Fall 2019 • No. 73 Issue No
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FALL 2019 • NO. 73 ISSUE NO. 73 • FALL 2019 FEATURES 28 40 50 RECIPES IN BLACK A COMET CIRCLING HOME AND WHITE CALLED RAJI TO ARKANSAS Michael Graff Mayukh Sen Jay Jennings 2Gravy Editor’s is a publication Note of the Southern 60MARY Busted BETH Sooks, LASSETER Rank Publisher Peelers, FoodwaysSara Camp Alliance, Milam an institute of the [email protected] White-Belly Jimmies Center for the Study of Southern Culture Bernard L. Herman at the University of Mississippi. SARA CAMP MILAM Editor 4 Featured Contributors [email protected] The SFA documents, studies, and explores 68 What’s For Dinner? 7the Director’s diverse food Cut cultures of the changing DANIELLEPriya Krishna A. SCRUGGS Visuals Editor AmericanJohn T. South.Edge Our work sets a welcome [email protected] table where all may consider our history 73 Beholden and our future in a spirit of respect and RICHIE SWANN Designer 10reconciliation. Good Ol’ Chico [email protected] Mitchell Gustavo Arellano JOHN T. EDGE Editor-in-Chief 76CARLYNN Last Course CROSBY AND OLIVIA TERENZIO [email protected] Rooted in Place NathalieJai Williams Dupree Graduate Fellows and Fact Checkers Rosalind Bentley 24 Wait and See ON THE COVER: Willie J. Allen Jr. Allen J. Willie Jenna Mason Illustration by Ran Zheng Fall 2019 77 10053-20 MMDISTIL_6x9_CharacterMachine_AD.indd 1 9/5/19 2:42 PM EDITOR’S NOTE LOOK HOMEWARD Can you see it differently? BY SARA CAMP MILAM Oaxaca is a state that has proudly kept its indigenous traditions as this issue of g r av y goes to alive—music, clothing, press, I am seven months pregnant. Any and especially food— sense of comfort I normally feel in my own body is fading quickly. If I recall cor- for centuries in the rectly, things are going to get worse before The Griffin Heights face of encroaching they get better. Where I’d really like to be, neighborhood in much of the time, is at home on my couch. Tallahassee, Florida modernity. There, I can recline to an angle that’s almost comfortable, with only my anxiety and my heartburn to keep me company. develop about the places we call home. satisfaction he’s found since returning home cooks and restaurant chefs who When I go on maternity leave, my You’ll read about the homes we are born to his hometown. That talk, which we’ve have forged new homes in this region. fantasy will become a reality of sorts. I’ll into, the homes we adopt, and the ones adapted for this issue, is not a food piece. (Speaking of home, both Krishna and Sen be physically at home a lot. To keep a we leave and return to. Food and cooking And I’m not sorry. It’s exactly the kind quote Vish Bhatt, the chef of my favorite healthy outlook, I will sometimes need are often central to home-making. But of thoughtful, incisive writing I admire hometown restaurant, Snackbar.) to get away. Or I will need to find a new not always. Back in June at our Benton- and want to share with you, Gravy reader. Here in Gravy, I hope you find oppor- this past summer, i traveled way to see familiar surroundings. I relate ville Field Trip, Oxford American senior Elsewhere in this issue, Rosalind tunities to consider your home, neighbor- through Mexico for a week as a guide for to these lessons in the most literal sense, editor Jay Jennings gave a beautiful talk Bentley returns to the Tallahassee neigh- hood, region, or nation in different lights. a Los Angeles Times–organized culinary for I learned them during my first ma- about his native state. Quoting his friend borhood where she grew up. As the ex- Maybe, reflecting on the homes you’ve tour. Our group of mostly middle-aged ternity leave three years ago. Editing this and colleague Charles Portis, Jennings pansion of Florida State University drives claimed, you’ll see an image that you had white Angelenos sampled street food in issue, I recognized that such shifts in described himself as an Arkansan who gentrification, Bentley asks, what will be nearly forgotten, or smell a long-lost dish Mexico City, took cooking classes in the place and perspective are also the kinds had “failed to achieve escape velocity.” lost when the old neighbors are gone? on the stove. Maybe you’ll step out of your colonial city of Puebla, and ate our weight of tricks that the best writers use. He left Little Rock after high school, only Priya Krishna and Mayukh Sen both kitchen to consider life from your neigh- in mole and handmade tortillas in the Working with these writers, I thought to move back decades later. Jay shared explore the Indian diaspora in the Amer- bor’s perspective. As you read, I wish you southern state of Oaxaca. often of home and the various ideas we the deep personal and professional Jr. Allen J. Willie ican South. Their pieces celebrate the a comfortable couch and no heartburn. 2 southernfoodways.org Fall 2019 3 FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS BERNARD L. HERMAN PRIYA KRISHNA Bernard L. Herman teaches Southern Studies and Priya Krishna regularly contributes to the New folklore at the University of North Carolina at York Times, Bon Appétit, and other publications Chapel Hill, where he explores the material cultures on subjects from cultlike Instant Pot fandom to of everyday life—how people furnish, inhabit, com- Texas grocery chains and her ongoing attachment, municate, and understand the worlds of things. His as an adult, to the classic PB&J. She is the author current work, A South You Never Ate, brings to- of the cookbook Indian-ish: Recipes and Antics gether over one hundred interviews on the food- from a Modern American Family, a tribute to her ways of Virginia’s Eastern Shore as part of a larger mom’s hybrid Indian American cooking. Before project on humanities-based sustainable econom- pursuing a freelance career, she worked for Lucky ic development. He wishes he had written Daniel Peach magazine. The last book she wishes she Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, which blurs had written is Emergency Contact, by Mary H.K. history, parable, and memoir in its evocative account Choi, about a young love that blooms awkward- of the great plague that swept London in 1665. ly over a string of text messages. JAY JENNINGS MAYUKH SEN Jay Jennings is senior editor at the Oxford Amer- Mayukh Sen is a New York–based writer whose ican and a freelance writer. He is the author of work has appeared in The New York Times and The Carry the Rock: Race, Football and the Soul of an Washington Post. He won a 2018 James Beard American City, about Little Rock Central High Award for his Food52 piece on soul food restaura- School fifty years after the integration crisis, and teur Princess Pamela and was nominated this year the editor of Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis for his Poetry Foundation piece on Maya Angelou’s Miscellany. He lives in Little Rock with his wife, food writing. He teaches writing at New York Uni- Abby, and his daughter, Marlo, who accompanied versity and is currently writing a book of narrative him to SFA’s recent Summer Field Trip in Ben- nonfiction, to be published by Norton, on the im- tonville. He wishes he’d written Lydia Peelle’s migrant women who shaped food in America. He short story “Nashville,” a terrifically funny por- wishes he’d written Parul Sehgal’s sharp and mas- trayal of Nashville as a rollicking bachelorette terful New York Times profile of English actress party destination. turned politician Glenda Jackson. Top: Gus Gustafson; Bottom: Khan Arshia Top: D'Souza; Bottom: Jason Edlyn Favreau Top: 4 southernfoodways.org Fall 2019 5 CALENDAR OF EVENTS DIRECTOR’S CUT OCTOBER 12, 2019 JOHN EGERTON PRIZE AT THE SOUTHERN FESTIVAL OF BOOKS Nashville, TN STAKING THE BIG TENT The SFA at twenty BY JOHN T. EDGE OCTOBER 2426, 2019 22ND SOUTHERN FOODWAYS DECEMBER 9, 2019 SYMPOSIUM At our best, we tell SFA CELEBRATES Work Songs, new stories about this JENNI HARRIS Po-Boys, Soup Five Generations of Bean Theater dynamic place and its White Oak Pastures Oxford, MS varied people. Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA OCTOBER 810, 2020 MARCH 28, 2020 23RD SOUTHERN FOODWAYS SYMPOSIUM SFA Spring Symposium The Future of the South The Future of the Restaurant Oxford, MS • , For more information, visit southernfoodways.org Fall 2019 7 THIS PAGE: Mississippi farmer and catfish processor Ed Scott fried catfish does not always sit well with our mem- owner, who wore a pistol on his hip while at the 1999 Symposium. bership. What you publish in Gravy now running the juke (but not while running PREVIOUS PAGE: North Carolina seems more aggressive, he said, in a kind the bases.) SFA events used to feel like that, pitmaster Ed Mitchell (left, in overalls) tone that told me he was truly searching he told me, in a generous tone that re- cooked at the 2002 Symposium. for an answer. It feels more threatening, minded me of that New Orleans conver- I heard. Those are not the words I would sation. In the telling, he implied that the have chosen, but I didn’t argue. SFA of today doesn’t feel that same way. new stories about this dynamic place and Our perspective has indeed changed, I’ve been puzzling this through, trying its varied people. Instead of codifying I told him. That’s because the SFA has to make sense of why he feels that way.