The Free Library of Philadelphia’s Culinary Literacy Center is hosting Greens: A Taste of African Heritage. Saturday’s free online cooking lesson will walk participants through three recipes with roots in the continent’s healthy eating traditions.
The dishes are all vegetarian, some vegan, with collard greens playing a prominent role.
“They’re so sacred to the African American community,” course instructor Claire L. Richardson told Billy Penn. “We’ve all grown up eating them in such different ways, depending on where our families come from, from the African diaspora.”
Attendees will be shown how to make creamed coconut greens with lime, as well as a kale salad with caramelized onions, sauteed apples and a cardamom dressing. The final dish is a Kenyan kachumbari — a tomato and onion salad — with a garlic, honey, and balsamic vinegar dressing.
None of the recipes are strictly traditional; instead, “loosely based on African cooking” customs and techniques, Richardson said. The aim is to stay culinarily “connected to our ancestry,” she explained, “by cooking in a healthier way.”
Richardson selected the three recipes from The African Heritage Diet, set by OldWays, a Boston-based nonprofit that promotes healthy and sustainable eating habits stemming from various cultural traditions.
“[As] we’ve passed things down through the generations, they got a little saltier, a little fattier, the recipes have gotten a little distorted,” Richardson said, citing the disproportionate rate of diabetes and high-blood pressure among African Americans.
As a mother who frequently struggled with finding nutritious meals to appeal to her diabetic son, she said she was able to incorporate the recipes into their daily lives.
Now a chief instructor and ambassador for the nonprofit, Richardson first came across OldWays in 2015, during their pilot program in the Free Library on Vine Street. She was initially skeptical.
“I was like, “I don’t want collard greens without meat,”” she said. “But everything I tasted I was floored by; it was so good.”
Beyond appealing to anyone with an interest in African culinary traditions or healthier diets, the lesson’s lineup is budget-friendly, Richardson said. She spent $15 on ingredients for all three of Saturday’s dishes — listed here.
While the idea is to cook along with Richardson, the lesson is also open for anyone to just watch, learn, or ask questions, said Aurora Sanchez, Healthy Communities Coordinator at the Free Library’s Culinary Literacy Center, who’ll be assisting Richardson throughout the lesson.
“We encourage folks to chime in and talk about what foods they love, and why they love them,” said Sanchez. “It’s more like conversation and cooking.”
The free Zoom session will begin at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday. Registration will close two hours in advance, at 10:30 a.m. A list of ingredients for the recipes is available here.
Greens: A Taste of African Heritage is the second in a series of six lessons. You can find more on the Culinary Literacy Center’s upcoming events online.
