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Plant It Forward Farmers Enrich Houston's Food Scene

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Plant It Forward Farmers Enrich Houston's Food Scene Cooking Globally Plant It Forward farmers enrich Houston’s food scene WORDS BY DAVID LEFTWICH • PHOTOS BY SONYA SELLERS 44 Winter 2019 edible HOUSTON ediblehouston.com 45 Far left: freshly harvested black eyed peas. This page, clockwise: Christine Kengue; cut around the base to free the calyx and leave the big seed; Elizabeth Nyuma (l), grandson Emmanuel Janga (daughter Mabel's son), and her daughter Oretha Nyuma (r). tanding on the concrete floor in Plant It Forward’s warehouse, Christine Kengue, a farmer and refugee from the Republic of Congo, picks up a sky blue chef’s knife with her muscular right hand. In her left hand she holds a roselle calyx that resembles an Sacorn encased in scarlet flower petals. She places her right thumb on top of the blade and her right middle and ring fingers just under the blade. With her right index finger she presses the tip of the calyx against the blue knife. Holding the bottom of the calyx with her left hand, she expertly rotates it, slicing off the top, then quickly removes the interior capsule. The intact sepals that remain now resemble a flower-petal cup Disney might design for the fairies of Neverland. As she shares her knowledge, Christine laughs heartily at my aston- ishment. Thanks to Plant It Forward, the nonprofit that has been help- ing African refugees farm commercially in Houston since 2011, roselle has become one of my favorite ingredients—but I’ve always peeled the calyx slowly, petal by petal. 44 Winter 2019 edible HOUSTON ediblehouston.com 45 “For sure, it’s very important for us [to cook traditional dishes]. It’s something you are so used to eating all the time, since you were a child, a baby. It’s always good. It tastes good.”—Oretha Nyuma People and the foods they farm, cook and eat have been moving around the world for centuries. Sometimes they move by choice, some- times by force (as was the case with enslaved Africans), sometimes out of desperation and a desire to find a better life. In most cases, they have adapted new ingredients to traditional foodways while maintaining those traditions and influencing the cuisines in their adopted countries. Roselle One such global food is roselle, a member of the hibiscus family and a relative of okra, which may be better known in Houston as the main ingredient in the red, tart jamaica agua fresca found in many Mexican restaurants—a drink that has been popular in Mexico since at least 1899. Roselle likely originated in India or Malaysia before spreading to West Africa. From there, enslaved Africans brought the seeds to the Americas. The plant has since been given many names and been used for many purposes. In India, the stem fibers have been used to make ropes and burlap bags. In addition to beverages, the calyx is used to make jams in Nigeria, Burma, Australia and Trinidad. He tells me enthusiastically, “When I am cooking for employees, it’s Christine’s daughter, Clech, who is translating as she helps her from me. You can check in all the cookbooks and you won’t find what mother prepare CSA shares, says she sautés the calyxes and serves them I’m making. It’s an African dish, but from me. It’s smoked chicken with as a side dish, often with fried fish. She also told me that the leaves are roselle. In this dish, I mixed a lot of vegetables, to make it a healthy dish. “the main green we ate in our part of Africa.” I put my chicken in a smoker. I cook my chopped roselle greens. I mix Guy Mouelet, a chef and Plant It Forward alumnus, also enjoys them with eggplant and okra. When, my chicken is ready, I cut it into roselle. Guy was forced to flee the Republic of Congo during a bloody small pieces. I add oil to a pan. I chop my onion. Add some garlic. Some civil war, which was partly a Western proxy war over energy resources. diced tomato. I put them in the pan. Sauté for five minutes. I mix in the He spent several years in Gabon, where he worked his way up from vegetables, add the chicken and chicken stock, salt and pepper. Taste it. server to executive chef at the Intercontinental Hotel. There, he received After 15 or 20 minutes it’s ready.” formal culinary training and cultivated a small garden that supplied the hotel’s kitchen. Amaranth Once in Houston, he became one of Plant It Forward’s first farm- Christine grew roselle on her farm in the Republic of Congo before she ers, tending his plot in the mornings while spending his afternoons and was forced to immigrate to Houston in December 2009. Clech tells me evenings working at various restaurants. He now has his eyes set on that her mother’s farm in Congo was larger than the one here and that opening his own restaurant that will focus on garden-to-table interna- she grew “everything,” including amaranth, which is Christine’s favorite tional food and finishing his memoir/cookbook, which he is writing in leafy green. French. Though a handful of amaranth varieties are native to Africa, Asia Though Guy no longer farms with Plant It Forward, he still main- and Europe, the majority of the species originated in the Americas, tains a garden and uses the produce at the Briar Club, where he cur- where the grains and leaves have been harvested for thousands of years. rently cooks and occasionally makes Congolese-inspired staff meals. Amaranth is also one of the greens used in the traditional Caribbean 46 Winter 2019 edible HOUSTON ediblehouston.com 47 Clockwise: Guy Mouelet (photo courtesy of Plant It Forward); roselle calyxes on the branch; purple longbeans. dish callaloo, especially in Jamaica. In Congolese cuisine, the leaf, which scientist think came from a Latin American variety, is also an important crop. Christine and Clech prepare the amaranth leaves by first boiling them. The water is drained and the greens rinsed. They then heat palm oil, often called red oil, and “add chopped onion, maybe some garlic. When sizzling, just add the leaves and sauté it. That’s it,” as Clech puts it. Okra When I ask Christine if she has any favorite American dishes, Clech interjects, “Let me answer, because I do the cooking. We rarely eat out. We mostly eat at home, mostly the same traditional dishes we had in Africa: Okra and fish. Soup. Some rice and chicken.” Christine adds, “Cassava.” Clech continues, “We don’t fry okra. We make soup. We already have fish in the pot. Some onions. Some seasonings. Some tomatoes. Then, we just chop up the okra and add it to the pot.” This dish strikingly resembles early gumbo recipes. The word “gum- bo” likely derives from a Bantu word for okra—a vegetable that was brought to the Americas by enslaved Africans and a language whose 46 Winter 2019 edible HOUSTON ediblehouston.com 47 fresh harvest of sweet potato greens 48 Winter 2019 edible HOUSTON ediblehouston.com 49 dialects are spoken in the Republic of Congo, where Christine grew okra Cassava before she grew it here. On Sundays, Clech says she often cooks a traditional Congolese dish us- Though gumbo, which is a confluence of African, Indigenous and ing cassava greens, which Guy, who tells me the greens are called “saka French cuisines, has been served in Louisiana since at least 1803, some saka” in the Congo, also cooks and serves them with rice. The genetic of the first printed recipes didn’t appear until La Cuisine Creole was pub- and anthropological records suggest that cassava originated in Brazil, lished in 1885. That cookbook includes several gumbo recipes, but the ba- where it was domesticated thousands of years ago. In the 16th century, sis for each soup, which is how the author categorizes the dish, is meat or Portuguese colonizers introduced the crop to West Africa. Since then, seafood, filé (dried North America sassafras leaves) and sliced okra. (The the tubers and leaves have become staples around the world. earliest gumbo recipes don’t include roux, which was a later addition.) In many West African cuisines, cassava tubers are used to make the Elizabeth Nyuma and her daughters Oretha and Mabel take a differ- starchy staple fufu, which both Clech and Oretha occasionally prepare ent approach to cooking okra. The Nyumas are from Liberia, which was and which Guy cooked for Anthony Bourdain in 2016. founded in 1822 as the controversial American Colonization Society’s “I told the people who came to eat food with Bourdain to wash your colony for resettling freed African Americans. After a civil war broke hands,” Guy recalls. “You eat fufu with your hands. No spoon. No fork. out in Liberia in 1999, Elizabeth’s parents were killed, forcing her and That is traditional.” her daughters to flee to neighboring Sierra Leone, which Oretha, who But on Sundays, Clech cooks the leafy greens. “You have to boil was speaking on behalf of her mother, stressed “was a totally different them for a long time, about an hour or so—until the color begins to country for us.” change. Once they are boiled, you can add fish—something like fil- They lived there for eight years, before qualifying for a United States leted tilapia. I add cabbage to the fish and cassava leaves. Then, I sea- program that assisted with their resettlement to son it. After I season it, I add red oil—palm Houston, where they have lived, according to oil—to another pan.
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