Here, all the foods are “whole,” not cut up, modified, genetically enhanced, or otherwise processed. I was overwhelmed by the noise and competing smells of fresh meat and fish, seawater, soil, and spices. It’s a bit like seeing the child in the face of her grandmother. The Kermel Market in Dakar is where I first saw Virginia in Africa. Its story, like that of the cowpea’s culinary and cultural stewards, began thousands of miles away across the Atlantic on the tropical savannahs of West Africa, where, after it was picked clean from the fields by Wolof, Serer, and Mandinka farmers, their Fulani neighbors-pastoral people-would graze cattle in an ancient pattern of cultural symbiosis. But like the people who relished it the most in the mid– to late 18th century at Mount Vernon, the black-eyed pea didn’t begin its history on the plantations of Virginia’s Tidewater region, where a scarce few would find their way into the soil near where the cabins of the enslaved once stood. Many see it as uniquely Southern, and it is indeed a deep part of the cuisine and lore of the larger region. The commonly told narrative about it being fodder for livestock and then later a surprisingly palatable food for people obscures an ancient history. To fill in the blanks, take a journey to the SenegambiaĬonsider the black-eyed pea, Vigna unguiculata, a variety of the cowpea. As Twitty gratefully sums up, 'Rice connects me to every other person, southern and global, who is nourished by rice's traditions and customs.The records are sparse on the foodways of the enslaved at Mount Vernon and colonial Virginia.

Exploring rice's culinary history and African diasporic identity, Twitty shows how to make the southern classics as well as international dishes-everything from Savannah Rice Waffles to Ghanaian Crab Stew. Commingled or paired with other foods, rice is indispensable to the foodways of the South.Īs Twitty's fifty-one recipes deliciously demonstrate, rice stars in Creole, Acadian, soul food, Low Country, and Gulf Coast kitchens, as well as in the kitchens of cooks from around the world who are now at home in the South. In some dishes, it is crunchingly crispy in others, soothingly smooth in still others, somewhere right in between. Filling and delicious, rice comes in numerous botanical varieties and offers a vast range of scents, tastes, and textures depending on how it is cooked. Twitty observes, depending on regional tastes, rice may be enjoyed at breakfast, lunch, and dinner as main dish, side dish, and snack in dishes savory and sweet. Among the staple foods most welcomed on southern tables-and on tables around the world-rice is without question the most versatile.

Rice michael twitty