Edna Lewis - The Edna Lewis Cookbook

T he principal author of this cookbook was a black woman who rose from humble origins and almost singlehandedly revived fine Southern cooking. Thanks to her, this style of food is not only increasingly popular in America, but also admired around the world. Those who love this sometimes simple but often complicated and sophisticated food and regard it as one of the worlds great cuisines owe a lot to the woman who has been referred to as the Grande Dame of Southern cooking and the Souths answer to Julia Child.

The famous American chef James Beard said, Edna Lewis makes me want to go right into the kitchen and start cooking. That is how many people feel about her. The US government honored her achievement with a commemorative postal stamp acknowledging her place among the greatest American chefs. The stamp is a head shot, so you dont see her tall, lithe body, often clothed in African fabrics, or her dignified way of moving and talking. You couldnt walk down the street without people stopping [her]: Youre so beautiful I want to paint you, photograph you, reports Scott Peacock, former executive chef of Watershed Restaurant in Decatur, Georgia, a famous Southern chef himself, and co-author of her last book.

Lewis also had a gift for living and for friendship. She counted friends among the poorest and the richest of Americans. She listened carefully and thoughtfully to everyones concerns and offered advice that was always grounded in common sense but that nevertheless came straight from the heart. No wonder so many people loved her. And she knew how to live. Everything she touched came alive with inspiration and pleasure, even simple tasks such as selecting food or preparing a meal.

Edna Lewis was born on April 13, 1916, in Freetown, Virginia, a small town established and named by three former slaves, including her grandfather Chester Lewis. She was one of eight children. The families in Freetown were largely self-sufficient, foraging or raising their own food and meat, with a few purchases from a nearby general store. Water was pumped by hand from the ground and heat in the winter was by wood fire or old Franklin Stove.

Of life in Freetown, Lewis said: If someone borrowed one cup of sugar, they would return two. If someone fell ill, the neighbors would go in and milk the cows, feed the chickens, clean the house, cook the food and come and sit with whoever was sick. I guess rural life conditioned people to cooperate with their neighbors.

What the family ate changed with the seasons. Lewis learned to cook (on a wood stove) by watching and imitating the other women of the family. Where tools were lacking, the cooks improvised. For example, they could not afford measuring spoons, so measured homemade baking powder on coins.

After leaving Freetown at age 16 to earn money for the family, Lewis moved to Washington, DC and then to New York. Jobs included ironing (she did not really know how to iron and lost that job within hours), domestic work, and seamstress. After making dresses for celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, she became the window dresser at Bonwit Teller, a fashionable department store, an important and well paid job, but in 1948 left to become chef and partner at Caf Nicholson, a new restaurant owned by a friend, a wealthy and well connected New York Bohemian named John Nicholson. Customers included Paul Robeson, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, William Faulkner, Richard Avedon, Marlene Dietrich, Diana Vreeland, Howard Hughes, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Gloria Vanderbilt, among many other celebrities.

Caf Nicholson became a Manhattan in spot thanks to Lewiss cooking and charm. The New York Times notes that restaurant critic Clementine Paddleford reviewed the restaurant in 1951 in the New York Herald Tribune , calling the souffl light as a dandelion seed in a wind and noting a sense of pride in the chef: We saw Edna peering in from the kitchen, just to see the effect on the guests and hear the echoes of praise. In reading this, we must keep in mind that women chefs were rare enough at that time, black women chefs unheard of.

In 1954, Lewis left the Caf, partly at the request of her husband Steve Kingston, a Communist Party member and organizer, who objected to her feeding the capitalists. Together they started a pheasant farm in New Jersey that failed. Eventually Lewis became chef at Gage & Tollner, a famous restaurant in Brooklyn she put back on the map as a fashionable stop for wealthy New Yorkers. She also worked as a volunteer at the American Museum of American History, which she loved. In 1972, she published her first cookbook, The Edna Lewis Cookbook, which was immediately praised by both James Beard and M. K. F. Fisher, the two best known food writers of the day. It was followed in 1976 by a second book, The Taste of Country Cooking , then in 1988 In Pursuit of Flavor , and in 2003, The Gift of Southern Cooking , with her student and friend Scott Peacock. The Edna Lewis Cookbook includes some non-Southern recipes but already introduces the idea of local ingredients and seasonal focus. The Taste of Country Cooking and The Gift of Southern Cooking are both considered high points of southern food history.

In 1990, Ms. Lewis received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) and in 1995 the James Beard Foundations Living Legend Award (their first such award). In her last years, she lived with Mr. Peacock in Atlanta and died, aged 89, in 2006.

Hunter Lewis