Photo by Angie Mosier
I hate comparing cookbooks — or indeed, any books — with one another or, rather, pitting them against one another: different writers have their own outlooks, their own experiences, their own voices. And so it is not to disparage any of the other books or authors who I’ve been proud to feature in CookbookCorner when I say that The Rise is the most inspiring, illuminating, important book I’ve come across for a long time. Its premise is, broadly, Black Food Matters; the pages within it show why. And while the context here is America, I should love to see Marcus Samuelsson bring out a companion volume honouring black cooks, chefs, and foodwriters here in the UK, where he has spent quite some time and, indeed, has a restaurant, Red Rooster in Shoreditch.
I worked with Samuelsson for a couple of years (or, to be more accurate, for an intensive, round-the-clock month for two years running) on the American series The Taste, and I was, as the days progressed, ever more impressed with his delicacy of judgement, his gentle but steely sense of fair play, his commitment to what he believed in, his inspirational joy in the multifariousness of food and all its possibilities, and his exquisite, almost numinous, gift for teaching. (If this were a different piece, I should like to express the honour of working with my other two confrères, Anthony Bourdain and Ludo Lefebvre, but that will have to be for another day!) And all these qualities are present in and essential to this book.
“Black food is not just one thing. It’s not a rigidly defined geography or a static set of tastes.” writes Samuelsson in his introduction. “Yet many readers may still think that Black food starts and stops with dishes like fried chicken and grits — a certain idea of “soul food” stuck in time. There’s much to learn by studying these dishes,” — and indeed, there are delicious iterations of both in here — “but they reflect just one of the many facets of Black cooking.” And that is what is so enlivening about this book: many approaches to food, many cuisines and influences, high end and home cooking are reflected here. And I’m grateful for the introduction to so many inspiring characters. I’m already acquainted with the work of some of the people featured here — Cheryl Day who wrote The Back In The Day Bakery Cookbook and The Treasury of Southern Baking, inter alia; Therese Nelson of blackculinaryhistory.com; Matthew Raiford, whose book Bress’n’Nyam was featured here recently; Toni Tipton-Martin, author of The Jemima Code and Jubilee; Michael Twitty, author of that masterpiece, The Cooking Gene; David Zilber, co-author of the monumental Noma Guide to Fermentation — but I’m afraid I’m shamefully ignorant of so many others. If I can’t name them all here, then all I have to say is that you need this wonderful book in your hands to get to know them yourself. I should add that there is a helpful bibliography at the back of the book, and a list of new young Black cooks and chefs to look out for.
And, oh, the recipes! Samuelson has devised these himself to honour those featured in the book, and my copy of it is a-flutter with post-it notes! Let me mention a few of the ones I’ve flagged (so far): Baked Sweet Potatoes with Garlic-Fermented Shrimp Butter; Haitian Black Rice and Mushrooms (this calls on lobster stock, which I just happen to have in my freezer and now know where it’s bound); Smoked Venison with Roti and Pine Nut Chutney; Brussels Sprouts and Shrimp; Steak Afrique with Sauce Yassa (which Samuelsson compares to Chimichurri, which is better known but doesn’t have to be); Chicken and Shrimp Tamarind Broth with Rice Noodles; Couscous and Roasted Figs with Lemon Ayib (an Ethiopian fresh cheese for which there’s an easy recipe); Beets with Sage Leaf and Dukkah Spice; Lamb Wat — a fundamental Ethiopian stew — with Fries and Cauliflower Cheese Stew (the one underneath the lamb, the other on top, all baked together, and which, come winter, will be strongly in evidence in Casa Lawson!); Bird and Toast (featuring brioche, chicken liver mousse, brined and fried chicken, and pickled peaches); Spiced Lemon Chess Pie; Montego Bay Rum Cake; Tigernut Custard Tart with Cinnamon-Poached Pears. And there are sauces and cocktails a-plenty. The recipe I’ve chosen to share with you today is written by Samuelsson in honour of Melba Wilson, of the restaurant Melba’s in Harlem (where Samuelsson is also based, and where his original Red Rooster is) and is Fried Chicken and Waffles with Piri Piri Glaze. Mindful of the words I quoted from the book’s introduction, I can only say that this is not meant to be a reductive choice: read this fabulous recipe and you’ll see why I had to feature it!
But before you do, I want to leave you with some words from elsewhere in the book: “If the United States [and obviously this is applicable here too] can embrace kimchi and nigiri sushi, we can learn to eat fufu. Jollof Rice deserves to be in the same conversation as paella or jambalaya. Pho has become an important part of the food story here, and fish pepper soup, a staple of Nigeria and other countries, ought to be just as present. Why do we accept one food but treat another as too different to try? We ought to unpack that. This book is one step in that direction."
Excerpted from THE RISE by Marcus Samuelsson with Osayi Endolyn.
Recipes with Yewande Komolafe and Tamie Cook.
Copyright © 2020 by Marcus Samuelsson.
Photographs by Angie Mosier.
Used with permission of Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved.
