Manifest: Smoke

Smoke was the theme this time for our Manifest dinner.  Smoking food for communal meals is a tradition as old as human civilization itself.  Many thanks to Chris May and Adam Sobsey.  Chris smoked 40 pounds of meat!  Check out the picture of us below sliding a massive cutting board heavy with prime cuts across the farm table.  It was epic!  Thanks as well to the twenty-five guests who came and enjoyed this great meal for a value price ($25) and shared their own stories of making our community a more equitable and communal place.  Check out the post on the first dinner to read Adam's writing and get a sense for what we are trying to accomplish.  If you would like to be added to the guest list for future dinners, please reach out to us via email: info at ninthstbakery dot com.

MANIFEST

Menu 27 August 2017

Openers:

Marinated eggplant

Cherrywood-smoked tuna belly & grouper collar

Ninth Street Bakery breads

*****

From the smoker:

Beef Brisket (Texas post oak, salt & pepper rub)

Puerco Pibil (pork shoulder, banana leaf, annatto, citrus reduction)

Thai-style BBQ Ribs (baby backs, St. Louis rub, honey, nam chim kai)

Chorizo & longaniza sausage

Yucatan pickled onion

Radish mustard

Radish greens chimichurri

*****

Sides:

Smoked Carnival Squash

Smoked peaches with roasted squash seeds

Refrigerator-pickled cucumbers

*****

Dessert:

Burnt caramel buttermilk chess pie

*****

Produce: Li’l Farm, Red Hawk Farm

Fish: Locals Seafood

Pork: Fickle Creek Farm, Firsthand Foods, Carniceria Superior

Beef: Firsthand Food, Hoofbeat Farm, Walker Farm

Bless this food. Bless us all.

* * * * *

Manifesto
by Chris May

Barbecue, simply put, is the practice of cooking meat with fire. It is the oldest culinary technique we know. So old, we believe it began with the mastery of fire by our human ancestors, Homo Erectus. It is no wonder then, that with each great human migration, nearly every culture in the world has developed and perfected their own form of barbecue. Now, the techniques may vary— open grilling, clay ovens, earth covered pits. It might be called, Asado, Braii, Gogigui, Lechon, Mezze, or as my Peruvian ancestors call it Pachamanca, but the practice of patiently cooking meat and gathering with friends and family to share it, is truly universal.

Our menu this evening is an attempt to marry the familiar “American” barbecue with flavors and influences from other cultures. Specifically, honoring the cultures of the individuals that harvest, produce, and prepare our food here in the U.S.

Now I’d like to take this time to share with you some words from Andrea Reusing, A James Beard award-winning chef and the owner of The Lantern, a restaurant in Chapel Hill. From: http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/07/30/539112692/a-chefs-plea

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Inequality does not affect our food system — our food system is built on inequality and requires it to function. The components of this inequality —racism, lack of access to capital, exploitation, land loss, nutritional and health disparities in communities of color, to name some — are tightly connected. Our nearly 20-year obsession with food and chefs has neither expanded access to high-quality food nor improved nutrition in low-resource neighborhoods.

Only an honest look at how food gets to the table in the U.S. can begin to unwind these connections. Food workers, as members of both the largest and lowest-paid U.S. workforce, are in a unique position to lead these conversations. Many of us have already helped incubate policy change on wage equality, organic certification and the humane treatment of animals. But a simpler and maybe even more powerful way we can be catalysts for real change in the food system is to simply tell the stories of who we are.

Take immigration. Our current policy renders much of the U.S. workforce completely invisible. This is more true in the food industry than in any other place in American life. There is a widespread disconnect on the critical role recent immigrants play in producing our food and an underlying empathy gap when it comes to the reality of daily life for these low-wage food workers and their families.

Our state produces half the sweet potatoes grown in the U.S. — 500,000 tons a year — which are all harvested by hand. A worker here has to dig and haul 2 tons to earn about $50. In meatpacking plants, horrific injuries and deaths resulting from unsafe working conditions are widespread. Farmworkers are exposed to far more pesticides than you or I would get on our spinach. Poverty wages allow ripe strawberries to be sold cheaply enough to be displayed unrefrigerated, piled high in produce section towers. Nearly half of immigrant farmworkers and their families in North Carolina are food insecure.

When as chefs we wonder whether a pork chop tastes better if the pig ate corn or nuts but we don't talk about the people who worked in the slaughterhouse where it was processed, we are creating a kind of theater. We encourage our audience to suspend their disbelief.

The theater our audience sees — abundant grocery stores and farmers markets, absurdly cheap fast food and our farm-to-table dining rooms — resembles what Jean Baudrillard famously called the simulacrum, a kind of heightened parallel world that, like Disneyland, is an artifice with no meaningful connection to the real world.

As chefs, we need to talk more about the economic realities of our kitchens and dining rooms and allow eaters to begin to experience them as we do: imperfect places where abundance and hope exist beside scarcity and compromise. Places that are weakened by the same structural inequality that afflicts every aspect of American life.

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In terms of food service labor, what does an ethical food economy look like? How do we take steps to change the status quo?

In ideal world, our society would recognize the true value of the labor that makes our food possible by fairly compensating and including/supporting the migrants doing this work in our communities. The cost of doing so would be passed along to us as consumers.

Unfortunately, a specific roadmap for completely changing the reality of our food economy does not exist, but there are a couple thoughts I would suggest we consider. 

Tonight, we are taking the first step by learning and being mindful of the food environment we participate in. The decisions we make as consumers can influence the market in which we operate. You can choose to eat at restaurants that pay a living wage, or that support community initiatives that help migrant workers. In most cases, however, restaurant wages are still the lowest in our country. The next time you eat at a restaurant, your tip can make a significant impact on your server and depending on the restaurant, cooks and bus staff.

To elaborate further on Andrea Reusing’s essay, there are other ways that we can support the under-represented, and under-resourced Latino migrants that make our food economy possible. I work for El Futuro, a mental health clinic just right around the corner from here that helps Latino families in our community.  Not long ago I remember one of our clinicians telling a story of a child client that was having some trouble in school. A family friend referred her to our clinic. This young girl was doing poorly in classes due to trauma experienced during her migration here. Her father, a food service worker, did not speak English and was not sufficiently equipped (time, financial resources) to help his daughter. Our therapists worked with this young girl and eventually her father, to build a strong support system at home and address not only her trauma, but her father’s as well. Today, she is thriving in school and working towards a brighter future.

El Futuro is one of several non-profit organizations serving the Latino community here that help to create a community of welcome. Organizations like these recognize the economic disparity and the insufficient access to resources that exists for our Latino neighbors. If you want to support and engage with those that make your food possible, consider volunteering with or financially supporting one of these Latino-serving non-profit organizations. 

El Futuro

El Centro Hispano

Urban Durham Ministries

Meat smoking begins at 5am

A place at the table






The main course

Adam Sobsey speaks to food culture and gastronomy

Twilight feast