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

Writing cookbooks marries the native New Yorker's love of cooking and reading. She has a "staggering amount of books" that strain the walls of her Brooklyn home. "I read eve everything; I even read the cereal box," says Harris, likening her passion to that of a child who has just discovered the joy of reading. She's also passionate about collecting everything from art to antique jewelry. "If it collects dust, I collect it."

Quite naturally, Harris is always testing and tasting recipes. She believes that recipes should be demystified to enhance enjoyment and inventiveness. "We have come to believe that recipe is the equivalent of a tablet handed down to Moses. It ain't." A prolific author, Harris always has a book "slowly bubbling on the back burner of the stove," since her project tend to overlap without distinct beginnings and endings. Her next book might focus on he love of condiments, but she might also try a novel or even a murder mystery. "I've got an idea for one that I've been noodling around with for 20 years. So who knows?

"I've got a notion up there," she says, drifting off for a moment to savor spicy plot twists for her whodunnit. "In fact, I have a couple of notions up there."

Yanick Rice Lamb, who teaches journalism at Howard University, is the former editor-in-chief of BET Weekend and Heart & Soul magazines. She is also coauthoring a biography of tennis and golf legend Althea Gibson, as well as a book on bid whist. Her profile of the cookbook author Jessica Harris begins in our new department on cuisine, THE WELCOME TABLE, page 50.