Lavada Nahon Preserves African American Food History At New York Historic Site
Lavada Nahon is a culinary historian, interpreter, and scholar. She studies both the food of the Mid-Atlantic region and the enslaved cooks who cooked for the upper class. Twenty years ago, Nahon toured the Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, and fell in love with the home’s wide hearth, where cooking took place. “I cooked over fire in my house growing up, and was a Girl Scout, so that kind of cooking was not foreign to me,” says Nahon. “I wanted to learn how to cook a roast, which is one of the most difficult things about historic cooking. I wrote to the site director and said ‘I’ll volunteer for a year for private time on the hearth,’ and she agreed.”
During her time as a volunteer, Nahon learned that the Van Cortlandt family had enslaved African cooks. “It doesn’t take long to realize that all of these wealthy families owned slaves, and their cooks were enslaved as well,” says Nahon. “I wanted to know who these slaves were, and what were they doing.” Seeking an answer, Nahon found herself cooking and lecturing among many historical sites, while studying the lives of enslaved cooks. Old historical documents such as wills, cookbooks and journals all revealed answers to Nahon’s questions about the lives of enslaved people in the Mid-Atlantic region. Now, she has taken on a new role as the interpreter of African American history for the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. “We know that people didn’t grow up on collard greens or sweet potatoes because they didn’t grow here,” says Nahon. “These cooks were making high English-style food, they’re cooking Dutch food. They’re cooking Jewish food and French food; they’re cooking what their owners want them to cook.”
As the global food supply, restaurants, and everyday folks around the world adjust to pandemic catastrophes, a 1-year-old in the kitchen is helping to bring smiles to people’s faces. “Chef Kobe” has an infectious, outsized personality and his parents began sharing their cooking sessions on Instagram near the end February. While the pandemic dragged on, their account quickly amassed over a million followers. Kobe’s parents, Ashley and Kyle Wian, say they are “all about hands on learning,” and that cooking teaches basic skills. “He investigates new ingredients, feels new textures, learns practical skills like pouring, scooping and measuring,” says Ashley. “That is why this all started…He has fine tuned so many motor skills just by helping me.” The Wians are thrilled that Kobe’s explorations in the kitchen can help people all over the world smile during a time when it’s needed most.
Pitmaster Aaron Franklin Reveals How To Make Real-Deal BBQ At Home
Since Aaron Franklin began Franklin Barbecue with his wife in 2009, he has been devoted to making delicious barbecue, even manufacturing his own barbecue pits. To inspire others to make fantastic barbecue at home, Franklin shares these tips.
Source local wood. Franklin says that barbecue has been homogenized in many ways, and he encourages people of different regions to source wood locally. “…If it’s hickory or it’s mesquite or it’s pecan or if you have red oak or almond…that’s kind of what makes a regional specialty,” says Franklin. “That’s what barbecue used to be—you had different animals and different woods and that’s what made that style. You don’t have to get post oak from Texas, just use what you have.”
Avoid kiln-dried wood. Franklin points out that firewood has to be kiln-dried to legally cross state lines. “They have to heat it up to get rid of bugs and stuff that are in the wood, so that changes the structure,” he says. “That dries it out so much you don’t really get much smoke and everything burns so much faster.”
Use a solid rig. “I’ve been building cookers for about 10 years now and building backyard-size pits I’ve been working on for five years,” says Franklin. He recommends using a steel smoker that excels at holding heat and smoke. “Our smoker is a mini version of what we do here. It’s a six-foot-long, handmade offset barbecue pit with a semi-insulated fire box that fits three briskets. It’s all made out of 5/16-inch steel, so it’s intended to be the kind of thing that you pass down, generation to generation—like a cast-iron skillet.”
Skip the grass-fed beef. The award-winning pitmaster says he prefers not to use grass-fed beef for smoked brisket, claiming it doesn’t have enough fat and some of its gamier flavors don’t mix well with smoke. “I usually would go with Angus as a breed but you could order Wagyu online,” says Franklin. “I would get the fattiest thing from your local butcher. Really, Costco is a good place to go sometimes.”
Documentary Reveals Salty Side of Mexican Food Icon Diana Kennedy
Diana Kennedy, widely regarded as one of the greatest living documenters of Mexican cuisine, now has her own documentary. The food icon is nearing a century of life at 97 years old, and has only now shown signs of slowing down. The documentary may be the last glimpse of Diana Kennedy in her true element, driving her stick-shift around Mexico and tending to her gardens. “I have planned only five [more] years, and nobody can say no,” Kennedy says in the film. “There’s a time, it’s like the caducidad, the date on your ingredients you buy, OK? They last so long.” The cookbook author has shaped the way Americans think about Mexican cooking throughout her entire life.
Survey Reveals What Global Home Cooks Are Buying Under Quarantine
Researchers from the University of Antwerp surveyed 11,000 shoppers in 11 countries to find out how the pandemic has reshaped their cooking and eating habits. Customers in almost half of the countries surveyed reported buying fewer salty and sweet snacks, despite the fact that stress can increase cravings for these foods. The surveyed revealed that many home cooks are satisfying their cravings by baking more at home. Mostly women responded, stating that they have tried several new recipes and have been making more creative use of leftovers. Some reported that once they regain confidence in the food supply at their local supermarkets, they may go back to their old cooking and eating habits.
Consumption of meat, fish and alcohol remained largely unchanged during the pandemic, according to the survey. However, every country reported a higher consumption of fresh, canned and/or frozen fruit and vegetables, likely spurred on by health concerns related to the coronavirus. Countries surveyed included Australia, Belgium, Chile, Uganda, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Greece, Canada, Brazil and Ireland. The ongoing survey is currently expanding its reach to 25 countries, and new research results will be released at the end of June.
Hot Dogs Take Flight Under Quarantine
Hot dogs sales skyrocketed in March, according to data from data analytics firm IRI. Hot dog sales increased 123% in the week ending March 15, compared to the same week last year. Then sales increased 127% in the week ending March 22. As general consumer stockpiling slowed in April, sales fell slightly, but 2020 remains a banner year for hot dogs. Since early March at the start of the pandemic, sales have been at least 29% higher every week compared to the same weeks in 2019, according to IRI. Founder of 210 Analytics, Anne-Marie Roerink, explains that hot dogs offer several advantages to unemployed, cash-strapped consumers concerned with meat shortages: they are inexpensive, have a long shelf life, and make quick and easy meals, particularly for children no longer getting meals from school.
Want More Eggs? A Primer On Raising Backyard Chickens
If your local grocery store is rationing eggs or you just want to save some money, raising chickens could be a good move. Food writer Tamar Haspel has been raising backyard chickens for 10 years and shares some tips. First, consider the climate where you live. Chicken breeds that do well in cold weather usually don’t like the heat, and vice versa. Next, plan out a chicken coop. If your area gets cold in winter, consider putting it near a source of electricity so you can run a water heater. Above all, the coop should keep your chickens safe. Baby chicks grow quickly in six months, then begin competing for food, so the coop should give them ample space to keep squabbles to a minimum. Varmint-proof walls are also a necessity (1-inch chicken wire works), but don’t forget to the floor: sturdy wire mesh will prevent predators from digging into the coop from below.
The coop should also be convenient for you, so eggs can be collected and the feeder refilled quickly. Chicken poop breaks down easily, and if you use plenty of litter, you’ll only need to shovel out the coop about once a year.
Chickens typically lay eggs for about two years, but they can live for ten years. Keep in mind that at some point, your chickens may become dinner. But they are worthwhile for the eggs alone. A laying hen can lay a dozen eggs in about two weeks, and during that time hens will eat about three pounds or 80 cents’ worth of feed. So a dozen eggs is worth at least twice the cost of the feed. In places like Brooklyn, where egg prices are even higher, the eggs can be worth even more.
Like Restaurants, Some Food Retailers Now Require Reservations
With retail outlets reopening this summer, reservation platforms are offering new services to ease overcrowding and wait lines. The high-end restaurant reservation platform Tock will be enrolling several retailers in the coming weeks. Tock’s new tool lets customers reserve 15-minute increment slots for receiving or picking up retail products. This feature helped Tock enroll over 1,100 international restaurants since March, and Tock CEO Nick Kokonas said the platform currently handles about $2 million a day in sales for takeout and pickup orders. According to Kokonas, Tock has been contacted by “everyone from automobile dealerships to grocery stores to farms” to help with reopenings. One of its newest clients is a women’s apparel chain using the service for styling appointments.
OpenTable also unveiled their grocery tech solution, aiming to help businesses reduce wait lines and mitigate crowd control issues in stores. The company says the tool is available for grocery stores, major retailers and “restaurants turned pop-up markets.” At Resy, chief marketing officer Victoria Vaynberg says the company is rolling out front and backend tools such as its Automated Capacity Monitor, which allows restaurant managers to set an online limit on capacity in dining rooms to comply with local occupancy regulations. Another feature, the Open Date Alert, allows restaurants to notify subscribers of reopening dates for particular regions and restaurants. The Mobile Waitlist feature also lets guests join a live queue when in close proximity to a restaurant, which helps reduce crowding.
Plant-Based “Meat” Sales Are Soaring
U.S. consumers continue to develop a taste for plant-based proteins. During the four-week period from April 12 to May 9, sales of all plant-based meat substitutes were 35% higher than the four-week period ending January 18, according to consumer-analytics company Nielsen. The companies with the biggest increases are Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, manufacturers of a new generation of meat-like products made with plant proteins. Why are consumers buying more of these products? Nineteen-year-old William Thomas of Brookline, New Hampshire, says he’s eating plant-based foods because “I’d always been trying to block out a lot of what was going on behind the scenes of the meat industry, but I can’t ignore it forever.” Faizal Karmali, 45, of Brooklyn, turned to plant-based meat because “it uses much less water to grow a bunch of peas than it does to grow a cow,” and because he doesn’t want to stress the meat industry further.
The coronavirus has been hard on the U.S. meat industry, forcing dozens of slaughterhouses to close temporarily, but the plant-based food industry had already been growing prior to the pandemic. Consumers were seeking alternatives in both fast food restaurants and in grocery stores, and manufacturers of plant-based meat substitutes had already been ramping up production for increased sales this year. Impossible Foods products are now sold in more than 3,000 stores, up from fewer than 200 in January, and the company has increased its workforce to 653 full-time employees, up from 587 in January. Beyond Meat also reported net revenue of $97.1 million in the first quarter of this year, an increase of 141 percent over last year. Its products are now in 25,000 grocery stores nationwide, and the company recently expanded into China. “We were saying that by 2030, Beyond Meat could have a $1 billion in sales,” said Alexia Howard, senior analyst at food equity research firm Bernstein. “Now, we’re saying by the end of 2020.”
Meat From a Vending Machine May Be Here To Stay
In 20156, when Joshua Applestone introduced vending machines at his butchery, Applestone Meat Company in upstate New York, a global pandemic not on his mind. “I wanted to eliminate one stressful thing from people’s lives: getting to the butcher shop before it closes,” Applestone said. The refrigerated vending machine allows customers to select and purchase meat cuts without human interaction.
Now, due to social distancing rules amid the coronavirus outbreak, Applestone’s meat vending machine is serving as a model for other butchers and grocery stores. Customers enter the storefront to find vending machines filled with various cuts of beef, chicken, lamb and pork. After selections are made and a payment card is swiped, the appropriate door opens so that the meat can be retrieved in a contactless transaction. “We thought society might take a while to warm up to these machines,” said Applestone, “but for the situation we’re all in, they’re the perfect solution. A lot of technology makes things more complicated. But vending machines? They’re here to help us.”
Shorter afterward, Kevin McCann of McCann’s Local Meats in Rochester, New York, opened his meat vending machine. McCann, who is a friend of Applestone’s, was surprised at how quickly customers grew comfortable with the vending machine, adding “the response has been unbelievable.” .