Do Aframs have their own Sandwich???
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I don't recall her mentioning the origin of pulled pork, but she did write about hearth cooking and the annual or rare plantations feasts
The quote that opens the page is taken from Solomon Northup.
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Kuwka_Atcha_Ratcha
Superstar
Own sandwich? Aframs INVENTED the sandwich,
Black Lightning
Superstar
Fried fish sammich with coleslaw.
Pig Ear Sandwich: An iconic dish of the American South
This soul-food delicacy that was once about struggle and survival has been transformed into a thing of comfort.
2 July 2020
- By Simon Urwin
“The ears give you lots of juiciness and tasty pork flavours all at the same time,” said cook Lavette Mack as she stirred a simmering pot on the stovetop. “Add a little crunch with some slaw, give it a kick with some homemade hot sauce, put it all together in a bun and you’ve got yourself something really special."
It’s mid-morning and there’s already a small queue forming at the counter of the Big Apple Inn, a much-loved soul food joint in the Farish Street neighbourhood of Jackson, Mississippi. “I’ll take six please,” said one customer in the colourful twang of the Deep South. “Give me two to have in, honey,” said another. Mack, who’s been working in the kitchen for more than 20 years, duly slices, spreads and stacks fresh batches of what’s become the most famous dish on the Big Apple’s menu: their pig ear sandwich.
The pig ear sandwich has been transformed into a comfort food (Credit: Simon Urwin)
“For some folk, they may be a novelty, a curiosity,” said Geno Lee, the current owner and great-grandson of the restaurant’s original founder. “But pigs’ ears are an important part of African American cuisine. They’re what we call peasant food; a part of the animal that historically even the poorest could afford. And that’s something the Inn has always stood for since it opened. Making sure everyone gets fed.”
The Big Apple story begins almost 100 years ago when Lee’s great-grandfather, Juan “Big John” Mora first arrived in Mississippi from Mexico in the early 1930s. “He jumped off the train in Jackson and stayed. He was never legal here,” said Lee. “Like many immigrants he got to work straight away, seeing how he could turn a dime.”
Pigs’ ears are an important part of African American cuisine
Big John built his own food cart, and using an old family recipe, began making and peddling hot tamales on street corners. By 1939 he’d saved enough money to purchase an old grocery store that he set about transforming into a restaurant.
“First he had to decide what to call it,” said Lee. “Around that time there was a dance craze sweeping the nation with lots of different moves like the ‘rusty dusty’ and the ‘pose and peck’. The dance was called The Big Apple and it was his absolute favourite. That’s how the place got its name.”
Next on Big John’s to-do list was finalising the bill of fare. He added his tamales to the shop’s existing offering of bologna – both are still on the menu to this day – but the Inn’s most iconic dish came about purely by accident.
“One day the butcher swung by and offered him some pigs’ ears for free. He snapped them up but had no idea what to do with them. That’s because when they’re fresh and raw, they’re big and tough. Come, I’ll show you.”
Carlos Laverne White has been coming to the Big Apple Inn for more than 50 years (Credit: Simon Urwin)
Lee led me to a back room and retrieved a slab of pink flesh the size of a bread-and-butter plate from a cold box. “At first Big John tried deep-frying them but couldn’t get them tender enough. Then he tried throwing them under the grill; same problem. Finally, he discovered that if he boiled them for two whole days, they’d eventually be good enough to eat.” He gestured to a pair of pressure cookers that rattled and hissed on top of a roaring gas flame nearby. “Thanks to these it now only takes us two hours to do the same thing.”
Lee then picked up a carving knife and cut an ear into three. “Each part is the perfect size to make a sandwich”, he said. “That was actually Big John’s invention. At that time, most people just ate the ears boiled but he decided to serve them in a bun. He also added the slaw, a splash of vinegar mustard diluted with water, and being of Mexican origin, it was also his idea to throw chillies in a pot and make a hot sauce.”
We walked back into the dining area, which was fast swelling with regulars as lunch hour approached. Lee invited me to sit and sample a “smoke and ears”: one pig ear sandwich alongside another filled with the ground, grilled meat from a Red Rose, a local smoked sausage.
The prices at Big Apple Inn have only gone up a penny or two every year (Credit: Simon Urwin)
A friendly diner looked over to my table and nodded his approval as a plate arrived with two freshly filled brioche buns. “I like to alternate – one bite of ear, one of smoke,” he said by way of recommendation. I followed his advice. The pig ear was glutinous, like a cooked lasagne sheet, with crunchier cartilage in the centre. It tasted like sweet bacon; the pork flavours followed by the after-punch of spicy chillies. The smoke had a deeper, richer tang from the beef hearts in the sausage and the char from the grill.
This is the place that made you glad that you were hungry
Noting my enthusiastic response to the meal, the diner went on to introduce himself as Carlos Laverne White. He told me that he’d been coming to the Inn for more than 50 years. “In all that time, the price has only gone up a penny or two every year. For those of us with little or no money, it means we can still eat,” he said. “I come once a week, when I can afford to pay the dollar and sixty cents. A smoke and ears fills me right up.”
An elderly gentleman in farm overalls settled opposite on the vivid, tangerine-coloured seating. Also a long-time customer, he told me he could remember a saying that went: “This is the place that made you glad that you were hungry.”
“That sentiment still applies to this day,” he told me with a broad smile. We chatted awhile and I asked him what makes eating at the Inn so special. He studied his pig ear sandwich while he pondered the reply.
“Well, you know something? All the unwanted bits of the pig – the feet, the tail, the chitterlings (intestines) and the ears – back in the day, it was what the slave owners used to give to the enslaved for their weekly rations. It’s a wonderful thing that what was once about struggle and survival has been turned over time into a thing of comfort. Soul food. It’s simple, but it’s delicious.”
The Big Apple Inn is a soul food joint in the Farish Street neighbourhood of Jackson, Mississippi (Credit: Simon Urwin)
After the lunchtime rush had passed, I headed back outside with Lee onto Farish Street – at one time Jackson’s equivalent of Memphis’ Beale Street or New Orleans’ Bourbon Street; a wildly popular place full of African American juke joints, movie theatres and nightclubs. “The Big Apple sat at the very heart of the action,” he said. “It was packed day and night. Not only with partygoers, but activists of the Civil Rights Movement.” He pointed to an upstairs window, now missing various panes of glass. “That used to be the office of Medgar Evers, the field secretary for the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).”
“The NAACP didn’t have much space for all their supporters, so they’d meet in the Inn and discuss their strategy for bringing an end to racial segregation. Even in those turbulent times it was a place where everyone felt safe. My grandfather was running the Inn at the time. He was mixed race – a black Latino – and an avid supporter of the movement. Anyone that got arrested, he bailed them out of jail. He took them home, gave them a meal and fresh clothes so they could get back out there and fight for justice.”
Looking up and down Farish Street, it was hard to imagine the crowds who came here to hear Evers speak, or arrived in their finery to dance the night away. In the late 60s and early 70s, businesses slowly began moving out, and now the neighbourhood is largely derelict, full of crumbling and abandoned buildings.
The Big Apple Inn swells with regulars during lunch hour (Credit: Simon Urwin)
I asked Lee why he chose to stay on and keep the business going.
“I originally studied for the priesthood then changed my mind, but the idea of ministry still appealed to me,” he replied. “I decided to become dedicated to the people of Farish Street. Selling pig ear sandwiches might not make me rich, but I leave the Big Apple Inn each night knowing that I’ve done some good, kept an important tradition alive and made sure that no-one goes home hungry. We’ve done just that throughout the pandemic in fact – staying open for take-out as we’re deemed a vital community service.”
“But, that’s not all that fills me with pride,” he added. “We now have lots of copycats in the state of Mississippi, even as far away as Memphis, Tennessee. They serve the exact same sandwich and some of them even say about their offering: ‘pig ear sandwich – just like you find on Farish Street’. So the legacy of Big John lives on and has even spread far and wide. That gives me the greatest satisfaction you could possibly imagine.”
Pig ear sandwich: An iconic dish of the American South
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Veteran
I just got done choking down the GOAT sammich, the Italian beef and sausage
and got to thinking, every ethnic group appears to have their own sandwich except Aframs.
Jews got the sandwich game on lock. Most notable is the pastrami on rye.
Italians got Cheesesteak and Italian beef
Messicans got the Torta
Puerto Ricans got the Jibarito
The Viet Cong got the Bahn Mi
WASP got the Lobster Roll
Do we lay claim to anything that has a traceable history?
Pulled Pork or Brisket Sammich? Is that our shyt?
Put me on game Coli bretheren
Also, what is your favorite sandwich?
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Food
This breathtaking quilt depicts Black people’s impact on American food, 406 times over
“The innovation and their creativity and the artifacts that have emerged, whether it was people or things or ingredients... it’s just such an incredible picture."
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The Legacy Quilt, part of the Museum of Food and Drink's new exhibit, "African/American: Making the Nation's Table." MUST CREDIT: Clay Williams/Museum of Food and Drink
Feb 25, 2022
“We’re in a few thousand square feet and we’re trying to tell 400 years of history. How do we do that?” Catherine Piccoli, the museum’s curatorial director, said about the exhibit, “African/American: Making the Nation’s Table.” “We discussed early on the concept of a quilt — since quilts are so deeply rooted in African American culture — being part of the exhibition, and as we continued to talk about the quilt it became the sort of holding place, if you will, for telling as many stories as we could.”
Scheduled to run through June 19, a.k.a. Juneteenth, the first-of-its-kind exhibit puts Black people’s culinary contributions in agriculture, culinary arts, brewing and distilling, and commerce on full display and allows guests to see, experience, and taste — yes, there is food available — the results. In addition to the quilt, the exhibit includes the Ebony Test Kitchen, a bastion of African American cuisine that was saved from demolition by preservation nonprofit Landmarks Illinois, along with photographs, artifacts, and virtual reality experiences.
Slated to open in early 2020, like so much of the rest of the world it was delayed because of the pandemic. However, given the events of the past two years — including the debut of Netflix’s High on the Hog, a docuseries based on the book of the same name by Jessica B. Harris that details Black people’s vital contributions to American food — Harris says society might be more receptive to such an exhibition than previously.
“I think clearly living in the post-George Floyd, post-COVID world, post all of the litany of names that we are now aware of, has made people more sensitized and more open to hearing about actually how foundational African Americans have always been in the creation not only of American food, but in the creation of American culture,” Harris told the Washington Post. “It’s a no-brainer in terms of music. It’s a no-brainer in terms of dance. Arguably, it’s a no-brainer in terms of popular culture and fashion, but in terms of food, people hadn’t really thought it through. So I think this is now enjoining people to maybe have that thought as well.”
MOFAD, which has been around for nearly a decade, had always wanted to curate such an exhibit. But it wasn’t until 2017 when Harris, one of the foremost scholars on foods of the African diaspora, had the capacity to be involved that it was finally put it into motion. Though Harris is listed as the lead curator, she is quick to point out that a team of people worked on the exhibit. “It was very much a collaborative effort, and that cannot be said enough,” Harris said. On top of MOFAD’s curatorial staff, an advisory committee of about 30 people, including Carla Hall, Questlove, Toni Tipton-Martin, and Michael W. Twitty, was formed to bring the idea to fruition.
Though MOFAD once occupied a space in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood, the intent was to always house "African/American" at the Africa Center, located at the nexus of Museum Mile and Harlem. "It was important for us that this exhibition be housed at an African or African American institution, and that we were near a historically Black neighborhood in the city," Piccoli said.
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"As the chef-owner of Dooky Chase's in New Orleans, Louisiana, [Leah] Chase turned a sandwich shop into an upscale restaurant for Creole cuisine, immortalizing dishes like her gumbo z'herbes. Over seven decades, diners included leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, celebrities, and US presidents," her Legacy Quilt text reads.
The Legacy Quilt was sewn by Harlem Needle Arts and features illustrations by graphic designer Adrian Franks. "The idea was to find 400 people, one for every year for the 400 years that were initially being celebrated when we were opening in 2020, which would have taken us from 1619 to 2020," Harris said, referring to the year enslaved Africans were first brought to America. "There are blank quilt squares to indicate the number of people that we just don't know and that are being discovered daily."
Food writer Osayi Endolyn was tasked with writing text to accompany each tile, and those words are displayed on a screen at the exhibit. "It kind of became a narratively based copywriting job. And as anyone who's a copywriter knows, that is some of the most important texts you'll ever read or write because it has so much potency and power," Endolyn told The Post. "It was my job to distill a lot of information down in just a very short space and to convey the who and the import of the what. That was difficult at times because you're talking about some incredibly profound people, especially under the circumstances that many of the earliest figures were in. It's just astounding."
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Anthony (Antonio) Johnson was one of the first Africans to arrive in Jamestown in 1619. "He served his indenture for 14 years before changing his name and purchasing his own land. Johnson raised livestock and ultimately grew his estate to 250 acres, a feat for a former servant," Johnson's Legacy Quilt text reads. MUST CREDIT: Adrian Franks/Harlem Needle Arts/Museum of Food and DrinkLegacy Quilt Project online and even submit their own African American culinary heroes.
"With this ongoing digital quilt, we are now able to, as people find folks and as people propose folks, to update and continue the quilt. And so it becomes an ongoing process that really reflects that history is not static," Harris said. As part of this effort, the museum's education staff assembled a guide for teachers and school groups to do their own legacy quilt projects, which has already been put to use by at least one classroom.
A media event and friends and family exhibitions held in the week leading up to the grand opening gave Harris and the rest of the team the first opportunity to see the public's response. "It was kind of wonderful," Harris said. "Hopefully they will have learned something, thought of things, or found a connecting point that will bring it forward and move it onward."
“African/American: Making the Nation’s Table” is at the Africa Center’s Aliko Dangote Hall in New York City through June 19
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UberEatsDriver
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- Brooklyn keeps on taking it.
East coast and Chicago dudes should come to the table and make a sandwich since we eat so many of them
2nd on the BBQ pulled pork.
Another staple, especially at church functions is a catfish sandwich.
