Nina Williams-Mbengue Transcript
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
She could feel her ancestors behind her looking over her shoulder, pushing her on, urging her onward to tell their story through her cooking.
Kerry Diamond:
Hey, Bombesquad, you're listening to Radio Cherry Bombe. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond coming to you from Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. It's a foggy day today but blue skies in the studio because I'm talking to one of my favorite people, Nina Williams-Mbengue. Nina is a child welfare advocate and a trustee and board member of The Edna Lewis Foundation, which is dedicated to honoring and extending the legacy of the great chef. Nina also happens to be Edna's niece.
When Nina was just 12 years old, she typed up the manuscript for the book many consider her aunt's most important work, A Taste of Country Cooking. If you haven't read her cooked from that book, I strongly recommend that you get a copy. We're going to learn more about Nina and her Aunt Edna in just a minute. It's not every day we get to talk about a legend, so stay tuned. Today's show is presented by Chronicle Books and one of their latest titles, Flavors of the Sun: The Sahadi's Guide to Understanding, Buying and Using Middle Eastern Ingredients written by Christine Sahadi Whelan and out September 7.
Christine Sahadi Whelan is a fourth generation co-owner of the Sahadi's, the famous Brooklyn specialty grocery and a lifelong Brooklyn resident. She grew up roaming around to Sahadi's and now she shares her stories and recipes in Flavors of the Sun. You can get a copy at your favorite bookstore or enter to win a copy from Cherry Bombe. Check out our Instagram feed for the giveaway and leave a comment. We'll pick one winner at random and the giveaway ends Sunday September 12 at midnight, PST.
And if you haven't been in the Sahadi's, definitely go visit. The originals the Sahadi's on Atlantic Avenue, not far from where I live, is a culinary landmark and I have spent a lot of time there. During Thanksgiving and the December holidays, it is quite the scene. All right, some housekeeping. I would love for you to sign up for our newsletter. We'll be announcing lots of fun stuff in the weeks ahead. New live and virtual events, great radio guests and the latest issue of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Don't miss a single thing. Visit cherrybombe.com to sign up and tell them I sent you. Now here's my interview with Nina Williams-Mbengue of The Edna Lewis foundation. Nina, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Thank you very much. I'm so thrilled to be here.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm so thrilled. It's been a few months since I spoke to you last and you look great. It's so nice to see you and talk to you.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Now Nina, are you officially retired now?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I am officially retired as of September last year, 2020. Yes, yes.
Kerry Diamond:
How is retirement treating you? Are you cooking? Are you gardening? What are you doing?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yeah. It's great. I'm doing all that I'm gardening. I'm actually a Master Gardener Apprentice with I guess Colorado State University Extension office. I'm really excited about that. I have all these volunteer hours to complete and then I'll be a master gardener.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell us what that even means, a master gardener apprentice. That sounds really cool.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, through Colorado State University, there's a program to train volunteers to learn about gardening to impart scientific evidence-based knowledge from Colorado State to home gardeners across the state. Gardening, vegetable gardening, flower gardening trees, shrubs. It's a three-month class that we took online this past year. Is that right? 2021. We had to pass a test.
And we began our volunteer piece, which is we do a certain number of hours of demonstration gardens around the state, there's an Ask an Expert information desk that folks can call in and ask their questions, and we go to different events and there's a booth. So it's really great. I wanted to learn a ton about gardening so I do a better job at gardening in my own garden, as well as give back to the state of Colorado. It's been fantastic.
Kerry Diamond:
Wonderful. What's the goal? Flowers, the vegetable garden, what do you hope to do with this knowledge?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Well, vegetable garden primarily, I guess, is what I'm working on so I can get better. I've got raised beds, I've got six raise beds and we added two big L-shaped raised beds in what was left of the grass in our backyard. That's probably my main goal. My front and backyards are also zero escapes. We pulled out all the lawn. So everything is dry, drought tolerant Denver. I live outside of Denver. So we're high altitude, we're a high plains desert, only get 15 inches of rain a year. So the lawn was tough to keep green and to get green, and I really love the beautiful flowers and supporting pollinators and all that stuff.
Kerry Diamond:
I heard you say term xeriscape? Is that what it's called when you don't have a traditional green lawn?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Right. Xeriscape. Zeroscape I think refers to complete lack of anything green. But Xeriscape I think it was penned here in Denver back in the 80s because it's so dry, and it is to use drought tolerant native plants instead of a lawn. You can have some lawn, we took it all out, but you can have some, but primarily you want to focus on, yeah, having drought tolerant stuff.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. Nina, tell us about the job you retired from.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I worked for nearly 25 years for the National Conference of State Legislators in CSL. It's a nonprofit, bipartisan organization, and every legislator and legislative staff person in all 50 states in the territories are members of the National Conference of State Legislators. I handle child welfare policy, but we handle every possible policy topic of interest and concern to legislators. We track legislation, wrote publications, testified, put together meetings, educated legislators. And it was great especially working on child welfare, foster care and adoption and child maltreatment. It was a really fantastic.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. And was that a bipartisan organization?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yes. Bipartisan, definitely.
Kerry Diamond:
So you were working with Democrats, Republicans, everybody.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Everybody, everybody, yep. I have to say, they now are not ... We were not allowed to make any policy recommendations as such, we were just bringing objective information to state lawmakers so that they can craft legislation as they see fit in their states. So we don't make a judgment about the policies, we just track them, we have to be very careful about that. But make sure that we're bringing all sides and all kinds of information to the table.
Kerry Diamond:
Just having gotten to know you over the past few months, I would imagine you got everybody to get along.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yeah. We try. But related to child welfare and child maltreatment, it was always the case generally that it was in everyone's best interest to really try and do everything you could to make the child's family successful so that child is safe and healthy. It was not a partisan issue.
Kerry Diamond:
Was it hard for you to step away from that work?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
A little bit. Yeah. And it still is. I do miss it. I am doing a little bit of contracting, consulting work, which is great, and I'm really grateful on child welfare. So I do miss it. But I still think about it all the time. And hopefully, I'll get to do some more volunteering. I would love to somehow merge the gardening work with something with young people in foster care, or even foster care, because gardening was always so nurturing for me. And I think it's something that young people that are in care or have been in care of families that are at risk, or vulnerable would really benefit from just being exposed to gardening and the earth and plants.
So I'm hoping that I can meld those two together. And of course, the gardening, my family and then my family in Virginia were farmers. And I just remember that, and I spent every summer on a farm till I was 13. So that's why I had to take this Master Gardener course because that was dependent on what I learned way back then.
Kerry Diamond:
But no doubt you learned a lot. So tell us where you went every summer.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I went to Virginia, I went to Orange County, Virginia in a little town. It was a town called Unionville. And within Unionville was Freetown, which was the community of freed slaves that Aunt Edna grew up in. My mother did not go up there. She was too little. But it was up the road from Aunt Ed's house and Aunt Ed was the older sister that I would stay with me and some of my other cousins every summer. Because I lived in New York City, I grew up in the Bronx, in the South Bronx that my mom worked. Single parent, she worked two or three jobs. So she sent me to her sister's farm. That just was such an important part of my life growing up, being there in the summers on our farm and being exposed to all that, it was just absolutely wonderful and what a blessing.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. What was a day like when you were younger on the farm?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Boy, what day was like? I remember I was out in the living room on the pull-out couch. And the first thing I remember was the smell of smoke because when I was there, my aunt cooked on a cookstove, a wood cook stove. We also drew water from the well. It was an outhouse. But yeah, I remember the smell of her getting the cookstove going, heating it up, putting wood in there, smelling that smoke. And then hearing those sounds.
And her older brother stayed in Virginia would always come by early in the morning. He'd already milked the cows, so he'd come by the big container of milk for her for the pigs and for her cooking and baking. Sometimes he'd bring a load of sweet potatoes or fresh corn. And he'd sit and they'd have early breakfast and the time I got up, I had leftover breakfast. So I remembered that as the start, and always having that wonderful breakfast.
And then the rest of the day, following along behind my Aunt Jen as she worked in the garden, as she cooked and baked all kinds of yeast rolls and bread and took care of the chickens they feed the animals early in the morning, and then in the evening and milking cows. My Aunt Jen didn't have cows at her house, but her brother did. He took care of other people's cows as well. She had a ton of cats. But probably I was attracted to cats because I took my few dollars and I'd buy canned milk and I'd feed these kittens and it would attract every cat in the countryside.
Kerry Diamond:
That's so funny. What are some of the dishes you remember her making, or the family making?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Oh, my gosh. Yeast rolls, she'd make those yeast rolls and the whole house would smell wonderful. She'd test them on us. I remember her storing in big brown paper bags to keep them fresh before dinner. Oh my god. So they'd have supper, which was earlier than dinner because of having to feed the cows and the pigs. But one thing I always loved was the fresh greens picked right out of the gardens that day and she'd fix collards. People weren't really into growing kale back then. But collard greens, turnip greens, and cook them and we'd have them for dinner.
We'd have a big salad, we'd always have big glass of ice water. Sometimes iced see, usually ice water. And everything from fried chicken to pan fried quail, to fesset. They'd have beef, all of the desserts. Now, we wouldn't necessarily have dessert every day. But if we'd have dessert on Sunday or something related to church. Sweet potato pie was my favorite and it's still my favorite. And watching my aunt make the sweet potato pie. The sweet potatoes, which she'd grow, she would grind them.
There were no food processors and she would strain them and cheesecloth, so she'd get a real fine liquid and blend that with egg white. Oh my god, it was delicious. And of course cinnamon and nutmeg. I can smell that. My Aunt Jen also made a caramel layer cake. That was divine. And I could see her now pouring the caramel on a spoon and testing that. Don't even start with the desserts. But everything. The fried chicken, we didn't deep fry chicken, they pan fried chicken with a piece of fat pack and bacon and butter.
The butter was, I remember my Aunt Jen, and I learned how to do it too, spending many hours making homemade butter, churning butter and then just slapping it, putting it on a big thing and cold water and just really working on that and it was just so delicious on everything. The fresh tomatoes out of the garden were just incredible. Aunt Jen would serve them slice, it's in this cookbook as well, sliced with just a little bit of vinegar and sugar and black pepper on, maybe a tiny bit of salt.
The greens, the string beans, the Kentucky wonder beans that they were full of fiber so they were cooked all day on the stove and they were just delicious to eat. And the juice from them, we call this pot liqueur, you could just drink it out of a glass, it'd be so delicious. Those were definitely my favorite dishes. Virginia ham, very thin sliced Virginia ham with everything, potato salad, making me really hungry now.
Kerry Diamond:
You're making me hungry. So you were a kid from the Bronx. What was this like?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Well, it was wonderful. It was it sort of like I was in the Bronx of course through the school year. I don't know, I sort of had a half and half life. Half time I'd be in the city in the Bronx. My mom was working three jobs. I was an only child. I was a latchkey kid, so I was coming home hitting up cans of SpaghettiOs. But in the summertime, I was just exposed to just great food and great cooking and gardening.
I just remember it was normal for me. I'd talk to my friends about it when I get back from Virginia. I remember I had, oh my gosh, I would hate to leave my mom in New York City for a couple of months. And then after I was in Virginia the couple of months, I'd hate to leave Virginia. I remember one time running down the hill and trying to hide behind the pigpen because I didn't want to go back.
Kerry Diamond:
So tell us a little bit more about Freetown and your family's connection to that.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Sure. Freetown, what would have been my great grandfather, great grandfather's and their families and other families as well for Freetown. They were given land by their former owners. They had been freed from chattel slavery and they formed this town called Freetown. And I learned about it from listening to Aunt Edna and Aunt Jen and my mom and Aunt Ruth and my uncles talk about it, and of course, reading in this cookbook, and probably I learned more about it from typing up the manuscript from her. So I always had that in the back of my mind that this is the place where we came from.
And in the summer times, Freetown, of course, it's still there. But at that time, my Uncle Lou, their older brother had his cattle there, and he took care of other people's cattle there. So Aunt Edna would often come down, especially when she was testing the cookbook when I was there, and we'd go to Freetown, we'd walk there, catch a ride there, and go pick blackberries in the summertime in the heat. And that was always fun, fun, scary, kind of fun. The brambles would get caught on your arms and your clothes. The cattle that were there, I thought they were chasing us. I don't know, I was terrified of them. But they were in Freetown.
There were some buildings there, but some of them were in ruins. They had been part of the homes that people had lived in. So when I went there, the people were not living there. There were a few buildings that were on the ground. And we were picking blackberries. And I was tagging along behind Aunt Edna and Aunt Jen and hearing them talk about Freetown and things that they remembered as they were walking along. And they were picking blackberries and other things, and coming back and preparing pies and talking and talking and laughing and remembering things that had happened to them when they grew up and I just loved all that.
Kerry Diamond:
Now, Nina, you've dropped a few little tidbits in there you mentioned when you typed up the manuscript. So let's jump to that. Folks might not realize that you played a very big role in one of America's most important cookbooks, The Taste of Country Cooking, that your Aunt Edna wrote. Tell us your role in helping this book come to be.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Sure. That was the second cookbook that Aunt Edna did. And I remember I was about 12. I think I started taking the typing course in middle school or junior high school. And I'd gotten a new typewriter, and Aunt Edna asked me to type up her recipes before she forwarded them on to Judith Jones, who was her editor, because Aunt Edna wrote on this long, yellow legal pads, and we laughed about her chicken scratch was hard to read. She didn't want poor Judith Jones to chose to suffer trying to read her writing. And I would type these up.
Aunt Edna had these long lists of things, which you could still see in the cookbook, but she also had run-on sentences. The whole page would be a paragraph, there were no commas, no periods. I was 12. And thought I was all that and knew what I was doing. And I would work with her. I said, "Aunt Edna, we can't give this, we got to put a period in here." Well, if there's anything I didn't understand, I figured Judith Jones probably wouldn't understand it. So I would work on it as I was typing it up, and I just remembered so much that.
Kerry Diamond:
You were 12 and you were like the first editor of this book before it even got to Judith. That's remarkable.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
It was wonderful. The thing that I always remember when I think about it just jumps into my head is the sweet face, baby calf. Public because we typed it over and over so many times, and probably Judith set back changes on it and did something to it. But I do remember that when I pick up the book, as I recently did and read again, it just takes me back to being in the apartment with Aunt Edna. She was living with us at the time. We were living in the Bronx.
We were living in one place. My mom got really ill and had to go to the hospital, and she stayed with her sister in Philadelphia. But Aunt Edna and her husband moved in with us in the Bronx, moved us across the street because the building we lived in, it had a incinerator, where you burn the garbage in the building but with backup in our apartment, all this black smoke. And my mother got pneumonia. And she'd had tuberculosis before. I think she had a relapse. But anyway, so Aunt Edna moved me across the street, and we all lived there together. So all those recipes were tested also in our tiny little kitchen and I was typing up the manuscript.
Kerry Diamond:
So you were also one of our taste testers.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yeah, definitely. Yep. Yeah, that was wonderful. That was the best part.
Kerry Diamond:
I can imagine. So you're 12, what did you think of all this? Did you know your aunt was a well regarded chef at the time? For a 12 year old to even know what a cookbook is and how a cookbook comes together is amazing.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yeah. I was 12 and then 13, 14. The book was published in '76. Well, I was familiar with her first cookbook. And I remember the photographer, John Hill, taking photographs. I think I might have been there in the room. I don't know whether I was actually in the room with him for the first book, the cover book, but I remember meeting him in washing photographs. And her friend, Evangelion Peterson, convinced Aunt Edna to write that first book, but she was in the hospital in Harlem. She'd broken an ankle.
I remember it's because of my mom working, I was often spent a lot of time with Aunt Edna, and I was with her when she was cooking for these other people. So I remember a lot, her friendship with Evangelion. And then they would cook for her, but they were also friends. And I was even younger than ... And I remember thinking they were just crazy. I remember them drinking wine, and they were talking and laughing. Aunt Edna was a great giggler. And the two of them would go on for hours. I don't know what they were talking about. But they were giggling, their voices would get higher and higher.
So I kind of knew Aunt Edna was cooking, she cooked for a lot of different people all kinds of food. I remember doing a bar mitzvah, just all this stuff. So I understood that. And I understood that people really respected her. The first book was a big deal for our family, for us anyway. So I kind of got that. I had no idea of the impact of The Taste of Country Cooking. I'd spent a lot of time with Aunt Edna in her restaurant in Harlem as well, which was a few years before The Taste of Country Cooking was what's published, and had closed before this period of her life.
Kerry Diamond:
What restaurant was that?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
She and her husband owned a restaurant in Harlem on 125th Street on 127th Street, maybe 7th Avenue. Our family has been talking about this. Nobody can remember the name of the restaurant or if it had a name. We're trying to find that out. But there was a restaurant. My Aunt Ruth, our Aunt Ruth daughter, Maddie worked at it in the summertime. I think it was only open for a couple of years.
I can visualize it in my head. I remember going there. I drunk my first coffee there, my first black coffee. But we can't remember the name of it. But it was on 125 or 127 Street. So I definitely knew that Aunt Edna, the food was around. I didn't imagine the impact that she would have, especially on the farm-to-table movement at all.
Kerry Diamond:
So when you said she was testing recipes down in Virginia, I'm guessing she was still testing while you were typing up the manuscript. What was testing like for Edna Lewis? I would imagine that she was such a good cook, she didn't have to test in the traditional sense.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
She was such a stickler, I remember. Even before the cookbooks and testing in our first department, I remember Aunt Edna. I mean, Aunt Edna, she would buy the green coffee beans and roast them and grind them, if it didn't taste right, the whole thing got thrown out and she'd start all over again. The same for Christmas cookies, if they were too this or too that, they were throwing it out and she started over again. Some of it was running into the third cookbook, which she went on testing after and that it was in pursuit of flavor.
But for The Taste of Country Cooking, I remember we were in the Bronx at a railroad flat in that little stove where she was cooking that dish over and over again to get the ingredient list and amount correct. She was calling her sister Jenny and her brother Lou and probably her sister Ruth, going over the recipe again, talking about the results. So then she would often go to Virginia, and they would prepare the recipes together, they would tweak it and that's what ended up getting in the book. So if she was hands on, it would be done over, it would change the recipe. The written piece would be updated based on it.
She was double checking both the recipes and what she was writing about. Historically, in the book she would write about revival week and summertime and emancipation day and how they farmed. So she was testing those memories that she had to make sure that she got that right. And the recipes, she was testing them and sometimes I guess her sister would cook along with her in Virginia to make sure it came out, the way it was supposed to taste. I think she was pursuing how the food tasted when she grew up and in getting verification for that from her sisters and brothers. So she was very hands-on, very much a stickler and would throw things out and start again.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you help cook at all?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Not much. I can remember helping stir things and watching her do things. I remember accusing her of being the reason that I can't cook because she would be cooking everything.
Kerry Diamond:
That's so funny.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I'd joke a little bit.
Kerry Diamond:
Was Edna the best cook in the family?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Actually Aunt Jen, the older sister was the best cook and then Aunt Ruth and my mom. But Aunt Jen, oh my god, Aunt Jen was just indescribable. That's why she was testing everything without Jen because Jen would ... We all say she was the cook. She was the best cook.
Kerry Diamond:
But Edna was the one who wanted to do it professionally?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
That's right. That's right. Right. Aunt Jen and Uncle Lou stayed in Virginia. They farmed and Jen loved being a farm wife. The other sisters and brothers went off. My mom came to New York with Aunt Edna. And Aunt Edna put her through high school and art school. Aunt Ruth came to New York and Philadelphia, Uncle George went to California, Pasadena. He became a horticulturalist and actually ran and retired as a superintendent of Descanso Gardens in Pasadena.
And he spent many, many decades building that up and burning that. And that was based on him farming as a child and a young man before he got off. He went to World War II and he was on the beach in Normandy, and he used the funding, the money from the GI Bill to go to Hampton Institute and get a degree in horticulture. And that's what he ended up doing.
Kerry Diamond:
Did Edna feel valued in her lifetime?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I think that she did. I think that she did. We used to have a joke about fame, fortune and glorification. And she's always said the fame and the glorification came, maybe not the fortune. But I think that she felt valued. I would go to several events with her, some of the James Beard Foundation, fundraisers, the events in Rockefeller Center. We were living near there. So she would come back talking about the 20 chickens that she took there.
In some of the magazine, things that she did, I was in a couple of them where I would go with her. And always talking about it. So I think she definitely felt valued. She was very shy, she was very humble. She didn't seek any of that. She had no ego or anything like that whatsoever. She was very withdrawn from these types of things. So I think she would probably would often be overwhelmed. But she was in many, many magazines, she won many, many awards.
I didn't go to the Chicago thing, but she won something through Victoria Magazine. My mother and I went and I think Aunt Ruth and Uncle Lou. So I think she really felt appreciated, personally, from the taste of country cooking in the book after and known in cooking circles. I remember being around her and Julia Child and James Beard. I was much younger then. So I think in that way, she did feel ... I do think she was very concerned about the African-American cooking tradition and black chefs and what was happening to them.
Before she died, I know her dream was to write the tome on history of African-American cooking in the united states, the Native American roots, the European roots, the African roots. As she always talked about wanting to do that, that was her dream. She was reading, she was collecting cookbooks. She was reading historical material. She was a teaching assistant at the African Hall at the American Museum of Natural History. So she was reading all that material.
Now, I think that while she didn't get to do that tome herself, she inspired so many young people, PhDs and food culture, and African cooking history. I'm not getting the titles right. So it just dawned on me recently that her dream, of course, did come true. Because so many of these people were influenced by Aunt Edna. They're doing what she wanted to do.
Kerry Diamond:
Her influence is incredible.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Interesting and maybe sad, but still remarkable, nonetheless, is how big she is today. Her influence just grows and grows and grows every year. And it must be amazing to you to see this.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
It is astonishing. Knowing how shy Aunt Edna was, and how she would shove all the stuff and go. But I think she always, and I've talked about this before, so forgive me, but she always thought about the people of Freetown. They made such an impression on her as a child. They'd come out of chattel slavery, and she learned to cook from them. She listened to their stories. I often think that they must have somewhat cushioned what they experienced in front of the children so that they wouldn't feel the brunt of the horror of what they'd gone through. But Aunt Edna thought of them all the time.
She loved the people of Freetown, she loved our family of Virginia, our cousins of Virginia. And I think she felt, urged all of her life to continue their story in the way that she could, which was to talk about how they cooked, how they raised their animals, how they raised food, how they gathered respect they had for their environment, for their lifestyle, for each other, and how they tried to help each other survive the aftermath of slavery. I think that drove her on and that was always foremost in her mind.
In one of her cooking stands, she was in South Carolina at Middleton Place, which was a former plantation. And she told me she'd often walk out early in the morning because it was so beautiful, and the mists were beautiful, and trees, and she would imagine she could feel her ancestors behind her looking over her shoulder, pushing her on, urging her onward to tell their story. And I think that that drove her and everything that she did more so than anything else. Any fame, she was not seeking that at all. But I think she wanted to tell their story and fell into being able to tell it through her cooking.
Kerry Diamond:
Did you watch High on the Hog yet, Nina?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I did. My husband and I watched it. We couldn't stop it. We watched it till 2:00 a.m.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. I couldn't help but think of your Aunt all through the four episodes. I'm sure you did too.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Definitely. It was great. She would be just absolutely thrilled and just pleased to see that.
Kerry Diamond:
We didn't talk about Gage & Tollner. For our listeners, Gage & Tollner was a famous restaurant in Brooklyn, and Edna cooked at Gage & Tollner. Kind of later in life, the restaurant closed for a long time, and just reopened under new leadership in March of this year. I think Edna was in her 70s or 80s when she worked at Gage & Tollner. I mean, what a work ethic.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Oh my God. She gave them a workout. She was in her probably between 75 and 80, I think, I would have to look it up exactly. But I remember Edna going there early in the morning, and she worked, just moved, danced circles around the younger chefs. She was just early in the morning 7:00 a.m., 8:00 a.m. 11 o'clock at night she was there just overseeing the kitchen, doing everything. I did go there a lot. It was fantastic.
Speaking of her concept of fame, I remember she'd come out and people would applaud her. And they would stand up and she would just practically run back in the kitchen. But that was a wonderful, incredible experience for everyone there and I think for her and we were very proud of her.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you remember some of the dishes you would eat at Gage & Tollner?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yeah. One famous one, it would start out as one of the appetizers. She craft soup, it was absolutely delicious. They still have another menu. Oh my god, that was divine. That just stood out. It was just creamy and delicious and just silken and just really such an incredible flavor. That I know people that had thought of Southern food as fried chicken and cornbread and greasy greens would have no idea that this kind of cooking was going on. That was the standout for me. I think she did do the pan fried chicken, other types of fish, rabbit and quail. I'm trying to remember. I have copies of some of the menus in my ... I have a big portfolio for articles and whatnot.
Kerry Diamond:
You are keeping her legacy alive, in other ways, you are part of the in The Edna Lewis Foundation.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I'm so excited to be part of that and so honored. I'm a trustee on the board. And it is a foundation. The Foundation's been around for a while. Chef Joe Randall began the original iteration of it. This version now is headed by Chef Mashama Bailey and there are about seven or eight other wonderful folks on it there. You can go to the website, The Edna Lewis Foundation and see who all the members are and they focus on promoting the work that Aunt Edna did. And also encouraging young chefs, young African-American chefs to pursue their dreams related to fresh Southern food, natural ingredients, sustainable agriculture.
There's actually a nearly scholarship award that's given out to three rising or aspiring young chefs and the awards are given out in three different areas, agriculture, storytelling and culinary arts. And they provide mentorship to the young chefs in addition to a monetary award. And it's just really exciting. And you can go on the website and see the chefs that were chosen last year, and then the chefs that have been chosen for this year. I don't know if they've listed the new chefs yet on the website. But it's really wonderful to see the things that they're involved in. They're from all over the country.
It is a process where they submit an application and talk about what they want to do with their goals and what they know about Edna Lewis. So it's really exciting working on that. And we're trying to build the foundation up and make it bigger. And the other folks on the foundation are all food people. They're chefs and restaurant owners and food writers and storytellers. And they're really incredible. And I just feel like ... I'm just so honored to be on there with them.
I'm not a food person as they are. And it's just incredible to listen to them and hear their stories and the work that they're doing. And the fact that they know Aunt Edna and they want to promote. And maybe some of them did not ever meet her, but they know of her work and they want to dedicate themselves to promoting work that she did.
Kerry Diamond:
The other thing I want to ask you about is we did this big Julia Child Project over kind of the past year, we did a special issue. You were wonderful to speak at the conference about your aunt and your time working on the cookbook. We have to give a shout out to Abena Anim-Somauh, who wrote that wonderful story called Edna Lewis is not the Julia Child of the South, because so many people would refer to your aunt as the Julia Child of the South. And when you really dig away at that and try to figure out the reasons why they would call her that, it was lazy, it was racist on some levels, it erased her contributions.
The more I talked about it with a Abena, the more you and I have spoken about your aunt, I'm struck by all the things that Julia has been given both in life and death that your aunt has not been the recipient of yet. Movies, documentaries, series, other books, all these things. As someone who was so moved by what your aunt did and her legacy, do you think those things will come eventually? Will we ever see an Edna Lewis documentary one day?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Well, I pray that we will do. There are a couple of short films that have been done. I mean, nothing to the extent that we see the Julian, the movie. So they've been short pieces done. There's a really nice one, I think you can get it online called In the Season, and it was done by a local Orange, Virginia historian. That's really nice. Yeah, it would be nice to see all those things. I'm telling you, she'd be astonished by what's going on now. And the people of Freetown would be just beside themselves. I don't know.
I just see, as you were saying, sort of this slow continued rise, and people learning about her and paying attention to her, which is absolutely incredible and she would be fine with that. She was so shy that even this would be beyond her. Yeah, I agree. What can I say, it's America. But I think that regardless, the truth always comes out. It may take a long while, but it does come out because people are still talking about her. People are basing their careers on her, the trajectory of their careers and what they're studying, and going to school for, and digging in deep about.
There was, as you know, a book of essays done on it, and any of the people that wrote the essays had not met her, but were so moved by The Taste of Country Cooking, that they're talking about her. And I think that's fine and it will get there. And I think it goes ... The movies and whatnot are fine, but it's better that people's lives are moved, that they're studying and that they're contributing to a body of knowledge that will last long beyond Hollywood wouldn't be. I think that was her dream, for people to really understand the contributions of Africans to American scene, and how we impacted and shaped our Western culture and Western food and Western food going.
I think that for her, that will be important enough, and that will take longer. Unfortunately, that's some of the issues that we're dealing with our nation regarding racism, and structural racism, and all these things. But the truth comes out, the comes out. Her cooking, her food, the voice in the book makes people remember their own roots, and how they grew up and the food that they grew up with. And I think that will stand the test of time, and all those things will happen or the effect will be the same, hopefully.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. And Nina, I can't thank you enough for everything you've done to keep your aunt's legacy alive and to the literal work that you did back as a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old, typing up that manuscript.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Aunt Edna has one remaining sibling, Aunt Ruth who's 97, who's been doing this as well. Aunt Edna has a son from Eritrea who also speaks of her and tries to carry on her history and her legend and our family. She's still live in our family. Whenever I see farm-to-table, environment, I think of Aunt Edna. I think it's the people of Freetown, and for a legacy to come about as a result of something that was so brutal and so hard. But really, nature and God is just forgiving and loving and just got to keep going forward. I think she would be very proud of that.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. Well, because we love you so much, then I would love to do a speed round with you so the listeners can learn a little bit more about you and what you love. Coffee or tea?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Tea.
Kerry Diamond:
How do you take it?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I'm not supposed to drink caffeinated tea, but give me some black tea and some sugar.
Kerry Diamond:
I won't tell. Aside from your aunt's books, what is one of your most treasured cookbooks?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
One of my most treasured cookbooks, aside from my aunt's books, well I have an Instant Pot Vegan Cookbook my daughter gave me for Christmas last year. I've got a bunch of Aunt Edna's cookbooks that were given to her by Knopf. So I've got Indian cookbooks. So those are all treasured because she treasured them. And they're signed by the authors.And sometimes I try and cook from them.
Kerry Diamond:
So some of those must be like Madhur Jaffrey's cookbooks.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yes. Yep. Yep.
Kerry Diamond:
She shared an editor with your aunt.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yes. Yeah, exactly. So I would say I treasure those.
Kerry Diamond:
What is the oldest thing in your fridge?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
The oldest thing in my fridge is a package of stir fried veggies. I looked at it this morning and I thought, God, I got to get rid of that.
Kerry Diamond:
What is your most used kitchen implement?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
My most use kitchen implement is a couple of things, big spoons. Let's see, some strainers. My husband is from West Africa, from Senegal. So anything to cook rice or anything like rice. I do have a spoon rest that was actually Aunt Enda's. It's an Italian piece of pottery dish that I have on the stove and I use that. We rest our spoons in that, I think about Aunt Edna. So a big stir spoons to do all kinds of things with.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you listen to music in the kitchen?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
I do not.
Kerry Diamond:
You don't. You like silence.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yeah. I don't know. Haven't about that. But no, yeah, I don't listen to music in the kitchen because I have to bring a laptop into the kitchen. And I listen to the recipe in the kitchen but not music.
Kerry Diamond:
What is the song though that makes you smile?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
A song that makes me smile. Any kind of happy song. What have I been listening to lately? I can't think of anything off the top of my head right now that makes me smile. Some gospel song. And this is what I think of Virginia. My mom always sang the song that she said her mom was sing, which was In The Garden. Just make sense. It's an old gospel song. You can look it up online called In The Garden. That makes me smile.
Kerry Diamond:
Dream travel destination?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Senegal. My husband's home. We've not been there yet. I would love to go to Dakar. That's my first. Somewhere in Italy, my second.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. This is our last question. This might be a kooky one for you. But if you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, can't be your aunt, who would it be and why?
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Oh, my god. One food celebrity on a desert island, person that I'm trapped with? Oh, my god. Well, there's so many, especially if they're cooking and then we have the food there too. Let's see. Well, I know Mashama Bailey, because she's a great cook. For some reason Marcus Samuelsson jumps in my head, just because I think he would prepare something really exotic and delicious. And he's written about my aunt, so we could talk about Aunt Edna. Those two would be the first I would think about. If Anthony Bourdain was still alive, it's kind of cool. Be stuck with him.
Kerry Diamond:
Nina, they still love Anthony, they still love your Aunt Edna.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Thanks for your time. You're really the bombe Nina. Thank you.
Nina Williams-Mbengue:
Thank you. This has been great. I'm honored. Thank you very much.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you so much to Nina Williams-Mbengue of the Edna Lewis Foundation for joining us and being so generous with her time and her memories. If you'd like to support the foundation with a donation or learn more about their work, visit ednalewisfoundation.org. Thank you to Chronicle Books for supporting our show. Don't miss Flavors of the Sun: The Sahadi's Guide to Understanding, Buying, and Using Middle Eastern Ingredients by Christine Sahadi Whelan out September 7th.
Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Want some more Cherry Bombe in your life? Sign up for our newsletter at cherrybombe.com. Love this episode? You can find Radio Cherry Bombe episodes about other legends including Julia Child wherever you get your podcasts. Radio Cherry Bombe is recorded at Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center in New York City. Thank you to Joseph Hazan, studio engineer for Newsstand Studios, and to our assistant producer, Jenna Sadhu. Thanks for listening, everybody. You're the bombe.
Harry From When Harry Met Sally:
I'll have what she's having.