Black American

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Want to channel star chef Kwame Onwuachi in your kitchen? Make his jambalaya

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By Leslie Brenner

There may be no more exciting chef on the American cooking scene these days than Kwame Onwuachi. The creator of highly acclaimed New York City hot spot Tatiana and author of two books seems to be everywhere.

In September he opened a new restaurant in Washington, D.C, Dōgon, and then last month added a 4-seat tasting counter within it, called Sirius.

Pete Wells profiled Onwuachi in the New York Times [read the story without a paywall through Dec. 3, 2024].

Last February, I wrote about Onwuachi’s jambalaya. The dish carries deep meaning for the chef, whose Baton Rouge-born mother made it for him when he was growing up.

READ: “Kwame Onwuachi’s jambalaya is a thrilling expression of a Creole classic”

The jambalaya Onwuachi included in My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef is hands-down the best I’ve ever had. Our adaptation streamlines his version for home cooks.

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Kwame Onwuachi's Jambalaya is a thrilling expression of a Creole classic

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By Leslie Brenner

Jambalaya was not in the cards when I recently visited New Orleans, but it was definitely front of mind when I came home.

This was the perfect excuse to dive into Kwame Onwuachi’s acclaimed cookbook, My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef, and start cooking. Since publishing it two years ago, Onwuachi has made a gigantic splash at Tatiana, the Afro-Caribbean restaurant he opened in New York City’s Lincoln Center 16 months ago. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a bigger splash: Tatiana topped the New York Times’ list of the 100 Best Restaurants in the city. Last fall, he was profiled in The New Yorker.

Jambalaya is not on Tatiana’s menu, but it does sit, as Onwuachi explains in his recipe’s headnote, “at the heart of Creole cuisine.” Generically, it’s a one-pot dish of rice with meats (often andouille sausage and chicken), vegetables (Louisiana’s “holy trinity” of onion, celery and bell pepper) and often shrimp or other seafood. Unlike gumbo, it’s not soupy or stewy. While gumbo (the ingredients of which are tatooed on Onwuachi’s arm, according to The New Yorker) is served with rice, jambalaya is a rice dish.

Every family has its own way of making it, writes Onwuachi in My America:

“Some use roux, some don’t. Some add andouille; others stick to seafood and chicken. Some families use short-grain rice, in a nod to paella; others use long."

The dish carries deep meaning for the chef, who grew up eating his mother’s jambalaya; she’s Creole, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. His father is from Nigeria (where Kwame lived as a youth); the chef draws a comparison between Creole jambalaya and Nigerian jollof, another one-pot rice dish.

“Jambalaya, however, hails from Louisiana, where many Africans worked the rice fields the two continents shared. They brought with them not just the knowledge of how to grow but also how to prepare rice. Once in Louisiana, proto-jollof incorporated whatever proteins were available: andouille sausage, abundant shrimp from coastal waters, and chicken, another economical choice. Also added were influences of from the Spanish settlers who yearned for the paella of their home; and the French, the masters of roux.”

Although jambalaya is known as a one-pot affair, you’d need to haul out quite a few extra pots were you to follow Onwauachi’s recipe verbatim. There’s a second pot for the shrimp stock (for which you’d need a full pound of shrimp shells). You’d need a third to make chicken stock, and a fourth to make Louisiana-Style Hot Sauce, which requires a batch of Pickling Spice — in a fifth pot.

In a restaurant kitchen, making each of those ingredients from scratch in large quantities makes sense, but I don’t know many home cooks who’d comply.

That’s why I took the liberty of creating a few shortcuts. I hope that if chef Onwuachi ever sees this story and my adaptation of his wonderful recipe, he’ll find it in his heart to forgive me. My motive (a pure one to be sure!) is to make the recipe accessible to readers who may or may not own five pots, but in any case probably aren’t inclined to fabricate two stocks, a sauce, a brine and a spice mix before beginning to cook. Shortcuts notwithstanding, I daresay the resulting jambalaya is still pretty magnificent — and I think pretty close to the effect Onwuachi is hoping you’ll get.

RECIPE: Kwame Onwuachi’s Jambalaya

If you love the dish as much as I do, you’ll want to purchase the book — especially if you’re a seasoned and devoted enough cook that you might already have some shrimp stock laid in the freezer, or you’re actually eager to make your own hot sauce, or you to know how to create your own shortcuts. It’s an inspiring and beautiful volume.

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The ‘queen of all gumbos’ is a glorious way to eat your greens (or observe Lent)

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Gumbo z’herbes from Toni Tipton-Martin’s ‘Jubilee’

By Leslie Brenner

It’s the time of year, in Louisiana and areas adjacent, for gumbo z’herbes — a greens-forward bowl of goodness that reflects the West African, Native American and European influences of the region.

Two years ago, Cooks Without Borders’ friend Chloé Landrieu-Murphy wrote about the dish in one of our favorite stories. Here’s how she characterized it:

“Often referred to as “the queen of all gumbos,” its name is a Creole dialect contraction for gumbo aux herbes, meaning “gumbo of greens.” (It’s also known as “green gumbo.”) Earthy, delicious and comforting, it is built like other gumbos, but it also includes an entire garden’s worth of leafy greens.” 

The dish has a fascinating background. The name gumbo z’herbes (pronounced gumbo zairbz) is a Creole contraction of the French gumbo aux herbes, so called because it contains multitudinous greens. It comes out of a Southern Louisiana tradition of cooking and eating green gumbo during Lent, the 40 days leading up to Holy Thursday. During that period, many observant Catholics abstain from eating meat on Fridays, and many gumbo z’herbes are vegan. But not all are; the one shown above, from Toni Tipton-Martin’s 2019 book Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking, is chockablock with brisket, ham and sausage.

RECIPE: ‘Jubilee’ Gumbo Z’Herbes

If you happen to live in New Orleans (or are headed there for a visit) and you’re lucky enough to snag a table, you can experience the most famous rendition of the dish in the universe. That would be the one served at Dooky Chase’s Restaurant, the beloved Tremé landmark presided over for more than 70 years by the late great chef Leah Chase. Yep, the Queen of Creole Cuisine, as chef Chase was known, conceived the queen of all gumbos.

The restaurant, which began life in 1941 as the sandwich and lottery ticket shop of her parents-in-law, Emily and Edgar “Dooky” Chase, Sr., has been serving green gumbo on Holy Thursday for eons. On that day it drops its regular menu in favor of gumbo z’herbes, fried chicken and cornbread muffins, inevitably drawing a huge crowd. (Interested? Call and have your name added to the waiting list for April 6.)

Gumbo des Herbes made from a recipe adapted from ‘The Dooky Chase Cookbook’

Dooky Chase’s gumbo z’herbes is loaded with greens, of course (usually nine, including including mustard greens, collards, turnip greens, carrot tops, beet greens, spinach, cabbage, lettuce and watercress), as well as a whole lot of meat — two kinds of sausages, smoked ham, beef brisket and veal brisket.

Like most green gumbos, it also includes filé powder (powdered sassafras), a traditional Choctaw ingredient. In that way it is distinct from okra-based gumbos. (Okra is only in season in Louisiana from June through the first frost.) Interestingly, etymologists disagree about whether gumbo gets its name from kombo (the Choctaw word for filé) or gombo (the word for okra in several West African languages).

Gumbo z’herbes always starts with a mountain of greens.

Happily, you can make an outstanding gumbo z’herbes at home; Tipton-Martin’s recipe is a great introduction. Or dive in full-force and make the one from Leah Chase’s The Dooky Chase Cookbook. The restaurant’s current chef, Edgar “Dooky” Chase IV (Leah’s grandson), gave us permission a couple years ago to share the recipe, and he helped me find a substitute for one of its ingredients, hot chaurice (a fresh sausage), for our adaptation.

RECIPE: Dooky Chase’s Gumbo des Herbes

Some gumbo z’herbes start with a roux; others don’t. Most contain Louisiana’s “holy trinity” — chopped onion, green bell pepper and celery. (Dooky Chase’s contains onion and garlic instead.)

What all gumbo z’herbes have in common is a prodigious amount of leafy greens: Count on a lot of washing, trimming and chopping. Once they’re braised (save the pot liquor!), they’re either coarsely chopped (as in Tipton-Martin’s) or puréed (Dooky Chase’s).

Vegan versions go both ways, too. The one our friend Chloé created for CWB leaves the greens roughly chopped, which gives it nice texture.

Chloé Landrieu-Murphy’s vegan gumbo z’herbes

RECIPE: Chloé’s Vegan Gumbo Z’herbes

Whichever way you go, consider this: It is said that the number of different greens you use in your gumbo z’herbes represents the number of friends you’ll make in the coming year, and an odd number is good luck.

Wishing you many new friends this year, a delicious green gumbo and an armful of four-leaf clover’s worth of good luck!

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Outstanding cookbook author Toni Tipton-Martin puts history at the center of the American table

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‘Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking,’ by Toni Tipton-Martin

By Leslie Brenner

Editor’s note: Women have a history of writing the best cookbooks. That’s why throughout March — Women’s History Month — we’ll be featuring cookbooks by our favorite female authors.

It is history itself that animates the books of Toni Tipton-Martin, a culinary historian, writer, editor and cook who has become a powerful force for amplifying, celebrating and honoring the voices of Black cooks throughout American history.

Toni Tipton-Martin / Photograph by Pableaux Johnson

Toni Tipton-Martin / Photograph by Pableaux Johnson

In 2015, Tipton-Martin published her award-winning The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African-American Cookbooks, which she followed in 2019 with Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking.

[Read more about Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee.]

Its pages are filled with delicious recognition of the contribution of African American cooks and chefs — and include some of our favorite recipes of the last year. I’m forever attached to Jubilee’s Pickled Shrimp, to Tipton-Martin’s Country-Style Potato Salad and to her Pork Chops in Lemon-Caper Sauce.

Pickled shrimp prepared from a recipe in ‘Jubilee’ by Toni Tipton-Martin

Pickled shrimp prepared from a recipe in ‘Jubilee’ by Toni Tipton-Martin

Its historical depth is just as appetizing — for instance a deep dive into green gumbo — gumbo z’herbes — that inspired an upcoming Cooks Without Borders story.

In September, Tipton-Martin — who began her career at the Los Angeles Times, and later led food coverage at the Cleveland Plain Dealer as its food editor — was named editor in chief of Cook’s Country.

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Cookbooks We Love: Marcus Samuelsson’s ‘The Rise’ celebrates Black cooks in America

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The Rise Lede.jpg

By Leslie Brenner

The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food, by Marcus Samuelsson with Osayi Endolyn, recipes with Yewande Komolafe and Tamie Cook, photographs by Angie Mosier, 2020, Little, Brown, $38.

Backgrounder: A good deal has been written about The Rise — the cookbook super-chef Marcus Samuelsson published late last year. Most of the coverage came right around pub-time, in the form of new-title roundups or best-of-the-year cookbook stories (it made the Washington Post and New York Times’ lists, among others.) Samuelsson and co-author Osayi Endolyn gave an excellent interview to Food & Wine magazine shortly after the book was published.

Many of the universally enthusiastic write-ups did a great job focusing on Samuelsson’s goal for the book. As he expresses it in his introduction:

“Black food is American food, and it’s long past time that the artistry and ingenuity of Black cooks were properly recognized.”

Samuelsson, of course, is the Ethiopia-born, Sweden-raised chef with a nearly three-decades-long history in New York. He made his name in 1995 as the youngest chef to earn a three-star review from The New York Times when he was executive chef of Aquavit; he opened his own restaurant, Red Rooster Harlem, in 2010. The chef has since built an empire of dozens of restaurants in the U.S., Canada, Bermuda, Britain, Sweden, Finland and Norway.

What I haven’t found much of are reviews and stories that dig into The Rise’s 119 recipes (plus 48 Pantry recipes).

Why We Love It: Endolyn’s essays about the chefs, activists and cooks who have inspired the recipes in the book are wonderful, enlightening reads. Spinning through them is a fabulous way to understand something about the future, present and past of Black cooking in America. Endolyn sheds thoughtful light on who has done, and is doing, and will continue informing some of the most exciting cooking anywhere.

Meanwhile, Samuelsson himself is one of the most talented and accomplished chefs of our time, and his recipes — developed with Yewande Komolafe and Tamie Cook — are often thrilling.

Papa Ed’s Shrimp and Grits from Marcus Samuelsson’s ‘The Rise.’ The recipe was inspired by Red Rooster executive chef Ed Brumfield.

We wasted no time weighing in on Papa Ed’s Shrimp and Grits two weeks after the book was published. The dish, inspired by Ed Brumfield, executive chef of Red Rooster Harlem, is heart-breakingly delicious, literally the best shrimp and grits I’ve ever had. Unless you have access to frozen okra, you’ll have to wait till it’s back in season in order to taste what I mean.

Rise Sweet Potato Overhead Landscape.JPG

The very first recipe I took for a spin was the lead-off recipe in the book: Baked Sweet Potatoes with Garlic-Fermented Shrimp Butter. I’m a sucker for a roasted sweet potato in any guise, and as this is Samuelsson’s tribute to David Zilber — a Toronto-born chef who’s the former director of fermentation at Noma in Copenhagen — the recipe beckoned that much louder. It’s almost decadent in its lusciousness. The shrimp paste (which I keep on hand for Thai dishes) gives the avocado-butter a wild and wonderful funk.

Montego Bay Rum Cake, prepared from a recipe in ‘The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food’ by Marcus Samuelsson with Osayi Endolyn, recipes with Yewande Komolafe and Tamie Cook

Nor can I resist a boozy dessert, and this one — a vanilla cake soaked in dark rum and frosted with whipped cream — didn’t disappoint. Montego Bay Rum Cake is Samuelsson’s tribute to chef Herb Wilson, whose trail-blazing upscale Caribbean restaurant in New York City’s East Village, Bambou, was an early inspiration for him. As originally published, the recipe requires a stand mixer; I’ve adapted it so you can use a hand-mixer, if you like.

Roasted Cauliflower Steaks with Nola East Mayo, from Marcus Samuelsson’s ‘The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food.’ The recipe is Samuelsson’s tribute to New Orleans chef Nina Compton.

You’ve gotta try this: Dressed up with minced dill pickle, onion, sambal oelek, fish sauce, celery salt and paprika, the jazzy mayo that tops these roasted cauliflower steaks is worth making on its own. (What a dip for boiled Gulf shrimp this will be!) And slathering it on cauliflower steaks dusted with the Moroccan spice blend ras el hanout is out of this world. (I do wish there were a recipe for ras el hanout in the book. I didn’t have any on hand, and used this one from Paula Wolfert via the San Jose Mercury News.) The recipe honors Nina Compton — chef and owner of Compère Lapin and Bywater American Bistro in New Orleans. The ingredients in the mayo sauce reflect that city’s “diverse African, Haitian and French populations.”

Still wanna cook: Circling back to okra season, the moment those pods start popping into markets, I’ll make Leah Chase Gumbo. Chase — the legendary chef-owner of Dooky Chase’s in New Orleans, who died at in 2019 at age 96 — is one of the chefs to whom Samuelsson dedicates the book. (You’ll have to pick up the book to read the wonderful anecdote about what Chase did to President Obama when he sprinkled hot sauce on her gumbo without tasting it first.) Samuelsson’s tribute gumbo includes shrimp, andouille sausage and filé powder, along with the okra.

Asparagus season will precede okra season, though, and at that moment I’ll pounce on The Rise’s recipe for Shrimp Fritters with Bitter Greens and Grapefruit — a West African-inspired recipe in honor of Jonny Rhodes. Rhodes is the highly acclaimed young Houston chef behind Indigo, a neo-soul food restaurant “focusing on the history, culture, and social experiences that have shaped and guided African American foodways.”

There are many more enticing recipes besides — and all those cool essays.

Here’s a great way to celebrate Black History Month: Buy yourself a copy of the The Rise. While you’re at it, buy one for a friend interested in exploring the delicious, dynamic diversity that is Black American cooking.

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Shrimp and grits from Marcus Samuelsson's new 'The Rise' is the best we've ever eaten. Ever.

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Papa Ed’s shrimp and grits, prepared from the recipe in ‘The Rise’ by Marcus Samuelsson

I’ve eaten my share of shrimp and grits in my time. OK, maybe more than my share. As a longtime newspaper food editor, then a restaurant critic for 8 years, I’ve eaten more than my share of everything.

Among all those shrimp and all those many grits, the best rendition I’ve ever eaten — by far — was one I prepared in my own kitchen just last week. The credit goes to Marcus Samuelsson, in whose new cookbook — The Rise — I found the awesome recipe.

‘The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food,' by Marcus Samuelsson. The book is shown in front of a wall of cookbooks.

I’m in process of cooking my way through the book in order to write a review, but I wanted to share the dish with you while okra is still in season (it will likely end very soon). The recipe — which Samuelsson calls “Papa Ed’s Shrimp and Grits” — was inspired by, and serves as an homage to, Ed Brumfield, executive chef of Red Rooster, Samuelsson’s restaurant in Harlem.

Most of the shrimp and grits I’ve eaten have been a basic low-country style, the shrimp poached in a rich gravy and spooned over cheesy grits. Toni Tipton-Martin sheds valuable light on the history of the dish and its styles in her much lauded (and wonderful) book Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking:

“Shrimp and grits are everywhere on restaurant menus, but harder to find in African American cookbooks unless you know what you’re looking for: The historian Arturo Schomburg called it ‘breakfast shrimp with hominy.’ In Gullah-Geechee parlance, it’s gone by names like shrimp gravy or smuttered shrimp. Casual Louisiana Creoles might call it breakfast shrimp with tomatoes.”

It is the more tomatoey, Creole direction Samuelsson takes for the dish in The Rise; it includes a small dice of okra, as well. The lively sauce, smoky with paprika and spicy with cayenne, is bright and piquant enough to beautifully balance those cheesy, rich grits. (Are you hungry yet?) It’s much like a quick shrimp gumbo served on grits.

My favorite shrimp and grits ever is not difficult to make. It calls for fish stock (we used shrimp stock, a substitution that’s acknowledged in our adaptation of the recipe). Because we’re in the habit of buying shrimp in the shell and freezing the shells for the purpose, we were able to whip up a quick shell stock before making it; you’ll find the method toward the end of our shrimp, andouille sausage and gumbo recipe. I suspect purchased low-sodium chicken broth would also work, as would clam juice diluted in with water and chicken broth in a 2:1:1 proportion.

Though I used fresh okra, as the recipe specifies, if you can’t find fresh, I also suspect frozen would work fine. (I like to buy an extra pound of beautiful okra during the season, which I trim and freeze in a zipper bag, just to have for such moments. It freezes beautifully, so if you do see it, consider grabbing some extra.) Just let it thaw before you dice it.

If you make this dish, I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. I could even imagine, if okra is still around then, making it the centerpiece of a Black Food MattersThanksgiving dinner.