“One thing I got over in 2020 was this embarrassment about my prior work. Because every new book I get, the book before it — ‘oh, it sucks! Oh my god. I don’t even want to look at that; don’t even bring that book around me anymore. I should have done this differently. I could have left that out.’ And now the way that I think about my body of work, I’m very proud of what I’ve done. And I really just see it as me practicing in public, and not being embarrassed about that.” — Bryant Terry
“With television, we often see historic people who pioneered in that industry as Julia Child and Jacques Pepin — who I grew up watching — and then recently I learned about Lena Richard, who had a cooking show a few years before that. I was just thinking about how amazing that was, and how it could have really impacted the food television industry if we had people like Lena Richard all those years ago, showcasing Black food and the techniques, and how groundbreaking that can be.” — Rahanna Bisseret Martinez
Last month, the first book from a newly minted publisher was released; that book is Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora. It’s edited by Bryant Terry, who also is the editor-in-chief of 4 Color Books, the aforementioned publisher. Terry is well-known for his veganism and his wonderful recipes — many of them Afro-Asian — that put vegetables on a pedestal. Black Food is a different kind of triumph, however — a loving ode to Black culinary ingenuity and culture in general.
One of the contributors to Black Food is Rahanna Bisseret Martinez, who is perhaps best known for being a finalist on Top Chef Jr., but who I think will soon be best known for being an incredibly smart, talented, joyful contribution to the world of food — at just 17 years old. I got to talk to both Bryant and Rahanna for this week’s episode of Food with Mark Bittman, but separately, so please be sure to stay tuned in after the first interview.
The recipes featured in the episode—Nicole Taylor’s Cocoa-Orange Fish, and Kia Damon’s Sweet Potato Grits—are here and here.
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