Golden sunlight that cascades through open windows. A hot oven and the friction of bodies moving in the kitchen. The earthy-sweet aroma of curry, cinnamon and cloves in the air.
When I think of Black holiday gatherings, I recall warmth in all its iterations. With a diaspora that touches every corner of the globe, there is both overlap and incredible diversity among pan-African cuisines. Some culinary traditions have been painstakingly passed down from generation to generation, while others have been absorbed through migration, marriage and countless other means and life circumstances.
Yet no matter where you are or what you’re eating, a sense of apricity — the warmth of the sun in the winter — is present. It settles over the table as Rashida Holmes, the founder of Caribbean restaurant Bridgetown Roti, and her family pass plates of dirty rice, macaroni pie and callaloo back and forth. I feel it too, in Nigerian and Kenyan American cookbook author Kiano Moju’s West Hollywood condo as she, her mother and her aunt chop fine spirals of collard greens to the rhythm of Afrobeats music.
It reverberates in the laughter of John and Roni Cleveland, owners of Post & Beam, as they watch their son eagerly pull from a tower of cookies. It beams from culinary artist Nia Lee’s face as she drops a fistful of flower petals onto a frosted cake. These L.
A.-based cooks opened their homes and one restaurant to us, introducing us to family and friends and sharing the dishes that define the.
