In 1971 the famous cook finished her first book, The Edna Lewis Cookbook. Here friends and protégés reflect on their lasting effect.
“As a chef, I’ve relied on cooking to get somewhere else, but Edna Lewis showed me that I had no reason to apologize for where I was already. In her written accounts of the people, recipes, rituals, and landscapes of her early childhood in Freetown, Virginia – a small settlement founded by her formerly enslaved grandfather at the end of the Civil War – she found no shame or need to flee. Only integrity, dignity and worth in the humble rural culture. It is thanks to her and our decades of friendship that I have dedicated my career to eating the American South. “- Scott Peacock, chef and restaurateur. Read the full article here »
“What Edna Lewis gave me was clear principles. Because of your philosophy, I have been able to articulate my own: one of excellence and respect, respect for the traditions from which you come and the ancestors you represent. She brought cooking into a learned space and talked about it like Europeans, but in an American colloquial language that emerged from the experience of African-American agriculture. It was not portrayed as “ethnic”. It wasn’t down. She laid a real foundation, an awareness of the American chef. I mean, if you can’t build on this platform, you might need to get into computer science. “- Alexander Smalls, cook and restaurateur. Read the full article here »
So yes, this is a love poem at the highest level, because the next best cook in the world, my grandmother is the best, just had her birthday and all the asparagus and the wild greens and the quails and tomatoes on the vines and small peas in spring and half runners in early summer and all the wonderful musty things that come off the floor said it was EDNA LEWIS’s birthday and all of us, who we all love, who love food, wish her a happy birthday because we who are really smart know that cooks make the best lovers … especially when they serve it with oysters on the half-shell. – Nikki Giovanni, an excerpt from the poem from 1997: “The only real lovers are cooks or happy birthday, Edna Lewis”.
