© 2024
Virginia's Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

In Search Of Virginia's Go-To Summertime Dish

Jason Fuller

Summertime and cookouts are inextricably tied to one another. It’s a time for family, friends and the forging of indelible memories. In Virginia, food tends to be so much more than just flavors and fulfillment. Many Virginians attend cookouts where there are hamburgers and hot dogs on a grill, but those items alone do not delve into the essence of food culture. 

The state that lays claim to the first colony in 1607 and produced four out of five of the country’s first presidents and has one of the oldest cooking books on record published in 1824, The Virginia House Wife by Mary Randolph, has an enriched food history and lineage. 

Whether discussing family recipes, regional favorites or the pervasiveness and diversity of seafood and Virginia Ham, many are intrigued by the diverse palette of Virginia’s food scene.

Michael Twitty is an author, culinary historian, food interpreter and chef at Colonial Williamsburg and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. He’s dedicated his life toward telling the story of food in Virginia through the eyes of those whom prepared it - enslaved African People. 

Credit Jason Fuller
Interpreter and food historian Michael Twitty at work in a kitchen in Colonial Williamsburg

Twitty adamantly describes the ingenuity and dexterity possessed by enslaved people who prepared food during the colonial era.

“These cast-iron pots and pans are easily 25 to 30 pounds… Now imagine filling them with water and carrying them - it’s a hard job. A dangerous job. Especially when you consider that enslaved children were responsible for bringing water back and forth,” Twitty says.

As Twitty peruses through his small garden in Colonial Williamsburg, grocery shopping as he calls it, he takes the most undervalued and trivialized items and to tantalize taste buds.

“It looks like spinach, but it’s actually sweet potato and black-eyed pea leaves,” says Twitty.

The green leaves protruding out of sweet potatoes are throw away items to many, but were used in many cases by enslaved African-American chefs during colonial ties.

Credit Jason Fuller
Michael Twitty chooses ingredients for a colonial-era meal

Twitty says enslaved peoples used every item at their disposal and were sometimes rewarded with freedom. One does not have to look too far from Jefferson’s Monticello to see this proof.

“Thomas Jefferson took James Hemmings with him to France, where he learned how to cook from the chef from the Court of Versailles. The best compliment that Jefferson ever got was from Patrick Henry saying Mr. Jefferson’s table is half Virginian and half French,” Twitty says.

“So every time you’re sitting down and have some Macaroni & Cheese think about Mr. James Hemmings, the best chef in America history, because he’s the one who brought it over here,” Twitty says.

Although, Thomas Jefferson never called macaroni pie instead of macaroni & cheese. 

Another classic dish that Virginians and other southerners indulge in are fish and grits or shrimp and grits. African-American history food interpreter Harold Caldwell says the history of that dish needs to be reclaimed by its originators - indigenous people.

“When the English arrived the grits [were] already here. Then of course when they see native people roasting the fish on a sapling grill. Naturally when combine those two -the roasting of the fish, eating it with the grits - you get fish and grits,” Caldwell says.

Caldwell also credits Virginians for having an imagination where foods like ham are viewed as both a main dish and condiment, because there’d be obligatory ham hocks or ham bones in each pot of leafy greens.

“Food and recipes are time machines because we can go back in time 410 years ago every time we pick up a fork,” says Patrick Evans-Hylton.

Evans-Hylton is a Virginia culinary expert and the publisher of Virginia Eats and Drinks Magazine. He says he’s pleased with what Virginians have on their plates in 2017.

“On the whole, I don’t think that if one of the early Virginians came here and went to a restaurant and sat down and order some seafood… I don’t think it would be too unfamiliar to them,” says Evans-Hylton.

He also described Virginia as being one of the first fusion cooking states because of Indigenous, English and African cultures simmering and melting in the same pot.

Evans-Hylton later spilled the beans of while discussing the history of crab cakes.

“Maryland has a better publicity agent than Virginia does, but we were doing the crab cakes first. I think we ought to charge Maryland 10 cents for every crab cake they fry up there.”

So, perhaps Virginia doesn’t have a unanimous canonized dish shared from Tidewater to the Shenandoah Valley.

Twitty says its fine if Virginia doesn’t have a unanimous dish, because he says that all food from Virginia has a distinctive and refreshing taste.

“I want people to know there’s a genuine Virginia flavor, and it comes from the oak and hickory. It comes from the tidewater and the rivers. It’s not boring. Our flavors are more natural. We don’t mask the taste of our food.”

This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association