- Just ahead on Black Issues Forum, holiday dishes do more than just feed us, they tell our story.

From the origins of soul food to the traditions we protect, reinvent, and pass down, we're uncovering the culture and the meaning behind the meals that define us all.

It's all on the menu.

Coming up next, stay with us.

- Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBSNC.

(upbeat music) ♪ - Welcome to Black Issues Forum, I'm Kenia Thompson.

Well, as we enter the holiday season, many of us are already thinking about that plate, the mac and cheese, the greens that are seasoned just right, and that sweet potato pie that seems to never make it to the next day.

But soul food is more than just recipes.

Today, we're digging into the history behind the dishes we love and how it feeds our culture and our joy for food.

I'm excited to welcome today's guests.

First is a local chef who was born in Benin, West Africa and adopted at age 10 by a Puerto Rican family.

She is the winner of Food Network's 63rd season of "Chopped."

And today, she's the owner of Ilewa Foods and a culinary storyteller.

And I'm honored to call her my friend, Chef Ade Carrena.

We also have your favorite farmer and historian, Earl Ijames.

He is the curator of African-American history and agriculture at the North Carolina Museum of History.

Earl is also a seventh generation North Carolinian with family farming roots, dating back to 1779, the Revolutionary War era.

He is also a 2022 Emmy Award winner for his short film on "The Long Leaf Pine."

Welcome.

- Thank you, Kenia.

- It's a pleasure to have you both here.

Earl, I'd love for you to kick us off.

You've developed kind of a lesson plan and experience for a traveling workshop.

Tell us a little bit about that and why you created it.

- Well, as a farmer and historian, I like to also give the history, but using heirloom seeds that are pure and have a better outcome as far as the product that you have.

So on one hand, it's the food ways, but on the other hand, as a historian, I like to talk about the origins and a format that I've created called "From Africa to America to Your Plate."

And it's a history of the Middle Passage and the origins of Southern cuisine.

And so we've been able to collaborate with people like Chef Ade to do different iterations of that.

And so we'll get a little small snippet of it here, but in a nutshell, I've brought some items from the farm that we can talk about and how that works.

- Yeah, we'll get to that in a little bit, but Ade, I'd love for you to chime in and share a little bit about the connection behind what we have on our plates today and how it goes back to roots.

- Yeah, absolutely.

I think food is a beautiful way to collect information.

And if you follow the food, you can understand the history of a people.

For me personally, the way I landed on this thought process was through my own, leaving my home country and coming and being raised in a Puerto Rican household and then coming to the South and seeing that these things kind of feel familiar to me, actually.

I've eaten this before, it may have looked a little different, but I've eaten this before.

So it's really important to honor the fact that our ancestors came in with a wealth of information and utilized what was accessible to them to create something beautiful and something new.

- Yeah, and I love the work that you both do because you do a lot of connection, right?

And the things that we do today, the things that we eat today, we see and experience today.

And you got the opportunity to do that on Food Network's "Chopped."

And so I wanted to take a moment and highlight that.

So earlier we did mention that Chef Ade was the winner of the 63rd season of "Chopped," her episode four, I believe.

She wowed judges with her amazing blends of suya spices and walked away changing how many African-inspired cuisines are created here in America.

Let's take a look at her winning moment.

- Next up, Chef Ade.

- Anyone else as nervous as I am?

It's, okay.

Chefs, today I made for y'all toasted bread with a Beninese black lime, smoked oyster spread with a watermelon radish.

I quickly leaned into the street food of my home.

A lot of women sell toasted baguettes on the side of the road with sardines.

So I was inspired by that.

- It's really good.

Like, it's tasty.

- Thank you.

- Chef, what's motivating you to do this?

- So I have a 10-year-old daughter.

I'd love to show her, especially as a black female chef, like there are no ceilings, you know?

She can do whatever she wants to do and has my full support.

And I'm exemplifying that for her.

- Chef Ade, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Have you made your decision?

- I think we have.

- I want this win so bad.

I mean, I've come so far.

Chef Ade put up such a fight.

I mean, it could go either way, but I do think I'm definitely the chop champion.

- So whose dish is on the chopping block?

(dramatic music) - Good job, you did so good.

You're a simple, happy girl.

Congratulations.

I was so close and I really thought I had it.

Like, I'm very happy for Chef Ade.

And I think my dad is very proud of me.

Yes, I can feel it.

- And that means Chef Ade Carrena, you are the Chopped champion.

10 grand is the prize money.

Congratulations.

- Thank you so much.

Thank you.

It feels amazing, I don't even have the words.

I am a Chopped champion.

What?

That's like amazing.

I can't even.

This shows my daughter that anything that she wants to do, if she sets her mind to it, she can achieve it.

I'm just so proud of you.

Thank you.

- I love that.

I see tears in your eyes again.

- Oh, I'm getting cry.

- I'm sorry.

I just, I love that moment for you.

Just share what you were feeling, what really it meant for a West African, fusing Puerto Rican food, inspired chef.

What did that mean for you?

- It was a really big moment for me, especially my journey to falling in love with food the way that I have.

You know, food was a very traumatic thing for me growing up that is now the thing that has brought me so much healing that I'm able to share with the world.

And being in that kitchen and facing all these challenges, because let's be honest, there was not a pantry full of West African ingredients for me to utilize.

I had to be very creative in how I talked about my dishes and how I created something that felt very familiar to me.

And I always say that food, when we're cooking, you understand the basics, but the rest is memory.

So I just pulled into every memory possible that I had from being at home, from watching my mother cook, my grandmother, and all the women who have impacted my life through food in beautiful ways.

And to show that there isn't one path in food for folks was a really good feeling for me.

I'm not classically trained.

I don't have a brick and mortar.

- But your food is delicious though.

It is delicious.

I know I'm biased, but a lot of other people say so too.

And the chefs, I mean, it's in the pudding, right?

Earl, when you look at that experience and you look at the opportunity to show the world really kind of the essence of African flavors and the roots, no pun intended, of where so many of our dishes come from, what is that thread that connects it all to today?

- Well, growing up in Winston-Salem and North Carolina, you have a lot of what we call soul food.

And as I studied and became a historian, I began to understand the magnitude of the divorcing of the knowledge of our ancestors from Africa and who we were and what we brought to this continent to help build and plant this continent versus what was known in the lexicon even today.

And so some of these items from the farm, for an example, I grow these types of items not only for culinary, the skills for you chefs, but for the education of, say the Morris-heading collard greens that come from West Africa, but were renamed Morris after a family in Robeson County.

And so the connotation has changed where people don't understand that they came from Africa and were brought here with seeds and transported oftentimes with, in the hair of our-- - So show us, you said you have these seeds.

- So these are seeds, these are okra seeds.

- And that's inside this okra that we see here on the table.

- This is an okra pod.

And the okra pod is a form of okra that grows in West Africa called burgundy okra, a red okra.

And it's very viable in North Carolina growing.

I grow it on my farm and espouse it to others as well.

And our chef friends love them.

And their clients and customers so.

- And I heard you even mention earlier that you didn't realize there were so many varieties of this okra.

- Yeah, actually I was telling my mom of this because I don't know if you guys know about African mothers, what they know is what they know, okay?

And so I was saying, "Mom, did you know that there were so many varieties of okra?

Have you ever seen okra that look like this?"

And she said, "No."

I was referring to a moment where I put okra in a blender to blend it quickly, to chop it, and my aunts called her to let her know, "That's not what you do."

- That's not what you do.

- Yeah.

So I was teasing my mom about the fact that there's so much more.

- Yeah.

And I think, you know, we don't, being raised here in America, we kind of lose our connection, right?

To our African ancestry.

And we don't realize just how much influence in our day to day, even though we're kind of disconnected from the traditions.

Earl, you talked about the collards.

What else do you have in this basket here?

- Well, just to pick up on something that you just mentioned, it's an intended outcome from the institution of slavery not to know where not only you're from, but have the larger society know where you're from and what you brought here.

And so along that line, on our farm, we have four different types of okra that come from four different regions of Africa that we talk about because most people just refer to Africa as one.

And it's a very diverse continent, as you know, three and a half times the size of continental United States.

And so you have an opportunity to convey that lesson while we're also reconnecting our present African-Americans to the understanding of the magnitude of who we are and where we came from and what we brought.

So what we have here, not only the Mars headings, but as I mentioned, those are the first collards that came into the new world, into Virginia first in the 1600s.

And then what you see here are some middlings.

I think many people have not heard of middlings.

- I had not before you.

- So rice, North and South Carolina were known as Carolina gold rice.

And we produce so much gold and so much Carolina gold rice in a high quality and quantity that even the emperors in Japan wanted Carolina gold rice.

But Carolina gold rice didn't originate in Carolina.

It originates in Senegal, Sierra Leone.

And so we didn't in our lexicon call it Sierra Leone rice.

Or Senegal rice.

And so that knowledge is deliberately stripped out so that it's rebranded Carolina gold or as rebranded Mars heading.

So we have that.

And then we have sweet potatoes.

And these- - That's a staple in the black community.

- North Carolina, I did an exhibit back at the North Carolina Museum of History several years ago about sweet potatoes.

And who knew that our state ranks among the largest producers of sweet potatoes in the entire world.

- Oh, wow.

- And then we have, I have what's called a, you know what this is.

What is it referred to now?

- The eggplant?

- Yes.

But originally it's called Guinea squash.

- Okay.

- Right?

So it's now known as eggplant.

And this is all wonderfully wrapped in a basket that's made by one of our artisan elders who is a North Carolina treasure man named Mr.

Neil Thomas.

Who makes original split oak baskets like this from our ancestors who were enslaved and made these baskets.

This is a perfect bushel basket, perfectly for harvest season, which we're in now.

- Okay.

- And so was harvest season, which you see on the front end is what's called a thumper.

- Yeah, that's right.

- Thumper watermelon.

- That term?

- Yes.

- So most people thump a watermelon to determine whether or not it is ripe.

And that is usually during the season from July through September.

And so once all the watermelons are harvested and the grass grows over, you forget about the watermelons, but then you go and you realize that there's one left over.

They will call thumpers, but you no longer have to thump them because you know they're ripe.

- Well, let's go back to the holiday table, right?

And so Ade, when you think of meals that we traditionally partake in, well, let's just say Americans traditionally partake in, what are some of similarities that we see in African dishes?

- Well, if I'm being specific more to like the deep South and my relationship and connection with Gullah Geechee folk, I would talk about red rice, which is very similar to me, in my country we call it Rio Gra, but it's more known as Jollof.

- Yeah.

- When I think about black-eyed peas, that is a big one for me because when I was a little girl, my mother had a little shack restaurant outside of her home where she sold a dish called ababa, which is literally exactly black-eyed peas that are stewed.

- And many Americans think that we just kind of created that here, but it comes from much deeper roots.

- Yeah, and my mother was very known for her ababa and I don't tell her this, I make my own version and I put tea in it and if she ever saw me do that, she would literally lose her mind.

- Yeah, so what's the difference between the Americanized version of black-eyed peas and the African version of black-eyed peas?

- When we do it at home, it doesn't have the pork or like the sausage or that meat smokiness that's coming from some of the things, the protein we put in it.

It's very simple, like a broth that's made with seasonings.

In my country, we use typically, our black pepper is very different than any black pepper you've ever smelled or seen or tasted before, so that's heavy in our food, that and ginger.

So it's a broth that is kind of stewed in, made with lots of different seasonings and then they serve it with rice.

- Oh, wow.

- Here, it's maybe richer, maybe has a thicker sort of component to it and smoky, whereas we don't have that.

Earl, when we think about reclaiming our roots in the kitchen-- - So this is a perfect segue.

- Yes.

- So this is because black-eyed peas, I teach about how and why they became a New Year's Day staple along with the collard greens.

A lot of people say, "Is collard greens good luck, black-eyed peas?"

Historically, what happens is at the end of the American Civil War, 1861-1865, Union General William T. Sherman's army marches from Georgia through South Carolina into North Carolina, literally ends here in Durham in April of 1865.

And that army lived off the land, so if that 60, 70,000 troop army was marching through, they were taking everything that you had in your stores.

But oftentimes, our formerly enslaved ancestors were smart enough to feign that this was not worth anything and the black-eyed peas, they would take them and feed them to cows so that the army thought that it was cow feed.

And so at the end of the Civil War, that was one of the largest commodities left to actually eat for everybody.

So in January of 1866, when the harvest season at that end of the year was over, one of the few things left were these types of plants, collard greens and black-eyed peas.

And that if you were to eat anything for Christmas or a holiday meal or a New Year's Day meal, it would likely have been that.

- Okay.

- And so that is the historical reason more than anything why we traditionally, especially in the South, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, on New Year's Day, have the black-eyed peas and collard.

- Now, I'm curious, at any point in time, did we try to disconnect from that?

Because maybe it was seen as status or not having enough money.

Because if you think about, that's what was left over.

That's just kind of what you had to consume.

- Well, so what we're talking about in real time is the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction when this place was devastated.

These states were devastated.

People, everyone was starving.

So everyone had to eat.

- Everyone had to eat.

- This type of food.

And then after the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction and certainly until the 20th century, it becomes more of a soul food fashionable.

And then today, it's in vogue, actually, what we call soul food.

- Ade, when you think of a dish that makes you think of home, and I know this may be dual-focused for you because you do have Puerto Rican influence, too, in your upbringing.

What's a dish that you think of and immediately think, this is home to me?

- Really good question.

I would say, for me, what feels like home is, in my country, we call it azin sonu, which is a peanut stew.

It is such a comforting meal for me and also shows a through line between Benin and North Carolina for me, because peanuts is one of our largest crops here in North Carolina.

And saying in Benin makes you wonder, makes you ask some questions about connections.

But peanut stew with anything, whether it's chicken, any sort of meat or seafood, is one of my favorite dishes to eat.

- And we'll come back to peanuts, 'cause I wanna talk about suya, too.

What's a dish for you?

- Well, all of 'em.

I love all the dishes.

- Not all of 'em.

Every single one.

- It is, I am not discriminatory in all this.

I grew up, this is my staple.

- Yeah.

- But peanuts, black-eyed peas, all were brought into Virginia beginning in the 1600s.

Our colony was chartered in 1663, Virginia, 1607.

Immediately, all these things were brought in by the British trading, trader companies from all over the world, and installed as part of the plantation system, in addition to what they were growing in tobacco and things like that.

But as you mentioned, peanuts in Virginia and North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, are world-renowned, and most people don't connect the two, like we say, so my job is to do that.

- Do that.

- So, but, we were just discussing how these Morris headings can be stir-fried.

- What can be stir-fried, I'm sorry?

- Well, these, or sauteed, I'm sorry.

Sauteed, or stir-fried.

A lot easier to prepare than the larger cabbage collard greens and we were just talking about how you saute them with the olive oil and all the spices out of this world.

- Yeah, it's out of this world.

- It is, so, but just to wrap it up, and as a curator hat, put my curator hat back on, is that this is an artifact, actually.

And Mr.

Neil Thomas is the 2025 United States Artist of the Year.

Born 1940, down in Rayford, North Carolina.

And he currently lives in Johnston County, and he makes these baskets for many years at the State Fair in North Carolina, and he's been a cornerstone at our North Carolina Museum of History annual African American Cultural Celebration.

And so his baskets are in our artifact collection, and so we get the story, the provenance, about what this is, how it was used traditionally, and put it in our museum so that the historiography of that is preserved.

- And folks can go to the website to find out more information for sure.

We just have a few minutes left, and I wanna make sure, we've got some dishes here that Chef Ade was so kind to bring.

I want you to touch on soya spice.

Do we use that in our American dishes, Annie?

I know I use it because I also use some of your spices, and you can talk about that as well.

- Yeah, I don't know that we do in the sense of the spice, but I think we do in the sense of the term of barbecue.

I like to say barbecue is a verb, and a way of practice, and not particularly like a specific spice blend or flavor.

So soya is a big street food for us across West Africa, and it's basically a dish and a spice blend.

So it's putting these spices that has a base of roasted peanuts, our ginger, and lots of our other spices, and putting that on some meat and grilling it.

So it is more the method, the way you do it, that makes barbecue to me.

So perhaps that's the connection, less about the blend itself, and more about the practice of a thing.

- That's the tradition that's passed down.

Well, I would love for our helper to hand us our dishes so you can tell us about what you've created for us here.

- I recently worked on a project that was talking a lot of history, thank you, in connection of Southern cuisine, I've been obsessed with hot milk cake, which is something I recently learned about.

And there's a history to it too, I'm sure.

But maybe you have some context for us.

But I like to tell, again, when we talk about food as a beautiful vehicle for sharing stories and telling about our history, this is a perfect one when we challenge what soul food is, or what Southern cuisine is, or who has ownership of it.

My practice is food is reflective of the people of its time.

And so I'm in this time, I'm West African, I have some spices, a spice company, and I like to blend that into what seems to be traditional.

So we have a very traditional hot milk cake, and a plantain caramel that's been spiced with our spices, and some toasted coconut.

- Nice, well we're gonna take a taste.

- So I've been saving my palate for this.

- For this?

- Mm-hmm.

- Oh wow.

- Oh my, that's delightful.

- Explain it to me.

- Are you just saying that 'cause you're on camera?

- Oh.

- It's good.

- I normally don't talk with food in my mouth.

- I know, I know, but we gotta talk right now.

So just a little bit.

- Well before we move on, I'm gonna have to agree with you and take it a further point, is that in North Carolina, barbecue is a verb and a noun.

So because the actual noun part of barbecue started in Carolina with our indigenous people, and venison, and they would actually use pits of tar, or light stumps, or hollowed out lonely pine stumps to actually cook venison in the ground.

And so when the English came over, they brought, of course, wine, and during the harvest season, we're talking about the only time that you really eat venison is during this time of the year.

So if you wanted that barbecue year-round, you switch to-- - Mm-hmm.

- To-- - Well, I'm gonna pause you there, 'cause we have like 30 seconds left.

We get to continue the conversation and enjoy our meals, but I just wanted to thank you both for being here, Earl Ijames, Ade Carrena.

Thank you so much.

- You're welcome.

- And hopefully everyone's holiday meals will have a little bit more meaning this year.

- Yes, thank you.

Thank you for having us.

- Thank you, Kenia.

- And I thank you for watching.

If you want more content like this, we invite you to engage with us on Instagram using the hashtag #BlackIssuesForum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum and on the PBS Video app.

I'm Kenia Thompson.

I'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) ♪ ♪ ♪ - Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBSNC.