#Stephen gray undercover colors full
#Stephen gray undercover colors series

that we were being worked to death,” he said, “we created a cuisine.” This food, he noted, was named for the soul-“something invisible that you could feel, like love and God.” “Despite the fact that we were in Hell . . . But Satterfield trusted in the seductive power of good cooking: “How do you get away with it if it’s not about food?” In the second episode, “The Rice Kingdom,” the culinary historian Michael Twitty prepares okra-and-crab soup at the Magnolia Plantation, outside Charleston. They knew how difficult it would be to do that in four episodes, beginning in the slave markets of West Africa and tracing centuries of suffering and transcendence in the United States. Harris sometimes cites an African proverb: “When the tale of the hunt is written by the lion, it will be a very different tale.” With the series, Satterfield and his partners wanted to upend Americans’ view of their history. Familiar with his son’s self-described “bougie tastes,” Sam apparently expected a showy meal, but he was pleasantly surprised. Half a dozen family members milled hungrily around the living room, until Satterfield’s father, Sam, returned from church. But, having spent his twenties training at high-end restaurants, he had things under control.

Satterfield presides like an unusually solicitous reporter: he listens intently as his guests excavate buried histories and lends a hand as they cook.Īt his parents’ house, Satterfield, a bearded, loose-limbed six feet five, had a sous-chef: his girlfriend, Gabriella Oviedo, a writer who also collaborates on his business.

#Stephen gray undercover colors series

Produced and directed almost entirely by African Americans, the series features Black chefs, pitmasters, historians, farmers, entrepreneurs, and cookbook writers discussing their heritages and creating delectable meals. Harris in the 2011 book “High on the Hog”-the basis for the show. Such stories about the African diaspora’s influences on American cuisine are disclosed in rich detail by Jessica B. George Washington’s Presidential kitchen was run by an enslaved man named Hercules, until he escaped servitude and vanished. Peanuts, a key ingredient in West African stews, got their American nickname, goobers, from the Bantu word nguba. This is what Satterfield calls a good origin story: an unexpected confluence of historical streams. Black Southerners adopted spaghetti, and came to consider it, like coleslaw or potato salad, a pleasing side dish to fried fish.

Miller, who appears in the series, had an explanation: catfish and spaghetti originated in the Deep South in the late eighteen-hundreds, as Italian immigrants settled in Mississippi and Louisiana. Satterfield didn’t realize the pairing’s wider significance until he was getting ready for an episode of “High on the Hog,” which refracts the history of the United States through the lens of Black food. When Stephen was growing up, his father often fixed catfish and spaghetti for Sunday dinners and for church fish fries. In 1946, she and his grandfather followed the Great Migration route north to Gary, Indiana.

#Stephen gray undercover colors full

The food writer Adrian Miller once noted, “It may be the most controversial soul food coupling since someone decided it was a good idea to marinate dill pickles in Kool-Aid.” Satterfield, who is thirty-nine, first encountered the dish as a family tradition: in Mississippi, where his maternal grandmother was born, the river was full of catfish, and spaghetti was cheap. With a dimpled smile, Satterfield lifted a lid to reveal a pot full of spaghetti and tomato sauce.ĭepending on whom you ask, this combination is either as congenial as shrimp and grits or as regrettable as a bad marriage. The fish, though, had a widely disputed accompaniment. The main course was catfish, coated in cornmeal and sizzling in avocado oil. Most of the meal was canonical Black Southern food: turnip greens simmered for hours, cheese grits, biscuits baked in a cast-iron skillet. It was one o’clock on a February afternoon, and he was preparing Sunday dinner for the family. Stephen Satterfield, the host of the Netflix food-history series “High on the Hog,” was bent over the stove in his parents’ kitchen, near Atlanta.