Dry Bone Soup

Ingredients | Broth

• Bones - any kind/combination like chicken, turkey, duck, oxtail, veal and beef, enough to fill a big pot. If the bones are big, have a butcher cut them to expose the marrow.
• A carrot or two cut into chunks
• 2 Celery stalks with leaves, cut into chunks
• A yellow onion, on the large side (or 2, small to medium), cut in quarters
• A head of garlic cut widthwise
• Thyme - a couple of fresh stalks (or some dried, rubbed between your fingers)
• Black peppercorns, about a tablespoon
• A bay leaf
• A tablespoon of apple cider vinegar

Method

1. Preheat the oven to a high temperature.
2. Place the bones in a large pot - not a saucepan - and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil and blanch the bones on a rapid boil for about 20 minutes. 
3. Remove from heat and drain the bones in a strainer.
4. Let the bones drain thoroughly and dry out a bit.
5. Put the blanched bones on a sheet pan. Add the vegetables and thyme and place the pan in the oven. Start checking on the bones after about 30 minutes. Roast until they start to caramelise and brown. Toss them around a bit and roast until very dark and aromatic. This can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour or more, depending on the bones.
6. Meanwhile, thoroughly wash the pot used for blanching and the strainer.
7. Once bones and vegetables are roasted, return them with any juices to the pot. Add the bay leaf, peppercorns, and cider vinegar, cover with water and bring to a boil. Lower the temperature, cover with a lid slightly ajar, and simmer for several hours. The longer, the better, though at least 8 hours if mainly using beef (or non-poultry bones). Add water as needed to ensure the ingredients are covered.
8. After several hours, turn off the heat and let the bones cool.
9. Strain the mixture in the strainer. Discard the bones, thyme stems and bay leaf, but save any big chunks of the vegetables. Let the mixture cool a bit more while you clean the strainer again.
10. Line the strainer with a few layers of cheesecloth and strain the liquid again.
11. Proceed to the soup or store the broth in a sealed container and refrigerate.

Ingredients| Soup

• 2 cups dry beans or field peas, soaked overnight and drained
• 8 cups of freshly made bone broth
• A piece of smoked meat if available (Smoked turkey wing or neck for example)
• 2 medium carrots, sliced into coins or chopped
• 1 celery stalk chopped
• 1 small white, red or yellow onion cut in half. One of the halves diced, and the other thinly sliced like paper
• 2 garlic cloves, smashed
• a small handful of freshly chopped parsley leaves, save the stems and set aside
• 2 large sage leaves
• 3 tablespoons of oil (butter can also work)
• 1 cup of cooked rice (leftovers are fine if clearing out the fridge)
• Cooked vegetables from the broth
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Add the beans or peas to a big pot.  Add the bone broth and smoked meat and bring to a simmer for 10-15 minutes. Add the carrots, celery, garlic, and a few parsley stems. Simmer gently until beans and vegetables are tender, for about an hour or a little more. Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed. Add up to 2 cups of water if too 'brothy' or to your liking.
2. While vegetables are simmering, in a small skillet, heat oil and add the sage leaves. Cook until aromatic and crispy. Remove sage from the oil and drain on a paper towel. Save the fragrant oil in a small container.
3. In a blender or small food processor, puree the cooked vegetables from the broth. Take a few spoonfuls from the cooking soup to make the puree.
4. Add the cooked rice to the soup and simmer until warm and tender.
5. Add the pureed vegetables. The soup should thicken a bit.
6. Serve soup in a bowl or mug. Top with a sprinkle of chopped parsley, onion slices, a crumble of fried sage, and a drizzle of aromatic oil.

The Journey of this recipe

Dry Bone soup is very simple and humble. Bones, root vegetables, water.   A little bit of nothing that simmered over hours turns into something very special. 

There is no abundance in this soup, just the beauty of the efficiency of scraps. 

Scraps snatched from the remains of a dinner plate.

Or a vegetable pulled from the earth, roots and all, like an unwanted weed that it sometimes was.

There is no abundance in this soup, just the beauty of the efficiency of scraps. And time.

Time is transformative. The bones give up their nurturing flavour.

The bitter onion turns inside itself to reveal a gentleness underneath layers of film that would otherwise bring tears.  Garlic loses its punch and pungency.Crunchy carrots and celery become sweet and creamy.

This soup is simple but requires more than its ingredients. It requires the gift of abundant time to be complete.

Anchor the recipe to a person but not in a nostalgic way 

My parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and their parents and grandparents subsided on some variation of this dry bone soup. Sometimes it was out of necessity; most of the time that was the case for many of them. And for some of them it was a source of comfort and the familiar that they could turn to after disappointment, loss, or to work through the grip of melancholy.

Sometimes the soup was just bones with nothing else. Sometimes it had more and different vegetables. Maybe even a bit of meat.

Nowadays this soup is enjoyed as a celebration. And a triumph over challenge and adversity.

And consumed by choice.

The Blacker the Cherry….

I have a love-hate-and-now-trying-to-fall-in-love-again-relationship with cherries. 

Fresh cherries, when they are in season and at their peak, are among the simplest and most seductive of mother nature’s pleasures and seasonal bounty. 

Tiny, juicy little coquettes ooze with sweetness when you nibble, then bite, into their flesh. 

Dripping red when they are at their best, leaving lips and fingers coloured in a beautiful burgundy shade like a super fine wine. Indeed, the blacker the cherry, the sweeter the juice.

Eating cherries was a solitary ritual for me though the stains they left on my teeth, tongue, and fingers, and sometimes clothing telegraphed my private indulgence to the rest of the world. 

Every year when I lived in New York City, I waited until cherries were in season and headed to my favourite farmers market. I picked Each.And.Every.One individually and lovingly, sometimes spending more than an hour to do so. I loved doing this and looked forward to it like I did during the same time of the year by spending a home game alone at Yankee Stadium with my beloved team.

Cherries. My little cuties….where did our love go?

It went out of my life when my two stepchildren came in, and any chance of having this solitary, annual delectable experience went ‘poof’ because they ate any and everything in the house. So one day, I picked my pound of cherries, went home, and ate the whole box while they were away because I simply could not share my luscious little buddies with the human hoovers in my house. Shortly after the kids came home, my stomach began rumbling, then it did the tango and a whole lot more, and I was sick for three days. Finding a random cherry pit on the kitchen floor, my husband threw me a knowing side-eye glance as he stifled a guffaw.

After that, I felt guilty, not for eating a whole pound of cherries, but for not sharing them or passing on the joy of this singular experience with my children. And I have hardly ever eaten another cherry in more than 15 years since.

The economies of the United States and Europe from the 1600s to the mid-1800s were built, and propelled by the forced labour of millions of kidnapped and enslaved Africans, primarily from the western and central parts of the continent. Cotton, tobacco, sugar, coffee, peanuts, wheat, and benne (sesame) were the agricultural backbone of these economies, much like oil is in this region today. In the United States, the king of all crops was Carolina Gold rice. Tracing back to Africa, it was introduced in South Carolina in the late 1700s where the overwhelming majority of enslaved Africans landed, dreadfully, in the United States.

Carolina Gold singularly redefined rice as a viable and abundant American export. Carolina Gold was the rice standard during its reign and became synonymous globally with long-grain rice. Fueled by slave labour, it was the first commodity to enter international trading markets, including Europe, the Indian subcontinent, and Asia. After slavery was abolished in 1865, the crop all but disappeared into extinction, ostensibly because of the demise of slavery as a legal institution and source of free and disposable labour. 

Recognised as an heirloom grain, Carolina Gold has burst onto the culinary scene again, this time on its own terms. It is grown in small batches by a handful of organic producers. It is revered as an artisanal experience in top restaurants and craft kitchens worldwide.

As a descendant of enslaved people brought to the Americas, the artist intends this project to imagine what her ancestors would have eaten—for survival and pleasure—and how we should reckon with this culinary legacy in a contemporary setting. Rice would have been a staple of their diet, brought from Africa to the Americas. Chronicled in trading as a significant global commodity, there was no recognition of their back-breaking toil and unremunerated labour. The project is also a continuation of An Introductory Curriculum for Reparations, an online resource commissioned by the Alserkal Arts Foundation for anyone interested in learning more about the complex history of race relations in the USA.

Sound by:

BLACKBODY, WHITE NOISE, 2021-2022; Radio art composition; Ricardo iamuuri Robinson; American, b. 1976

THERE ARE BLACK PEOPLE IN THE FUTURE 2020 by La'Vender Freddy

Special thanks to Anson Mills