Making African-American dishes healthier

[Moorbey]

Angela Shelf Medearis sees big changes in African-American cuisine over the last decade or so.

Changes in attitude — moving away from the old stereotypes about "soul food" — changes in ingredients and changes in diet have led to healthier meals, says the author of five cookbooks and star of the cooking show The Kitchen Diva. She is also the author of 90 children's books.

Her goal as a chef and author has been to educate blacks and others about the history of African-American cooking, its roots in African culture and to encourage healthier eating.

"When the slaves came from Africa to South America and then to North America, they changed recipes and techniques for cooking. One of the major fusion cuisines is African-American cuisine," Medearis says. On the slave ships also came fruits, vegetables, seasonings and other things that had never been seen in South and North America, she says.

It wasn't always easy to get that message out.

"There was a stereotypical, somewhat racist look at African Americans and cooking and culinary history," she says. "When I started doing cookbooks, I couldn't get on TV because they thought I'd be frying up a chicken or doing something with a barbecue pit ... I think we've progressed."

African-American cooking is now moving well beyond those stereotypes. Recipes that use tofu or vegetarian meals are finding their way among comfort foods. Health concerns and better education about diet have fueled some of the changes.

Diabetes runs in her family, and Americans are starting to understand that many traditional meals — like those that include large portions of eggs and bacon — come from a time when people needed the protein and energy to work in the fields.

Now we sit in front of a computer all day, she says. "I get a lot more requests now to take grandma's greens and find a way to make this healthier." She continues to push the concept that vegetarian meals have a long history in African-American cooking.

"The ethnic vegetarian was not something that was cooked up by a bunch of hippies. Vegetarian meals have been part of ethnic groups since recorded history," she says.

Talking about healthier diets is one thing. Her job is to find ways to make them taste good enough that people want to eat them.

The problem with most healthy recipes is they taste terrible, she says. "I take a lot of time taking things like wheat gluten and tofu and teaching people ways they can taste great."

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