Two Holidays, One Great Bowl –– Juneteenth Bowl

This Sunday it’s a double party. It’s Father’s Day and it’s Juneteenth, African American Emancipation Day, commemorating the end of slavery. Celebrate and serve up some of the gifts from Africa in one delicious, nutrient-dense Juneteenth Bowl:

• sorghum  — This gluten-free ancient grain goes back millennia and was introduced to America over three centuries ago. It’s been a southern staple crop ever since.
• sweet potatoes — In America, we confuse yams and sweet potatoes. What came from Africa are yams, true tubers, with rough skins and pale, starchy flesh. Sweet potatoes, root vegetables, are smoother skinned, with soft. orange flesh. Both are sweet, yet low glycemic and high in antioxidants but sweet potatoes grow more plentifully here. 
• black-eyed peas  — Born to thrive when it’s hot, these beans can also survive the freezer. Cooking up a big pot of these black eyed beauties means enjoying bright summer flavors now and long after your summer tan has faded. Freeze the leftovers then pull your ready-made meal out some miserable night in October when the idea of cooking reduces you to tears.
• peanuts  — Not a true nut, but a legume, a member of the bean and pea family.  It’s rich in protein, fiber, and overall deliciousness, and as with other legumes, peanuts enrich the soil they’re grown in.
• collards — According to James Beard Award winning food historian Michael Twitty, collards aren’t native to Africa, but they became the mainstay of slaves in the south, who supplemented their diet by growing collards and other hearty, heat-tolerant greens. As he writes, 

“This food connects us to the globe. It connects us to Africa. It connects us to slavery, to freedom, to sharecropping, to migration, to triumph, to survival. It’s a powerful symbol of our history, our social identity, and the cultural politics we negotiate our lives by.”

Happy Father’s Day. Happy Juneteenth.

How to Make Juneteenth Bowl

1. Bring water or vegetable broth to boil in a large pot. Add sorghum. Keep the pot on high heat and continue boiling for another 5 minutes. Then reduce the heat to low, cover the pod and let everything simmer. It will need little attention, just peek in occasionally and give it a stir so the sorghum doesn’t get lonely and there’s still plenty of liquid in the pot.
2. After an hour, grains should be tender and plump. Pour off any liquid the grains haven’t absorbed. Toss sorghum with coconut oil, cumin and lemon juice. Season generously with sea salt and freshly ground pepper.
3. Meanwhile, spread chopped sweet potato onto a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and sprinkle with a little sea salt.
4. Roast sweet potato in the oven for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent charring. When sweet potato is tender and darkened at the edges, remove from oven and set aside.
5. In a good-sized soup pot, heat the remaining tablespoon of olive oil over medium-high heat. When it starts to shimmer, add the chopped onion. Stir and cook for a few minutes, until onion starts to turn translucent. Then add minced garlic and jalapeno, chopped red pepper and celery. Stir and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, or until vegetables soften and become fragrant.
6. Stir in the cooked black-eyed peas, the chopped tomatoes, paprika and turmeric. Cover and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.
7. Remove the lid and add the sorghum syrup or molasses to balance flavors. Add fresh thyme leaves and season to taste with sea salt and pepper.
8. Wash the collards well. Blot dry. Slice out the thick central stems and discard (or reserve them to make broth later). Stack the collard leaves and roll them up widthwise, forming a tight collard cigar. Using your sharpest knife, slice across as thinly as possible, forming skinny ribbons — collard tinsel — or to use the proper culinary term, chiffonade. Alternately, using the shredding disc, shred the collards in a food processor. You’ll have roughly 2 cups of greens.
9. Scoop the collards into a large bowl. Add the minced garlic, lemon juice and olive oil. Toss to combine. Season with sea salt and pepper.
10. To serve, scatter a spoon or two of collards into bowls. Spoon sorghum to cover. Top with chopped sweet potato, a few more shreds of collards and a good ladle or two of black-eyed peas. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts and enjoy.

Recipe Tips:

• All Juneteenth Bowl components can be made a day or two ahead, then kept covered and refrigerated. Assemble when you’re ready. It’s nutrient-dense, rainbow-bright and flavor-packed. It’s like Juneteenth in a bowl.
• Sorghum is a slow-cooking grain. Really slow. It needs an hour’s worth of simmering or the aid of an Instant Pot for quickest, most tender results. For a quicker fix, use rice, another whole grain with a rich African history.
• Peanut allergy?  My heart goes out to you. Substitute toasted sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds.  Or both!

Related Recipes 

Mafé, a luscious Senegalese stew of sweet potatoes, peanuts and okra from La Cocina’s Nafy Flatley.

Sweet potatoes, peanuts and black-eyed peas come together again in my recipe for  African American sweet potato and peanut stew, from my book, Feeding the Hungry Ghost: Life, Faith and What to Eat for Dinner.

Jollof rice, a west African favorite, from Chef Kwame Onwauchi in his new book, My America.

Red food is often part of a Juneteenth menu, signifying the blood of African slaves.  But it can have a sweet spin, too, as with my recipe for red velvet cake, which gets its redness and tenderness from a beet.

For more of African cuisine and culture, check out the wonderful Netflix series High on the Hog.

Juneteenth Bowl

Indigenous to Africa and immortalized beloved by America, sorghum, sweet potato, black-eyed peas, and peanuts come together in one bowl.

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Ingredients

  

For the sorghum:

• 4 cups water or vegetable broth
• 1 cup sorghum
• 1 tablespoon coconut oil
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• juice of 1 lemon
• sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

For the sweet potato:

• 1 sweet potato chopped
• 1 tablespoons olive oil
• a sprinkle of sea salt

For the collards:

• 1 bunch collard greens
• 1 garlic clove minced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice from 1 juicy lemon
• sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

For black-eyed pea stew:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion chopped
• 2 garlic cloves minced
• 1/2 jalapeno minced
• 1 red pepper chopped
• 1 stalk celery chopped
• 2 cups black-eyed peas cooked and cooled
• 1 28- ounce can chopped fire-roasted tomatoes or about 2 pounds fresh ripe tomatoes (2-3 good-sized tomatoes) chopped
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 sprig fresh thyme leaves
• 1/2 teaspoon sorghum syrup or molasses
• sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

To serve:

• 1/2 cup roasted peanuts chopped

Instructions

 

• Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
• Bring water or vegetable broth to boil in a large pot. Add sorghum. Keep the pot on high heat and continue boiling for another 5 minutes. Then reduce the heat to low, cover the pod and let everything simmer for 1 hour. It will need little attention, just peek in occasionally and give it a stir so the sorghum doesn’t get lonely and there’s still plenty of liquid in the pot.
• After an hour, grains should be tender and plump. Pour off any liquid the grains haven’t absorbed. Toss sorghum with coconut oil, cumin and lemon juice. Season generously with sea salt and freshly ground pepper.
• Meanwhile, spread chopped sweet potato onto a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil and sprinkle with a little sea salt.
• Roast sweet potato in the oven for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent charring. When sweet potato is tender and darkened at the edges, remove from oven and set aside.
• In a good-sized soup pot, heat the remaining tablespoon of olive oil over medium-high heat. When it starts to shimmer, add the chopped onion. Stir and cook for a few minutes, until onion starts to turn translucent. Then add minced garlic and jalapeno, chopped red pepper and celery. Stir and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, or until vegetables soften and become fragrant.
• Stir in the cooked black-eyed peas, the chopped tomatoes, paprika and turmeric. Cover and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.
• Remove the lid and add the sorghum syrup or molasses to balance flavors. Add fresh thyme leaves and season to taste with sea salt and pepper.
• Wash the collards well. Blot dry. Slice out the thick central stems and discard (or reserve them to make broth later). Stack the collard leaves and roll them up widthwise, forming a tight collard cigar. Using your sharpest knife, slice across as thinly as possible, forming skinny ribbons — collard tinsel — or to use the proper culinary term, chiffonade. Alternately, using the shredding disc, shred the collards in a food processor. You’ll have roughly 2 cups of greens.
• Scoop the collards into a large bowl. Add the minced garlic, lemon juice and olive oil. Toss to combine. Season with sea salt and pepper.
• To serve, scatter a spoon or two of collards into bowls. Spoon sorghum to cover. Top with chopped sweet potato, a few more shreds of collards and a good ladle or two of black-eyed peas. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts and enjoy.

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