Atlanta – Edna Lewis – still striking at almost 80, wearing her signature silver chignon, dangly earrings and one of her many colorful African-print gowns underneath her chef’s coat – helped prepare a special lunch of Southern delicacies in 1994 for a meeting of the Association of Food Journalists, with several other chefs, including her friend and protégé, Scott Peacock.
Silence fell upon the audience as she proudly revealed the star attraction: liver pudding, a brown, unadorned slab that looked no more appetizing than its name suggested. Noses wrinkled.
Bewildered glances and private snickers were exchanged.
This was, after all, perhaps the most revered Southern chef in American history, famous for the she-crab soup and chocolate soufflés that drew the likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Greta Garbo and Truman Capote to Cafe Nicholson, the New York restaurant where she had once cooked.
Why on earth, here in a plush banquet room at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead, would she choose to serve us this? Because Lewis loved it. She wanted to share it. And she had an important story to tell.
Reading from handwritten notes in a voice so soft that we had to strain to hear, she talked about her childhood as the granddaughter of a slave in rural Freetown, Va. She described hog-butchering season and the celebratory atmosphere during that bountiful time.
Every part of the pig was used, including the liver, and the family made huge quantities of the humble pâté to savor and give away.
Still, not everyone was persuaded to give it a try. But those who did found it to be a rare and delicious treat, tasting all the better knowing that it didn’t represent the latest trend or chef’s whim, but a bygone way of life none of us had known.
Season to season
Throughout her life, Lewis, who died Feb. 13 at age 89, made it her mission to keep those traditions from becoming lost – in the restaurants where she worked, the cooking classes she taught and the eloquent prose about rural life she penned.
“The Edna Lewis Cookbook” (1972), “The Taste of Country Cooking” (1976) and “In Pursuit of Flavor” (1988) are classics for legions of chefs and home cooks who share her passion for fresh, unadulterated ingredients that are treated with care and respect.
“Since most young people haven’t tasted real Southern food – there is a tremendous value in preserving it,” she once said. “We are so far removed from the land and nature nowadays. No one even knows what the season for asparagus is.”
Back in Freetown, life revolved around the seasons. And for Lewis, there was no better place to revel in the rewards of each – through plenty of hard work in the fields – than by sitting at the dinner table.
“Edna always loved cooking,” recalled her sister Ruth Smith, who still lives in rural Virginia, where they grew up. “Especially every August, when the Bethel Baptist Church would have its annual homecoming. That was her favorite time to get a menu together.
“There would be country ham, fried chicken, apple cobbler, sweet potato pie, homemade peach ice cream. And corn pudding – that was always one of my favorites. Even after she moved, she loved to come home and prepare for those revivals.”
Smith eventually joined her sister in New York, where she brought a taste of revival to the restaurant scene as chef at Cafe Nicholson and, later, Gage & Tollner. She well remembers the accolades bestowed on her.
“I was so very proud,” she said. “Edna was extraordinary.”
That was the impression Lewis left nearly everywhere she went.
“Edna had a quiet grace about her that made her even more commanding than if she had been a shouter,” remembered TV personality and cookbook author Nathalie Dupree, formerly of Atlanta and now based in Charleston, S.C.
For a while, Dupree and Lewis shared the same editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Judith Jones, and the authors would occasionally go out for drinks in New York.
“Usually it was someplace nondescript,” Dupree said, “but two times stand out. The first was at the Four Seasons. We were standing at the bar and wanting to get a table for just a little taste of hors d’oeuvres. The chef walked by, did a double-take and sent us upstairs to an empty room, where he joined us – along with trays and trays of food. He told me he admired her as much as any woman he knew.
“Another time we went to 21 for drinks – Edna said she had never been there – and all of a sudden, the owner came rushing up and once again showered her with superlatives and us with good food. I was so interested that these powerful white men showed her such homage.”
Lewis was all too aware of how rare it was for a black woman to get that kind of respect and attention. She was always eager to extend a helping hand to others with talent who were struggling to achieve success.
One was Sonya Jones, an Atlanta native reared on Southern home cooking who now bakes fresh yeast rolls, sweet potato pies and other goodies at her tiny Sweet Auburn Bread Co. in downtown Atlanta.
She got to know Lewis when she became involved in the Society for the Revival and Preservation of Southern Food, an organization of Southern food aficionados founded by Lewis and Peacock. It eventually gave way to what is now the thriving Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi.
No compromise
Lewis was impressed by Jones’ enthusiasm and that she had put herself through the Culinary Institute of America.
She took her much younger peer under her wing, inviting her to work side by side with her in cooking classes and preparing for functions, including a charity dinner at the James Beard Foundation house in New York that involved making fried chicken and hundreds of the delicate cookies known as Cats’ Tongues.
“Miss Lewis – as many of her friends affectionately called her – truly inspired me,” Jones said. “I remember going shopping with her and how particular she was about her ingredients.
“She would often call ahead to make sure the chickens were small enough to suit her. If they weren’t, she wouldn’t buy them. She refused to compromise.”
She was equally fussy in how those ingredients were handled, eschewing hand mixers and food processors and other modern conveniences in the kitchen.
Lewis was especially eager to sing the praises of Peacock, whom she befriended more than 16 years ago when he was cooking at the Georgia Governor’s Mansion.
While rolling biscuits together for an event, the two bonded immediately. In the years that followed, she would persuade the Alabama-born chef to give up his aspirations of studying abroad in hopes of becoming the next Wolfgang Puck or Julia Child and instead stay in the South.
A Beard nomination
Eventually, she joined him in Atlanta, where she helped steer his career and watched him receive national accolades, first as chef at Horseradish Grill and later at Watershed, where he continues to work.
The two were nominated for a prestigious James Beard Foundation award for their 2003 cookbook, “The Gift of Southern Cooking” (Knopf, $29.95). In 1995, the foundation gave her its first Living Legend Award, and in 1999, the Southern Foodways Alliance presented her with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
As Lewis aged, Peacock became her primary caregiver. When she died last week in the apartment they shared for more than six years, he was at her side.
“Miss Lewis taught me so many things, but her biggest gift to me was me,” he said. “In teaching me to see the value of a bowl of grits, she taught me to see the value in myself.”
Knopf to reprint “Taste”
Lewis had a tremendous impact even on those who didn’t know her personally. When news of her death spread last week, the phone lines at Knopf, her publisher, became flooded with requests for her older books.
By the end of the week, it was official: Knopf will publish a 30th-anniversary hardback edition of “The Taste of Country Cooking” in August.
“When the announcement was made,” said publicity director Nicholas Latimer, “everyone applauded.”
