Years back, on an evening in Awendaw, South Carolina, a nine-year-old girl named Charlotte made dinner for her family. Charlotte’s mother had just stepped out to tend to an emergency, and the child took it upon herself to light the stove and cook up a meal of rice and fried liver, complete with a rich, brown gravy made from the fond left behind in the skillet. Now at age 81, the renowned Gullah Geechee chef Charlotte Jenkins says, “I always watched my mother cook and enjoyed being with her in the kitchen, so I figured it would be no problem for me to cook as I’d seen her do.” And she was right. When her mother called to check in, Charlotte’s brother answered the phone and let their mother know that Charlotte had not only capably prepared their dinner, but she’d done very well—and the gravy was perfect.

From that early moment, a spark was lit in chef Jenkins that couldn’t be extinguished. She held her brother’s opinion in high regard, and he encouraged her to continue cooking. In 1962, just after graduating from high school, she moved to New York City, joining other African Americans in the Great Migration, a time when many Black Southerners moved north and west in search of a release from the grips of the highly oppressive Jim Crow South. She eventually returned to South Carolina in 1973 to raise a family with her late husband Frank, a fellow Lowcountry native, and in 1997, the two of them opened Gullah Cuisine in Mount Pleasant, a restaurant that served the Jenkins family’s authentic Gullah Geechee food—red rice, okra gumbo, shrimp and grits, and seafood casserole—for almost two decades.

Like Jenkins (as well as my grandmother and most of my elders), I also had fond childhood memories of cooking, eating, and feeding my family. Despite growing up in Charleston, just across the river from Mount Pleasant, I never had an opportunity to eat at Jenkins’ restaurant, which closed when she retired in 2014. Truthfully, I didn’t learn about her work until I began my own journey as a chef, when I started looking into the culinary history of my hometown. Along the way, I came across a multitude of Black women chefs who, just like Jenkins, had largely been left out of conversations in the media around Southern cooking.

This past March, at the annual Charleston Wine + Food festival, I had the great pleasure of leading a cooking class with Jenkins and her daughter Kesha, where we taught our guests how to cook a perfect pot of rice, as well as conch stew and wedding punch, two recipes from her seminal 2010 cookbook, Gullah Cuisine: By Land and By Sea. “The conch stew to me was always an authentic Gullah dish,” Jenkins tells me, “something that wasn’t even an everyday thing for us because conch was sometimes hard to get. And back in the days when we got conch, it was exciting to prepare it. It’s in this odd shell, and you have to work to get the meat, and to me, the final product is delicious.” The wedding punch was a recipe of Kesha’s, a refreshing, celebratory concoction of moonshine, fresh sliced fruit, and Kool-Aid that packed a powerful punch (pun intended). Jenkins kept a watchful eye on me as I prepped and cooked the stew alongside her. After working so many years in professional kitchens, I’m great under pressure, but no chef in any restaurant gave me the feeling that Jenkins gave me then—a look that said, “I trust you to make this, but I’m keeping my eye on you just in case.”

Kesha, Jenkins, and I also discussed the role that Gullah Geechee culture played in creating American cuisine and its roots in the African diaspora. When enslaved West Africans were first brought from their fertile rice-growing homeland to the low-lying barrier islands of South Carolina, they retained their culture and community as much as they could. Many recognizable Southern American dishes, such as collard greens, cornbread, and sweet potato pie, were developed during this time, and are emblematic of the Gullah culture’s enduring influence. 

Despite existing for centuries in the South Carolina Lowcountry, Gullah Geechee cooking is still considered a new concept to many, and Jenkins acknowledged that the investors and income her restaurant required simply weren’t there when she needed them. “I didn’t get that support,” Jenkins tells me. “The support I got was from my family, my savings, and our community—that’s what kept us going.” But while it was around, her Gullah Cuisine restaurant was instrumental in putting the region’s foodways on the map. “Nobody seemed to know about Gullah food then, or that Gullah Geechee people exist and have a style of cooking,” Jenkins says. “The restaurant woke people up to that.”

Despite being retired, Jenkins continues to answer the call she felt as a young girl and hasn’t stopped cooking since; after many years, she’s still mentoring young chefs, cooking for family and friends, and catering private events with Kesha at her side. At 2023’s Charleston Wine + Food festival, a year before our cooking class together, Jenkins and other Gullah matriarchs from across the Lowcountry were honored at a dinner prepared by young women chefs with ties to the local community. “I saw all the work I’d done didn’t go in vain,” Jenkins says. “It means a lot to me to teach others about our cuisine and culture,” she adds, “because if I don’t share, it dies. But by sharing, I can keep it alive.” 

Recipes

Gullah Conch Stew

Get the recipe >

Pineapple Moonshine Punch

Get the recipe >

The post Chef Charlotte Jenkins Is Spreading the Gospel of Gullah Cuisine appeared first on Saveur.

“Stew means something special in the Lowcountry,” says Charleston, South Carolina-based chef Amethyst Ganaway. “These smothered seafood dishes appear in a lot of those old spiral-bound fishermen’s wives’ cookbooks, but I added dawadawa and crawfish powder to this recipe, to tie it back to West African culture, where coastal communities use smoked fish to create umami.” Dawadawa, or iru, are fermented locust beans, a popular condiment in Nigerian-style soups and stews; many West African techniques and ingredients are essential aspects of Gullah Geechee cooking. Carolina Lowcountry stews often employ bacon or smoked pork for flavor, but Ganaway wanted to accentuate the freshly shucked local oysters in her meatless version; she also added rich seasonings including sun-dried tomato powder, bay leaf powder, and smoked chipotle powder. This Lowcountry brown oyster stew recipe was a highlight during a dinner Ganaway cooked at the Charleston Wine + Food Festival to honor such Gullah Geechee culinary matriarchs as Emily Meggett and Sallie Ann Robinson. 

Look for crawfish powder or dried shrimp powder at a Caribbean or African grocer, or online. Caribbean bay leaf powder, dawadawa, and sun-dried tomato powder can also be found online. When shucking the oysters, reserve the liquor (the juice that gets released from inside the shells) to incorporate the briny flavor into the stew. Season the brown oyster stew with more salt as needed before serving.

Featured in, “A Tribute to the Matriarchs of the Lowcountry.”

The post Lowcountry Brown Oyster Stew appeared first on Saveur.

Nestled between two major tourist destinations, Edisto—a small island off the South Carolina coast about an hour south of Charleston and two hours north of Hilton Head Island—is a reminder of days long past. Winding roads, some paved and others not, are shrouded by overhanging Spanish moss; a salty breeze, just barely there, gently counters the humidity. It’s a place where the earth and the Atlantic Ocean’s tributaries meet, surrounded by lush thickets that have acted as a natural barrier for centuries, allowing the local people and their culture to thrive.

Gullah Geechee folkways and heritage permeate Edisto. And the matriarch of the storied island is widely considered to be Emily Meggett, 89, a bearer of the culture all along the Gullah Geechee Corridor, which traces the coastlines of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. 

In her new cookbook Gullah Geechee Home Cooking, Meggett shares her remarkable life story and how she has honored her Gullah Geechee, African, and Southern roots through food. She also traces her family’s history, from her ancestors’ enslavement in the Lowcountry to her own upbringing in Edisto. (Meggett’s great-great-grandfather was one of the “kings of Edisto Island,” a community patriarch who, after enslavement, was able to settle on the island.)

As a child, Meggett spent her days out in nature, searching for massive conches on the beaches and enjoying the bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables. She especially relished in the days before a possible big storm, when the community would cook all kinds of delicious food in case bad weather impacted their supply. Meggett also met the love of her life on the island. She and her husband built a home there and raised 10 children, while maintaining strong ties to the local community and culture. Meggett was, and still is, very active in her local church and spent 46 years working at the Dodge House (a Sea Island cotton plantation home built in 1810, now a museum, where freed slaves once found refuge). In both places, she honed her culinary chops and became well known for her generous, loving spirit—and for taking care of others through food. 

To learn the intricacies of Gullah Geechee cuisine is to unlearn all of the stereotypical narratives about Southern food. Southern and Soul food are usually used interchangeably, despite the terms having different meanings, and mainstream media often implies that both cuisines are fatty and over-salted, born out of necessity rather than trained expertise. Gullah food shows that Southern and Soul food are none of these things, and people have been cooking and eating these dishes since before colonization and the transatlantic slave trade. The use of fresh, local ingredients, as well as techniques like one-pot cooking and barbequing, reveal that whipping up both cuisines requires much more skill and innovation than the chefs and cooks receive credit for.

The first recipe featured in Meggett’s book teaches readers how to prepare deviled crab, a dish that requires immense skill—from cleaning and cooking the fresh-caught crab, to removing the tender meat, seasoning it, and spooning it back into the shells. In the Lowcountry, blue crabs are best in spring and summer, when the crustaceans’ bodies are full of sweet, plump flesh and—if you’re lucky enough to have a female crab—creamy roe. Locals know how to catch them by hand with a trap or with a single piece of string tied around a piece of raw chicken (and how to order them at the local seafood market or from a local fisherman). Unless you’re from or have visited the region, Meggett’s recipe is a revelation, and it’s no surprise that her deviled crab is famous throughout the region. The result is moist and subtly sweet, rich and bright without being heavy. Though the term “farm to table” is rarely used in the context of African American cookery, dishes like Meggett’s deviled crab embody the very concept. 

Meggett’s book and her life are a testament to how being from the Lowcountry means being connected to everything and everyone around you. In this community, there exists an unparalleled symbiosis between the people and nature, with families tending to the same land—and to each other—generation after generation. Throughout her book, Meggett interweaves the stories of the people—Black women in particular—who helped shape her into a nurturer and inspire her recipes. She spotlights the mothers, aunties, 

friends, church folk, and elders who first taught her to make a pot of creamy grits as a child, and mentors like Julia Brown, a Gullah woman who showed Meggett the ins and outs of professional cooking later in her career. Brown taught her, “You do it right or you do it over,” the age-old adage professional cooks and chefs are often told in fine dining, and one that echoes what many Black mothers and aunties teach their children at home.

The role Meggett plays in her community is one countless Black women share but are rarely celebrated for. Her story and recipes should easily be heralded alongside those of some of history’s greatest culinarians, like Edna Lewis, Leah Chase, and Julia Child. Meggett’s food isn’t fussy—it invites home cooks from all backgrounds into the kitchen to learn how to cook fresh and flavorful dishes without the stress of perfection we often see presented on social media and television. Her love for food and her community is an essential ingredient that makes her cooking, and Gullah food as a whole, so special. Gullah meals are made to be shared with others, and Meggett makes that clear in the portion sizes and headnotes throughout her cookbook. For instance, in her fried shrimp recipe, Meggett calls for people to make “enough for family, guests, and anybody who ‘just happens’ to stop by.”

Gullah Geechee food, culture, and people are often described as being on the brink of some sort of extinction, which can lead outsiders to misuse and appropriate their cultural heritage like music, art, and food, rather than appreciating it. But Gullah people have survived for so long, and they will continue to do so through future generations of culture bearers and griots. Today, Meggett continues to feed her community in Edisto, regularly delivering food to banks, doctors’ offices, and hospitals throughout the greater Charleston area. Her legacy goes beyond the meals—it’s her kindness and joy that authentically spreads to those around her. To sit at Meggett’s table (or to recreate one of her belly-warming dishes at home) is to feel and taste the love and soul put into the food.

Recipe

Deviled Crab

Get the recipe >

The post This Matriarch of Gullah Geechee Food Has Been Cooking Farm-To-Table For Decades appeared first on Saveur.