And for everyone who joined our email list, thank you.  Stay tuned for more great vegan news and views you can use,  including our new video on how to make quick and delicious vegan pizza in minutes.  Be well!

©2012 byanygreensnecessary.com. All Rights Reserved.

BAGN:  Hi, Bryant.  What can we look forward to in this new cookbook?

BT:  What you can look for in Vegan Soul Kitchen is some bright, bold, and sexy soul food, as I say on the back of the book.  One thing I wanted to do is bring a fresh, modern twist to this traditional cuisine. It’s bigger than just African American cuisine, although the bulk of the recipes are inspired by foods that I grew up eating in the South, growing up in Memphis, living in New Orleans, and traveling throughout the South. There are also some recipes inspired by African dishes, and some inspired by Caribbean dishes.  So I kind of broadly define what I’m doing in this book as Afro-diasporic cuisine.

BAGN:  What led you write to Vegan Soul Kitchen?

BT:  For this book, the most important thing was for me to reclaim African American heritage food or soul food, as it’s often referred to, because it’s gotten such a bad rap. When people imagine this cuisine, it’s always the artery-clogging, fatty, fried, sweet foods that are bad for us.  As I say in the essay that opens the book, yes these foods are a part of the cuisine, but in my family, those are the foods we ate at celebrations, on holidays, when we were being festive.  But the foods that we ate on an everyday basis were as local as the backyard garden, as seasonal as whatever we were growing in that season, and as fresh as what we harvested right before the meal.  And I want people to remember that this is a part of our legacy, and that our food is interesting and diverse and complex.

BAGN:  One of the innovative things you do in the book is include a soundtrack for each recipe.  How did that come about?

BT:  It’s actually a kind of trademark that I’ve developed.  I started doing it when I wrote Grub, my first book, and I wanted to continue it with this book.  With me in my family, and with a lot of people, especially African Americans, food and music are so intimately tied together.  I come from a very musical family.  My grandfather started a traveling quartet back in the 50s.  All of his children are musicians in one way or another.  So, I grew up being at family gatherings where there was always singing and people playing the piano and connecting in that way.  So music is intimately tied to my relationship with the culinary arts.  So I thought that providing soundtracks, songs that might have inspired the recipes, songs that I think might go well with the meal, would be something that people might be able to appreciate and enjoy along with the recipes.

BAGN:  You consider yourself a food justice activist and connect the types of food that people eat with issues of poverty and racism and justice.  How do you want people to see the food that they eat, the food that they choose for themselves and their families, differently?

BT:  Well, I’ll say this.  I’m not identifying myself as much as a food justice activist or even an eco chef these days.  I think oftentimes these types of labels bring a lot of responsibility that people put on the person who might be identified as these things.  I really feel like primarily I’m a creative person and I’m letting infinite intelligence, spirit, God, however you want to describe it, move through me.  I hope that the work that I do inspires people to think and act differently.  Right now my focus is on food.  I say that more than giving a lecture or writing two books or writing essays, the way that I’ve seen more people shift their connection with food, their understanding of food, their relationship with the food system, is by making them a delicious meal made from local, seasonal, and sustainable good food.  And that’s why whenever I’m presenting these days, I always like to have some component of the food in there through cooking demonstrations or leaving them with a recipe.  I want to [use food] to lure people into this “delicious revolution,” as Alice Waters calls it.  The way that I encapsulate what I try to do is to start with the visceral, move to the cerebral, and end at the political. 

BAGN:  What is your favorite recipe in Vegan Soul Kitchen?

BT:  There are a couple.  But the one that I like to share with people, and that people immediately fall in love with, is my Black-eyed Pea Fritters with Hot Pepper Sauce.  Bean fritters are thought to have their origin in Nigeria, but you can find them throughout West Africa.  The other recipe that I find myself making a lot lately is my Gumbo Z.  Gumbo Z is my interpretation of a traditional Louisianan dish that was eaten during Lent called Gumbo Z’Herbes.  This recipe is said to use up to nine different greens, and it’s such a great way to use a barrage of nutrient-dense greens in one dish.  Mine doesn’t use that many. I think I use collards, mustards, kale, and spinach, and it’s so rich and so tasty. 

BAGN:  Now I have to ask you, is there a favorite dessert recipe in the book?

BT:  Why yes there is (laughs).  Yeah, I have a sweet tooth, too.  I always have to go back to my Chocolate Pecan Pudding Pie.  It’s just so rich and decadent… It’s a big hit.

BAGN:  Sounds delicious.  When you come to DC on your book tour, I’d love for us to make that recipe as part of a book signing that we’ll have for you.

BT:  I’d love that.

BAGN:  The last thing that I want to ask you about is the drawing we’re having at By Any Greens Necessary for folks who sign up on our email list for a chance to win a free copy of Vegan Soul Kitchen.  Would you do us the honor of signing the book to our lucky winners when we do the drawing?

BT:  I would be more than happy to do that.  And I just want to say that I love the name of your site, By Any Greens Necessary.  That goes back to Malcolm X, but I was also thinking of Public Enemy.  I always say that we need more flavor in the green movement and you’re certainly bringing it with By Any Greens Necessary.

BAGN:  Thank you.  I really appreciate that.  And I return the compliment for all the great work that you’re doing, especially with the new cookbook.  Thanks again for talking with us.

BT:  You’re welcome.  Take care.

©2012 byanygreensnecessary.com. All Rights Reserved.