Exclusive Q&A with Michael W. Twitty

By: The Local Palate

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There are 280 recipes in culinary historian Michael W. Twitty’s new book, Recipes from the American South, but it’s the one that didn’t make it into the wide-ranging, exhaustively researched, deeply felt collection that woke him up in the middle of the night. “I forgot fried okra,” he confesses. “There was room for 300 recipes, but we stopped at 260 to include room for variations. Fried okra is the one that got away.”

The quintessential Southern vegetable gets plenty of love, represented in 10 different dishes, among them okra cakes, okra gumbo, okra pickles, and Limping Susan, the answering culinary song to Hoppin’ John, also in the book.

Twitty is no stranger to scholarly, historical, and lengthy tomes; his 2017 book The Cooking Gene weighed in at 464 pages and doubled down on James Beard Awards in 2018 for Best Food Writing and Book of the Year.

In 2012, he logged thousands of miles on his Southern Discomfort road trip through the South, from Chesapeake to Texas, Virginia to Louisiana, interviewing, taking photographs, “smelling, touching, and tasting.”

Twitty says with authority that the South is the largest culinary region in America, and in this book, he strives to begin at the beginning—“Native Americans set the first Southern table” he writes—and give due to all the peoples from all the lands who have contributed to the remarkably diverse and culturally rich feast.

Kay West: Recipes of the American South seems to be a daunting topic, and it resulted in a very big book. What was the genesis for this?

Michael W. Twitty: Emily Takoudes [executive commissioning editor for food at Phaidon] was looking for an author or coauthors for this project and asked if I knew anyone. No one wanted to do a book of this scope and size, and ultimately, we decided I was the person. But beyond that, for me it was the legacy: seeing other big books about Palestinian food, Japanese food, Irish food, Latin American food, I thought Southern food deserved the same.

Kay West: What did you bring to the table?

Michael W. Twitty: I had already passed through different parts of the Southern food world, I had done forays in Cajun country, the Lowcountry, Chesapeake, Texas, Mississippi and on and on. I had also been to eight countries in West Africa and all across the UK, Ireland, France, Scandinavia. I had done the field trips. I knew I needed to sort of write my thesis, and you do that by writing solid, thorough books that show what you know but also that your arms, mind, and heart are open, and you have something to say. That was my biggest motivation.

Kay West: You have always been outspoken regarding misconceptions about Southern food, and this book is an emphatic refutation of those assumptions of the region.

Michael W. Twitty: Native Americans set the first Southern table, but then came the European colonization of the South, the forced migration of enslaved Africans. And guess what, all these African groups weren’t the same and all these European groups aren’t the same. Southern food is a story about patterns of migration and patterns of movement. Foods don’t walk, people do, and they bring their food and recipes with them.

Kay West: How did you get started?

Michael W. Twitty: Almost immediately, we did a framework, and that was pretty easy—I love lists! My late mother wanted prose from me, and I wanted to write lists. I used to joke with her that people wrote books about lists and made lots of money doing it. But from the start, it was breads, starches, proteins, vegetables, and then I spent the next four years on it.

Kay West: Within those sections, how did you represent the different cultures of the South?

Michael W. Twitty: I’m really good at diversifying and try not to repeat too much, which was the philosophy of The Cooking Gene. In this book, I wanted to make sure I touched on everything without going to exhaustion. It was very important to me to define Creole versus Cajun. Creole cooking emerged from urban centers and was very much informed by French, Spanish, and African cooking: immigrants. Let’s make it plain: Cajuns are the blackest white people on earth. The way they speak, the way they cook, the way their food comes out. They go to the countryside and the bayou and who else does that? Black people.

Kay West: The publisher touts this as a “home cook’s guide.” Why did you include possum (possum and sweet potatoes) and rabbit (fried rabbit and rabbit stew) that few readers are likely to have in their home kitchen?

Michael W. Twitty: This is the kind of food that is joked about or denigrated as roadkill, but if you’re a rural person living off the land, you won’t eat something that will kill you. The origin of these recipes was in the 30s and 40s before many people in the country had cars but used wagons pulled by mules and horses. If they hit something, why waste it? I will never eat possum, but I wanted to put some respect on these recipes that are leaving us but have history and legacy.

Kay West: The vernacular of many recipes—Hoppin’ John, Limping Susan, kilt greens, mess of greens, ash cakes, Sally Lunn bread—is so embedded in place and time. Do you find that language more frequently in the South?

Michael W. Twitty: There’s a whole language there and that’s just the surface. There are probably at least 200 terms within Southern food unique to place. If I say Frogmore stew to people who don’t know, I have to add, “There are no frogs in Frogmore stew!” And no cats were harmed for cathead biscuits.

Kay West: Why was it important to pay homage so emphatically to Southern women and Queer men, as you do in your introduction?

Michael W. Twitty: I wanted to honor my mother and grandmother, who with my father were my primary cooking instructors, but Southern women in particular. We also have to recognize that Southern queerness is a big thing in Southern food; without that we don’t have Craig Claiborne, Bill Neal, Bill Smith. The kitchen was the place for women and gay boys.

Kay West: In the acknowledgements, you trace your lineage to multiple generations and specific countries and regions and refer to them as your ancestors. Was that an important quest for you?

Michael W. Twitty: One of the things I am most proud of in my acknowledgements is that it is the first time an African American author is able to evidence and hold conviction thanking their African ancestors specific to them, from Mende, Fonti, Kongo, and many more. That was a lot of oral history, genetic genealogy, and thousands of dollars of DNA work.