Dish for Gish

Returning, somewhat, to the food beat, a dilemma that I hope the collective wisdom of Cod readers and Pullquote readers can solve. For Fessering reasons tedious to relate, I'm screening Birth of a Nation this week for 8-10 undergrads. To incentivize sitting through a three-hour silent b&w pro-Klan opus, I promised to feed them. Now, the question is, feed them what? Dinner-and-a-movie-wise, what is the dinner when the movie is Birth of a Nation? And no, I'm not gonna light a cross in the yard and make s'mores.

Comments

[Skeen]

Well, if it's a silent, then at least you don't have to worry about noisy food?

[debra van Culiblog]

Something from one of Edna Lewis' cookbooks?

http://blog.vcu.edu/blackhistory/2005/02/edna_lewis.html
about Edna Lewis and her cookbooks

http://blog.vcu.edu/blackhistory/biography/

http://www.epicurious.com/cooking/holiday/black_history/lewis
Edna Lewis just died this year!

Maybe the class can make stuff together from the Lewis culinaria? Surely that's way more fun than being served something. Or am I too much of a hippy?

[debra van Culiblog]

The Taste of Country Cooking
Lewis organized The Taste of Country Cooking with menus set to the routines of rural life: "A Spring Breakfast When the Shad Were Running," "Making Ice Cream on a Summer Afternoon," "Morning-After-Hog-Butchering Breakfast." These slices of seasonal life evoke a world of persimmon beer and country-fried apples, watermelon-rind pickles and smothered rabbit and Saturday-night yeast bread. The rhythm of farm work and holiday feast follows the back-and-forth between people and nature, revealing a regional cuisine's original connection to the soil. Lewis's advocacy of natural foods reflects not the zeal of a convert but the living memory of being a farm girl in Freetown, where the woods and orchard and garden were her supermarket, and a box behind the kitchen stove served as a makeshift nursery for hatchling chicks.

from : http://www.epicurious.com/cooking/holiday/black_history/lewis

[debra van Culiblog]

http://www.watershedrestaurant.com/dinner%20menu.htm
Just some ideas pulled from the Watershed's dinner menu. Scott Peacock and Edna Lewis were 'buddies', and she made her last cookbook with him.

Dinner Menu

Starters

Creamy Stone Ground Shrimp Grits and Pullman Plank 7
Fried Oysters with Red Pepper Catsup and Spicy Dipping Sauce 9
Pimento Cheese and Celery 7
Sauté of Wild Mushrooms with Cheese and Country Ham on Toast 7
Prince Edward Island Mussels Steamed with White Wine, Garlic, and Leeks 12
Butter Bean Hummus with Crudités and Homemade Pita 10
Tasting of Artisanal Cheeses 12
Tomato Basil Soup 6
Olives 4

Salads

“Shed” 5
Iceberg Lettuce Salad with Bacon and Blue Cheese dressing 6
Steak Salad 15

Entrees

All Natural Coleman Beef Burger with Extra Sharp Cheddar 12
Roast Duck Breast with Sautéed Local Greens and Seasonal Vegetables 22
Country Captain 14
Beef Stroganoff 16
Okra Pancakes with Yellow Squash and Roasted Tomatoes 14
Southern Table Salmon Croquettes 16
Fried Catfish with Hush Puppies 16
Fresh Fish of the Day (market price)
Meyer Natural Angus New York Strip 28
Shrimp and Garlic Spaghetti 16
Hot Vegetable Plate 14
Whole Young Herb Roasted Chicken with Creamy Grits and Wild Mushrooms 17
(please allow 30 minutes cooking time)
Grilled Niman Ranch Pork Chop with Collard Greens and Mac-n-Cheese 18

On The Side

Gingered Beets 3
Onion Rings 4
Fries 4
Hot Vegetable Side 4

[debra van Culiblog]

I said Edna Lewis, but here I am giving a recipe from the Watershed, Scott Peacock's resto. I still think you should cook from her cookbook.

Sweet Potato Casserole (as seen on Food Network)

Ingredients:

5 pounds small sweet potatoes (about 10 potatoes)

8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick)

1 ¾ teaspoons salt

¾ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/3 cup honey

1/3 cup light brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

3 eggs, lightly beaten

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 cups milk, heated

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened

Topping Ingredients:

1 cup light brown sugar

1 cup all purpose flour

½ teaspoon ground Ceylon cinnamon

½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

¼ teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), chilled

1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Wash the sweet potatoes and put them on a foil- or parchment-lined baking sheet. Bake in the preheated oven for 1 to 1 ½ hours, until they are very tender. Remove from the oven and allow to cool briefly, then peel. Put the peeled sweet potatoes into the large bowl of an electric mixer fitted with beaters or a whip attachment. Mix the hot sweet potatoes on low speed to begin mashing them. Add the butter, and mix until it is absorbed. Add the salt, nutmeg, honey, and both sugars, and mix until they are thoroughly blended. Add the lightly beaten eggs and vanilla, and beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Reduce mixer speed to low, and slowly add the heated milk. When the milk is incorporated, taste carefully for seasoning, and add more salt or nutmeg as needed. Thoroughly butter a 9 x 13 x 2 inch baking dish with the softened butter, and pour the sweet potato mixture into it.

Raise the oven temperature to 375 F.

Make the topping: Put the brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt into a mixing bowl and mix well. Use your fingers to work the chilled butter into the mixture until it resembles oatmeal with some pea-size pieces of butter in it. Stir in the pecan pieces, and mix well. Sprinkle the mixture evenly over the top of the sweet potatoes, and bake in the 375 F oven for 30-45 minutes, until the topping is golden brown and crisp and the sweet potatoes are set but still slightly loose in the center. Serve hot.

[Fesser]

I like the idea of presenting gay white men looking after old and frail black women as an alternate race/gender dynamic to the whole subhuman black men preying on virginal young white women thing in the movie. Unfortch, my kitchen is not such that I could turn 8-10 students loose in it.
More generally, I'd been hesitant about cooking in an explicitly Southern idiom for this occasion, but if I d0, I think the Lewis /Peacock idea is what could make it work.

[la_depressionada]

that culiblog girl has GOT to switch to decaf.

forget the lewis food since your students, dixie chiclets aren't they?, have grannies who can cook better than you. i haven't yet been inspired, but you should certainly give them gobs of expensive protein, of which they as undergrads are most likely bereft.

also did you see the paper this weekend? that julie powell is an awful cliche, breaking up with her husband after she got famous. she'll be f*cking angelina jolie next.

[la_depressionada]

here's an idea:

knishes
fishes
licorices

[farm sale costa rica]

Shrimp is a type of seafood, particularly shellfish is an elongated body with 10 legs, looking very similar to shrimps and prawns, with a shell somewhat weaker than them.
Size between 5 and 8 cm, but there are a variety of smaller size, those who take the name of shrimps.

The seafood can be consumed fresh throughout the year, although its market price is cheaper during the winter.

[Air Jordan shoes]

Have a dream, pay your action! Dream is very far away, but must be true!

[ohio orthodontist]

I know what her passion is. She's deeply into it.

[replica jewelry]

Its interesting. I would like to know more about this…I really wanted to know how this works can you please help me out…….Thanks for sharing.bndrf