Breads – The Knead to Read

Conjure Women by Afia Atakora
And Hoecakes with Honey Butter

History has always been wary of powerful women and they are often written into a story as a magical mysterious side plot or as a villain. It was refreshing to see magic and power and women at the center of this novel – and view intimately into their inner conscious which housed their doubts, insecurities, and how they mustered up their strength. This was the type of book that sucked you so completely into its world – especially since it so seamlessly floated in and out of different generations and time periods and perspectives. At the heart of the story was the mother-daughter relationship between Miss May Belle, a healer, and her daughter Rue. We see the struggle that daughters of powerful independent mothers can sympathize with – how to live up to their incredible mother? How to carry on her legacy? How to need her and not need her?

The setting is also important here: the Civil War era in the South on a current and then former slave plantation. Atakora explores the former slaves’ tenuous and suspicious relationship with the word “freedom” and the lengths in which they must go to maintain it. The villains of the story are the same but morph only in title: from slave master to KKK mob. On the flip side you get the unlikely relationship between Rue and the master’s daughter Varina (albeit a friendship that comes along with its inevitable power structures attached). The masterful part of Atakora’s telling of this story was her ability to create such full characters. We see them at their best and most powerful and most good but we also see them making questionable decisions and making mistakes and doing harm. Overall it was a fantastic, well-written telling of the black experience during Civil War and it gobbled you up and transported you into a world of mysticism, haints, the healing power of the earth, “freedom,” and survival.

Final Recommendation:
Skip it! / Put it on your list! / ((Go read it now!))

I started this blog to connect deeper into my books. I am obsessed with tasting a piece of their world and knowing fully, as much as I can, what the characters are experiencing. Its why I love to travel and it’s why I love food. Ashcakes were mentioned throughout this book. They are essentially a corncake, often wrapped in leaves, that are placed on the ashes of a fire to cook. Similar to this are hoecakes, which used to be placed on the back of a garden hoe and placed over a fire to cook. What I made was the closest I could get to this without started a fire in my Bronx neighborhood – and it was essentially fried corn cakes. I asked my friend Julia, who is living in Tennessee, and my closest connection to anything South to ask her boss who owns a bakery for a recipe for these. Mignon ended up asking her pastor, who then got the recipe from his wife and stated: “This is how my grandmother made them.” Can’t think of a better endorsement than that!

In the book, Rue describes Ma Doe’s ashcakes as the best around, and that her secret was a little taste of honey. I didn’t want to mess with the recipe but wanted to incorporate honey, so I mixed together a honey butter to put on top. It was unreal. I also wanted to incorporate some wild edible flowers to make a nod to Rue and Mary Bell’s work as healers.

Quotes that inspired the recipe (and also show how this book travels through generations):

“Rue knew that her mama, thin as she was, did have a love for Sylvia’s ashcakes,” (16).
Afia Atakora

“Li’l Sylvia sold ashcakes, honey sweet, a secret recipe passed down from her mama. […] They had all grown prosperous, as Bruh Abel always said they would,” (295).
Afia Atakora

Hoecakes: (makes about 8)

1 ½ cups of self-rising cornmeal (can be yellow or white)
⅔ cups of buttermilk (if you use regular milk it is ok – but will come out thinner)
1 egg, room temperature
½ teaspoon of salt
½ cup – ⅔ of oil to fry (should come up to about your first knuckle 1 inch or so in the pan) Any neutral-tasting oil will work: Canola is great or vegetable.

How-To:

Measure out your oil into a pan with high enough edges. Heat on medium. It’s helpful to have a thermometer here to make sure your oil isn’t too hot – a deep-frying thermometer or candy thermometer will work. Your oil should be heated to about 365-375 degrees.
Mix all your ingredients into a bowl and mix well. It should hold together but be slightly liquidy – almost like the consistency of oatmeal. If your buttermilk is very thick, feel free to add a few tablespoons more to the mixture.
Drop using a big serving spoon (I used a large ice cream scoop) into your heated up oil. Fry until golden brown on both sides, flipping halfway through. Remove and let cool on a wire cooling rack lined with paper towels.
Serve with honey butter and maple syrup OR eat as a side to a savory meal!

Honey Butter:

1 stick of butter, softened
2 tablespoons of honey
1 tablespoon of powdered sugar
Pinch of salt

*you can adjust the honey to your tastes – feel free to add more! 🙂

How-To:

Mix your butter in a mixer until creamy
Throw in your honey, pinch of salt, and your powdered sugar and mix for about 1 minute until fluffy.
Spread on everything.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah & Vetkoeks with Brie and Jam

I am a little late reading this book by Trevor Noah, which was published back in 2016. It tracks Noah’s life in South Africa during and post-apartheid from his half-white (Swiss) and half-Black (Xhosa). This book is everything: hilariously funny, heartbreakingly sad, and filled with a healthy dose of historical facts. It has been calmly chilling out on my shelf for years and I definitely regret not starting sooner. Each chapter follows a similar formula to all those 90s sitcoms we all love (I’m thinking along the lines of 7th Heaven or Boy Meets World): something funny, something tragic, a good moral lesson, and then circles back to the funny. But, more overwhelmingly, this book reads like a love letter to Noah’s mother – who was a pillar of love and unswerving faith and strength in the face of domestic violence, poverty, and harsh structural (and every other form of) racism. Because of the way they’re structured, you can get away with reading this book in chunks and even taking a long break in between chapters (cheating on your books with other books hehe), but it is much more powerful when read all together. The book crescendos to a powerful last chapter that tells so many truths about deep-rooted familial love and the moment quite literally had me holding my breath for a good portion of it.

As a product of interracial marriage, and currently in an interracial marriage of my own, in a city that is visibly and undeniably segregated (albeit, not technically required by law), I was able to really connect to Noah’s confusion around where he belonged in the world. Being an interracial child meant Noah was “classified” as colored and this was an actual crime at the time in apartheid South Africa (thus…the title of the book!). He was constantly forced to “pick” a side when he’d rather just “be.” One of the first lessons I remember from childhood was centered around the duality of life, even though I didn’t have the vocabulary for it at the time. My parents were different in everything, similar to Noah’s. Aside from different religions and races, they were also from starkly different socioeconomic classes. Yet, despite all of the differences, our family worked and functioned beautifully. We sat together, happily munching on a meal of empanadas de carne with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy, in harmonious and integrated bliss. I grew up learning to value searching for my own truth and to accept anyone no matter where they were from or what they looked like. I believe that I am lucky that this lesson of acceptance came before my lessons in the realities of the world and how it can be cruelly unaccepting of anything that it could not clearly categorize. Noah learned this lesson too, but it was punctuated by harsher conditions of poverty and violence.

Did I laugh? Yes, of course. Noah is a brilliant comedian. Did I cry? Hell yes, and it surprised me too. From the first page, I realized that this book was not going to be a book of laughs that just happened to give me a glimpse into the harsh laws of a racist regime BUT it was going to be raw and personal and gritty with moments of laughter. Did I throw this book at my husband when I finished demanding that he read it? YESS, and I would throw it at you too if I could.

Final Recommendation:
Skip it! / Put it on your List! / ((GO READ IT NOW!))

In one scene, Noah reminisces about his hustling days in the South African slum of Alex where he used to sell burned CDs and DJing parties. He talks about how to make your money grow and the dangers of eating all your profits (and I HEARD that). He mentioned that almost every morning during this time he would eat something called vetkoeks – a fried dough that translates to “fat cake” in Afrikaans. My husband, who is Dominican, said these are very similar to “Yani Queques,” or the Caribbean Johnny Cakes, that he grew up eating. In DR they often just fry the empanada dough and eat it, while elsewhere in the Caribbean they add in cornmeal. Vetkoeks are classic, quick, and cheap street food that is extremely versatile and can be either sweet or savory or eaten on its own. It’s deep-fried simple deliciousness.

Here’s the quote that inspired this post:

“When you’re trying to stretch your money, food is where you have to be careful. You have to plan or you’ll eat your profits. So every morning for breakfast we eat vetkoek, which is fried dough, basically. Those were cheap, like 50 cents a pop. We could buy a bunch of those and have enough energy to sustain us until later on in the day”
Trevor Noah, pages 213-214

Vetkoek Recipe

Adapted from Africanbites.com

5 ½ cups cake flour plus a bit more for kneading* (I used almost a cup more!)
2 teaspoons of salt
3 tablespoons sugar
1 packet of active dry yeast
2 cups lukewarm water (not too hot or you’ll hurt your yeast!)
Fill with Brie and Apricot Jam

*If you can’t find cake flour or just want to make this without a trip to the supermarket, cake flour is essentially just regular AP flour with less gluten and a little finer. Decrease your flour measurement by about half a cup if you choose to use regular AP flour!

How-To:

In a large bowl, mix salt, sugar, warm water, and yeast. Set aside for 5 to 10 minutes. This is an important step to activate your yeast – if you lessen the wait time your dough will not rise. Wait for the yeast to release bubbles.
Add flour then mix until everything has come together into a soft and sticky dough. This is easiest with a wooded spoon or a rubber spatula.
Cover loosely with a clean cloth and let rise in a warm, draft-free place for 1 to 2 hours or until doubled. I let mine rise in the oven on the “bread proof” setting for 2 hours and then it was ready. **If you use this setting make sure not to put the bowl in right away because it will be too hot – it needs time to level out the heat inside.
Turn dough out onto a heavily floured surface, flatten to knock out air bubbles, and knead to make firm, you may add flour as needed. My dough was veryyyy sticky and needed a lot of flour added (about a cup more). Not sure where I went wrong but the final product was still light and delicious.
Roll out dough into 1 inch thick and use a 3 inch or larger biscuit/cookie cutter to cut dough.
In a large/deep, saucepan pour your vegetable oil, until it is at least 3 inches (I make sure it reaches over my first knuckle) over medium heat until oil is 350 degrees. If you are new to frying, resist the urge to crank up the heat high to get your oil warmed up and allow it to slowly get to the temperature it needs to be. If your oil is too hot, the outside will begin to brown and burn before the inside cooks through.
Fry until golden brown about 2-3 minutes on each side depending on size, then flip to the other side (a 3 inch circle should take around 5-6 total minutes). Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a paper napkin (best to use a paper napkin over a wire cooling rack).
Let it cool for about 3 minutes then cut with a serrated knife and place your slice of brie and a spoonful of apricot jam inside and enjoy! (If you don’t have these on hand a pro tip is to just sprinkle some powdered sugar on them and enjoy while they’re warm!!)