Georgia Brunswick Stew-Jim Sanders Family Recipe

~Doc Lawrence

For many years they gathered for barbecue, Brunswick Stew, fine French wines and elevated conversation in the rear of his legendary Atlanta wine store. Jim Sanders was rightly called the father of fine wines in Georgia. He also was a genuine gourmet with a highly develop palate, who loved to entertain.

Sanders, a bear of a man, was well-educated with a Master's in English from Emory University. He was proud of his service in the Army during World War II, when he was wounded five times during the Pacific Campaign. A native of Covington, Georgia, his culinary skills reflected Georgia and French influences. 

Just prior to his death, Jim gave me his notes which contain many recipes. His Brunswick Stew recipe was handed down through generations of his family. It has the flavor of America with a distinctly exciting Southern accent.

JIM SANDERS GEORGIA BRUNSWICK STEW

INGREDIENTS:

1 four-pound baking chicken

4 pounds ground pork

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce

1-tablespoon chili powder

1 tablespoon thyme

1 tablespoons cayenne pepper

2 cups chopped onions

1 cup red wine, preferably Rhone style

3 to 4 tablespoons bacon drippings

36 ounces tomato juice

4 ounce tomato catsup

3 cups cut shoepeg corn

Kosher salt and black pepper

PREPARATION:

Boil the chicken until it is very tender, cool, de-bone and chop the meat finely. Meanwhile, in a large pot over medium heat, braise the pork until half done. Add half the chopped onions, one chopped garlic clove, chili powder, thyme, cayenne pepper and a generous sprinkling of kosher salt and black pepper. Continue to braise until the meat is well browned, stirring every few minutes to break up any lumps and combine with chicken. Add the tomato juice and catsup and simmer for 11/2 hours. Add the rest of the chopped onions, another chopped garlic clove and simmer for another 30 minutes. Taste for salt and spoon off the fat before serving.

Jim always served a Beaujolais or Rhone wine with this dish. Iced tea (sweet) and fresh-squeezed lemonade are also wonderful beverage accompaniments.

NOTE: I have a limited number of Jim's cookbooks. Contact me is interested: 

doclawrence@mindspring.com

An African Voice in Alabama-Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo. Hardcover – Deckle Edge, May 8, 2018 by Zora Neale Hurston with foreword by Alice Walker

Reviewed by Doc Lawrence

I visited Africatown two decades ago during a press trip to Mobile, Alabama’s charming port city. While I was fascinated by the history, a mixture of the tragedy of slavery and the power of human determination to survive, I left unaware of Cudjo Lewis who lived there and is buried in the community cemetery. With the publication recently of Zora Neale Hurston’s stunning Barracoon, a book she wrote from around 1927 to 1931, but was rejected by publishers until 2018, we are beginning to learn first-hand Cudjo’s story of childhood in Africa, his kidnapping by slave traders, a  nightmarish journey to Alabama where he was sold into slavery. 

A strange word, Barracoon was the infamous holding facility for kidnapped Africans awaiting a trans-Atlantic journey.

What makes Hurston’s interviews spellbindingly original is best described in Barracoon by the author.  “Of all the millions transported from Africa to the Americas, only one man is left. The only man on earth who has in his heart the memory of his African home; the horrors of a slave raid; the barracoon; the Lenten tones of slavery; and who has 67 years of freedom in a foreign land behind him.” 

Cudjo with Grandchildren

The  recently discovered slave ship believed to be the Clotilda has rested underwater in Mobile Bay and was the transport for Cudjo’s harrowing middle passage into bondage. He remembered the ship, its human cargo and the recalled the suffering endured as it crossed the Atlantic Ocean. 

Zora Neale Hurston

During Hurston’s visits with Cudjo, they established a friendship while regularly enjoying peaches and watermelons from his garden. Cudjo's name from birth was African, Kossola. When she first spoke his name, he tearfully told her, “Nobody don’t callee me my name from cross de water but you.” 

Cudjo spoke in a unique vernacular which Ms. Hurston respectfully records but which was, according to many accounts, one of several reasons publishers didn’t want to take a chance on the book for decades. Contrast this rejection with Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus Stories, where African vernacular interpreted by the white author was a commercial success.

Alice Walker’s introduction is a tutorial on Zora Neale Hurston as well as a reminder that the legacy of slavery and the sting of its painful progeny racial segregation have not slipped into the dustbin of antiquity. One of the most gifted members of the Harlem Renaissance, Ms. Hurston’s books, particularly the American classic, These Eyes Were Watching God, have only recently garnered well-deserved acclaim. The isolated world of her childhood, not too much different from Cudjo’s, is on display in Hurston’s hometown of Eatonville, Florida, a black city founded by former slaves who  have maintained much of their culture. 

Hurston, who died impoverished, was buried in a pauper’s grave near Fort Pierce, Florida. A giant among American authors, she was cleaning houses when she died. Alice Walker located her grave and placed an appropriate headstone. Africatown was added to the National Register of Historic of Historic Places in 2012. Cudjo is buried in the cemetery.