Other People's Bookshelves Q&A with Mecca Bos.
'Black women are some of the most important architects of Southern cooking'
Q - Hello, Mecca. Can you please tell us about yourself and your substack publication?
A - I am a longtime Twin Cities based food writer and chef who specializes in championing the voices of people of color, especially women of color in the kitchen. I am co-founder of BIPOC Foodways Alliance, an organization dedicated breaking down silos between cultural communities; while simultaneously providing a platform for women of color to tell stories through their cultural legacy home cooking. My Substack BIPOC Foodways with Mecca Bos is a home for these stories and themes (plus the occasional personal ditty from me!)
Q - Please tell us about your bookshelves and cookbook collection, what does it consist of and how many do you have?
A - My cookbook collection is a mashup of my own and my partner’s. Previous to moving in together, I had a smallish collection of only books that were highly personal and important to me. This includes books gifted to me, and books that I couldn’t resist buying for myself. Sean is an Indigenous food sovereignty expert, and our interests intersect in many ways. He loves gifting books, and if something catches his eye that we would be interested in, he usually grabs it. My collection has gotten a lot better, thanks to this!
I love a lot of these books, but most of the time I’m not using them to cook from, to be honest. I love books that have a strong narrative, and a strong point of view. That said, I do find that recipes that come from books instead of the internet are usually more inspiring, and a lot of times they work better! I don’t know if the younger generation knows this or not, but I would encourage young people to at least amass a small collection of reliable go-to books for kitchen use. Like a lot of people, I have a tendency to read cookbooks the way I would a novel, devouring the narrative parts and even poring over ingredients lists and techniques. It’s fascinating to me how different cooks approach the kitchen in their own personal ways.
Q - Which cookbooks do you love and use the most and why? Do any of them have a sentimental value?
A - This photograph depicts some of my all time favorites.
From top to bottom:
Before the internet, no pro kitchen worth its salt would be caught without a ‘Food Lover’s Companion’. It’s sort of a glossary of kitchen terms that was invaluable when you couldn’t just flick open Google to find out what a bain marie is, for instance. My mom bought this one for me at a kitchen store when I was first starting out in pro kitchens.
‘The Taste of Country Cooking’ is one of the most beautiful cookbooks ever written, but the fact that it is written by Edna Lewis, one of the grande dames of Southern Cooking, means the world to me. As a Black woman chef I often come up short on inspiring voices, and Edna Lewis always finds a way to keep me going when I crack open this book.
I got ‘The Italian Country Table’ as a membership incentive to public radio 25 years ago when I was just starting out as an adult and getting married. We had very little money– we had very little of anything– but this book helped me gain some confidence as a new home cook. Lynn Rosetto Kasper has become a wonderful friend to me. The Balsamico Roast Chicken and Potatoes were on heavy rotation in my house, and they’ll never go out of style.
‘Eat Me’ by Kenny Shopsin is a perfect example of this narrative-style cookbook that you won’t be able to put down if you start reading it. Check out the documentary on Shopsin’s, one of the most iconic New York City restaurants of all time. I ate there twice before Kenny passed away, and had the chance to tell him how much I loved him, and his cooking. There will never be anyone like Kenny–he was a true individual.
When I had a fledgling personal cooking business as a young chef, a client gifted me ‘How to Cook Everything’ by Mark Bittman and it quite literally saved my business as I wasn’t very adept at cooking at the time in spite of going headlong into a business. It’s my most shopworn book, and it gets things done. Short ingredients lists, straightforward techniques, and versatile. I’d still recommend it to this day.
‘The Jemima Code’ is the book that set me on my path to learning about Black women in the kitchen. Prior to receiving this book as a gift from an aunt, I could not understand why I felt so frustrated and uninspired as a Black woman chef. The answer was hidden within the Jemima Code. This book is like ground zero for me.
Q - Are there any rare or special editions in your collection?
A - I don’t have any rare or special editions in my collection that I know of, but I do have several signed copies– two signed by Anthony Bourdain are prized possessions, one by Paul Prudhomme, and another by Toni Tipton Martin, who is an idol of mine and a casual friend.
Q - Can you remember your first cookbook? What was it and do you still have it with you?
A - The earliest cookbook I had was a tattered old thing with binding that barely held the colorful pages together– sadly I cannot remember its title. Inside was a beloved cookie recipe that my mom and I would make together when I was barely five years old. I don’t have it with me anymore, but I wish I did. I can see its colorful pages in my mind’s eye. My mom keeps everything, and I should really check in with her to see if she still has it.
One of the things I like to remind the younger generation is that when I was young and getting into cooking, there was no internet, and so a lot of times you were relegated to whatever cookbooks your mom or grandma had on their shelves. You might grab one of those books and start cooking out of it just because it was what you had available to you. That’s how I made coq au vin for my entire family at Easter one year when I was barely in college and had zero cooking experience. It was pretty much a disaster, but that’s how you learn to cook– by making a lot of mistakes, and being unafraid to get back into the kitchen anyway.
Q - What system do you use to organise or file your books?
A - I don’t organize my books in any special way– it’s completely random like a lot of my life. It bothers me not at all! I can usually find what I’m looking for anyway, and in my search, sometimes I’ll come across something surprising that I haven’t seen in awhile.
Q - What is your oldest Cookbook and when was it published?
A - I’m not sure what my oldest book is, but I had an antique copy of The Pillsbury Family Cookbook– I got it at an antique store. It was one of the first books I started cooking out of– again, not because it was the greatest book, but because it’s what I had available to me. My mom loved to go antiquing when I was a kid, and I gravitated toward cooking even then. I gifted it to a friend a few years back because it had such sentimental value to me and I wanted to give her something special from my heart.
Q - Which cookbooks would you recommend and why?
A - I recommend cookbooks written by Black women, because they are still so woefully rare. I can get up on a soapbox on this subject for hours, but suffice to say that Black women are some of the most important architects of Southern cooking, and yet our contributions are not well documented or even credited properly to this day. Consider this quote by Journalist John Edgerton:
“Throughout 350 years of slavery, segregation, and legally enforced white supremacy, the vast majority of women of African ancestry in the South lived lives tightly circumscribed [to] . . . domestic kitchens. To them fell the overarching responsibility for the feeding of the South, as well as the duty of birthing and nurturing replacement generations.”
And yet, the vast majority of these recipes were never written, or credit for them was not given to the rightful owners of that intellectual property. Of the 100,000+ recipe collections published over hundreds of years of American history through the end of the 20th century, only 200 or so have been credited to black cooks and writers. Pick up Toni Tipton Martin’s ‘The Jemima Code’ to read more about this important subject.
Q - Do you prefer cookbooks by famous chefs, regional cuisine, or specific themes?
A - I prefer cookbooks written by personalities– or better put, writers. I don’t care if the writer is famous at all, but I just want it to read well and be entertaining. This is why one of my favorite books of all time is ‘Vibration Cooking’ by Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor.
Less of a traditional cookbook and more a set of guidelines-meets-memoir, it’s one of the most entertaining books you’ll read in any genre. Anyone can learn to cook– I’m a strong believer in this– but it takes someone special to put that knowledge into a strong point of view and highly personal ethos. This is what I look for in a cookbook.
Q - Which cookbook authors have you met or would you like to meet? Tell us about them.
A - Well, I live with one of my favorite cookbook authors, Sean Sherman, and as I said above, I met Toni Tipton Martin, who I truly admire. I had the great pleasure of dining in Jacques Pepin’s home, as well as Mark Bittman’s. I've met Jose Andres, and Lynne Rosetto Kasper is another idol and wonderful friend. I got to chat up Anthony Bourdain twice in 24 hours. There are many more. I’m truly lucky.
I’m in the process of writing a cookbook proposal that explores my own identity as a biracial woman born and raised in the Upper Midwest, and my search for identity through the lens of food. This is the kind of book I would buy if I found it on the shelves, and I hope my shelf (and many other people’s shelves) becomes a home for it one day!
Thank you for sharing your bookshelves and cookbooks with us Mecca.
You can also take a peek into Mecca’s Kitchen in this Other People’s Kitchens Q&A with Mecca
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Great 👍 must read piece 💎
Loved this Mecca, such a great read and an impressive collection! I also find myself drawn to the ones with a strong voice and a good story 😊 Best of luck with your own cookbook - that's very exciting!