Flavor as artifact: Jessica Harris: stirring up pots of history - The welcome table - Book Review

Black Issues Book Review, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Yanick Rice Lamb

It's easy to understand why Jessica Harris is considered the Zora Neale Hurston of the culinary world. Like Hurston, she has a way with words, a love of history and a passion for anthropology, as well as an appreciation for everyday folks and the simple things of life. Harris makes mouths drool as her voice meanders along, whether she's describing her mother's rutabagas, seasoned with bacon and basil, or a chutney made with the juicy Louisiana Creole tomatoes. She makes you want to float along with her on a bamboo raft in Jamaica in search of tiny river shrimp called janga, or share some red rice in Charleston, South Carolina. All of this flavor comes through in her eight cookbooks, especially her latest from Simon & Schuster, Beyond Gumbo: Creole Fusion Food From the Atlantic Rim (March 2003, $27.00, ISBN 0-684-87062-2).

"I think of this as more than a cookbook," Harris says of Beyond Gumbo. The book serves as a travelogue with descriptions of such places as the Mercado de las Curanderas, a healer's market in Mexico City that recalls West Africa. It's a reference book with definitions of aji Amarillo, a chile in Peru, and the history of vanilla.

Harris, a culinary historian, English professor and journalist, profiles of Leah Chase, the renowned chef at Dooky Chase in New Orleans, along with home chefs like Delia Maduro and her tales of making milk fudge (dushi de leite) in Curacao. Interspersed among recipe for Colombo de Poulet, a chicken curry from Guadeloupe, or Punch a la Noix de Coco, a coconut concoction from Martinique, are vintage black-and-white postcards from Harris's personal collection. The culinary images depict such scenes as vegetable hawkers in Barbados, men catching terrapin in Savannah and a family preparing dinner in Mexico.

"She has conjured up the souls of the ancestors, raided their cupboards and set the table with their most memorable recipes," says Alexander Smalls, a chef and restaurateur of Cafe Beulah in Manhattan.

Most of Harris's cookbooks, front Sky Juice, and Flying Fish: Traditional Caribbean Cooking (Fireside, February 1991, ISBN 0-671-68165-6) to The Welcome Table: African-American Heritage Cooking (Fireside, December 1996, ISBN 0-684-81837-X), show the ties that bind us throughout the Diaspora. "We are more alike than we are different, whether we live in Bahia or Brooklyn," Harris contends.

The fibers of West Africa are woven into the baskets of South Carolina's Low Country, she points out, just as bhaji in Trinidad, collards in the States and Couve a Mineira in Brazil demonstrate our global love of greens. She links pepperpots in Philadelphia to those in Jamaica, as well as pralines in New Orleans to pinda in Curacao.

Then, of course, there's our reliance on rice--Barbados's rice and peas, Haiti's red beans and rice, Cuba's black beans and rice, and Peru's lima beans and rice. "They are cousins if not brothers and sisters," Harris says of all these dishes. And she uses this family of foods to drive home the Creole connection.

When it comes to Creole food, think beyond New Orleans to other parts of the Atlantic Rim, she suggests. "It's the world's original fusion food. The Creole "kinship in the kitchen goes beyond what we cook to how we cook--including an emphasis on deep frying, boiling, slow cooking, and use of all sorts of hot sauces.

Harris has experienced these linkages by getting all up in folks' pots on every continent except Antarctica, Asking her to pinpoint a favorite place or food, she says, is like asking a mother to pick a favorite child. "Part of my soul absolutely lives in Bahia," she finally admits, but she also has a special spot in her heart for Senegal, Morocco and an endless list of other places. Besides English, Harris speaks French, Spanish and Portuguese; about 50 words of Wolof and Yoruba; plus 10 words each "of a whole lot of other things." When necessary, she communicates by, pointing, gesturing and resorting to what she calls "international hand jive."

Her love of food? She got it from her mama, Rhoda Harris, a dietitian who stood over the stove with her only child at home and in kitchens around the world until her death three years ago, and her father, Jesse, who died 15 years earlier and saw food in a celebratory light. Harris has one nagging regret. "My mother slipped away, and I don't have all of her recipes." As a result, she has become a Pied Piper of sorts, on a crusade to encourage people to document their family histories.

"How do y'all do what you do?" I Harris asks. "If your grandma knits, tats, crochets, makes hats, makes dolls, get it down! If you can't find your grandma's recipes, find someone else's and save hers." Harris would love to see all of this evolve into a national legacy project. But in the meantime, she will cajole, bribe mad guilt people into taking action by any means necessary.

She appeals to emotions and tempts the taste buds by conjuring up memories of the coconut cake that Big Mama made for you ant you atone, the juicy chicken with the crispy crust, the buttermilk biscuits with Alaga syrup. Wouldn't it be a shame to lose those recipes? Wouldn't it be a downright travesty? "Write it down," Harris admonishes. "Videotape it first if necessary."