High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America

I think a lot about food.

How it connects us through time,

across geography...

It's so good.

...from generation to generation.

It tells stories about where we've been,

where we are,

and where we're going.

Are you familiar with the phrase "high on the hog"?

Yes, I am.

-It already smells like mac 'n' cheese. - Absolutely.

The truth is, a lot of American food has its roots in African American food,

traditions and ingenuity.

I'm Stephen Satterfield.

I'm a food writer who studied as a chef

and worked as a sommelier for over a decade.

And I'm on a journey to uncover the stories of African American food

and meet the new generation preserving our history.

This one's of the Carolina gold rice.

We've broken the rice down and made rice grits.

From the earliest days,

through the darkest decades of struggle,

we persevered.

Despite the fact that we were in hell, we were suffering,

somehow in all of that nonsense,

we created a cuisine.

These are our stories.

Benin, West Africa.

It was strange to come home to a place I had never been.

Fragments of a lost memory were everywhere.

In the sounds and smells and tastes.

Deciding to trace the origins of the food

that had come to define America was one thing,

but being on the continent and feeling it?

That was completely another.

And the depth of my understanding began on a stroll through the Dantokpa Market

with Dr. Jessica B. Harris.

Or as I like to call her, Dr. J.

So, we are here in Tokpa?

-Dantokpa? -Dantokpa. We are in the Tokpa.

One of the largest open-air markets in Western Africa.

And my feet are on the ground here, and it feels incredible.

There you go. A whole new meaning to "boots on the ground", right?

Now , you gotta understand, Dr. J is just a straight-up legend to me.

She's penned over a dozen books

examining the foods of the African diaspora,

and it's hard to overstate the influence her book,

High on the Hog, has had on me.

- I'm a market junkie. - Yeah.

This is where you come to be in the center

-of the throbbing life of the place. - Mm-hmm.

So, this is where we are.

We're in the heart. It doesn't get more in the heart than this.

Yeah. We have basically walking retail outlets?

Right? Oh, yeah!

Oh, yeah, you can get a little bit of anything.

- And it's jumpin' here, too. - It's Saturday in the market!

-Here we are. -Okay.

This is us.

-Something familiar. -Right?

You know I have okra on my business card?

-I did not know that. -Okay. And on my stationery.

-It was your e-mail address at one time. -It is. It still is. Yeah.

-It still is. -So this really is us.

This is us. This is mine.

So, in talking about okra

and how quintessentially African it is,

it's African because it made the voyage with us.

It did. But it's African also because it originated here.

Right.

And then we brought it to the New World.

It's the connector.

Mm-hmm. What would be some applications for okra, uh,

in a West African dish?

Okra will turn up in all sorts of soupy stews.

-It's-It's used as a thickener. - Mm-hmm.

Here's another funny thing. If you wanna ask for okra in French,

you're learning a French word that's also an English word.

- Go ahead. -It's called gombo .

- Gombo ? - Gombo .

Which makes a lot of sense, right?

Which makes absolute sense.

All right, there's a lot more to cover than okra.

Oh, there's so much to see in the market.

I just feel like, you know, the experience of seeing my own likeness...

-Isn't it? -...reflected, in the hair.

I see our style and the garments and how we wear stuff.

- And in our swagger? -Our swagger.

Our ingenuity. Our resourcefulness.

I mean, obviously, it's enormous,

but there does seem to be some kind of order, and...

-Oh, no, there's absolutely order. - Yeah.

The thing that's interesting is just seeing

how many different things are actually sold.

Right.

Give me another one!

Ohh! Two at a time.

Give me another. You want to see?

-Ahh! -Okay.

I'm so excited to be here with you,

because of all people, you have done the most work

-in trying to dispel this myth... -

...of yam versus sweet potato.

This is the place we can put that to rest.

Yes. These are yams.

These are yams.

I always said that they look like

a hairy elephant foot.

Look at this thing.

That's a four-toed hairy elephant foot.

It's unbelievable.

-Okay? It is not a sweet potato. -No, it's not.

If we're not looking at this in a supermarket,

we're not looking at yams.

Right. Exactly.

So, why is it after all these years,

that people have continued to confuse the yam and the sweet potato?

Well, because yams are so important.

You can see that they got more of these here

than anything else in the market.

- Yeah. - But

they don't grow in North America, or they didn't.

Now they're growing them a bit in Florida, some other places. Because temperature.

Right.

-So, we've always been creative people. -Right.

What do we do?

-Come up with the next best thing. -There you go. Which is?

-The sweet potato. -And what do we call it?

-A yam. -So, what are you having at Thanksgiving?

You're having a sweet potato pie...

- Uh-huh. -...and not a yam pie.

And the candied...

-Sweet potato. -There you go.

So, as long as we're here myth-busting,

do you have any other foods that come to mind

that are of African origin that,

uh, people assume to be from America?

So we've got black-eyed peas, we've got okra,

we've got watermelon, we've got the yam confusion.

Okay.

What else have we got? Rice.

-And rice. -And rice.

There is...

One of the other cruxes or nexuses of African foodways is rice.

-Absolutely. -The beginning of us.

The thing with Benin is,

it may not be the rice coast, but it was the slave coast.

-This red rice is Nigerian rice. -Oh, okay.

The rice is organized by quality.

There is even superior quality. We call this one Jollof.

Jollof. So this rice is the Jollof rice?

-Yes, Jollof. Which has been broken once. - Uh-huh.

Some are broken twice. Some are totally broken.

So, there's broken once, and they call it Jollof.

-Oui, Jollof. - Jollof, like Jollof rice.

Every time I see rice,

I can't not think about how this is the thing

that built the wealth of our nation...

Our now nation, before it even was a nation.

Made Charleston.

Made Charleston happen.

And the Sea Islands and South Carolina.

-You know. - Yeah.

It was rice.

Rice, rice, and more rice.

-It was the foundation. -Yeah.

It was absolutely the foundation.

-Okay. - Merci.

Merci, madame . Au revoir.

-Where are we off to next? - On to the next.

I'm gonna show you some more stuff.

Dr. J and I lunched at a low-key local spot

called Saveurs du Benin, or "Tastes of Benin."

The dish that is most appreciated

by the people of Ouidah...

The place is owned by chef Valérie Vinakpon.

A fixture on Cotonou's food scene,

she's written six cookbooks featuring her country's traditional dishes.

- There it is. - Great.

This looks good. What are you serving us?

Grilled chicken.

Is this moyo?

- This is tomato juice. -It's tomato juice?

This is amiwo, and then this is your chicken.

And the amiwo is wonderful because it's got such great taste.

-It's the corn flour, with the tomato. -Mm-hmm.

-Delicious. -And it's lovely.

So good.

So, this is the pepper.

-This is a tomato-y based one. - Okay.

She said that's the hot one. You do you.

Everyone is different, so make sure that this is the you that is not...

It's true.

You know, 'cause you could do you and have the top of your head fly off.

That is very real.