Feasts of Fiction: Recipes from Literary Legends

To be a writer is a cerebral gift from the heavens; to be a cook is a gift of sorcery from the Earth.

It’s been nearly a month since we last connected, and I’ve miss y’all. My hands have been full caretaking for a family member, traveling across the U.S., visiting friends and loved ones, and of course, trying to make this bread. I’ve been absent but now I return, eager and energized to be writing here again. Please accept this special end-of-year recipe roundup and new series as a holiday offering :*

Toni Morrison and Alice Walker in a kitchen, 1974. Photo for Jill Krementz.

Duality.

It’s one of the most conflicting characteristics of my personality. I often seem to exist in between, floating and teetering in the crevices of two spaces—whether that’s being West African or American, queer or straight, humble or full of hubris, serious or absurd, stoned or sober, a writer or a home cook. I guess that makes me both and all of these things at once.

I’m a writer who cooks, and a home cook who gets just as excited reading about food as I do bathing in the pleasure of food itself. Living within a binary world doesn’t feel natural to me. Choosing one or the other of anything is sometimes arduous, limiting, and flat. I thrive in the potent medicine of duality, mutability … in being both and.

In the spirit of embracing duality within the literary and culinary space, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks researching and adapting recipes from some of the most prolific fiction writers and novelists—trying to avoid any with obvious links to food. While this task might seem straightforward, I quickly discovered that published recipes from non-food writers are surprisingly rare. I was able to uncover some beautifully intentional recipes from the likes of Tolstoy, Toni Morrison, Alice B. Toklas, and Langston Hughes. Each recipe is a unique glimpse into their world, inviting us to connect with their lives through the understated intimacy and intellect of recipe writing.

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Toni Morrison’s Spice Carrot Cake—

Starting with a recipe from Auntie, Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, is as simple as hugging your mother goodnight. This past month, while visiting my mom’s ranch house in Texas, I embarrassingly walked in on her while she was praying. It felt strange—me checking on her as though she were my baby. I opened the door slowly, trying not to wake her, and there she was, kneeling in a silky cheetah-print bonnet and a long, cozy grey cotton nightgown, praying at the foot of her bed. It brought to mind a quote from Morrison about being both a mother and a writer:

"I was involved in writing Beloved at that time—this was in 1983—and eventually I realized that I was clearer-headed, more confident and generally more intelligent in the morning."

I’ve noticed something similar in my own writing: my thoughts are sharp and decisive in the early hours. There’s something about those quiet, soft moments of crafting work while the world sleeps that I find peaceful, hazy and grounding. At some point, of course, my mother will age and become frail. I'll have to help her up after she has kneeled to pray. I’ll be the parent her the child, sleeping in the next room, while I’m at a desk writing. My words an act evocation and care. Like writing, like love, recipes are offerings. A way to give part of yourself without reciprocity. This carrot cake could be seen as the kind of labor of love Morrison passes along like her words—rooted in love, memory, and the nurturing spirit of home.

What you need:

Brown Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

• 2 sticks (227 g) brown butter, cooled

• 1 pound (453 g) cream cheese, at room temperature

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 3 1/2 cups or 1 pound (454 g) powdered sugar

• Pinch of salt

Cake

• 2 ½ cups (325 g) all-purpose flour

• 1 tablespoon (10 g) ground Vietnamese cinnamon

• 1 tablespoon (16 g) baking powder

• 1 teaspoon (4 g) baking soda

• ½ teaspoon kosher salt

• 2 teaspoons (6 g) ground ginger

• 1 teaspoon (2 g) ground cardamom

• ½ teaspoon (1 g) ground nutmeg

• ¼ teaspoon ground cloves

• 1 pound (454 g) carrots

• 1 cup (240 g) sour cream or buttermilk

• 2 tablespoons freshly grated ginger

• 1 ½ cups (300 g) dark brown sugar

• 4 large eggs (room temperature)

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 1 cup (220 g) sunflower oil (or another neutral oil)

• ¾ cup (125 g) raisins (optional)

• 1 cup (125 g) toasted pecans or walnuts (optional)

What to Do:

[Frosting]

1. Start by browning the butter in a medium-sized pot. Slowly melt the butter over medium heat and stir continuously using a whisk or silicone spatula. Cook until the butter becomes foamy, fragrant, and brown, with the solids from the milk visible and sinking to the bottom of the pan (5-10 minutes). You’ll begin to smell a change in the butter, which will turn a golden brown. Once it’s done, turn off the heat. Be careful not to burn it—just allow it to toast to a nutty flavor. Use this as a reference

2. Transfer the butter to a separate bowl to let cool in the refrigerator. Once it’s solidified in the fridge, whisk it smooth and then transfer it to the bowl of a stand mixer (or a large bowl with a handheld mixer). This whipping is a crucial step for making the creamy frosting texture. YUMM

3. Now add the brown butter and cream cheese to the mixer and combine on medium-high speed until smooth. Both the brown butter and cream cheese should be at room temperature for the best texture while mixing.

4. Add a pinch of salt and the vanilla extract, and mix on medium until combined. Gradually add the powdered sugar, starting on low speed to prevent a sugar cloud. Once the sugar is incorporated, increase the speed to medium-high and beat for 1 minute until fluffy and smooth. Set aside.

[Cake]

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease your cake pans lightly with sunflower oil (or butter) and line with parchment paper. Parchment paper is your best friend! If you don't have pre-cut circles, trace the pans with a pencil and cut out the shapes, then flip the paper so the pencil side is down.

2. If using pecans or walnuts, toast them on a parchment-lined baking sheet until fragrant, about 6-10 minutes, depending on your oven. Once cooled, finely chop and set aside.

3. Peel and grate the carrots using the large holes on a box grater. In a separate bowl, combine the carrots with the sour cream and freshly grated ginger. Mix and set aside.

4. In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a large bowl with an electric mixer, add the eggs and brown sugar. Mix on medium-high speed for 5-8 minutes or until thick, pale, and fluffy. The eggs should increase in volume, change from dark to light brown, and the texture should appear smooth. This step is what gives your cake its airiness. When the eggs fall, they should ribbon and create a line that quickly disappears.

5. While the eggs are mixing, whisk together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, nutmeg, and cloves). Once the egg mixture is fluffy, slowly stream in the oil on medium speed. This will emulsify the oil with the eggs, keeping the mixture smooth.

6. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture, alternating with the carrot mixture. Start and end with the dry ingredients. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed, mixing until just combined. Stir in the raisins and nuts (if using).

7. Divide the batter evenly into the prepared cake pans (about 600 grams of batter per pan). Bake at 350°F for 22-25 minutes or until the cake is golden and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

8. Let the cakes cool for about 8 minutes in the pans before running an offset spatula or butter knife around the edges. Invert the cakes onto a cooling rack and allow them to cool completely before frosting.

9. Frost and serve.

Recipe adapted from Oak Town Spice Shop

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Alice B. Toklas’ Haschisch (Hash) Fudge—

The first time weed appeared in a cookbook was in 1954, when Alice B. Toklas published her Haschish Fudge in the cult classic The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book with Harper’s. The editors spotted the suspicious ingredient and held the recipe out. The publishers of the British edition kept the recipe. Toklas' hash bars—essentially the original OG pot brownie recipe—was borrowed from her friend, the strange, brilliant, painter, writer, and performance artist, Brion Gysin. This recipe is a glorious odd mix of spices, nuts, fruit, and cannabis.

Born in San Francisco to Polish-Jewish immigrants, she shared an easeful and satisfying life in France with her lover and life-long partner Gertrude Stein as a writer and cook. Together, they hosted infamously wild-ass salons where she cooked and cackled with their besties, like Henri Matisse, Ernest Hemingway, and Pablo Picasso.

Toklas (left) and Stein (right), France 1944, The New Yorker.

While researching the history of edibles for my cookbook, I came across Alice B. Toklas' work for the first time and quickly learned that her cookbook was written as a form of procrastination—a distraction from writing her memoir. I deeply resonate with that form of procrastination. Here’s the recipe from Toklas via Gysin:

What you need:

• 1 tsp black peppercorns

• 1 tsp coriander seeds

• a scratch of nutmeg

• 1/4 tsp cinnamon

• a handful of stoned dates (haha, she says)

• a handful of dried figs

• a handful of flaked almonds

• a bunch of cannabis sativa leaves (or you can just crumble in some hash or weed)

• 140g light brown sugar

• 125g butter

What to do:

1. Toast the peppercorns and the coriander seeds in a small frying pan on a high heat until they start to smell wonderful. Put them with some nutmeg scrapings and the cinnamon (if you wish) into a pestle and mortar/coffee grinder and pulverize.

2. Chop the fruit and nuts and mix them in a bowl. Sprinkle on the spices and add the cannabis in whatever form you have – if it’s leaves they will have to be pounded first (i.e. in the pestle and mortar with the seeds and cinnamon), but hash or weed can be crumbled in with the other spices.

3. Dissolve the sugar and the butter in a heavy-based saucepan over a low heat. When the sugar has melted, the mixture will be separated : melted butter floating on top of a slightly bubbling brown sugary goo. SLowly bring to the boil – don’t let it catch on the bottom of the pan -stirring briskly with a wooden spoon until the mixture starts to boil and come together. Keep stirring until it is a thicker, foamier texture. Mix in the fruity bits, take off the heat and beat thoroughly. The fruit will break down and make it even smoother. (If you are left with a little melted butter in the pan, drain it off, and use some kitchen paper to de-grease the fudge mix.)

4. Line a tray with a piece of buttered greaseproof paper and push the fudge into it, or Alice suggests rolling it into individual walnut-sized pieces. Cool to room temperature in the larder overnight, in the fridge if you’re in a hurry, or in the freezer if you’re desperate.

   (Recipe adapted from Lit Hub)

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Langston Hughes’ Smoked Pork Soup with Black-Eyed Peas and Mustard Greens—

Poet Langston Hughes in 1947, Cleveland Public Library Digital Gallery

Mr Langston Hughes, the sharply dressed and sharp-witted poet and activist who shaped the Harlem Renaissance, was one of the first Black Americans to earn a living as a writer. Something many writers are still unable to do. After dropping out of Columbia in his youth, he briefly spent time as a cook in Paris. In written correspondence to a friend, he gossiped in the pages:

I'm working at the "Grand Duc" where the culinary staff and the entertainers are American Negroes. One of the owners is colored too. The jazz-band starts playing at one and we're still serving champagne long after day-light. I'm vastly amused.

But about France! Kid, stay in Harlem! The French are the most franc-loving, sou-clutching, hard-faced, hard worked, cold and half-starved set of people I've ever seen in life.

Heat-unknown. Hot water—water—what is it? You can pay for a smile here. Nothing, absolutely nothing is given away. You even pay for water in a restaurant on the use of the toilette. And do they like Americans of any color? They do not!! Paris—old and ugly and dirty. Style, class? You see more well-dressed people in a New York subway station in five seconds than I've seen in all my three weeks in Paris.

While I haven’t been able to uncover any of his written recipes during that stint abroad, the column Eat Your Words from The Paris Review, written by Valerie Stivers shares vignettes from Hughes’ rereleased 1931 classic Not Without Laughter where several dishes dedicated to his life and the meals that he shared in his novel of Black domestic fiction. The smoked pork soup with black-eyed peas and mustard greens is akin to what Hughes would have enjoyed, alongside a glass of bourbon, as his love for deeply grounded Southern flavors was well known.

What you need:

• 1 tbs unsalted butter

• 1 carrot, chopped

• 1 celery stalk, minced

• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

• 1/2 cup dried black-eyed peas

• 6 cups chicken stock

• 1 smoked ham hock, about 1 pound

• 1 tbs chopped fresh thyme

• 2 cups chopped mustard greens

• 1 cup chopped tomato

• 1 tsp kosher salt

• 1 tbs cider vinegar

• olive oil

What to do:

1. Soak the peas for 8 hours or overnight on the counter in room temperature.

2. Place a 4- to 6-quart soup pot on the stove over medium heat and add the butter. When the butter has melted, add the carrot and celery and cook, stirring occasionally, for a few minutes, until the vegetables are tender but not thoroughly cooked.

3. Add the garlic, black-eyed peas, chicken stock, and ham hock. Partially cover and simmer until the peas are soft, about 1 1/2 hours. Skim any foam from the top, if necessary for better consistency.

4. Remove the ham hock from the soup pot, cool, and take the meat off the bone. Coarsely chop the meat and return it to the pot. Discard the bone and any animal tissue.

5. Add the black-eyed peas, thyme, and salt to the pot. Simmer for another 1 hour or until the peas are tender and cooked through. Keep an eye on the liquid level and add more water if needed.

6. Stir in the mustard greens, chopped tomato, and cider vinegar. Taste the soup and adjust seasoning as necessary with more salt, spice or cider.

7. Ladle the soup into bowls and drizzle with extra olive oil for richness. Enjoy with crusty bus or cornbread.

(Recipe adapted from Eat Your Words Column, in The Paris Review)

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Leo Tolstoy's Macaroni and Cheese—

Hear me out. I was hesitant to add a white man’s mac n cheese recipe into this round-up and I pray that no one comes for me in the comments. I understand that much of the tradition folded into the mac n cheese recipes are a staple in the Black American experience. But I have a soft spot in my heart for Leo Tolstoy—the Russian philosopher, pacifist, Virgo, and vegetarian known for having a tumultuous marriage.

In one study, two social scientists go as far as to suggest that Tolstoy's literary contributions connect the frameworks of what we now know as critical race theory and feminist theory. Critics give him flowers for his literary contributions and progressive empathy for the oppressed.

So I took the liberty of adding more melanin and cheese into Tolstoy’s original family recipe; with fresh mozzarella, gouda, and a proper rue cheese sauce from my baby sister’s epic mac n cheese recipe. Her mac n cheese is now an official staple in the immediate Aggrey surname family.

What you need:

• 1 lb. dried elbow pasta

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

• 1 1/2 cups whole milk

• 2 1/2 cups half and half **see chef tips #1 below**

• 4 cups shredded medium cheddar cheese divided (measured after shredding)

• 2 cups shredded Gruyere cheese divided (measured after shredding)

• 1/2 Tbsp. salt

• 1/2 tsp. black pepper

• 1/4 tsp. paprika smoked paprika is our favorite!

What to do:

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees F and grease a 3 qt baking dish (9x13"). Set aside.

• Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. When boiling, add dried pasta and cook 1 minute less than the package directs for al dente. Drain and drizzle with a little bit of olive oil to keep from sticking.

• While water is coming up to a boil, shred cheeses and toss together to mix, then divide into three piles. Approximately 3 cups for the sauce, 1 1/2 cups for the inner layer, and 1 1/2 cups for the topping.

• Melt butter in a large saucepan over MED heat. Sprinkle in flour and whisk to combine. Mixture will look like very wet sand. Cook for approximately 1 minute, whisking often. Slowly pour in about 2 cups or so of the half-and half, while whisking constantly, until smooth. Slowly pour in the remaining half and half plus the whole milk, while whisking constantly, until combined and smooth.

• Continue to heat over MED heat, whisking very often, until thickened to a very thick consistency. It should almost be the consistency of a semi-thinned out condensed soup.

• Remove from the heat and stir in spices and 1 1/2 cups of the cheeses, stirring to melt and combine. Stir in another 1 1/2 cups of cheese, and stir until completely melted and smooth.

• In a large mixing bowl, combine drained pasta with cheese sauce, stirring to combine fully. Pour half of the pasta mixture into the prepared baking dish. Top with 1 1/2 cups of shredded cheese, then top that with the remaining pasta mixture.

• Sprinkle the top with the last 1 1/2 cups of cheese and bake for 15 minutes, until cheesy is bubbly and lightly golden brown.

(recipe adapted from Lit Hub)

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