having the food of African American people. So you may call components of it soul food or Southern cuisine, but to me it is quintessentially American food.

Deb Freeman:

Adrienne has an impressive resume and she's worked in some of the top kitchens in the world, including Eric Ripert's Le Bernardin and Marcus Samuelsson's Red Rooster and Streetbird. You might also remember Adrienne as the runner up on the Colorado season of Top Chef, where she reconnected with her soul food roots. Since the show, Adrienne has continued her exploration of soul food through her popup dinner party series Sunday Best.

Adrienne Cheatham:

So the popup series actually started right after doing Top Chef. I knew that I was going to take a second before I went back to a restaurant and I went into Top Chef not knowing what I was doing. I mean, I was cooking food from restaurants that I had worked at before because I hadn't had my own restaurant. I hadn't cooked my own food. I hadn't developed what the style was going to be. It wasn't until the end of the season that I started finally getting there and it was because I had to recreate my mother's Cajun gumbo. It was eye opening in the way that this is what I'd had in the back of my mind for a while and I was forced to do it.

Adrienne Cheatham:

If she hadn't cooked gumbo and I hadn't had to recreate it, I don't know that I would've gotten there, but having that experience on that challenge really accelerated getting me in that head space. And so by the finale, that was what I was starting to cook and explore, but I hadn't done it before. I just got a taste of doing it the last few challenges of the show and was like, oh my God. Now I know what I want to cook. I'm beginning to form the idea. I'm beginning to get my mind wrapped around the narrative of it. So starting the popup series was a way to cook that food and explore these cultural connections that Black people have had with other cultures since we were brought to this country.

Deb Freeman:

I love that Adrienne calls her popup series Sunday Best. It's a term that carries a lot of meaning in the Black community.

Adrienne Cheatham:

There is such a strong history and I knew of it in the context of my family. So my dad is from Jackson, Mississippi. Well, he's born in Chicago, raised in Jackson from the time he was like one, so to me he's from there. We have family in Terry, Mississippi also, which is a small town. So we spent summer breaks and spring breaks going to Mississippi, 12 or 14-hour road trip from Chicago, because our dad wanted us to be raised right, as he said. You want to get kids out of the city in the summer. They can run around. Outdoor in Mississippi is different than outdoor on the South Side of Chicago.

Adrienne Cheatham:

So we would go down there and it was the late '80s, early, mid '90s. Girls in Chicago, we were wearing Timbs, Air Force Ones, big oversized polo shirts and Eddie Bauer button ups. We would go to Mississippi and our pajamas were, like, men's boxer shorts and t-shirts. That's what my sister and I would wear as pajamas or around the house. And we always stayed with my great-aunt Ruby. We call her Big Sister. Big Sister would always say, "You are not going to dress like a little boy in my house," and she would give us a house dress to wear. Yes. It's like a robe, but it zips up.

Deb Freeman:

Oh wow. My grandmother wore those. Exactly.

Adrienne Cheatham:

Yep. It's got a little quilted pattern around the shoulders.

Deb Freeman:

Exactly. Some pockets.

Adrienne Cheatham:

Exactly. So she would always... We'd have to have a house dress. If we didn't have a dress, my father would have to take us to the department store to get a dress and some decent shoes. Because if we were leaving the immediate area around her house, which was all Black, if we were going anywhere else in the city, she would say, "No, you are putting on your Sunday best." I'm like, "What do you mean?" She's like, "You brought a dress for church, right?" I'm like, "Yeah, of course. Yes, ma'am. I brought a dress for church." She's like, "Okay, so put on your church dress and that is what you're going to wear."

Adrienne Cheatham:

Because, as she would say... I mean, bless her heart. She's 97 now and still with us. Thank God. But she used to say, "You are not going to let these good White people see you dress like that." And we were mortified. I'm like, I can't believe it. Like, what is she talking about? But she grew up in a time where people looked at you as less than already. One of the things that you could control was how you dressed. Your clothes had to be clean and pressed. Your stockings couldn't have holes in them. Shoes had to be polished. You can wear nice casual clothes around other Black people, but if you're going anywhere outside of your immediate couple block radius, you put your best foot forward so people see you as somebody worthy of respect.

Deb Freeman:

I can totally relate to this. I grew up the same way and I also went to Catholic school. So you can best believe before I left the house to go to school, to go to church, or anywhere really, my clothes were starched and pressed. And on Sundays, you would've thought I was going to the White House for lunch. My church dresses had [inaudible 00:19:34] slips to make the skirt puff out. I was wearing socks with black leather Mary Janes without any scuffs and white gloves. It was absolutely next level. Even today, I wouldn't dare leave the house wrinkled. I think my nana might come out of the grave if I did that. But now I realize why she made sure I was spotless when I walked out the front door.

Adrienne Cheatham:

It's the same concept of like... It's a celebration. Yes, you're dressing up so other people can see you as equal or they can see you and not say, "I don't like this person because, ugh, they have dirty clothes and this and that." It's like, no, if you don't like me, the only reason you don't like me is because I'm Black. That was how it was for Big Sister and my father as well. He grew up in 1950s Mississippi. Around the time Emmett Till was murdered. So this isn't so far removed. It was kind of like that celebrating who you are with people you love. I'm dressing up, yes, for myself, so I can be seen as respectable, but I'm also dressing up for my family to let them know that I care about them and I want to look good for them. I'm not going to put on some boxer shorts and a t-shirt to hang out with my grandmother because I respect her. I want to give her that respect of dressing up for her as well.

Deb Freeman:

Sunday Best is a great name. Not only for the cultural memories it invokes, but because it's descriptive of what Adrienne's doing with her cooking. Taking the flavors and dishes of soul food and showing the masses that Black cuisine is serious cuisine and deserves its place in the world of fine dining.

Adrienne Cheatham:

You think you're doing this or you're one of the few people doing it, then you meet other chefs... my age older, younger... that have been toying with these same ideas and cooking some food in a similar way. Obviously, we all have our different interpretations, but there are chefs who have been doing this before me as well. One of the main threads that I've seen is that we never thought our food was worthy to be included in the conversation of venerated cuisine, so we never paid that much attention to it. We each, in our own space, in our own time, individually, came to a point where we're like, this food is beautiful. Obviously, everybody knows the greatest hits. Fried chicken, collard greens, cornbread. Fried chicken was something that you only made in the summertime because the hens were a certain size and before the meat got too tough. But they're delicious dishes. They just took over the narrative of what the food is because they're amazing. So why not pick and choose the best of it if you're going to be recreating this cuisine as your family moves up north?

Adrienne Cheatham:

But I really see it going in any direction. There are French restaurants that get into Japanese cuisine and French restaurants that get into Korean or mixed with different cultures and cuisine along their path. I really see Southern cuisine doing that exact same thing. We've got the history in the food. We've got the techniques already embedded in the cuisine. It's just a matter of also getting over the fact that you're not disrespecting your family by changing their recipes. That's another thing a lot of chefs have grappled with. Like, I can't call this mac and cheese if I'm doing it this way. It has to be done the way my grandmother did it or she'll roll over in her grave. Well, she might, but she also might be proud of you for changing it a little bit.

Deb Freeman:

The idea of breaking stereotypes is important to Adrienne, who has worked in some of the best kitchens in the world. She's known some similarities while cooking in those kitchens to cooking she witnessed growing up.

Adrienne Cheatham:

Some of the most interesting things that I noticed, especially when I went to work in Michelin-starred restaurants... So when I was at Le Bernardin, which is largely considered one of the best restaurants in the country, if not in the world, I started noticing things. Yes, you learn French cuisine technique in culinary school, but you don't really learn it until you get to a restaurant. I had worked in more casual restaurants previously, but then going to a Michelin-starred restaurant, where it's very, very technique driven... You don't deviate from technique because things work a certain way. Because it's been proven. So you don't want to change it up too much. But as I'm watching these techniques, I'm like, okay, we're making bechamel, we're adding cheese, it's called a Mornay. Well, that's how my family makes mac and cheese. You start with a roux. You add milk to it. You melt in your cheese. Because everybody knows you can't just melt certain types of cheese. The oil separates, they get stringy, and you can't toss that into macaroni or mix it into your pasta. So these techniques are woven in to our cuisine also.

Adrienne Cheatham:

When you're cooking collard greens, you don't just put your ham hock or smoked turkey in the pot as the same time as the collard greens. You get your flavor infused into that water. You simmer that ham hock or smoked turkey with some Lawry seasoning or whatever seasoning your family is partial too and you get that cooking. In French cuisine, that's called a bouillon, but we just call it what you put your greens in. When you're frying chicken, you put it in flour first, then buttermilk, then flour or corn meal again. That's not called standard breading procedure. That's just called making fried chicken. So when I say techniques, I'm working in this fine dining French restaurant and I'm like, this is the exact same thing that my great aunt in Mississippi is doing. Like, why is it that I can't swap out some of these ingredients from France or swap out some of these ingredients from Peru or Japan for ingredients from the South?

Deb Freeman:

To be honest, it's no mystery why a lot of soul food techniques mirror French techniques if you consider the origin of these dishes in the first place, but it's an important observation when thinking about how soul is often seen by the general public. Although this perception is changing, it's hard to convince everyone all at once, but Adrienne is confident in the direction she's taking her food.

Adrienne Cheatham:

Some people are. Some people are definitely kind of burrowed into the like, I mean, this is great, but it's not Southern food. It's like, yeah, it is, but it's not soul food. It's like, yeah, it is. Soul food, Southern cuisine, American cuisine, whatever you want to call it, was invented out of necessity. There are small things that differentiate those three categories, but by and large, when I say the food of African Americans, I mean the food that America was built on. North to south, the people working the fields, working the kitchens, were largely African American and the cuisine that built this country and the hands that built this country were the hands of African Americans.

Adrienne Cheatham:

So you can't have American cuisine without saying there was nuance, there was depth, there was breath. There was so much that changed every hundred miles or less that you went. The cuisine in this area of Louisiana is different from this area. You travel a few miles and what's available, the soil, is so different, so there was so much beauty and nuance. You have these common threads because you would have people from similar areas in Africa. They brought cooking techniques and seeds and ways of cooking and ways of thinking about food and respecting the land and they mix with what they learned from indigenous Americans. Ingredients that were brought up from Mexico. Different immigrant groups that came over. Irish immigrants, German immigrants, Syrian, refugees, Vietnamese, Indian. All these groups came over from the founding of this country through the 1960s and '70s and had a huge impact on the cuisine, but everything was brought to and through the hands of African Americans. It's so beautiful to see how those combined.

Adrienne Cheatham:

You can't talk about American cuisine without acknowledging the core group that developed the cuisine and all the others that had a hand in helping push it along the way. So that's what me and chefs nowadays are kind of playing with. It's like, so you have these people brought over in chains who had to cook and farm and build agriculture on a land that had never been touched and the pressure and the immense work that took, but the food changed. Every group that came over brought a new technique and that got folded into the pot. So what we're doing is kind of going back to those influences that we incorporated before and saying, oh, now I see where that came from. So why can't I push it even further forward and bring it somewhere else?

Deb Freeman:

Over the past two episodes, we've talked to several people about soul food and its future and it's given me a lot to think about. Don't get me wrong. I love seeing the traditional dishes that everyone knows, but I'm excited to see where this cuisine is going. Black food is worthy to be on the culinary table just like any other cuisine. And with the caliber of chefs that are out there today along with the ones that have come before, I don't think there's anyone that can make an argument otherwise.

Deb Freeman:

This has been Setting the Table. I'd like to thank my guests, Aaron Hutcherson, Scotty Scott, and Adrienne Cheatham. You can follow Aaron's work at The Washington Post and also follow him on Twitter and Instagram @thehungryhutch. You can check out Scotty's recipes at cookdrankeat.com and follow him on Twitter and Instagram @cookdrankeat. His new cookbook, Fix Me A Plate: Traditional and New School Soul Food Recipes is available now at book sellers everywhere. Learn more about Adrienne's popup dinner series, Sunday Best, at adriennecheatham.com And follow her on Instagram @chefadriennecheatham Adrian. Her new cookbook, Sunday Best: Cooking Up the Weekend Spirit Every Day will be available at book sellers everywhere this month.

Deb Freeman:

Setting the Table is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Thank you to the Setting the Table team. Producer, Marvin Yueh; audio editor, Evan Linsey; researcher, Haven Ogbaselase; and intern, [Kai Stone 00:31:06]. I'd also like to thank Whetstone founder, Stephen Satterfield; Whetstone Radio Collective Head of Podcast, Céline Glasier; sound engineer, Max Kotelchuck; associate producer, Quentin Lebeau; production assistant, [Amalisa Yutinco 00:31:25]; and sound intern, Simon Lavender. Cover art created by Whetstone Art Director, Alexandria Bowman. Our theme music is Who's Back in Town by Sammy Miller and The Congregation. You can learn more about this podcast at whetstoneradio.com, on Instagram and Twitter @whetstoneradio, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, Whetstone Radio Collective for more podcast video content. You can learn more about all things happening at Whetstone at whetstonemagazine.com. Until next time, I'm Deb Freeman.