H.B.C.U. Homecomings Are Canceled, but Students and Alumni Will Feast Anyway
Brunch, a major part of homecoming at historically Black colleges and universities, is still on for this year, even if it has to be virtual.
Matriculation at historically Black colleges and universities is more than late-night study sessions: It’s a balancing act between academics and discovering merriment, and learning how to be. It’s routine to walk the same grassy quadrant as ancestors who believed education was a weapon, while making plans to let off steam.
At homecoming, the uniqueness of the Black college experience is on full display for everyone to take in.
This year, many homecoming festivities have been canceled because of the Covid-19 pandemic. But the energy of game day never dissipates. Memories of tailgating sustain many graduates of H.B.C.U.s, and brunch, which has become the new cornerstone of homecoming celebrations, will be a virtual affair for 2020.
And there are many alumni who will have no problem cooking at home. Pinky Cole(a graduate of Clark Atlanta) founded the fast-casual chain Slutty Vegan; Keisha Lance Bottoms(Florida A&M, or FAMU), the 60th mayor of Atlanta, has posted pictures of sweet potato pies and macaroni and cheese that have gone viral. The chef Carla Hall(Howard), the award-winning cookbook author Bryant Terry(Xavier) and Senator Kamala Harris(Howard), who has said she loves to cook — the list goes on.
A Taste of France Without Venturing Too Far
A trip to Normandy — and an attractive salad pairing — inspired this menu from David Tanis.
Time moves along, and suddenly it’s fall. The weather is fine, and trees are sporting multicolored leaves. A different kind of hunger sets in, and you’re longing for the food of autumn — deeper, more robust fare.
For me, composing a three-course menu is always fun. You want a balance of flavors and textures and a certain progression. Start the meal with something light and bright, go for deeper notes in the main course and end with something sweet, but not too sweet.
Inspiration can come from anywhere: a gander at the produce in the market, advice from a cookbook or two, a sudden craving. Sometimes I start with dessert and work backward. Or begin in the middle and then decide on the other courses.
This menu began with a memory.
I recalled a salad I’d had at a restaurant in Normandy, in northern France. That probably sounds grandiose, but I was living and working in Paris at the time, just getting out of town for the weekend to visit friends. We stopped for lunch at an unassuming little bistro, where there were only a few choices on the menu: salad or pâté to begin, duck confit or steak for the main (both with fried potatoes) and Camembert or an apple tart to finish. The place wasn’t at all fancy — this was basic, simple French fare.
What I Learned From Loving Mapo Tofu
A decades-long fascination with the much-loved Sichuan dish inspires research — and eventually a little experimentation.
Anyone who says tofu is bland or boring hasn’t eaten mapo tofu, the intoxicatingly spicy, fragrant dish from the Sichuan Province of China.
Unlike the gentle Vietnamese tofu dishes I grew up with in Southern California, "mapo" as some casually refer to it, first captured my attention as a teenager in the early 1980s, when my dad and his buddy — whom we always reverently called Mr. Lee — let me tag along for lunch at a Chinese restaurant. As the adults talked, I ate as much of the tender tofu cubes and piquant meat sauce as I could without seeming piggish.
More than smitten, I became fascinated with the slithery brow-wiper, going on to research it in library books as a youth, traveling to Chengdu (the capital of Sichuan Province and the dish’s birthplace) to understand its origins, and later experimenting with it in my own kitchen.
Mapo tofu is sometimes translated as "pockmarked old woman's bean curd"(In Chinese, "ma" refers to pockmarks, and "po" can refer to an older woman.) The name is an inelegant nod to the smallpox-scarred skin of Mrs. Chen, who is said to have invented the dish in the late 1800s at her family’s restaurant in northern Chengdu.
As the story goes, porters lugging oil to market would frequent her establishment, and one day, they requested an affordable dish made of tofu and meat cooked up with some of the oil they transported. Mrs. Chen seasoned her creation with Sichuan staples, and it became a hit, its popularity only growing over time.
