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Tuesday, May 10, 2022
The Observer & Baker City Herald
Flavors from the
South
Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
This elegant salad from Alexander Smalls is built around the childhood fl avors of pears, fi eld greens and black-eyed peas. It’s tossed in a sweet, savory citrus vinaigrette.
Former opera singer Alexander Smalls explores
his childhood foods in his cookbook
By GRETCHEN McKAY
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
P
ITTSBURGH — Alexander Smalls was
a professional opera singer before he
reinvented himself as a chef and restaurateur.
So it’s no surprise he brings an artist’s eye to the
recipes he created for his 2020 cookbook, “Meals,
Music, And Muses: Recipes From my African
American Kitchen” (Flatiron, $35).
Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Alexander Small’s deviled crab cake recipe comes with a spicy Creole
mayonnaise.
He brings a pretty good
ear to the Southern dishes
featured in the book, by
off ering a “soundtrack” of
the bold and fl avorful Gullah
Geechee foods he grew up
eating and learned to cook
in Spartanburg, South Caro-
lina — some of which were
featured at the Declaration &
Resistance dinner he curated
April 23 at the Westmoreland
Museum of American Art to
celebrate an exhibition of Bal-
timore artist Stephen Towns.
Each chapter pays homage
to a genre of music tied to a
category of food. Starters,
for instance, are likened to
the improvisation, blues and
swing found in jazz while
rice, pasta and grits — “lean
on me” dishes that are often
the backbone of a home
cook’s repertoire — represent
the comfort of spirituals.
As he notes in the cook-
book’s forward, food and
music are inextricably linked
in the U.S., especially in
African American culture.
“Both Southern music and
Southern food are rooted in a
knotty lineage that connects
West Africa and Western
Europe,” he writes.
Smalls spent years
traveling the world as a
young artist, and won both
Grammy and Tony awards
for the cast recording of
“Porgy and Bess,” by George
Gershwin, with the Houston
Grand Opera. Yet he was
never able to break opera’s
glass ceiling as a Black man;
his last audition with the
Metropolitan Opera in New
York, he recalls, resulted
in an off er to be part of the
chorus instead of the prime
role he’d made his debut to,
to rave reviews.
“So I left devastated,” he
says, “but really determined
to get on with my life,” by
opening the small, inti-
mate restaurant he’d always
dreamed of in the back of his
mind.
Cafe Beulah, one of the
forerunners of the soul food
revolution in New York
City, opened in 1994 to rave
reviews. Four more restau-
rants followed, including
The Cecil in 2013, which
highlights the interplay
between African and Asian
cuisines, and the jazz bar
and restaurant Minton’s
next door.
“I needed to own not just
a seat at the table,” Smalls
says, “but the whole table.”
His fi rst cookbook, 2018’s
“Between Harlem and
Heaven: Afro-Asian-Amer-
ican Cooking for Big Nights,
Weeknights, and Every Day,”
won him a 2019 James Beard
Foundation Book Award for
best American cookbook. It
explores the immense infl u-
ence the African diaspora
has had on global cuisine.
With “Meals, Music, and
Muses,” Smalls hopes to
continue the conversation
about the unsung contribu-
tions people of the African
diaspora have made to
American cuisine.
“It’s essentially my sort of
ode to the African-American
kitchen, and my pathway if
you will,” he says. “The lens
to which I’ve been the cre-
ative person that I am.”
DEVILED CRAB
CAKES WITH
SPICY CREOLE
MAYO
“Crab cakes are an essential
part of Southern coastal cooking,”
Alexander Smalls writes in “Meals,
Music, and Muses,” which is why
the chef and restaurateur has had
them on his restaurant and catering
menus for more than 30 years. This
“Jazz” starter, which can be made
larger for a plated entree or smaller
as an appetizer, features a robust
Creole mayonnaise brightened with
cayenne to lift the fl avor profi le.
If you’re trying to cut back on
fried foods, you can bake the crab
cakes in a 400-degree oven until
browned, about 5 minutes.
For crab cakes
1 pound lump crabmeat,
picked over for shells
2 tablespoons fi nely chopped onion
2 tablespoon fi nely
chopped red pepper
2 tablespoons fi nely chopped celery
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley
2 large eggs, beaten
1 cup small cubes white
bread, toasted
1/2 cup plain bread crumbs,
plus more for dredging
2 teaspoons fi nely chopped
fresh thyme
1 1/2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
See, South/Page B2
Spending time in parks good for the brain, study suggests
By DOUGLAS PERRY
oregonlive.com
Living around greenery
modestly fuels the brain
in middle-aged women,
helping to ward off depres-
sion and dementia, a study
concludes.
The research builds on
earlier work that showed
spending as little as 20 min-
utes in nature can cut one’s
stress hormone levels. The
benefi ts of this have been
called the “nature pill.”
“Some of the primary
ways that nature may
improve health is by helping
people recover from psycho-
logical stress and by encour-
aging people to be outside
socializing with friends,
both of which boost mental
health,” the new study’s lead
author, Marcia Pescador
Jimenez, told a Boston Uni-
versity publication.
Pescador Jimenez is an
assistant professor of epide-
miology at the university’s
School of Public Health.
In the study, published in
the medical journal JAMA
Network Open, researchers
measured “psychomotor
speed, attention, learning
and working memory” in
more than 13,000 women,
with an average age of 61,
who had completed self-ad-
ministered online cognitive
testing. The researchers esti-
mated the subjects’ green-
space exposure through a
satellite imagery tool that
detects and quantifi es live
green vegetation.
Adjusting for age, race
and socioeconomic status,
the study found “higher res-
idential surrounding green
space” is associated with
higher scores of overall cog-
nitive function, psycho-
motor speed and attention.
“Cognitive function at
middle age is considered a
strong predictor of whether
a person may develop
dementia later in life,”
Boston University’s The
Brink publication points out.
The reason for this
improved brain power
appears straightforward:
Being around green spaces
promotes physical activity
and calming thoughts –
and reduces exposure to air
pollution.
Spending time in nature
has been shown to reduce
infl ammation in the body,
aid the ability to sleep
well and improve immune
function.
“Based on these results,
clinicians and public-health
authorities should con-
sider green space expo-
sure as a potential factor to
reduce depression, and thus,
boost cognition,” Pescador
Jimenez said. “Policymakers
and urban planners should
focus on adding more green
space in everyday life to
improve cognitive function.”
Pescador Jimenez
said her next step in this
research would be to “apply
deep-learning algorithms
to Google Street View
images to better understand
which specifi c elements of
greenery, such as trees or
grass, could be the driving
factors for health.”
Shane Dixon Kavanaugh/TNS
Living near greenery boosts cognitive function, a recent study shows.