I loved the book. I think anyone who’s interested in food and history should definitely read it. Can you give folks a sense of what the book covers?
The book is an edible tour of African American history from West Africa to the American West. Since culinary history can be a vast subject, I thought the best way to tell a concise story was by way of an “anatomy of a meal.” I created a representative soul food meal, and I wrote a chapter on every part of the meal and explain what it is, how it got on the soul food plate and what it means for the culture. In most chapters, I include traditional, health-conscious and fancy recipes. One of my main objectives is that people get in the kitchen and cook soul food.
How do you think this historically accurate description of soul food differs from what the average American thinks about it?
In my experience, the average American has maybe heard the words “soul food,” but they really don’t know what it is. For those in the know, they think of something boiled for hours, deep fried or gloriously sweet that ultimately is unhealthy eating. It raises the questions the food writer Donna Pierce asked more than a decade ago: Does soul food need a warning label? Others have adopted the narrative that soul food is the master’s unwanted food or leftovers.
I learned so much from it. If writing is at all you for you like it is for me, I’m guessing you learned a lot too. What are some of the learnings that surprised you during the writing?
Yes, we are kindred spirits, my man! Three big things jump out at me right away. The first surprise is that when I discovered what enslaved African Americans actually ate, the cuisine came close to what we now call “vegan.” They were eating vegetables in season, there was very little meat, and processed foods were a luxury. The second surprise is that, in most situations, master and slave were eating from the same pot. That information completely upends the idea that soul food is slave food. The third surprise is the high-class pedigree of so many soul foods. We tend to think of foods that black people eat as “poverty food” but rich folks were grubbing on it too. Context is important.
You say that the book is a love letter .. . say more about that?
Soul food has such a horrible reputation that I believe it causes people to discount the culinary genius of soul food cooks. I thought it was high time that some celebrated these cooks instead of denigrating them.
What are some of the roots of soul food that go back to African culture and cooking?
Jessica B. Harris has done a lot to show the culinary connections between West Africa and the Americas.In terms of the soul food story, we see similar food habits from West Africa replicated here in what would eventually become the United States. Soul food meals usually involve more fish, more green, leafy vegetables and more seasoning with chillis than the typical American meal.
Greens seem particularly important! Can you say a bit more about them?
West Africans figured out a long time ago that eating green, leafy vegetables were good for you, and that culinary legacy is very strong in soul food cooking. Just as tropical climate bitter greens are consumed in West Africa, temperate climate bitter greens get top billing in soul food circles. The most popular are cabbage, collards, kale, mustard and turnip greens. Now that the mainstream has discovered the nutritional benefits of this food, what used to be called “weeds” when African Americans primarily ate them is now called a “superfood.” When I speak on my book tour, I tell kale lovers “Welcome to the party, black folks have been eating that for at least three centuries.”
Catfish?
As I mentioned earlier, West Africans are big fish eaters. I had no idea that there were species of catfish in West Africa, and that smoked catfish is essential to many stews. Knowing this partly negates the idea that enslaved West Africans arrived to the Americas and were forced to eat completely foreign foods. Now we see that were some things that they would have recognized, thus continuing a West African food tradition in a different part of the world. Anyway, African Americans remain big fish eaters to this day, and catfish is the connoisseur’s choice.
To be clear the life of enslaved people was very, very difficult. Can you talk more about it and what it meant for people’s cooking and eating?
Yes, the difficulty for most enslaved people was getting enough food to eat that was edible. Enslaved people were given, on average, a weekly ration of 5 pounds of cornmeal (or some other starch), a couple of pounds of meat that was dried, salted or smoked and a jug of molasses. That’s it. Thus, the enslaved had to figure out how to supplement their diet by fishing, foraging, gardening and hunting outside of the sunup-to-sundown work schedule. They managed successful strategies to survive, but persistent hunger is a consistent theme in slave narratives.
What about mac and cheese – how that get in there?
Yes, another surprise because there’s not a lot of dairy in soul food and this is clearly an Italian dish. Though, I must tell you that there are several older African Americans who believe that white people “stole” this dish from us just like they did rock ‘n’ roll. Mac ‘n’ cheese gets onto the soul food plate by way of the African Americans who cooked in the Big House. Mac ‘n’ cheese was royalty food as far back as the 1300s and remained a prestige dish for centuries, ultimately making its way to the American South. When the plantation owners entertained with mac ‘n’ cheese, it was the enslaved cooks who often made the dish. After Emancipation, it became a popular item for Sunday meals and special occasions.
And it sounds like it’s a similar story with pound cake and peach cobbler?
It is! These desserts are made from ingredients—white flour, white sugar, whole milk–of which enslaved cooks had little access. In the antebellum South, cakes, cobblers and pies were dishes that appeared on African American tables only on the weekends and on special occasions. Just like other high-end dishes, enslaved African Americans were often the ones tasked to do the cooking.
This is your third trip to the Roadhouse to do one of these special dinners. Excited to be coming back?
Definitely! I had such a great time when I did my “Black Chefs in the White House” event on the night of President Obama’s first inauguration. It was a lively crowd, and it just an enjoyable evening. The same was true when I did the tribute to street vendors. On each occasion, Chef Alex “put his foot in it” so the food was wonderful.
Some of your research was done here at the Longone collection at U of M on your trips to Ann Arbor. How was that experience?
The Longone collection is such an incredible resource! For a researching geek like me, it’s akin to going to Disneyland with an E ticket—you can go on any ride through history with the rare cookbooks in that collections. It helped me connect some dots in my research.
How did the Great Migration impact African American cooking?
I firmly believe that the movement of people from the American South to other parts of the country is the key part of the soul food story, more so than the migration from West Africa. Soul food is really the cuisine of migrants who left a particular part of the South (the Deep South) and tried to recreate home—just as other migrants do. They tried to procure, cook and eat the familiar foods of the South, but when they couldn’t they made substitutions and also picked up a few things from their foreign neighbors. Soul food, at its core, is really a limited repertoire of southern cuisine that draws heavily on the celebration foods of the South.
Your family went west rather than to the north. Can you give us a bit of your personal history?
I’m born and raised in the Denver, Colorado area. This information immediately loses me street cred in soul food circles. I win most of them back by sharing that my mother is from Chattanooga, Tennessee and my father is from Helena, Arkansas. My mother followed an older sister to Denver and my father was in the military and came out here because of the Air Force base. They met in church in the late 1960s, and that union brought me into the world. Because I had southern-born parents who embraced the region’s food rather than distancing themselves, I grew up eating soul food.
In reading the book it struck me that nearly every single item you described is either a regular on the Roadhouse menu or appears fairly often as a special. I realized we actually have a darned good soul food restaurant on our hands!!
Ha! That’s good to know. I believe that if soul food is to survive, it has become accessible. That means people who are not African American need to feel comfortable making and eating this cuisine at home and in restaurants. Some African Americans will have to let go of the notion that white people can’t cook in general, and in particular with this cuisine. I heard that a lot in interviews! Accessibility explains the profound popularity of other ethnic cuisines like Chinese, Italian and Mexican (really Tex-Mex). Much like African Americans, these ethnic groups were at the margins but their food became socially acceptable.
You and I have known each other ten years ever since we met at the Southern Foodways Alliance symposium. We’re both big believers in the work of the organization. Can you tell folks a bit about it?
I love the Southern Foodways Alliance! Not only because it celebrates the diverse food cultures of the South, but also because it creates a space for very different people to connect through food. It shows that if we just took a moment to learn more about what we cook and eat, we’ll see that we have a lot more in common than what supposedly divides us.
The weekend of May 31 and June 1 we have our 5th annual Camp Bacon which is a fundraiser for SFA. Maybe you should come back for it?
I would love that! Dig this, I never went to camp when I was a kid. It would be awesome to go to a really fun camp when I’m an adult!
What else would you like us to know about Soul Food the book, or the food?
I want people to understand that soul food deserves much more appreciation that it currently gets. Soul food doesn’t need a warning label…it needs more love. African American cooks belong to a very rich culinary tradition, and I hope that my work is an appetizer for more investigation into this unique heritage.
Tag: ARI WEINZWEIG
enjoy an inspiring breakfast with zingerman’s co-founder Ari Weinzweig
Please join us this coming Friday, April 4, 730am-9am, at the Zingerman’s Roadhouse for a very special breakfast.
Ari will discuss his latest book, Part 3 of the Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading series, A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Managing Ourselves. The latest book continues to share the “secrets” that have helped take Zingerman’s from a 25-seat, 4-person start up to a nationally known, $49,000,000-organization employing over 600 people. The book includes Secrets #30-39, and explores our belief that some of the most important work we do to build great organizations and lead rewarding lives is the work we need to do inside. The book includes essays on our approach to managing ourselves, mindfulness, leadership at the four levels of organizational growth, personal visioning, why the way the leader thinks will be manifested in the way the organization runs, creating a creative organization and more.
You’ll also hear from Zingerman’s staff, we’ll be inviting employees from around the organization to engage Ari in a dialogue about Zingerman’s, building the business, being part of this organization and how you can apply Zingerman’s approaches to help strengthen your organization.Don’t miss it!
Event is from 8:00 am to 9:00 am, Breakfast served at 7:30 am.
$20 for breakfast or $45 for breakfast and a copy of Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, Part 3: A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Managing Ourselves
Ari: How did you get so enamored of butchery?
Joel: One of my very first jobs was at a little market in Chelsea, Michigan. It’s not there any more. But I loved it so much. I never, ever, ever was like “I have to go to work.” It was a butcher shop. They had some produce and some dry goods and stuff. It’d been there forever. We had great relationships with customers. There were all these regulars that came in all the time. It was like a conversation that continued for years.
A: What do you think about the beef at the Roadhouse?
J: The meats are fantastic here. All of the steers we’re buying are out in the pasture the whole time. No feedlot beef. I think that we’re so incredibly fortunate to get the beef that we get in. Our meat supplier says that he hasn’t had beef this good come in this regularly ever. One of our family farmers goes out to 20 something farms and hand selects the animals. And he loads them up and works with them in the field. Making sure that the fields are being rotated properly. He does meticulous beautiful work. Better treatment of the animals too. I went down there and it was very refreshing to see that it was exactly what I was hoping for. I got to meet all the people who do the slaughtering. The holding pen lets them chill out and be comfortable for their last few days. When I visited they made sure that we were very quiet—even talking about them, they wanted us to move fifty yards away. They want them to be relaxed and not stressed out. Plus, we have 6 to 8 steer a year are coming off our own Cornman Farms in Dexter. It’s raised by us on Island Lake Road. Some of it comes to the farm from 4H auctions and we finish them the last 4-6 months in our fields.
A: What makes the difference between this beef and what other restaurants are serving?
J: Our dry aging program is pretty neat. It’s certainly a more expensive way to prepare and serve beef but the flavor’s well worth it. The dry aging . . . I like to use the analogy of cooking stock down to concentrate its flavor.
A: I often compare it to aging cheese. Does that make sense?
J: Yeah. The more moisture is lost the more you concentrate the flavors. We age the beef for burgers for two weeks. The flavors are already concentrated. With the steaks we continue to age up to about four weeks. I like ‘em a bit older even. But this is a good place to be.
A: And we’re only buying whole animals right?
J: Yeah, all the beef that goes onto the Zingerman’s Roadhouse menu is butchered in the back off the side. We don’t really buy boxed (pre-cut) beef the way most restaurants do. We’re one of the only places that’s buying whole animals. We work with the whole side of beef. We have a whole cooler for the aging. It could be bigger though! We’re serving so much.
A: Given the variability of the food business it can’t be that easy to manage the supply?
J: One of the trickiest parts of my job is to maintain a steady flow of meat. We use almost two steers worth in a week. We have to have burgers and barbecue all the time. So we have to manage the menu for all the other cuts. It’s kind of like a chess match.
A: What does the aging process do for the meat?
J: In the beginning the sides lose one pound or so of water a day. At that stage they’re about 700-800 pounds. The first week to ten days is when you’re losing the most. So by the time we get the beef, it’s been aged two weeks and it might have already lost nearly twenty pounds of weight. And then it keeps losing weight as we age it longer. After you’ve aged an animal the surface has to be cut off. So you lose that too.
A: What do you like about cutting meat?
J: It’s an art form for me. I really enjoy making things. I really enjoy taking something big, a side of beef that’s one big piece and then making all these beautiful steaks and cuts of meat out of it. I have a lot of fond memories of cutting meat from my first job at that market. It’s something that for me is comforting. I also really enjoy the logic puzzle that you have to be able to piece together what cuts to use in order to manage the menu and not have any waste.
A: So with all that work can you really taste the difference?
J: You really can taste the beef. You take a nibble of this and twenty minutes later you’re still tasting really good flavors. The burger is also a very tricky thing. There’s a certain amount that you need to have every day. We only have x amount of animal. You have to be creative and understand what the different parts of the beef will do. I make a blend of the different cuts. It’s got great flavor. And then we cook over oak on the grill.
A: Anything else you want us to know?
J: To be able to use a whole animal this way is pretty neat. Most places they’re getting in boxes of beef and putting it through the grinder. It’s not very traditional. The box beef came in in the late 70s. The craft that is butchery is a dying art now. It’s so neat to be a part of place that nurtures that tradition and encourages it. That makes it not just a thing of the past. There’s maybe three hundred people in the state that can break a steer down. People think meat just mysteriously shows up in the store. But people work hard for it. I’m just grateful to be in a spot where I can do this kind of work with this quality of meat.
A: I think it’s almost a little floral. Does that sound right?
J: Yeah, absolutely. It is quite a bit of difference. The average meat that you buy at the supermarket is a “wet age” where they’ll take the animal right to the cutting room floor. They have a team of folks that are systematically breaking the animals down and the meat goes right into the plastic cryovac seal. It will “age” there. There are a number of studies that show that in the plastic the beef can gain tenderness, but you don’t gain any flavor. In fact sometimes you get some off flavor from the plastic. But you’re not losing the water you do with dry-aging the way we do it. So the cost is lower. You’re taking a 776 pounds of steer and you’re selling it in 776 pounds of product. They sell the bones too.
A: What about the burger?
J: We grind it every day. It’s always freshly ground. And we do all our patties by hand—most places force the meat out through into the patty shape. But that breaks down the fats and the texture. We grind it a bit coarser so you have to chew the meat and get the full flavor. We have a recipe, but it’s not a science. It’s a craft. We use the trimmings from the steaks. One batch of burger is 11 pounds of which 2-3 are aged steak trimming. It’s more flavorful meat at that point. We want to keep the aged flavor but in a burger we don’t want it take over the flavor completely.
Stop by the Roadhouse and taste it for yourself!
Tag: ARI WEINZWEIG
This past Wednesday, Zingerman’s Roadhouse was honored to host the 9th Annual African American Dinner. The event was a benefit for the African American Cultural and Historical Museum of Washtenaw County. The AACHM was established in 1993 to research, collect, preserve and exhibit cultural and historical materials about the life and work of Black Americans in Washtenaw County.
The menu for the dinner was comprised of dishes that are part of the traditional African American food pantheon, and reflect the wide and varied origins of these foods. Ari described the origins of these staples, both from the new world, as well as Africa and Asia. For more about the foods served at the dinner, check out Ari’s description of the menu.
Dr. Patterson introduced Kiera Turner, who sung a traditional spiritual titled, “I Talked to God Last Night.” The spiritual, said Dr. Patterson, served as a fitting benediction before the meal.
After a sumptuous feast of heart, traditional foods, we were treated to an array of desserts. Interestingly, the historic sweet potato pie recipe called for the filling to made with sliced, rather than mashed, sweet potatoes, in the same manner as an apple pie! We also tasted thick rice pudding, and a wonderful peach cobbler.
Like all good meals, it was a time for greeting old friends and meeting new people.
And, of course, for lots of photos to revisit the dinner later on.
photo by Benjamin-Weatherstonenjoy an inspiring breakfast with zingerman’s co-founder Ari Weinzweig
Please join us on Thursday, January 16 at the Zingerman’s Roadhouse for a very special breakfast.
Ari will discuss his latest book, Part 3 of the Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading series, A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Managing Ourselves.The latest book continues to share the “secrets” that have helped take Zingerman’s from a 25-seat, 4-person start up to a nationally known, $49,000,000-organization employing over 600 people. The book includes Secrets #30-39, and explores our belief that some of the most important work we do to build great organizations and lead rewarding lives is the work we need to do inside. The book includes essays on our approach to managing ourselves, mindfulness, leadership at the four levels of organizational growth, personal visioning, why the way the leader thinks will be manifested in the way the organization runs, creating a creative organization and more.
You’ll also hear from Zingerman’s staff, we’ll be inviting employees from around the organization to engage Ari in a dialogue about Zingerman’s, building the business, being part of this organization and how you can apply Zingerman’s approaches to help strengthen your organization.Don’t miss it!
Event is from 8:00 am to 9:00 am, Breakfast served at 7:30 am. Call 734-663-FOOD (3663), or reserve your seat online!
$20 for breakfast or $45 for breakfast and a copy of Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading, Part 3: A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Managing Ourselves
It seems reasonable to assume that experience and education would make for better-rounded, more effective individuals. But when it comes to creativity, the data is that advanced degrees, seniority, and impressive titles make no difference whatsoever. Steven Johnson shows statistically that there’s absolutely no correlation between creativity quotients and any of the usual credentials that earn people social and organizational status. Moving up the org chart, growing older, having a bigger office or a fancier car may matter to some, but they count for naught when it comes to being creative.
To the contrary, if we’re not careful, creativity levels can actually decrease as we mature and move up the corporate ladder. Old-school organizations still tend to confine creative activity to a certain department, or to owners and managers; everyone else is instructed to just implement the ideas the elites initiate. Since so much is filtered out and lost as it moves up through the hierarchy, there’s actually limited access to real-life information from the front lines. As people grow more attached to the status quo, it becomes harder to bust out and break down barriers everyone has accepted for so long. If you sketched out a creativity pyramid, it would probably work in reverse to the way the hierarchical organization operates. Decisions are mostly made at the top, but the potential for innovation and insight are more readily found at the wider base.
Jonah Lehrer, in his book Imagine, makes a comparable case. “The people deep inside a domain often suffer from a kind of intellectual handicap. As a result, the impossible problem stays impossible. It’s not until the challenge is shared with motivated outsiders that the solution can be found.” In the old model, the people “inside the domain” are those at the top of the organization. The “outsiders” are all around them—the front line folks they employ but rarely engage with. Instead, upper level execs hire high-end firms and spend big bucks to gain innovative insight. I’d suggest at least experimenting with a lower cost option: creating a constructive framework in which everyone in the organization is involved. As Whyte writes, “Companies need the contributing vitality of all the individuals who work for them in order to stay alive in the sea of changeability in which they find themselves. They must find a real way of asking people to bring these hidden, heartfelt qualities into the workplace.” Or, as Pablo Picasso famously said, “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
What all of this comes down to is bad organizational algebra— if all of the insights are supposed to come from the top of an organization (small or large, for- or not-for-profit), then by definition we’re missing out on the majority of our collective creative ability. As Sir Kenneth Robinson says, “The role of a creative leader is not to have all the ideas; it’s to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they’re valued.” Business writer Steven Johnson (sounding very much like an anarchist) maintains, “Hierarchical filtering of ideas constricts creativity…. No matter how smart the ‘authorities’ may be, if they are outnumbered a thousand to one…there will be more good ideas lurking in the market than in the feudal castle.” And anarchist Colin Ward warns, “the knowledge and wisdom of the people at the bottom of the pyramid finds no place in the decision making leadership hierarchy of the institution. If ideas are your business, you cannot afford to condemn most of the people in the organization to being merely machines programmed by somebody else.”
Conclusion: A Quick Look at Leaders and Creativity
Personally I’ve started to focus particular attention on how we attempt to spread our creative mindset, optimistic outlook, and openness to ideas to people we’ve newly hired into our organization. The way we welcome them into the organization makes an enormous difference. Many will unknowingly have been taught that they have no influence over anything in their organization. In which case, why get creative?
This helpless feeling is, unfortunately, endemic. It feels more and more to me then that the most important creative work we can undertake is an effort to encourage those who are new to our organizations, our social circles, or our families, to undo that difficult state of mind. We can teach people that rather than wait for their bosses to make things better, they’d do better to think boldly, to go for greatness, to wonder why, and to release a bit of their natural wildness into the world. Whether your organization employs five people or fifty, five hundred or five thousand, think of what amazing things might happen if we could unleash all of their naturally occurring creative abilities.
Pulling a couple of my favorite themes together, maybe I’ll leave you with this thought from Basque performance artist Esther Ferrer. Writing to composer John Cage, she articulated that anarchism, like creativity, is “choice, which engages only yourself and which you decided to practice. . . . One can practice it alone, even if others are not at all interested. . . . These ideas, John, at bottom, are simply natural creations of free thought . . . capable of inventing imaginative and joyful solutions.”
So, I say, let’s get to work and have some fun while we’re at it. Go wild, read books, connect all the dots you can, and “embrace the anarchist.” Whatever you do, don’t worry—the creativity will come, and when it does it’s sure to raise our spirits, our effectiveness and our enjoyment of life. At the least we’ll breathe better. As Julia Cameron says, “Creativity is oxygen for our souls.”
On Tuesday, April 22 at 7pm Zingerman’s Roadhouse will host a very special dinner with Adrian Miller, author of Soul Food: The Surprising Story of An American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time. Chef Alex has created a menu direct from the chapters of Soul Food and Adrian will share his knowledge and the history of the foods we’ll be eating at the dinner.
![ari's-signature-[Converted]](https://www.zingermanscommunity.com/app/uploads/2013/08/aris-signature-Converted.png){kind=small}
Ari talks meat with Joel at Zingerman’s Roadhouse
To the contrary, if we’re not careful, creativity levels can actually decrease as we mature and move up the corporate ladder. Old-school organizations still tend to confine creative activity to a certain department, or to owners and managers; everyone else is instructed to just implement the ideas the elites initiate. Since so much is filtered out and lost as it moves up through the hierarchy, there’s actually limited access to real-life information from the front lines. As people grow more attached to the status quo, it becomes harder to bust out and break down barriers everyone has accepted for so long. If you sketched out a creativity pyramid, it would probably work in reverse to the way the hierarchical organization operates. Decisions are mostly made at the top, but the potential for innovation and insight are more readily found at the wider base.