“Ever since its inception, I’ve been going because the produce is fresh and locally grown.” – Edna Lewis on the Greenmarket
It’s the 100th anniversary of Black History Month and it would be impossible to discuss the history and inestimable contributions of Black chefs and thinkers without acknowledging Edna Lewis.
A pioneering chef, writer, and teacher, Edna is credited with elevating Southern cuisine to its rightful place as an integral part of American cuisine. She passed away at the age of 89 twenty years ago on February 13, 2006. Edna is close to our hearts as she was a fervent supporter of the Greenmarket.
Enshrined in her menus and writings was a devotion to seasonality and a deep reverence for farmers. Edna could regularly be found perusing the produce and talking shop with our producers at the Union Square and Grand Army Plaza Greenmarkets.
She was so dedicated to the program that she even went as far as to help open the Albee Square Greenmarket (now Brooklyn Borough Hall Greenmarket) on Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn in the late 1990s. It was a short walk from Gage & Tollner, where Edna served as the Executive Chef from 1988 to 1995.
In the 1990 Summer edition of our Greenmarket newsletter, Barry Benepe, Greenmarket’s late and great co-founder, featured Edna as the Greenmarket Chef of the Month. He wrote “at the market Mrs. Lewis knows what to look for in fresh produce, how to pick it, how to check for flavor and how various gradations for ripeness may be appropriate for different recipes and cooking techniques.”
It is in that spirit that we encourage you to get out to your local Greenmarket, commune with the farmers, and pick up the ingredients to make the following Edna Lewis classics:
- Roasted Beets in Gingered Syrup
- Silken Turnip and Potato Soup
- Smothered Steak
- Apple Cake with Caramel Glaze
We leave you with the closing excerpt from “What is Southern,” one of Edna’s final essays that was discovered posthumously and printed in Gourmet Magazine in 2008:
“So many great souls have passed off the scene. The world has changed. We are now faced with picking up the pieces and trying to put them into shape, document them so the present-day young generation can see what southern food was like. The foundation on which it rested was pure ingredients, open-pollinated seed – planted and replanted for generations – natural fertilizers. We grew the seeds of what we ate, we worked with love and care.”
To learn more about Edna Lewis’s legacy, watch Finding Edna Lewis, a mini-series from Virginia Public Media in which food writer Deb Freeman journeys from Freetown, VA to New York City, and even the Union Square Greenmarket, to uncover Edna Lewis’s legacy.