Plus: Smoked okra dip, grinding your own everything, and when to be concerned about PFAS
This Week’s Marksisms
Food with Mark Bittman: Klancy Miller / Jerusha Klemperer
What you’ve come to know as our “traditional” interview is today with the writer and chef Klancy Miller, who is a prime example of a person who takes true joy in lifting up others. Her new book, For the Culture: Phenomenal Black Women and Femmes in Food: Interviews, Inspiration, and Recipes, and her magazine on which the book is based, is comprised of interviews and recipes from more than 50 Black women: Adrienne Cheatham, Zoe Adjonyoh, Zella Palmer, Jerrelle Guy, Mashama Bailey. “I wish I’d had more sisterly insights to accompany me on my path,” Klancy writes, and her mission to put a spotlight on and support other Black women in the food world is inspiring. The recipe we featured after our interview with Klancy, Jerrelle Guy’s Baked Smoked Okra Dip, is below.
We also have with us today Jerusha Klemperer, who is the very smart and very warm director of FoodPrint, a nonprofit with the goal of helping people to make food choices that do less harm to the environment, animals, and people (yes, a topic that is near and dear to me). FoodPrint’s podcast, hosted by Jerusha, is What You’re Eating, and last week’s episode was “PFAS: The ‘Forever Chemicals’ in Your Food.”
I talked to Jerusha about these man-made toxins, and I’m almost 100% sure that many of you are going to find the topic fascinating — and if that’s the case, then you can go listen to Jerusha’s full report, which includes interviews with farmers who have been deeply affected by PFAS. We’re going to start with Jerusha — and then stay tuned for Klancy after that.
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Jerrelle Guy’s Baked Smoked Okra Dip
Jerrelle Guy’s Baked Smoked Okra Dip
Grind Your Own
The great chef Evan Hanczor came to Glynwood to cook for an event, and asked whether I had any cornmeal that we could use for dredging clam strips (which we got from Wellfleet Shellfish Company) and maybe to make some corn bread. I did not.
And then I realized that the amazing Mockmill, which I’ve had for nearly two years, and which I use to grind flours for my breads (so far wheat of many types, of course, plus barley, buckwheat, and rye – all wonderful, for different reasons) was not limited to bread flours: In fact, it’ll grind almost anything dried, as long as the oil content isn’t too high. Sesame seeds, for example, don’t work. But chickpeas do, as I found a few days later, when I made a nice socca. And so, of course, does corn, of which I have a few pounds (from Masienda, whose corn is wonderful). So, ten minutes later, I gave Evan a pound of fine-ground cornmeal for the clams and two pounds of some coarser stuff for the cornbread. So cool!
Farmers Markets Unite!
My friend Richard McCarthy is working on an international organization of farmers markets – an idea whose time has come, for sure – and he writes a little about it here.
Talking About … Community Kitchen
There are climate and climate/food conferences all over New York this week (which is the week, for some reason, I chose to go to San Francisco; more about that as it develops), among them a day-long FoodTank conference that ended with a screening of the new Food Inc 2. That morning, Bloomberg’s Deena Shanker interviewed me, mostly about Community Kitchen; you might enjoy watching it. (I start at 2:14:30.)
This Little Froggy Came to Dinner
How to catch (and skin, and cook, and eat) a frog, from Garden and Gun, courtesy of The Browser.
See ya next week!
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