7 Ingredients That Define the African Diaspora, According to Renowned Black Chefs

On Monday, February 3, five celebrated Black chefs collaborated to tell a story of ingredients that have traveled to the United States through the African Diaspora. The Follow Your Roots dinner was hosted by 2024 F&W Best New Chef Camari Mick, who invited the group of culinary powerhouses — including 2020 F&W Best New Chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph, partner of Emmer & Rye Hospitality in Austin; Charlie Mitchell, executive chef at Saga; Akwasi Brenya-Mensa, chef and founder of the London-based, Pan-African concept Tatale; and Brittney "Chef Stikxz" Williams — to The Musket Room in New York City to celebrate Black History Month.

There are many ingredients that have shaped African foodways, following Black families and home cooks from Africa to the Caribbean islands and to the American South. Dr. Jessica B. Harris, culinary historian and author of High on the Hog, explored the history of several of these ingredients — and the Black chefs who have brought them to the forefront of American cuisine — in a Food & Wine feature "The Original Innovators" in 2020.

“African Americans have toiled in every aspect of the country’s food — growing it, selling it, serving it, and creating and offering the beverages to accompany it,” she wrote. “It’s a 400-year history that is only now in the 21st century being fully understood, researched, and told. It’s about time.”

Related: Jessica B. Harris Receives James Beard Lifetime Achievement Award

It was Harris herself who selected the seven ingredients highlighted at the Follow Your Roots dinner: okra, salt codfish, sweet potato, black-eyed peas, pork, sugarcane, and sorrel. With each course came a story from the chef who prepared it, explaining how that ingredient had impacted their own lives and careers. A booklet by Harris, provided to guests, further detailed the roles each ingredient played through the African diaspora.

“Together, we are weaving threads through the gaps in our history,” Mick wrote in the booklet’s introduction. “Once fragmented but never truly broken.”

Read on to discover the creative ways that the chefs explored this powerful history on the plate.

Okra

While the origins of okra are largely unknown, its history can be traced back to Egypt, “where wild okra has been found in the upper Nile,” says Harris. Today, the ingredient is often fried or used in stews like gumbo, where it helps thicken the broth. At the dinner, chef Akwasi Brenya-Mensa, founder of the London-based, Pan-African concept Tatale, incorporated okra into a Ghanian-inspired okra soup — a dish he ate throughout his childhood.

“The story of okra for me is really enjoying it before knowing that it was referred to as ‘slimy,’” Brenya-Mensa says. The thick, tomato-based soup, cooked with red palm oil, scotch bonnet peppers, and 'nduja was served with sticky rice reminiscent of the West African "swallow" food, fufu. “It’s a good example of a dish that connects us from the United States to West Africa. It speaks to all of us.”

Related: The Complete Guide to Cooking With Okra

Salt codfish

“The history of the maritime Atlantic can be tasted in a piece of salt codfish,” says Harris. “The plank-like pieces of dried, salted fish were loaded into the holds of slave ships to be reconstituted in the meager fare that was used to sustain the enslaved as well as the sailors who held them captive.” The ingredient followed the diaspora around the world. You can find it in croquettes in France, in fritters in Puerto Rico, and in Jamaica’s national dish, ackee and saltfish.

2020 F&W Best New Chef Tavel Bristol-Joseph, partner of Emmer & Rye Hospitality in Austin, cooked the salt codfish with onions, garlic, tomato, green onions, cilantro, and served it atop johnny cakes. Growing up in Guyana, Bristol-Joseph’s grandmother would make johnny cakes — cornmeal flatbread — with eggs for breakfast. “It’s something near and dear to my heart,” he says.

Related: Caribbean Johnny Cakes

Sweet potatoes

According to writer and food scholar Dr. Scott Alves Barton, “Yams are considered to be the most common African staple aboard Middle Passage ships; some estimates say 100,000 yams fed 500 enslaved people — sometimes their only foodstuff.” Creamier, more deeply orange-colored sweet potatoes were more accessible in the New World, acting as a substitute for yams.

This dish was a collaboration among the five participating chefs, along with New York City-based chef and TV host Sophia Roe, who was unable to attend. They served fried sweet potato gnudi with a spicy sweet potato purée, peanut salsa macha, and brown beech mushrooms.

Related: The Difference Between Yams and Sweet Potatoes

Black-eyed peas

Like salt codfish, earthy black-eyed peas traveled from Africa to the United States to feed people who were enslaved. They were planted in the Carolinas and exported to the Caribbean. Over the years, the ingredient became associated with New Year’s Eve, eaten for good luck.

Growing up, Charlie Mitchell, the chef of Saga in New York City, celebrated the tradition every year with his family. “As I got older, I would cook them for myself on New Years,” he says. For the Follow Your Roots dinner, Mitchell prepared a cassoulet with black-eyed peas. “It’s a very classic French dish, but with some collard greens and ham hock to remind me of how we used to eat [black-eyed peas] growing up.” For an extra layer of savoriness, Mitchell added oxtail and foie gras. “I wanted to keep it classic but also use ingredients that I cook with today.”

Pork

Christopher Columbus brought pigs from the Canary Islands to the Americas during his second voyage in 1493. “They have, however, made themselves quite at home here, and their meat has become a favorite of the New World,” says Harris. In Jamaica, pork is often used for jerk-style barbecue, “a fusion of traditional American and African technique.”

“Of course I had to do jerk,” says Brittney "Chef Stikxz" Williams, whose parents are from Saint Elizabeth and Westmoreland, Jamaica. “I’m very tied to my culture.”

Williams’ jerk pork rack is “as authentic as authentic can get,” smoked for four hours over pimento wood. She served it over calabaza squash purée along with a fennel salad, tossed in a vinaigrette made with callaloo — a Caribbean leafy vegetable. The callaloo, as well as the scotch bonnet peppers used in the pork’s barbecue glaze, were grown by Williams’ father. “These are all straight from Jamaica and reimagined.”

Related: At this Louisiana Farm, Activism, Family, and Food Form the Sweetest Harvest

Sugarcane

Along with pigs, Christopher Columbus brought sugarcane to the New World from the Canary Islands during his second voyage. “It transformed not only the agriculture of the Caribbean and parts of South and North America, but also the culture of the region for its labor-intensive cultivation brought with it race-based chattel slavery,” says Harris.

With sugarcane also came rum, made from distilled sugarcane molasses. Originating in the Caribbean, rum is now one of the most popular spirits around the globe. As a pre-dessert treat, Mick served a mini sugarcane rum float. The concept harkens back to the American soda shops of the 1950s, where in many states, due to Jim Crow laws, Black people were banned from entry. Mick poured a house-made sugarcane tonic over rum ice cream, made with Ten to One dark rum.

Sorrel

For the final dish, Mick presented a dessert made from Jamaican sorrel, or hibiscus flower. “Its significance has travelled all the way from Ghana to the Caribbean, where my heritage is Jamaican,” says Mick. “Traditionally, we have it in teas, but I incorporated it into a semifreddo.”

Mick’s sorrel semifreddo is a layer cake of sorts, inspired by île flottante, one of the only remaining recipes from Thomas Jefferson’s enslaved chef, James Hemings. “Usually [île flottante] is served with egg whites that have been whipped and then steamed; or cooked into a bath of anglaise, then served in that anglaise.” Instead, Mick layered the sorrel semifreddo with nutmeg meringue, and served it over a coconut anglaise, speckled with thyme oil.

“Thyme is the workhorse of Jamaican cuisine,” she says. “It goes in your cereal. It goes in your breakfast smoothie. I wanted that to come through on the plate.”

Related: Jackie Summers Celebrates Sorrel

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