Cooking class serves up soul food

Sometimes it’s OK to cheat — when you’re cooking.

Leslie Smedley, the host cook for… Sometimes it’s OK to cheat — when you’re cooking.

Leslie Smedley, the host cook for Pitt’s international cooking demonstrations, doesn’t follow every recipe exactly. Instead, she chooses to add her own touches to the food she cooks.

During a cooking class held in the Cathedral of Learning Friday, Smedley improvised while cooking African-American inspired dishes, adding Indian spices such as cumin and coriander, as well as fresh garlic to her cornbread and black-eyed peas. Smedley also took ham — a traditional accompaniment to black-eyed peas — off the menu because she didn’t want to exclude any vegetarians in attendance.

While Pitt’s Office of International Studies has sponsored monthly cooking class for the past two years, February’s theme was chosen in recognition of Black History Month.

“I usually only cook with a glass of wine,” Smedley said as the small group in attendance watched her spread ingredients out on the kitchen island. But she added that she would try to do her best without one.

The cooking lesson began with Smedley demonstrating the preparation of black-eyed peas. She used dry peas for the dish, telling the group to always search for any stones that sometimes get mixed into the jar.

“You don’t want to catch [a stone] on one of your back molars,” Smedley said.

Smedley encouraged members of the group to participate, setting two people to work chopping onions while she passed around jars of spices for the rest of group to smell.

“If anyone has a cold, smell this,” she instructed.

The strongest aroma in the room, though, was the smell of garlic. Smedley said the smell was so strong that she didn’t think anyone would want to stand near members of the audience for the rest of the day.

“But, hey, that’s their problem,” she said. “We won’t smell each other.”

Smedley explained that Southern black families historically cooked with any type of inexpensive ingredients available to them, and many black people ate black-eyed peas on New Year’s, hoping it would bring them good luck.

“It’s not New Year’s,” Smedley said, “but from March on, we’ll be all right for the rest of the year.”

While the peas cooked, Smedley explained how to make cornbread, mixing cornmeal, flour and other dry ingredients into a black skillet, which she placed in the oven.

“I swear by my cast-iron skillet,” Smedley said, claiming that nothing ever stuck to the bottom of it when she cooked.

“And I haven’t hit my husband over the head with it,” she added.

Francesca Amati, a Pitt graduate student from Switzerland, said she did not have this type of cooking in her country. Although many Swiss people eat breads, Amati did not know how to make cornbread.

“I was dreaming about making cornbread,” Amati said.

After both dishes finished cooking, the group headed to an adjoining room where they sat down at a large table and ate the meal. Some members of the group came from countries like Japan and Turkey, and they compared the meal with dishes from their native homes.

Jamie Rayman, the assistant director for programming in Pitt’s Office of International Studies, said the organization mainly targets spouses of internationalists for its cooking demonstrations.

“People are looking for ways to meet new people and express their creativity, but also it is a way for them to practice their English,” Rayman said. “It is a non-threatening environment where there are good feelings.”

” And everyone likes to eat,” Rayman added.