Foodways, Black Panther and Chicken Yassa

Chicken Yasa

Sabbatical is often a necessary thing.  It allows us to recharge and reconnect with that which is truly important.  It is an opportunity to set aside the maddening and to reach for the sublime.  Sometimes, you have to seek peace of mind first, and that I've found is in the author of all peace.  With that done, I'm back.  And I'm back with a big one.

While I took the time away I became a better student of food, the culinary arts and practices and soulfood in particular.  I'd like to think that I even became a better writer and cook, as well. My dear friend James Gilmore doubts my skills, but he's young and hardheaded so he kinda gets a pass.  Shout out to The November Company for doing such a fantastic job on the pilot for an upcoming project, by the way.  Anyway, it was during my sabbatical that I found myself growing, my love for God deepening and my internal soulish sense of self...reaching.  I hadn't yet realized it, but this entire blogging venture has been an exercise in me doing just that.  Reaching for something.  It wasn't until I began working on my next theologically inspired book and then went and saw the movie Black Panther, that I started to put the pieces together.

Sidebar.  If you're one of the 4 people in North America that hasn't gone to see The Black Panther movie,  you simply don't know what you're missing.  Especially if you're black.

Me and the peeps at Black Panther

Baby Dora Milaje.  Representation matters

To be transparent, I've been aware of the reaching of my soul pointed upward toward God and inward in the inspection and apprehending of the gifts and talents he's placed in me for some time, but this was different.  For the first time in many years, I felt quite clearly  my soul...reaching backward.  Not back as into the old life that I had prior to the transformation, not back into symbolic Egypt, so to speak.  But, back into a time and place and way of living and of a people.

One of the most important tropes that the Black Panther movie explored and illuminated into images was and is that of an untouched and undisturbed people of The Continent.  It is a kind of fantastical, counter historical, hypothetical proposition of what people who look like me and my family might have lived like had our ancestors not been brought as chattel slaves to this country.  I think that it is a worthy proposition to explore, one that might hold answers to how we reach and finally achieve another, more sustainable and viable brand of unity, today.  

As my mind reached back to the land of my ancestors (or at least some of them..more on that in another post).  I realized that had the circumstances that created of what we now know as "soulfood proper" might not have ever given rise to it at all.  In fact, the foods that the slaves were denied by virtue of their position in society might well have been the very foods these same ancestors dined on without prohibition.  Under those circumstances it is possible that without colonization, immigration or a strong trade between the continents like in the fictional Wakanda, that African foodways might never have been established here in the "new world."  But I'd still be eating Chicken Yassa.

Dinner In Wakanda

Webster defines "Foodways" as  "the eating habits and culinary practices of a people, region, or historical period" and this I think is a quality definition.  However, folklorist Jay Anderson's description of Foodways is even better.  In an essay from 1971 he wrote that  "foodways encompasses the whole interrelated system of food conceptualization and evaluation, procurement, preservation, preparation, consumption and nutrition shared by all the members of a particular society."  Thank you Wiki.

Imminent food scholar and historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris is partly to blame for this post because when I went reaching back to The Continent to find a food item to use as a goal post that I would attain to that represented a very accessible dish, it was Dr. Harris that provided me inspiration.  In an interview about her excellent book, "High on the Hog" she was asked "What African dish that you've eaten is your favorite?"  Without hesitation Dr. Harris replied, "Chicken Yassa."  And the chase for me, was on.

To say that Chicken Yassa is a popular dish is a big understatement.  This African version of lemon chicken, or perhaps we might say "the original version" of lemon chicken is in my opinion better by light years.  Yes, I am also a nerd.  A West African dish mostly associated with Senegal, Yassa is heavy on the onions and crushed garlic in the marinade of mustard (I used organic brown mustard and I loved it) along with hot pepper flakes, bay leaves, salt, vegetable oil, black pepper and of course, fresh lemon juice, the marinated chicken and onions sits overnight (for the best flavor) and then goes into a pan to be browned.

The final steps in this incredible dish are to remove the browned chicken and place the entire marinated onion garlic mixture into the pan to be sauted until the onions are caramelized.  This part cannot be rushed and the smells your kitchen will experience are simply...sublime.

Finally, the chicken pieces are added back into the abundance of sauted onions along with some chicken stock to finish cooking and the dish is done.  Chicken Yassa is always served with a starch and that is usually rice.  The beautiful part of this is that any protein can be cooked in a Yassa fashion. and the variations using fish are quite common.  Below is the recipie that I adapted for my dish.  I decided to omit the olives but will likely give them a try next time.

Try this dish.  It's worth your time to learn it.  Maybe while you're doing so and chopping more onions than you could have ever imagined any single dish would require, maybe you find yourself reaching back or up or within to find something that touches, moves or inspires you. 

I did.

Kev