Jubilee Red Beans and Rice:

I don’t have any bread to share with you today, based in part upon some complications I’ve realized my “Breads of the World” project poses. More on that below if you’re interested, but first, instead of a typical recipe post I thought I’d share a few images and considerations about the meal we ate on Saturday. In an effort to diversify my cookbook shelves, one of my recent acquisitions is the beautiful volume you see above: Jubilee: Two Centuries of African American Cooking by Toni Tipton-Martin. As numerous Black cooks and food historians have in recent years, Tipton-Martin wants to acknowledge the tremendous role of Black cooks in “soul food” and “Southern food.” But she also wants to push beyond that – to restrict African American food to stereotypes is to perpetuate caricatures and poor representation. Tipton-Martin’s recipes come with history lessons – not all are extensive, but she recognizes and shares the background and development of the dishes she offers, sometimes with original recipes from centuries-old collections, and then her updated or adapted version.

Although the book certainly pushes beyond the borders of “The South,” on a cold, rainy day in Los Angeles I wanted something deep and warm and spicy I could spend the afternoon checking on, so I went with red beans and rice. Tipton-Martin’s recipe headnote is about Louis Armstrong and his devotion to the dish despite changing circumstances, a consideration of how traditions are sustained even as they undergo adaptation. Unless I’m baking, these days I tend to see recipes as guidelines rather than rules, but this one I followed to the letter, and it was basically perfect. A mound of hot, buttered rice underneath and a final sprinkle of cayenne pepper on top, and we were the happiest of quarantine campers.

Bread in a Pandemic:

Speaking of quarantine, while I continue to be enthusiastic about my “Breads of the World” project, I’m starting to realize it carries a few distinct challenges, emphasized thanks to pandemic conditions. First and perhaps most obvious: N. and I are going to eat a lot of bread this year. That doesn’t sound like a big or particularly intelligent revelation, I know, but it is a blessing-curse I hadn’t quite realized the magnitude of when I started collecting ideas. As my friend D. commented the other day, when you are a happy household of two working from home, baked goods weigh more heavily (all puns intended) in your day-to-day. Were this a typical year, I would just bring my bread of the moment to work and leave it in the department mail-room. It would be gone by mid-afternoon, and I’d be headed home ready to think through the next one. Now, although I certainly could (and probably should) engage in some bread-drops for local friends (what would you call a drive-by bread drop? A roll-out? A loafing?), the reality of making a loaf or a batch of buns is that most of the time N. and I will wind up eating them all. “We’re going to be having a lot of bread and salad this year,” I told him yesterday. He was delighted, but I can imagine weekly dosings might become less appealing than the panem et circensus alternative.

Second, there are a lot of breads to choose from! Again, not exactly an epiphany, but I could easily bake one or even two a week and still have pages of recipes to sift through in December. I don’t agree with all of their choices, but the list of breads on Wikipedia is both an entertaining read-through and a fair example of what I mean. I’m not obsessed with authenticity (and I don’t want every selection to turn into the intensive research I did for the naan-e-komaj I made earlier this month), but because I do want this project to be representative in both its scope and its recipes, I do want to look into the breads I’ve chosen at least a little bit, and if possible, to find a recipe or an overview from someone of or familiar with the culture or region that produced the bread. That takes time. Especially when the semester begins, my imaginary second career as a culinary historian will resume its usual status as unpaid-side-hustle, which means less time for exploring and writing about the breads I decide to recreate.

Third, and related to the point about being representative, breads from areas that are typically less well represented also often use less typical, and thus less accessible, flours. Cassava, teff, and millet flour are certainly not impossible to locate, especially with the whole internet at my literal fingertips, but they aren’t on the shelves at my usual grocery store. And since I’m not shopping as often as I would be under non-COVID conditions, I can’t just decide on a whim to make, say, pao de queijo one afternoon unless I already have tapioca flour on hand. That’s not a complaint, per se, but it is a realization that I’m going to have to plan around. You know, like everything else these days!

Until next time, then…