by Maya Angelou
6 end loin pork chops
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, if needed
1 cup hot water
1 cup milk
Fry bacon in large skillet on medium heat, and remove to paper towels to drain.
Sautê onion in same skillet with bacon fat, and remove to paper towels to drain.
Season pork chops with salt and pepper, and dredge in flour. Fry on medium heat in the same skillet with bacon fat until light brown, and remove to warm plate.
Put remaining flour into skillet (add oil if necessary). Brown flour lightly. Add hot water immediately, and then milk. Stir vigorously. Season as desired with more salt and pepper.
Put pork chops, bacon, and onion into gravy, and reduce heat to simmer. Cover skillet, and simmer for 20 minutes.
Check gravy for seasoning. Adjust as needed while food is still hot.
Smoked Pork Chops
SERVES 3 TO 5
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
3 large smoked pork chops
1 quart hot water
1 tablespoon butter
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and diced
One 8-ounce can crushed pineapple, drained
1 tablespoon brown sugar
⅛ teaspoon cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon nutmeg
⅛ cup water
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Place oil and chops in large, deep skillet, and pour hot water over chops. Simmer for 20 minutes, turning chops twice while water is simmering. Take skillet off heat. Remove chops from water, and discard water. Pat chops dry.
Place butter in small pan, and add apples. Sautê apples until they are tender. Add pineapple, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and cook until all liquid has disappeared.
Put chops in an accommodating baking dish. Cover with apple-pineapple mixture. Pour water into bottom of dish, and cover. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove cover and continue baking for 20 minutes.
Braísed Cabbage
wíth Gínger
SERVES 4
1 medium to large head of cabbage
2 tablespoons (¼ stick) butter
¼ cup chopped onion
2 tablespoons peeled, grated fresh ginger
1 large green bell pepper, chopped
1 cup chicken bouillon
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Quarter cabbage, remove stalk, and cover with boiling water. Let sit for 10 minutes. Drain cabbage, and pat dry in a towel. Remove to chopping board, and cut into bite-size pieces.
Melt butter over moderate heat and add cabbage, onion, ginger, bell pepper, and bouillon. Sautê until tender but not brown. Cover and cook over medium heat an added 20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Serve at once.
Cabbage wíth Celery and
Water Chestnuts
SERVES 4 TO 6
1 large onion, sliced
1 green bell pepper, cut into large pieces
3 stalks of celery, chopped
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 head cabbage, cut into large bite-size pieces
1 cup water
One 8-ounce can water chestnut slices, drained
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Sauté onion, bell pepper, and celery in oil until translucent but not brown. Add cabbage and water, cover, and simmer for 25 to 30 minutes. Add water chestnut slices to cabbage. Season with salt and pepper. Cook 10 more minutes, and serve.
CAN YOU COOK CREOLE?”
I looked at the woman and gave her a lie as soft as melting butter. “Yes, of course. That’s all I know how to cook.”
The Creole Cafe had a cardboard sign in the window that announced, COOK WANTED. SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLARS A WEEK. As soon as I saw it I knew I could cook Creole, whatever that was.
Desperation to find help must have blinded the proprietress to my age, or perhaps it was the fact that I was six feet and had an attitude that belied my seventeen years. She didn’t question me about recipes and menus, but her long brown face did trail down in wrinkles, and doubt hung on the edges of her questions. “Can you start on Monday?” “I’ll be glad to.”
“You know it’s six days a week. We’re closed on Sunday.”
“That’s fine with me. I like to go to church on Sunday.” It’s awful to think that the devil gave me that lie, but it came unexpectedly and worked like dollar bills. Suspicion and doubt fled from her face, and she smiled. Her teeth were all the same size, a small white picket fence semicircled in her mouth.
“Well, I know we’re going to get along. You’re a good Christian. I like that. Yes, ma’am, I sure do.”
My need for a job stiffed my telling (confessing to) her that I mean to be a Christian but that I blow it every day. Instead, I asked her, “What time on Monday? Bless the Lord!”
“You get here at five.”
Five in the morning. Those mean streets menaced by thugs who had not yet gone to sleep, pillowing on someone else’s dreams. Five! Just when the streetcars began to rattle, their lighted insides looking like exclusive houses in the fog. Five!
“All right, I’ll be here at five, Monday morning.”
“You’ll cook the dinners and put them on the steam table. You don’t have to do short orders. I do that.”
Mrs. Dupree was a short, plump woman of about fifty. Her hair was naturally straight and heavy. Probably Cajun, Indian, African, and white, and, naturally, Negro.
“And what’s your name?”
“Rita.” Marguerite was too solemn and Maya too fancy. Rita sounded like dark, flashing eyes, hot peppers, and Creole evenings with strummed guitars. “Rita Johnson.”
“That’s a right nice name.” Then, as some people do to show their sense of familiarity, she immediately narrowed the name down. “I’ll call you Reet. Okay?”
Okay, of course. I had a job. Seventy-five dollars a week. So I was Reet. Reet, poteet, and gone. All Reet. No wall I had to do was learn to cook. I asked old Papa Ford to teach me.
He had been a grown man when the twentieth century was born and left a large family of brothers and sisters in Terre Haute, Indiana (always called the East Coast), to find what the world had in store for a “good-looking colored boy with no education in his head, but a pile of larceny in his heart.” He traveled with circuses “shoveling elephant shit.” He shot dice in freight trains and played poker in back rooms and shanties all over the northern states. He worked as a chef on Pullman dining cars and was a fry cook in the Merchant Marine Corps.
By 1943, when I first saw him at my mother’s house in San Francisco, his good looks were as delicate as an old man’s memory, and disappointment rode his face bareback. His hands had gone. His gambler’s fingers had thickened. During the Depression he worked at the only straight job he knew, which was carpentering. That had further toughened his “moneymakers.” Mother rescued him from a job as a sweeper in a pinochle parlor and brought him home to look after the house and five roomers who rented from us.
He sorted and counted the linen when the laundry truck picked it up and returned it, then grudgingly handed out fresh sheets to the roomers. He cooked massive and delicious dinners when Mother was busy, and he sat in the tall-ceiling kitchen drinking coffee by the potfuls.
Papa Ford loved my mother (as did nearly everyone) with a childlike devotion. He went so far as to control his profanity when she was around, knowing she couldn’t abide cursing unless she was doing the cursing.
When I told him I had a job as a cook and needed his help, he said, “Why the sheeit do you want to work in a goddamn kitchen washing dishes?”
“Papa, the job pays seventy-five dollars a week and I’ll be cooking, not washing dishes.”
“Colored women been cooking so long, thought you’d be tired of it by now.” “If you’ll just tell me how to cook a few dishes …”
“High school and all that education. How come you don�
�t get a goddamn job where you can go to work looking like something?”
I tried another tack. “I probably couldn’t learn to cook Creole food anyway. It’s too complicated.”
“Sheeit. Ain’t nothing but onions, celery, green peppers, garlic, and tomatoes. Put that in everything and you got Creole food. I already told you how to cook rice.”
“Yes.” I could cook rice till each grain stood separately.
“That’s all, then. Them geechees can’t live without swamp seed.” He crackled at his joke, then recalled with a frown, “Still don’t like you working as a goddamn cook. Get married. Then you don’t have to cook for nobody but your own family. Sheeit. Yeah, don’t forget, put red chili pepper in everything. They’ll be expecting it.”
The Creole Cafe steamed with onion vapor, garlic mists, tomato fogs, and green pepper sprays. I put the Creole flavors into Vivian Baxter’s recipe for short ribs of beef, and Salisbury steak was just hamburger with a Creole sauce.
Mrs. Dupree chose the daily menu and left a note on the steam table informing me of her gastronomic decisions. But I, Rita, the chef, decided how much garlic and how many bay leaves would flavor the steamed Shreveport tripe. For over a month I was embroiled in the mysteries of the kitchen with the expectancy of an alchemist about to discover the secret properties of gold.
Only after the mystery had worn down to a layer of commonness did I begin to notice the customers. They consisted largely of light-skinned, slick-haired Creoles from Louisiana, who spoke French patois only a little less complicated than the contents of my pots and equally spicy. I thought it fitting and not at all unusual that they enjoyed my cooking. I was following Papa Ford’s instructions loosely and adding artistic touches of my own. Mrs. Dupree said I was building up her business.
Our customers never just ate, paid, and left. They sat for hours on the long backless stools and exchanged gossip or shared the patient philosophy of the black South.
Near the steam counter, the soft sounds of black talk, the sharp reports of laughter, and the shuffling feet on tiled floors mixed themselves in odorous vapors. I was content. My cooking was appreciated. I had pockets full of money and my son was well looked after. I may not have been happy. I was content.
Braísed Short Ríbs
of Beef
SERVES 8
5 pounds beef short ribs, cut into 3-inch pieces
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
½ teaspoon meat tenderizer
All-purpose flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 cups meat stock or water
5 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1½ inch pieces
One 28-ounce can tomatoes
One 6-ounce can tomato paste
2 large onions, diced
3 stalks celery, chopped
3 cloves garlic, diced
2 green bell peppers, cut into large pieces
2 bay leaves
1 cup good cabernet sauvignon
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Season meat with salt and pepper, sprinkle with meat tenderizer, and dust with flour. (I sprinkle meat tenderizer on all meat, since I expect it to be tough.) Brown on all sides in oil in Dutch oven. Add stock; cover and bake in the oven for 1 hour.
Remove from oven and add carrots, tomatoes, tomato paste, onions, celery, garlic, bell peppers, bay leaves, and wine. Return to oven, and cook 1½ hours. Meat should be very tender. Remove bay leaves, and adjust seasoning as needed.
On large serving dish, arrange vegetables around meat, and sprinkle with parsley.
INDEPENDENCE IS A HEADY DRAFT, and if you drink it in your youth it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine. It does not matter that its taste is not very appealing; it is addictive and with each drink the consumer wants more.
When I was twenty and living in San Francisco, I had a three-year-old son, two jobs, and two rented rooms with cooking privileges down the hall. My landlady, Mrs. Jefferson, was kind and grandmotherly. She was a ready babysitter and insisted on providing dinner for her tenants. Her ways were so tender and her personality so sweet that no one was mean enough to discourage her disastrous culinary exploits. Spaghetti at her table, which was offered at least three times a week, was a mysterious red, white, and brown concoction. We would occasionally encounter an unidentifiable piece of meat floating on the plate.
There was no money in my budget to afford restaurant food, so my son and I were often loyal, if unhappy, diners at Chez Jefferson.
My mother had moved from Post Street into a fourteen-room Victorian house on Fulton Street, which she had filled with gothic, heavily carved furniture. The upholstery on the sofa and occasional chairs was red-wine-colored mohair. Oriental rugs were placed throughout the house. She had a live-in employee who was a fill-in cook for her and cleaned the house.
Mother picked up Guy two or three times a week and took him to her house where she fed him peaches and cream and hot dogs, but I only went to her house when she was expecting me.
My mother understood and encouraged my self-reliance. We had a standing appointment, which I looked forward to eagerly. Once a month, she would cook one of my favorite dishes and I would go to her house for lunch. One important date that stands out in my mind I call Vivian’s Red Rice Day.
When I arrived at the Fulton Street house my mother was dressed beautifully, her makeup was perfect, and she wore good jewelry.
After we embraced, I washed my hands and we walked through her formal dark dining room and into the large bright kitchen.
Much of lunch was already on the table. Vivian Baxter cooked wonderful meals and was very serious about how to present them.
On that long-ago Red Rice Day, my mother had placed on the table a dry, crispy, roasted capon, no dressing or gravy, and a simple lettuce salad, no tomatoes or cucumbers. A widemouthed bowl covered with a platter sat next to her plate.
She blessed the table with a fervent but brief prayer and put her left hand on the platter and her right on the bowl and turned the dishes over. She gently loosened the bowl from its contents and revealed a tall mound of glistening red rice (my favorite food in all the world) decorated with finely minced parsley and the green tops of scallions.
The chicken and salad do not feature so prominently on my taste buds’ memory, but each grain of red rice is emblazoned on the surface of my tongue forever.
Gluttonous and greedy negatively describe the hearty eater offered the seduction of her favorite food.
Two large portions of rice sated my appetite, but the deliciousness of the dish made me long for a larger stomach so that I could eat two more helpings.
My mother had plans for the rest of the afternoon, so she gathered her wraps and we left the house together.
We reached the middle of the block and were enveloped in the stinging acid aroma of vinegar from the pickle factory on the corner of Fillmore and Fulton streets. I had walked ahead. My mother stopped me and said, “Baby.”
I walked back to her.
“Baby. I’ve been thinking and now I am sure. You are the greatest woman I’ve ever met.”
My mother was five feet four inches to my six-foot frame.
I looked down at the pretty little woman, and her perfect makeup and diamond earrings, who owned a hotel and was admired by most people in San Francisco’s black community.
She continued, “You are very kind and very intelligent and those elements are not always found together. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune, and my mother—yes, you belong in that category. Here, give me a kiss.”
She kissed me on the lips and turned and jaywalked across the street to her beige and brown Pontiac. I pulled myself together and walked down to Fillmore Street. I crossed there and waited for the number 22 streetcar.
My policy of independence would not allow me to accept money or even a ride from my mother, but I welcomed her wisdom. Now I thought of her statement. I thought, Supp
ose she is right. She’s very intelligent and she often said she didn’t fear anyone enough to lie to him, so suppose she is right. Imagine, I really might be somebody. Imagine.
At that moment, when I could still taste the red rice, I decided the time had come when I should cut down on dangerous habits like smoking, drinking, and cursing.
Imagine, I might really become somebody.
Red Ríce
SERVES 8
½ pound thick sliced bacon
1 cup chopped onions
½ cup chopped red bell peppers
2 cups canned tomatoes
One 6-ounce can tomato paste
Dash of freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon salt
4 cups cooked white rice
2 cups water
Fry bacon in a large skillet on medium heat until brown, stirring with fork. Add onions and peppers. Cover and cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove lid and add remaining ingredients; mix well. Bring to boil, about 3 minutes. Stir vigorously, cover again, and cook over very low heat for about 15 minutes until rice and liquid are totally mixed.
Roasted Capon