Each weekend this month, you can sign up to learn how to cook a meal from the African diaspora: green plantain porridge, classic mac and cheese, curried chicken and shrimp creole.
These cooking classes, led by local chefs and held at Clemmons Family Farm in Charlotte, are part of a larger, new effort: the African Diaspora Foodways Institute of Vermont.
It’s a partnership between the African American-owned historic farm and the University of Vermont. It aims to strengthen Vermont’s African diaspora restaurants and catering businesses, and to diversify food tourism here.
The institute is currently in a one-year pilot phase funded by two grants: $250,000 from the Leahy Institute for Rural Partnerships and $25,000 from the Agency of Agriculture’s Working Lands Enterprise Initiative.
During the pilot, the institute is providing professional development, marketing support and $10,000 grants to four entrepreneurs. They include Maria Lara-Bregatta at Café Mamajuana in Colchester, Andrew Gonyon at Humble Revelry in Milton, Julian Perkins at Jamaican Jewelz in Bellows Falls and Alganesh Michael at A Taste of Abyssinia in South Burlington.
In return, the chefs are participating in events like the cooking classes, where they get to share not only recipes, but the cultural heritage of their food.
For instance, at this past Saturday’s cooking class, Julian Perkins — who also goes by Chef Jewelz — told participants about where she would get ingredients like coconut milk and plantains on her home island of Jamaica.
“We never used to source out for our food when back home, because everything was grown,” Perkins said. “That's what you use to make your dinner or your breakfast.”
Since starting her business in Bellows Falls in 2011, Perkins said she’s requested items enough times from local suppliers, like the Market Basket in Claremont, New Hampshire, that they’ve started carrying plantains.
“It's expected, and other Jamaican restaurants are benefiting from that as well,” she said.
There are some ingredients like the Ethiopian plant teff – what the flatbread injera is made with – that the African Diaspora Foodways Institute of Vermont would like to grow locally.
But Catharine Noel, a senior consultant for the institute, said it’s been challenging to figure out who could tend the teff.
“It's not easy to find a partner, with farmers who would be able to cultivate and harvest the African diaspora foods in Charlotte, when they live in other places like Winooski and Colchester and Caledonia and Windham counties,” Noel said.
She added that there is a lot of potential — and need — within Vermont’s African diaspora food businesses, and it’s been tough deciding how to prioritize. Among the issues facing these entrepreneurs: a volatile restaurant industry, hiring enough help, and long-term systemic inequities — Black Vermonters are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as white Vermonters.
“So the staying power that we can give them at this stage is very, very important,” Noel said.
The $10,000 grants are going a long way for some of these chefs, funding things like a bakery expansion, maple syrup purchases, increased advertising and new kitchen floor mats.
“It evens things up,” said Andrew Gonyon, who’s known as Chef Pops. His Milton restaurant Humble Revelry is solely run by his family, and he said it’s tricky to afford extras while cooking high-caliber food — while also convincing Vermonters to eat something new-to-them, what Gonyon calls “northern soul food.”
“If you're doing something that is totally different, people kind of get in with trepidation, like putting your foot into new water,” he said. “But we have faithful customers that we're building our own tradition and nostalgia with right now.”
He added that it’s useful to have more visibility as well as new relationships through the African Diaspora Foodways Institute, like one-on-one mentorship with another chef, and support from the UVM Nutrition and Food Sciences Department.
Judith Anglin is the chair of that department. So far, she’s advised one chef how to make a new product shelf-stable, and another how to blend flavors more effectively to improve taste.
She’ll also have students analyze the nutritional content of the four chefs’ food. Anglin studies the relationship between nutrition and health disparities for people of African descent.
“One of the reasons why we want our students to get involved is so that they can understand how to address health equity inside the community in a practical, meaningful way,” she said. “The Clemmons Farm was an ideal place for us to start.”
The farm has been an “empowering” place for Alganesh Michael, the owner of the Ethiopian and Eritrean catering business A Taste of Abyssinia.
“You want to not only make this network grow and be heard and be seen, but also there is a feeling that you are all coming together in a powerful place, a historic place,” Michael said.
Café Mamajuana owner Maria Lara-Bregatta said the Clemmons family’s tenure in Vermont — more than six decades — and the continued possibilities they open for Black people here, make her grateful.
“We are capable of longevity and holding on to our assets and our land and our possessions,” Lara-Bregatta said. “My hope is to be at my diner for years to come. I want it to be a classic diner, reliable, and they've made that possible for me.”
