The Excellence Of Edna Lewis

I just finished reading Edna Lewis’ incredible book The Taste of Country Cooking. Not just a cookbook, this work functions both as instructional material and memoir, using recipes to tell the story of a year in the lives of people living in Freetown, the self-sustaining agricultural community in rural Virginia where Lewis grew up. 

The book is full of tips and instructions for seasonal, no-waste cookery. The range of techniques covered is expansive, from tips on slaughtering a pig and preserving its meat to refined recipes that showcase the daintiest vegetables of summer. Zero-waste and farm-to-table are now douchey fine-dining buzzwords, used to convince the wealthy to pay a few dollars more for an appetizer. In Lewis’ childhood, as in the childhoods of so many people from her generation, eating with the seasons and preserving foods via canning and fermentation were necessary survival tools.

The most impressive aspect of Lewis’ childhood community is how joyful and luxurious its food rituals were. Although the people of Freetown were basically subsistence farmers, they turned the natural bounty of the land they lived on into intricate multi-course meals and structured their lives around celebrations and feast days. Many “Southern” recipes like fried chicken and biscuits appear the book, as you would expect, but there are plenty of fancy French-influenced techniques too, like roast pheasant with fruit sauce or venison with juniper berries.

The smile of a true badass.

The self-reliance and prosperity of the community of Freetown is even more incredible when considered in its greater societal context. The town was founded by freed slaves in the Reconstruction period, and remained entirely populated by the black descendants of its founders through Edna’s childhood in the 1920s. By creating an isolated all-black farming community, Freetown’s inhabitants could escape some of the worst effects of Virginia’s Jim Crow laws that limited where and how black people could work and live. Freetown existed almost as an alternate reality, an intentional community celebrating freedom where black excellence could be nurtured and appreciated.

As someone interested in “Southern” or “country” food, I must be mindful of its fraught history. For too long, the celebrated figures of America’s most distinctive regional cuisine have been white men. The problem persists to the present day, when chefs like Sean Brock are given credit for revitalizing Southern food, taking media space away from the black and other marginalized voices who are responsible for so much of the Southern food tradition. 

Loudly celebrating figures like Edna Lewis can help correct the whitewashed historical record. She was more badass than any modern chef I can think of, with a colorful life that included time in FDR’s re-election campaign, a stint in the American Communist Party, and encounters with a who’s-who of 20th century celebrities. That’s certainly a wilder life than contemporary chef adventure-bros like Dave Chang!

Most people probably don’t have alum powder at home these days. I substituted baking powder, which seemed to work.

The first recipe I made from The Taste of Country Cooking was a watermelon rind pickle. I’ve read about this dish before, but never had the opportunity to try it, so I was excited to test it out. It’s a great use for something that otherwise gets thrown away. The sweet, delicately spiced pickle would be great as an accompaniment to fatty roasted meats, as Edna suggests. I have been eating it on its own as a snack or as a topper for bread and cheese. I have plans to turn the leftover pickle juice into a tangy BBQ sauce. I’m not going to reprint the recipe in full since you should just go buy the book! Just know that the page I have included here is missing crucial steps for making this recipe correctly.

Cutting the rind off gave me my first kitchen boo boo in a while.

I subbed lime for the lemon and ground cinnamon and allspice for the cinnamon stick and mace.

The rinds turn glassy and translucent in the pickling solution.

Unsuccessfully trying to capture the quality of sunlight filtering through the jar.

My hammock and mason jar lifestyle. Is this cottagecore?