FreeTown African & American Cuisine Blog

• Parade Days in Brooklyn, and a Table Waiting at Home

  The first Jamaica Day Parade just joined Labor Day on Brooklyn's calendar. How a Crown Heights kitchen feeds a parade-day house, tray by tray.

• Two Traditions of Cooked Greens, Cassava Leaf and Collards

  Cassava leaf is pounded to a pulp and cooked for hours in Sierra Leone. Collards are cut in ribbons and braised with smoked meat in the American South. Two unrelated plants, one shared method, and the pot liquor nobody pours away.

• The Food of West Indian Day Carnival on Eastern Parkway

  Doubles, corn soup, jerk off oil-drum grills, sorrel and pelau line Eastern Parkway every Labor Day. Where Carnival food came from, why the parade moved to Brooklyn, and which dishes carry West African and Indian lineage.

• How Crown Heights Came to Eat the Way It Does

  From Weeksville farms in the 1830s to kosher Kingston Avenue, Southern kitchens brought north by the Great Migration, Caribbean bakeries on Nostrand and newer West African restaurants, here is how Crown Heights food history was assembled.

• Freetown Is the Capital of Sierra Leone, and That Is Where the Name Comes From

  Freetown is the capital of Sierra Leone, on a mountainous Atlantic peninsula with one of the world's great natural harbours, founded in the 1790s by Black Loyalists who left North America. The city, its history, and its rice-and-stew table.

• What Nine Night Is, and the West African Roots Behind It

  Nine Night is a Jamaican wake held over the nine nights after a death, ending on the night the spirit is believed to leave. What happens, what gets cooked, and the Akan and Kongo funerary patterns scholars trace it back to.

• The Jollof Wars, and Why Every Country Cooks It Differently

  The jollof wars are a running argument between Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Sierra Leone and their neighbors over whose jollof rice is best. Here is where the dish comes from, how each version is built, and why the fight has no ending.

• How West African Cooking Shaped Southern Food

  Rice, okra, black-eyed peas, groundnuts and long-cooked greens carry West African technique into Southern kitchens. What food historians agree on, what they still argue about, and where those two traditions meet in Crown Heights.

• Catering an Event in a Church Basement or Community Room

  Catering a church basement, tenant room or rec center event in Brooklyn, where folding tables, one working outlet and a hard end time shape the order more than a $100 tray of baked chicken does.

• Getting Catering Trays Up Four Flights in a Brooklyn Walk Up

  The stairs are the hard part. Planning how full catering pans get up a Brooklyn stoop, through a narrow hall and into a fourth floor walkup with no lift, and what to settle by phone first.

• Catering for an Event Near Eastern Parkway and the Brooklyn Museum

  Planning catering for a gathering on the Eastern Parkway corridor, where street closures and parking rules decide the pickup before the menu does, built on a $40 rice tray and a $100 pan of fried chicken.

• Ordering Catering Across Prospect Park to Park Slope

  An honest look at collecting catering from Crown Heights for a Park Slope party, what the crossing costs you in effort, and what a $165 pan of lamb suya or $85 jollof buys that Fifth Avenue does not stock.

• Catering an Event in a Bushwick Loft or Raw Space

  Catering a Bushwick loft or raw event space that has no kitchen, no oven and sometimes no hot water, choosing trays like $120 Fried Chicken Suya and $85 jollof that need nothing done to them on site.

• Catering a Small Office or Studio Gathering in Clinton Hill

  Catering a modest weekday gathering for a Clinton Hill studio or small office with no kitchen in the building, using a $85 pan of FreeTown Pasta, a $60 Caesar salad and a $100 tray of baked chicken.

• Catering a Community Event in Brownsville

  Ordering catering for a Brownsville community event when the money was decided first, building backwards from a $40 pan of white rice and a $100 pan of fried chicken on a tray list that runs to $165.

• Catering a Program in Weeksville

  A heritage or community program needs a food number approved before anything is ordered. Published full-tray prices, from $60 collard greens to $120 fried chicken suya, make that line writable in advance.

• Catering for a Staff Room or Shift Meal in East Flatbush

  A staff room table gets visited in ones and twos across a whole shift, so an East Flatbush order leans on $140 turkey wings sitting in their own sauce and $85 jollof that eats fine at room temperature.

• Catering a Congregation Event in Flatbush

  The Flatbush hall meal is usually organized on a sign-up sheet that hides its real cost. What changes when it becomes one countable order of $100 baked chicken, $40 rice and $90 mac and cheese.

• Catering an Event in Prospect Lefferts Gardens

  In a prewar Prospect Lefferts Gardens building the catering problem is the vestibule, the stairwell turn and the super, not the menu. How full pans of $40 rice and $100 baked chicken get upstairs level.

• Catering a Family Gathering in Bedford Stuyvesant

  A brownstone backyard has no counter, no outlet and one route in through the house, so a Bed Stuy order leans on $100 fried chicken, $60 collard greens and $85 jollof that hold up outdoors all afternoon.

• Catering a Gathering in Prospect Heights

  Ordering fewer and denser full pans for a Prospect Heights parlor floor with no linear feet for a buffet line, starting with $85 jollof rice, $90 mac and cheese and a $60 Caesar salad.

• White Rice or Jollof Rice, Choosing the Base of a Catering Spread

  White Rice is $40 a pan and Pan Jollof Rice is $85 from the same Crown Heights kitchen. Choosing between a neutral base and a seasoned one is the decision that shapes every other tray on a Brooklyn catering order.

• The Top of the Menu, Steak and Lamb Catering Trays in Brooklyn

  Pan Steak is $160 and Pan Lamb is $165 at the top of a Crown Heights catering list that starts at $40. Lamb Suya is also $165. Here is when a premium tray earns its place on a Brooklyn spread and when it does not.

• Shrimp and Salmon Catering Trays for a Brooklyn Occasion

  Pan Shrimp is $125 and Pan Salmon is $150 from a Crown Heights catering list, the two seafood trays that make a Brooklyn spread read as an event. Here is when the step up from a $100 chicken pan is worth it.

• Putting a Salad on a Table Where Everything Else Is Hot

  A Pan Caesar Salad is $60 in Crown Heights and it is the only cold green tray on an eighteen item catering list. That makes it a structural choice about how a Brooklyn buffet reads, not a health one.

• Ordering a Tray of Mashed Potatoes for a Brooklyn Event

  A full pan of mashed potato is $80 from the catering list at 1172 Park Place in Crown Heights, the soft plain tray that sits under a $140 pan of turkey wings and gives everyone at the table something easy to eat.

• Ordering a Tray of Fried Whiting in Brooklyn

  Fried whiting is $115 a full pan from a Crown Heights kitchen, alongside shrimp at $125 and salmon at $150. Where the Brooklyn fish fry tradition comes from, how fried fish behaves as catering, and how to time the tray.

• Ordering a Tray of Turkey Wings in Brooklyn

  A full pan of turkey wings runs $140 from a Crown Heights kitchen, and it is the tray that anchors a table when a whole bird is not practical. How the dish holds, what to put beside it, and what only the phone can answer.

• Fried or Baked Chicken for a Catering Order, Both at 100 Dollars

  Pan Fried Chicken and Pan Baked Chicken are both $100 a full pan at a Crown Heights kitchen, so the choice is logistics, not budget. How each tray behaves over a long event, and why ordering one of each is common.

• Ordering a Tray of Collard Greens for a Brooklyn Gathering

  A full pan of collard greens is $60, the least expensive Southern tray at a Crown Heights catering kitchen, and the one that survives a long event better than anything else on the table. What it does for a spread and what to ask before you order.