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E C U A D O R / P E R U / R E P U B L I C O F G E O R G I A / M E X I C O C I T Y / V E R M O N T / S O U T H KO R E A

A J O U R N A L O N F O O D O R I G I N S A N D C U LT U R E .

ED.

ORIGIN FORAGING

WINTER 2018

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Welcome to the second of what we hope is many volumes of Whetstone Magazine. As I am ceaselessly reminded each time I tell someone I’ve started a food magazine, it’s no easy task. So why the torment? It’s a question I’ve returned to repeatedly as the complexities of independent publishing have at times taken a toll on my inherently bloated anxiety. But like so many, the timing of this endeavour makes persistence a non-negotiable. Endurance is the only option. More pointedly, it is an essential quality of resistance. All over the world, a disturbing insurgency of intense nationalism and misogyny reflects an illiterate fear of diminishing resources and erasure. The ways in which this has cascaded into society range from unfortunate to tragic. It is a painful irony that in the precise moment in which these fear-based prejudices are more pervasive than they’ve been in a lifetime, the exact opposite is true.

BILL ADDISON

As the “others” among us are asked to exist on the fringes of our society, if at all, our effort represents more than ten countries and covers more than a half dozen. We are proud to say this magazine is the construction of women and people of color. As you’ll hear in more precise and beautiful language from African-American food scholar and historian, Michael Twitty, food is not the place to escape these conversations, rather it is a foundational opportunity for understanding. With cookbooks, airplanes and Instagram, our affinity for global cuisine has reached meridian. Our hope is that there may be an equal care for the people and histories that have produced the beloved (and exploited) cuisines. Whetstone is an invitation to adore the people and traditions of other nations as much as we do their food. Thank you for supporting us in this work. With Gratitude, Stephen Satterfield Founder, Whetstone Magazine

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CONTRIBUTORS

Sarah Alexander Sarah Alexander lives and works in Burlington, Vermont. She is an avid cook, gardener, and writer. Sarah currently serves as the Gleaning and Food Rescue Coordinator at the Intervale Center where she addresses community food security and food access.

Abby Portman Abby Portman is the Community Relations Coordinator at the Intervale Center, an agricultural nonprofit based in Burlington, Vermont. Her main hobbies are cooking, eating, and photography.

Annie Sloan North Carolina informed Annie’s palate. She attended culinary school in Chicago, picked thousands of pine tips on Lummi Island, and sat at many of world’s best tables. At Evergreen State College, she studied food through a kaleidoscope and designed critical tasting studies. She’s currently thinking about food law and pecan pie.

Marina Goldi Marina is a buyer in the steel mill industry by day and a photographer by night. She enjoys traveling, architecture and exploring Detroit where she is known as @marinapiagoldi – a lifestyle blogger documenting her culinary adventures through the city.

Bella Luna Bella Luna is a writer and creative who spent the last 7 years in Oakland, California. She’s driven by a calling to reconnect with her ancestral roots. Bella now lives in México City 6

documenting personal and social experiences to find her voice in contemporary México. Follow her @theplaylust.

Sana Javeri Kadri Sana Javeri Kadri is a sometimes salty, permanently hungry, photographer and writer. She was raised in post-colonial Bombay, wound up in the produce aisles of California and can be currently found @sanajaverikadri on Instagram or in person wherever there are vegetables to be found. She’s also schemer-in-chief for Diaspora Co.

George McCalman Raised in Brooklyn, Creative Director George McCalman received his BFA in philosophy at St. Johns in Queens, NY. He credits his Caribbean background for his unique ability to both embrace and rebel against traditional modes of design. His studio, MCCALMAN.CO, serves primarily art, lifestyle, and food clients. Follow him @McCalmanCo

Simran Sethi Simran Sethi is a journalist and educator focused on food, sustainability and social change. She is the creator of The Slow Melt, a podcast on chocolate and winner of the 2017 SAVEUR magazine Best Food Podcast. She is also the author of Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love.

Heleene Tambet Heleene’s work is centered on global agricultural development and production systems. An Estonian native, she’s a graduate student in development economics in San Francisco, where she explores global food diversity and

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the future of small-scale farming through travel and writing. In her spare time she works on a farm in Sonoma County.

Laurel Bellante Laurel Bellante is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona. She specializes in food security in the U.S. and Mexico. Using a political ecology approach, Laurel is a passionate defender of farmer rights, rural livelihoods and more sustainable and just food systems.

Rachel Glueck Rachel Glueck is a recovering nomad, forging a semisettled life in Todos Santos, where she and her husband have a Mexican restaurant and mezcaleria, El Refugio. Between raising their business and newborn, Rachel writes on culture, cuisine, and sustainability.

Satchita Melina Satchita Melina is a San Francisco based artist whose work consists of free-hand paintings and illustrations that review and draw on her love for the wild, Eastern traditions, sexual empowerment and socio-political issues. In addition to visual storytelling she also works as a doula and women’s sexuality educator.

Melissa Sáenz Gordon Melissa (aka MellyG) is the host of the Te Aprecio Show, a regional R&B radio program on BFF.fm. In addition, she’s a practicing visual artist and street photographer and advocate for collaborative spaces and open minds.

Seoyoung Jung Seoyoung Jung is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America. She worked in Michelin star restaurants in New York for several years before returning to Korea to work at a Korean fermentation company. Seoyoung received extensive training about traditional Korean fermentation, and was also certified in Korean royal cuisine.

Sonja Swanson Sonja Swanson is a freelance writer based in Korea and the U.S. She moved back to Korea to explore her roots, worked in marketing and was an editor at Time Out Seoul.

R.S. Whipple R.S. Whipple received her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2006. Her paintings, sculpture and animations have been exhibited internationally.

Janeivy Hilaro Neivy is a Puerto Rican and Dominican photographer based in Connecticut. He uses nature as his palette to deliver bold imagery of often overlooked places and locations. With a focus on community, diversity and sustainability, he’s been recognized worldwide for his efforts.

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Michael Twitty Calls Us In The African-American food scholar and historian puts his whole soul into the work. CONTRIBUTOR

“You know they were punished. You know they were whipped. You know they were hurt. The rest is left up to your imagination.” When he’s upset, Michael Twitty doesn’t like to be alone. But after learning that his enslaved great-great-grandfather, Harry Townsend, endeavored to escape, but couldn’t, in that moment he needed to be. A Mr. Frasier was paid $5.00 for the return of Harry Townsend. The rest is left up to your imagination. At times it’s painful, but there is no distance between Michael Twitty and his subject matter. His profound interest in genealogy and genetics has placed Twitty and his family directly into his analysis and thesis, and in so doing, has made the personal universal. “I want people to know that Southern food came at a cost. Soul food came at a cost. Comfort food, from the Southern U.S., came at a cost. And that my family was part of the human cost.” I heard Twitty speak a year ago. We sat in an amber-lit room accented by the smell of aging books, hardwood, and freshly brewed tea. His chair was only a few feet in front of a fireplace whose overmantel, a short time ago, was bedecked with a painting of John C. Calhoun, former Vice President to Andrew Jackson and a vehemently pro-slavery South Carolinian. Twitty began his talk by noting the inherent strangeness of presenting in a building commemorating such a man. And his talking (and writing) — at once spellbinding, disquieting, and soothing — are what have

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propelled him as one of the nation’s most essential voices on Southern food. Effortless brilliance has the power to pacify, and Michael Twitty drops profundities with the same practiced ease and grace with which he lowers flour-coated chicken into spitting oil. But his openness and astuteness come at a cost. By the end of his talk, tears were rolling down his cheeks. Since then, Yale has renamed Calhoun College, Harvard has hosted a symposium on higher ed’s ties to slavery, and a few Confederate monuments have been toppled. Is this too little, too late? Many who would unequivocally rebuke white nationalism don’t have the tools they need to sit with their pain and discomfort. Americans have proven ill-equipped to properly remember the country’s tragedies. A blind eye at the dining room table is a blind spot in our hearts. It’s the same blind spot that allowed a bronze sculpture of Robert E. Lee, erected in 1924, to endure well into 2017. Patinaed statues of men atop horses aren’t history lessons, they’re monuments. They are symptomatic of our refusal to accurately remember. If we are to preclude regression, the United States has a long way to go. We have not competently addressed our sins and Twitty is working tirelessly to change that. He takes on the United State’s most commonplace chicanery: obfuscation, willful blindness, and cluelessness. Intentional obfuscation often happens in pursuance of antebellum sentimentality. Southern plantations are billed as “attractions” and toured predominantly by ardent revisionists

Portrait by RS Whipple 12

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and wistful whites who pay tribute to Scarlett O’Hara’s dresses, breezy verandas, and twangy gentility. Docents feed guests’ spurious reminiscences by eschewing candor. Though the people who were enslaved on the property far outnumber those who weren’t, they’re rarely considered. This same affected amnesia caused Paula Deen to organize a plantation-style wedding for her brother, replete with realistic “servers.” During her deposition in a discrimination lawsuit regarding her wedding planning and similar goings-on, Deen said “of course” she had, on occasion, used the N-word. The Food Network dropped her three shows, retailers dropped her products, and amidst the commotion, Twitty’s notoriety rose. On his blog, Afroculinaria, he composed “An Open Letter to Paula Deen.” In it, he let her know that he was relieved she hadn’t denied using the word. He is of the belief that everyone is at least a little bit racist. Accordingly, Twitty suggested that she start grappling with her explicit and implicit biases instead of blithely claiming she isn’t racist. He implored her to do the work. There was also a revelation that many of his friends had dressed up like her for Halloween. (This is admittedly a futile synopsis — if you haven’t read the letter, you should.) Though the Washington Post called it his “takedown” of Paula Deen, Twitty has mastered the art of calling in, not out. He used this same approach writing to Sean Brock, a South Carolinian and fine-dining chef of distinction. During Mind of a Chef’s second season, Brock visits Senegal to study the roots of his kitchens’ cuisine. There he finds some ideas to “steal,” and references “missing links,” though there is no mention of the word “slavery” or any version thereof during the entire half hour. My friend and I finished the episode together. She looked at me knowingly. “What the hell? He acted like they immigrated to the South.” I shut my laptop indignantly and considered texting friends who worked for him. Twitty’s methods were, of course, far more effective. He penned a 3,000+ word missive, saluting Brock’s trip to Senegal, while reminding him that it wasn’t uncharted territory and that chefs of color had long been exploring those connections. Like the Deen piece, it is thoughtful and solicitous. The inverse of Brock’s approach is looking into the past to explore its gruesome bits. For people of color, avoiding history’s brutalities is sometimes a necessary act of self-preservation. Experiencing its reverberations daily, means you seldom need reminders. Alternately, as white people, many of us have become adept at ignoring the past, occasionally stopping to view its horrors — for art’s sake. Myriad perspectives were exchanged concerning the popularity of 12 Years a Slave and the buzz surrounding The Birth of a Nation. Some argued that the films might help open the eyes stubbornly closed to the United States’ 246 years of slavery and subsequent lack of contrition. Others questioned the effectiveness of a slav-

ery genre in entertainment. Discussions were less nuanced when HBO announced its forthcoming (ill-conceived) series, Confederate, from the producers of Game of Thrones. The show imagines a world in which the Confederacy didn’t lose, and slavery remained in its original form. After the press release, the internet pounced. April Reign, who gained a following with her #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, ignited a similarly effective campaign as she and her followers tweeted #NoConfederate with a vengeance. A week before HBO’s announcement, on the day of The Cooking Gene’s release, Twitty’s first book, he did an interview with Tom Ashbrook on his public radio program, On Point. During the interview, Ashbrook asks (states) incredulously, “It’s hardly as though the history of Africans and African Americans in the Old South is not visible, is not palpable.” Twitty corrects him, “...it’s as if we never existed. ” He reminds him that they don’t show up in the commemorative paintings hung in courthouses, that their graves are plowed over for gas stations and condos, and they’re being gentrified and expelled by hurricanes. “So, no, I don’t think we can take it for granted that everybody knows,” he protested. Though he had already heard a few intermittent “wows” and other approving sounds from Ashbrook, Twitty further elucidated by sharing a conversation he’d recently had with a white woman from Savannah, Georgia. She told him that she had eaten okra, hoppin’ john, and red rice all her life. Astounded, she looked at him and asked, “Those come from Africa?” Twitty had this exchange while he was interpreting (not reenacting) slavery in Colonial Williamsburg. As part of his Southern Discomfort Tour, Twitty visits the aforementioned plantations of the South, cooking for persons past and present. His movements around the hearths and pots of yore pay tribute, linking and mending history’s broken strings to his contemporary gestures. He cooks and scrubs and kindles. The ghosts of these kitchens serve as puppeteers. Instead of researching the past, he is informed by it, he allows himself to be moved. In The Cooking Gene, Twitty writes, “I feel their souls passing through me as I cook and tell their stories. At the end of the day, I feel like a terminal and less like a man who is breathing and aware.” It’s unusual enough to see a culinary historian work with their hands, let alone one who places their body into their work. Or, a distinction he makes, one who commits “to doing.” And commit he did, in numerous ways. In order to write his first book, Twitty told me he “spent day after day sitting at the local Dunkin Donuts, from four o’clock in the morning till eleven o’clock at night, hammering away, hoping to get something meaningful out of those long days.” His book, part memoir, part culinary history, part wake-up call, took four years to complete, but was a lifetime in the making. For food origin enthusiasts, its pages are filled with pithy defenses of its relevance, like, (one I immediately underlined), “There is no chef without a homeland.” There is the anecdote of him ingesting Virginia red clay and reflecting, “I was not just of Virginia — Virginia was in me.” On the phone, he shared how he cooks within this value system. “I cook intuitively and taste as I

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Michael Twitty’s “whetstone:” a mortar and pestle (often for black-eyed pea fritters) Advice to students of food: “Not everybody can do this, but anyone with heart can. Consider that this is about the people who cook the food, not the food itself.” How to read The Cooking Gene: Like many others, I devoured it in a few days. But, I did take his advice and jumped around, referred back, and occasionally read it alongside food. My ﬂagged, marked, and splattered copy already resembles the union of an essential tome and a well-loved cookbook. Meal he’d cook with Sean Brock: “Oh goodness… I think I’d have to go with something like my family’s fried chicken. And that’s because his family recipe and my family recipe might be very similar — but they’d tell very different stories. And then we’d eat them side by side, not one after the other.”

go along and make sure that the conversation that I’m attempting to have with the people eating my food begins, ya know, with the food telling me about itself. Where it’s from, who it’s from, and why it came from there.” To explore the where, who, and why more deeply, Twitty knew he had to go to West Africa. Though, he said, it was difficult to convince people of the essential nature of this trip. After finishing his first book and turning forty, he secured funding through a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign. Although he had spent years researching the parallels and cultural continuities, being there made his heart swell. It was a big “I told you so,” he said. He would look around and see the connections he had only read about and think “Yeah, we did that. We did that! I told you we did that!” It reminded him of the first time he visited the South as a child. “There are moments of this visceral feeling of connection that the papers, the facts, and scholarship cannot prove or disprove. It just is.” He contends that it was in the taste of the food. In the rhythm of people’s steps, in their worries and values. “There’s a word for it,” he hesitated. “A long SAT-type word. Oh, yeah, sonder. The realization that everybody around you is very much like you. Just as complex and vivid and full of stories and memories.”

ers are a family, albeit a dysfunctional one. His message of connectedness is certainly antithetical to the “many sides” narrative. But in a world of sides, there was a false dichotomy represented in Virginia, those who want to go back in time and those fiercely opposed. There is a much larger group in the United States that wasn’t represented — those unwilling to confront the past and thus unable to confront their biases. If the Land of Liberty is, at long last, able to properly remember, grieve, and honor its past, we will enjoy a future more farfetched than the plot of Confederate — one of true equality. Michael Twitty is handing us the tools. Read his groundbreaking book. Attend his string-mending meals. Listen to his heartening talks. Open his letters.

I asked him how it felt to add a printed and bound version of his thinking to his dynamic online and public presence. “I still don’t know what to think everytime I pick up a copy of the book.” Twitty revealed. “I don’t know if I even associate myself with the person on the cover.” His reply is consistent with his relentless search for deeper understanding. He knew at seven years old that he would would one day convert to Judaism, at ten that he wanted to work with historical recipes, and at sixteen that “being gay was nothing.” Twitty, an African-American, Jewish, gay man was on the cusp of a trip to Charlottesville to cook at Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, Monticello, armed with his oft-repeated message: all Southern-

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Chef Norma Listman-Sanchez and friends explore the representative foodways of her hometown

CONTRIBUTOR

Bella Luna PHOTOGRAPHER

Sana Kadri Javeri

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México City. A Saturday night in June. Norma Listman was hosting friends from Mumbai and the Bay Area. I met the group at our favorite café in La Colonia Juarez. Within a few hours and many mezcales later, we all agreed to join Norma in a Sunday pilgrimage to her hometown of Texcoco, to experience the tradition of barbacoa. To set the stage, I’d only met Norma a few months into my México City immigration. A serendipitous event because we rolled in the same Bay Area circles, we went to the same places, but never crossed paths until we both made an instinctual decision to move to México late last year. Norma is a chef and historian born in México. She trained for 10 years in some of the most revered kitchens and culinary projects to come out of the Bay Area such as Camino in Oakland, San Francisco’s Delfina group, and Charles Phan’s restaurant group. To eat with Norma is to receive a wake up call about México’s place in the world. To visit her hometown of Texcoco is to get a glimpse into those beginnings. It is all too easy to get caught up in the hype and narrative that México City is having its moment, but experiences like Texcoco continue to show me that today’s México, the vibrant, the avant-garde, the melting pot, is nothing new, but rather a steady evolution over centuries grounded in traditions that are alive today. We awoke with thick heads and caravanned from México City an hour north-east toward Texcoco. Along the journey we passed colorful favela style neighborhoods where thousands of workers, house cleaners, food vendors, artisans, etc., live and commute to and from México City daily. Our taxis dropped us off at the opening of La Purificación, a small town which is part of the municipality of Texcoco. Like moths to a flame, we all walked directly into the bustling site where, for over 60 years lamb and goat abattoirs have raised, killed, and sold their animals cooked barbacoa style every Sunday without fail. Generations before that, pre-hispanic indigenous cultures used the same technique to cook rabbit, iguanas, and other proteins.

We were lured in by the smell of succulent meat being pulled out of large pozos, underground ovens used to slow cook barbacoa

wrapped in maguey leaves for at least eight hours. Walking under the green, vine covered canopy, I was immediately transported to my grandmother’s backyard. Although barbacoa is new to me, the style of cooking is comforting and familiar. As a child, my Mexican-American family marked our important celebrations by preparing cabeza, cows head. We’d spend the day cooking the head, including the eyes and tongue, in an outdoor oven made of brick and cement by my dad and his brothers. This style of cooking and eating defines for me what it is to convivir in our culture. The communal effort where everyone has a job and no one wants for a full belly. Norma always has this satisfied smirk on her face when she shows people her secrets to traditional Mexican cuisine and the frenzy it causes. She quickly snapped us out of it and gave instructions on how to navigate the vendors, giving each of us a task gathering ingredients from the scattered stands. Eighty lambs are slaughtered weekly in preparation for Sunday barbacoa. It was only 11:30 am, but we were already in danger of getting sold out. Someone was in charge of ordering the barbacoa with specific instructions not to forget la pancita, the delicious belly mixed with spices, onion, and juices from the barbacoa itself. Another was sent off to buy lemon, salsa, and avocados; another to buy handmade corn tortillas, and someone else to buy pulque, a slimy alcoholic drink made from fermented aguamiel or mead, scraped from the leaves of large pulquero maguey plants. I took on the ruthless job of scouting out a table among the politely aggressive Sunday crowd. I noticed at one table sat three generations savoring the tradition, a baby in his stroller enjoying piece after piece of meat handed to him by his grandfather. We finally all regrouped and sat down at a communal picnic table and laid out our bounty: barbacoa, pancita, consomé, a soup collected from the juices that sweat from the barbacoa as it cooks underground, carafes of prickly pear and honey flavored pulque, green salsa, red salsa, aguacates criollos that you smash in your hand, consuming both the shell and meat within, lemon, corn tortillas, salt, cactus salad, and my favorite discovery of the trip: pápalo. A fragrant green leaf taking its name from the Nahuatl

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Fish in Wind and Sun The days when drying ﬁsh was a matter of survival have long passed, but their beloved ﬂavors endure on the Korean Peninsula.

CONTRIBUTOR

Bhuri Kitchen PHOTOGRAPHERS

Bburi Kitchen and Sunghoon Cho

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Korean barbecue might be the most familiar representation of the national cuisine abroad, but grilling huge piles of meat is a recent trend that doesn’t reflect the majority of Korean culinary history. For hundreds of years, beef consumption was limited to special occasions and the aristocracy. The rest of the largely agrarian population kept their cows in the fields, not on their plates. As luck (or geography) would have it, the Korean peninsula is surrounded on three sides by sea, and we’ve helped ourselves to the bounty of clams, crabs and fish for protein. Even as meat consumption has risen in recent years, South Koreans still consume over double the amount of seafood per capita that Americans and Europeans do, edging out Japan and Norway for the top spot in a U.N. study of 24 countries between 2013 and 2015. While raw and freshly grilled fish are popular, Korea’s sweltering summers and freezing cold winters made food preservation an essential part of our food traditions and drying fish in winter was one of the most common ways to keep fish ready to eat year-round. “Drying foods in the sun and wind is an ancient method of preservation,” Harold McGee writes in On Food and Cooking. On the Korean peninsula, archeological evidence suggests that people have been processing fish since Neolithic times (6000 BC to 2000 BC) — one study of a coastal Neolithic settlement analyzed fish remains and observed a higher concentration of large fish heads (which are more oily and difficult to preserve) than bodies, suggesting that villagers caught the fish, discarded the heads and took

the carcasses elsewhere for processing. The authors argue these early communities didn’t have to rely on grain storage, and therefore agriculture, during periods of stress because they had access to long-term stores of fish. It makes sense: drying fish doesn’t require advanced tools, and the resulting fish is light, portable and delicious. McGee points out that “dehydration intensifies and alters flavor” by concentrating flavor molecules and breaking down cellular structure, promoting enzyme activity. There’s a lot going on in this disarmingly simple process. Just about every type of seafood can be dried and stored for later. If you walk around older neighborhoods in seaside villages today, you can sometimes see the catch of the day hanging up to dry in small courtyards. In markets, you’ll find special shops just for dried seafood called geoneomul stores. They sell staples like dried seaweed and shrimp for soups, dried squid for snacking, and all kinds of dried fish for grilling and steaming. Silver, fragrant anchovies come in wide cardboard boxes and a half-dozen sizes; the largish ones for stock, medium for snacking and the smaller for banchan (side dishes). You can order your fish ban-geonjo (half-dry and chewier) or geonjo (fully dried). Today, supermarkets have fully stocked freezers of seafood from all over the world, but dried fish is more than just a relic of the

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Gwamaegi, from the cold waters of the southeast coast, is considered a drinking food, best paired with traditional rice brews

Hwangtae is from the northern part of the country, and is the most prized form of pollack, taking several months to make.

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