Code Noir: the blog
By Lelani Lewis, as told to Taylor Early
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege to teach a module for masters students at the Koninklijk conservatorium. The lesson was about food and identity. Whilst this is a subject close to my heart, and one I could talk endlessly on-- for anyone who'd listen-- it made me wonder if this resonated with anyone else.
It made me consider a conversation I had had with restaurant owner Maxime Tevreden. Maxime owns a Vegan Caribbean restaurant in Almere and is also well-versed in Caribbean Food history. Whilst in the car coming from another chef's production kitchen, we started to talk about our identity as mixed-race women. It became clear that while we had had very different upbringings, food was the lynchpin to reaffirming our identity.
In a society that is obsessed with pigeonholing people into sometimes inadequate 'titles', food became my rhyme and reason. With a deeper understanding of ingredient migration, and how many cultural foods are an amalgamation of different peoples and influences, I became more secure in the duality of my identity. Oftentimes, mixed-race people are living on the periphery of each race they are made up of. We’re told we are not enough of one or the other race to justify membership to the club. After telling a friend that I was part of a group trying to create more representation for BIPOC people in the food industry, he commented, 'you're not black!' It stung. And I certainly don't benefit from the white privileges my mother is afforded. So I find refuge in food--and I'm not talking about eating tubs of Ben and Jerry's-- but rather actively searching for connections to the cultures that I am made up of.
Growing up in London I would often hear stories related to the 60's Windrush generation - groups of West Indian people from the British CommonWealth were called to Britain to fill underserved jobs. The reception they received once they got to the UK was far from welcoming; with people commonly seeing signs above Public Houses reading - No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs - in that order! Being of Irish and Caribbean descent, these two cultures became connected. They seemingly had nothing in common, but now did, with my knowing that they had both suffered discrimination at the hands of the British.
And then a few years ago I taught a summer school. The lesson was on the culinary history of the Caribbean and our relationship to food. It was a very interactive workshop where students were tasked with making up food rituals, recalling poignant memories of food, and creating a Caribbean cocktail. The cocktail; a Guinness punch. A favourite concoction drunk in some of the British colonised islands, it’s a mixture of punchy stout, creamy and sweet condensed milk and lashings of cinnamon and nutmeg. My familiarity with Guinness came from both sides of my family, and I understood the Irish connection, as Guinness was founded in Dublin, Ireland. But what of the connection to the Caribbean?
So I went into research mode. And found out that in the 1600s, Irish people were brought over to work as indentured servants on plantations. Because of the large diasporic community of Irish in the Caribbean, Guinness decided to make an export; a stronger version with more hops to last the Atlantic crossing. This gave me a feeling of belonging, knowing that these two cultures, who were supposedly unconnected, were now connected through food. This snapshot into the past is just one of countless examples that connects food to identity.
Code Noir, by first impression, is an interactive dinner exploring the culinary history of the Caribbean. But it's so much more to me. It's actually a manifestation of the idea that food and identity are intrinsically linked. Many of the migrants who came to the Caribbean-- forced and otherwise-- brought some semblance of home by way of a food item. Europeans brought wheat and livestock. African's brought plantains, beans, nuts, fruits. Chinese brought pak choi and noodles. And Indian's brought curry and rotis. This merging of migrant ingredients created the melting pot cuisine that makes up present-day Caribbean food. For example, the idea that roti is from India is one that is obvious. But the sands of time have worked their magical powers, erasing the attachment to one place or another... And the roti has become inter-linked, and part of the cultural cuisine in the same way Peruvian potatoes have become a national dish in Holland. So in this way, although food and identity are symbiotic with one another, there is also a fluidity to this relationship. A fluidity that is impacted by the global routes and adoptions of ingredients, affirming and reaffirming our complex human identities.
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Taylor, here. A bit on me-- unlike Lelani, I’m not a chef. But, I too am a mixed Black woman of colour, and deeply in love with food. And especially its capacity for change. Food has created the world as we know it and holds all of its secrets. For most folks, food is the entryway point of sustainability. Culinary traditions are the oldest form of sustainability I can think of-- especially those food cultures borne from and impacted by colonialism. Resilience, creativity, togetherness, and connection to the land are all values reflected in the bread we make and break together.
I’m delighted to help curate dialogue here in this digital home surrounding food and how we relate to it as communities and individuals. In addition to think-pieces from Lelani and me, we are sitting down (virtually and corona-safe!) with other chefs and food-oriented people to celebrate their journeys with food and identity. We hope to deepen our collective understanding of the Diasporic storytellers around us, nourishing their communities with the stories and ingredients of their ancestors. Through the conversations housed here, we aim to cultivate and hold space for re-relating to each other, consider our seats at the table, and uncover how we can keep inviting folks to join. Really, to celebrate each other! And maybe sip some tea together occasionally. (wink)
Lelani was kind enough to start us off with more insight into her own journey below.
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Tell me your story: how did you come to find your place in food?
Before I left London to come to Amsterdam, I had started doing pop ups, or supper clubs with a cousin of mine. We called the concept Carricou Kitchen, and our goal was to modernize Caribbean food. We had great attendance-- people were really loving the idea of creating different dishes using Caribbean ingredients. So when I moved to Amsterdam, I wanted to continue pursuing this idea, and started Nyam in 2016. I started doing pop-ups all over Amsterdam, and one of my first dinners was seven-courses-- crazy! So that was the beginning of me finding my way. From doing the pop-ups, I then had a production kitchen, and I started doing more caterings, and that still continues. I’m no longer in a production kitchen, but I’m still doing catering. And maybe one day I’ll continue doing pop-ups.
I think one of the reasons why food became so crucial for me was because I found that it gave me a form of identity. Being in a country that I was new to and unfamiliar with, looking at Caribbean food culture and history gave me more of a feeling of belonging. It became quite crucial to me and my life to understand this food-- this cuisine-- as well as its connections to the rest of the world.
What is your earliest food memory?
My earliest memory of food… It’s probably gross, actually. My memory is quite bad. But I just remembered eating curry mutton. It’s a tough meat, but it’s also quite fatty. As a kid, I used to do this thing... (laughs) I used to love to eat glutinous, fatty meats. I wouldn’t eat a lot of things, but I loved meat. And every kind of meat would be called chicken. (note from Taylor: I called all meat “chicken” as well!) I remember eating this curry mutton, and loving it. And my Gran used to make pork chops, and apparently I used to just eat the rind of fat. Yeah… that’s pretty gross. But that’s some of my earliest memories.
What does it mean to you to reclaim culture and find identity through cooking food? Especially in a predominantly white country?
I kind of clung on to the idea of Caribbean food when I moved here, because I couldn’t find that here. And it’s such a huge part of my identity. My dad has 11 brothers and sisters, so a very large family. And growing up, that moulded me to enjoy large family gatherings, which were centered around food and these massive feasts of people bringing different Caribbean dishes. So when I came here, I was a bit at a loss where to find that cuisine, and I started to delve deeper into the history, and see myself in some of that. See myself being biracial, or mixed race and that actually this whole idea of culture and identity actually being pigeon-holed or one-way-- “you’re either one or the other”. But instead, actually seeing the fluidity of cultural foods and ingredients going around the world and people usurping some of those ingredients and making them their national dishes, their national treasures. It kind of gave me and understanding that identity is very fluid; it’s very open.
How has that journey looked for you?
As I said, I started in London doing pop-ups, and then I continued in Amsterdam. I think whilst doing the pop-ups in Amsterdam,a lot of questions came up around what Caribbean food is. People being completely in the dark about it, lots of stereotypes, lots of simple understanding. People may have been familiar with a dish like jerk chicken from Jamaica, but that’s not a cuisine, it's a dish. And I found that infuriating to a degree.I wanted to demonstrate the plethora of foods and dishes that come from the region as it’s such a colourful and tasty fare.
What is your favourite dish to cook that makes you feel the most ‘you’ and connected to your identity?
That’s a difficult question. I think curry of any sort. And roti actually. Firstly, who doesn’t love bread? My mum is a Plastic Paddy, aka a person of Irish descent. Her parents are Irish and she grew up in the UK, so she would be referred to by other Irish people as a Plastic Paddy. She was taught by one of my Grenadian aunties how to make roti, and it became my favourite meal. And I think that’s because this roti, a dhalpuri roti, it’s a quite a long and arduous process. You have to knead the bread, cook and mill the split peas and put them in the dough. Then you have to roll it out and fry them. So it’s quite a process! But I remember on special occasions, my mum and I would make them. I’d be rolling them out, she’d be frying. And I suppose that bonding experience of creating something, seeing it from beginning to end really makes me love the food. Plus my mum and a lot of my family absolutely love curry. Not only is it the national dish of Britain-- which is insane-- but it’s also something that was brought to the Caribbean through the Indian indentured workers. It has a lot of relatability to me. There are a lot of different links that bring it back to why I love it.
What do you wish for the future of Code Noir?
I really hope that Code Noir becomes something of, not necessarily an institution, but we’re able to (pandemic granting) do the dinner in a lot more places-- cultural institutions, roll it out even further. So that more and more people start to understand the connectivity of food, and the connectivity of culture and identity. I think that the dinner helps people have conversations about these difficult topics, and it makes it a lot more digestible. Even if people don’t understand the full weight and the full gravity of the subject, I think the project will plant seeds in their mind, which will hopefully germinate over time. The more that they’re reading about these subjects, the more Black Lives Matter subjects are being brought up in the news, I really believe that projects like this help it resonate further, and help amplify those voices. I hope that we’re able to take it further, and in different formats- workshops, talks. And continue with the dinners.