Bed-Stuy Tea: An Interview with Cookbook Author Nicole A. Taylor

Episode Transcript

Adwoa Adusei Hi, listeners. Adwoa here. Today, we are bringing you an episode of Bed-Stuy Tea, a podcast series from the Library's Community Audio feed, which is home to podcasts and other creative audio projects produced by patrons and staff. Joining me to talk about it is librarian and Bed-Stuy Tea producer Peter Enzinna. Hi, Peter.

Peter Enzinna Hi, Adwoa.

Adwoa Adusei Tell me a little bit about Bed-Stuy Tea.

Peter Enzinna So myself and Krishna and Riann, two other staff at Macon Library, started Bed-Stuy Tea last year as a way to connect with our patrons and community in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the neighborhood everyone probably knows as Bed-Stuy. There are so many creative people living here, artists, writers and chefs. And, we wanted to create an interview show where we feature these incredible patrons.

Adwoa Adusei And why the title Bed-Stuy Tea?

Peter Enzinna Well, we envision it as a sit-down, a nice, relaxing, tea time break, if you will, or coffee, as the case may be. And, you know, just a time to see what's out there and hear from people in the neighborhood. And also, you know, it's the tea on Bed-Stuy, what's going on behind the scenes.

Adwoa Adusei The hot tea, the hot goss.

Peter Enzinna Exactly.

Adwoa Adusei Can you tell listeners a bit about the episode they're about to hear?

Peter Enzinna Of course. Today, we're going to hear an episode recorded earlier this year with Nicole Taylor. She's a cookbook author with three books under her belt, including the latest, Watermelon & Redbirds, which is a history and tour of Juneteenth cooking. It was a really fun episode about the differences between Southern and Northern cooking, Black cooking through the ages, Black celebrations, and her specific history coming to New York from Atlanta, Georgia. So, I think it's a great episode.

Adwoa Adusei Awesome. All right, let's get into it.

[Pause]

Nicole A Taylor What I love about this neighborhood the most, and why it's so beloved and it is my home is that you still see Black economic, social and political and business power in the neighborhood. And to just describe the food and the people in Bed-Stuy, I would say warm, diverse and very, very Brooklyn.

[Music]

Riann Roca Hello and welcome to Bed-Stuy Tea, the podcast from Brooklyn Public Library's Macon branch all about our neighborhood and its creative life. My name is Riann.

Krishna Paul I’m Krishna.

Peter Enzinna And I'm Peter.

Riann Roca And we are your hosts for this episode, continuing our Á La Carte series.

Peter Enzinna Today, we're sitting down with Nicole A. Taylor, James Beard Award-nominated author of three cookbooks, the most recent of which is Watermelon & Red Birds: A Cookbook for Juneteenth and Black Celebrations, as well as the Up South Cookbook and The Last O.G. Cookbook, based on the Tracy Morgan TV show about a Brooklyn chef returning to a changed borough.

Riann Roca She's also the executive producer of “If We So Choose,” a short documentary about the desegregation of an iconic Southern fast food joint, and the co-founder of The Maroon, a marketplace and retreat house focused on radical rest for Black creatives.

Krishna Paul We were thrilled to jump into conversation with Nicole all about cooking and dining from North to South, Brooklyn's changing appetites and her favorite things to eat and cook.

Peter Enzinna Pour yourself a cup and enjoy.

[Theme music]

Peter Enzinna So Nicole Taylor, thank you so much for coming in and talking to us.

Nicole A Taylor Oh my gosh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Peter Enzinna Finally made it happen.

Nicole A Taylor We did.

Riann Roca So tell us about your journey as a writer and what led you to becoming a food writer specifically? Was there a person who taught you to start cooking or to start writing?

Nicole A Taylor I must admit, writing was not in my bingo cards. I spent many years working in the nonprofit sector, but I will say that I've recently discovered that I've always had this knack for writing. I have three or four bins full of journals, poetry from like a young girl all the way through my college years. Even now, I've kept a journal for, oh my gosh, 20 plus years. But I did not have being a food writer or writer on my list of goals. It kind of happened through talking in a podcast. I started off hosting Hot Grease on Heritage Radio Network several years back, and so many editors would reach out to me and say, ‘That was a great show, do you want to write about it?’ And also, I was interviewing a lot of cookbook authors. I must say, I'm a fabulous cook. So in that process, I realized, like, maybe I should write a cookbook? And finally, after my book came out in 2015, The Up South Cookbook: Chasing Dixie in a Brooklyn Kitchen, I finally started calling myself a food writer because my cookbook is more than just recipes. It's a lot of storytelling through the head notes and essays.

Peter Enzinna Yeah, I feel like we were going to talk about that later. But, like, the narrative aspect to your cookbooks is really like a strong through line. And is there something different about your approach to that or how that comes out of your storytelling instinct? You said you kept these journals forever. You know, storytelling is more than what we think of as a professional writer. What about that made itself felt when you were composing your first cookbook?

Nicole A Taylor I think the journaling aspect of my being, and also a person that's super curious, and I read a lot and I go down a lot of rabbit holes. So what you find in my cookbook and a lot of narrative cookbooks—the authors are doing research, you know, doing deep dives on rice or vegging out on red drink. So for me, I wanted to share that with other people, not just share steps or tips in the food. I wanted to talk a bit more about my local bodega and what I buy there, and who's there in the voices that I hear. So yeah, this narrative cookbook genre has always been around, but I would say in recent years people have been gravitating to cookbooks that are more storytelling now and just not recipes. I just so happened to create three cookbooks around that genre. It wasn't on purpose, it’s kind of just who I am.

Peter Enzinna Yeah, that comes through.

Krishna Paul Your roots are in Georgia, and you split your time between Athens and Brooklyn. Your first cookbook, The Up South Cookbook, focused on the Black Southern stories and practices that informed your cooking and eating after your move North. Can you talk about what you brought to Brooklyn, and what keeps you in touch with your home in Georgia?

Nicole A Taylor Yeah, the first time I stepped off of the stairwell at the Nostrand and Fulton A train stop, it felt like home. The people, the colors, the smells, the sounds. It more specifically reminded me of a Black neighborhood in Atlanta. I attended Clark Atlanta University, one of the largest historically Black colleges in the country. And the West End neighborhood is where Clark Atlanta University and all the other HBCUs in the Atlanta University Center consortium. But Nostrand and Fulton reminds me of that neighborhood so much. And I was like, I'm home.

There's also another instance—the grocery store, bodega, or corner store, as we call it here in New York. And I'm talking, and there's an elderly Southern woman next to me, and she hears my voice and she's like, ‘Where are you from?’ And when that happens, and I say, ‘I'm from Georgia,’ and that person tells me, ‘I'm from South Carolina, I'm from North Carolina, I'm from Georgia, and I've been here X number of years’ … I automatically feel at home. And I brought my voice, my little voice to Bedford-Stuyvesant and to Brooklyn. And I still have it. And when I talk, people always say, ‘Where you from?’

So I feel like I brought that here. But I also brought in the very back of my mind all these traditions that I thought were very country. I thought that they were very old school. I brought them with me. And so the moment that I moved to New York City in 2008, it was a very interesting time in food. It was the rise of the Brooklyn DIY, the Brooklyn kind of … there were a lot of memes about Brooklyn then, the Brooklyn foods scene. So I was on the rise at that same time, and some of the things that were being mocked, or some of the things that were being turned into successful businesses were ideas and practices I grew up with: mason jars, cloth sack napkins, artisanal this … I'm like, hold up, hold up, hold up. We made cornbread just like this in Athens, Georgia. So, I brought those two things with me. I brought tradition with me in the back of my head, and I brought my literal voice, my country self, my very familiar self. I think in a lot of rooms when I'm with Black people from the American South, they're like, you remind me of somebody. And I just think it’s my way of like being in a room and being Black women. I kind of carry them with me, Black women from the South.

Riann Roca You mentioned traditions and bringing here, was there anyone, I mean, from looking at your cookbooks, the food looks amazing…

Nicole A Taylor Thank you.

Riann Roca Was there anyone who influenced you, who taught you to cook or who helped you carry these traditions forward?

Peter Enzinna Oh, that's a good question.

Riann Roca Not scripted.

Peter Enzinna Off the dome.

Nicole A Taylor So many women. I like to say that I learned to cook by watching. I was a kid, and I'm still the person where I can just sit and watch someone cook and get inspired, and I can recreate that. It's like I have a visual picture. So growing up, you know, my great aunt Bessie Goolsbee, I talk about her in my first book a lot. I also talk about my two cousins who, for decades, they worked in a white sorority house on the University of Georgia campus. And those two kitchens I spent a lot of time in, maybe not helping so much, but watching. And so I learn how to be in the kitchen from them, how to be this ultimate taskmaster. So I credit them a lot. And nowadays, I feel like you're always learning how to be a better cook and how to move in the kitchen. So, when I'm with my chef friends and I see them adding salt at the end of their rice preparation and not in the water, I'm like, ‘Ooh, okay, Chef JJ Johnson. That's the trick to a perfectly cooked pot of rice?’ So I pick up those little tips and take them with me.

Riann Roca So your most recent cookbook, Watermelon & Red Birds: A Cookbook for Juneteenth and Black Celebrations came out in 2022. You declare independence from the traditional boundaries of so-called Southern food and soul food. What are those boundaries and how have they changed?

Nicole A Taylor Ooh. I'm so proud of that book, the first Juneteenth cookbook published by a major publisher. I definitely set out in the book to create what I call the 3.0 of Black cookbooks. There are so many cookbooks by Black authors that have come out in recent years, and a lot of those books have been about their particular story, right? Their story, their South, their Africa, their California. And I feel like the genre of Soul food and Black food has been really defined, particularly when you look at the U.S. or America. So my goal with the Juneteenth cookbook was to do a few things, and that was to honor 1865, the day that enslaved Texans found out they were free, but also to be super creative in this book. Drill in on the essentials of Juneteenth, barbecue, red drink, and so forth. But also say to cookbook authors and all people that are reading this that you can be creative. Black chefs, Black writers like myself, as long as we pay homage in a respectful way, we can be creative in the book. So that was my goal, just not to just do a red punch, but to do something beyond the red punch. You know, create a margarita with the strawberries and limes and to create barbecue that wasn't just your barbecue ribs. So you see a lot of creative dishes inside of Watermelon & Redbirds.

Peter Enzinna Could you tell us a little bit about what it's like to develop a cookbook? And you spoke about the research, just some more about that. That sounds like, honestly, the best part of writing is, to me, would be the part where you just get to go out and experience and take notes and go through all these experiences … what the process is of slimming that down and choosing recipes out of that.

Nicole A Taylor Honestly, the first thing that I do when I'm embarking upon a cookbook or even writing is walking, like walking the neighborhood. And all three of the books that I've written … well, particularly The Up South Cookbook and Watermelon & Red Birds, and The Last O.G. Cookbook, I literally was walking Bed-Stuy or walking Brooklyn, and I get inspired by people, colors, trees, flowers blooming. I love a bookstore. I love a library, so I'm always going to those two spots when I'm starting, because I want to get all the books about a particular neighborhood or a particular dish. I want to see what other people have written about this subject. And a lot of times I read books that aren't cookbooks because I need to find nuggets about food there. So you'll see, like in Watermelon & Red Birds, I have what I call the poor man's bibliography of, like, books that I read along the way. Just a sampling of books along the way. Because developing a cookbook is two fold. For me, I'm working on the narrative piece as well as this very technical piece of developing a recipe and testing it and making notes about the test. And most times, or sometimes, working with a recipe developer. That's fun, but it's not as cool as spending hours upon hours reading or listening to podcasts. I tend to get lost and love that part the most. I do love the food part, but I will say, like, reading is one of those things that I could just do for days upon days and nothing else and never take a shower.

Peter Enzinna Absolutely. Yeah, I feel like walking and browsing in a bookstore or a library are both very serendipitous. You know, you're looking for certain things, but you're also, you know, your mind is kind of attuned to whatever comes your way and blending it with whatever you're thinking about. And I feel like including the bibliography, like you said, gives you a sense of where you're at and what's going into it beyond just the ingredients and, you know, looking to include a certain flavor or a certain ingredient. You know, it imbues it with your whole journey towards making that recipe.

Nicole A Taylor And also referencing other people. I think one of the things you see in my book a lot is I like to reference music, I like to reference other people who've written about a certain subject that may have triggered a thought. So I really make a point to name names and places. So you see a lot of parks mentioned in my book. You see a lot of floral things mentioned in my book, music. So that's kind of a signature Nicole A. Taylor thing. When you pick up … even the works that I've written for, you know, The New York Times or Food Print or any online or print publication, there's always a nod if you really know me, to who I am. There are some core principles that I always put into my writing. Like I always have a music reference, or outdoor reference. It's just something that I do, a little breadcrumb.

Peter Enzinna A signature.

Riann Roca I love that.

Krishna Paul Your recipes and writing in The Last O.G. Cookbook stems from the show's story about a formerly incarcerated chef who returns to a Brooklyn neighborhood he doesn't recognize. How do the chefs and upheavals in the culture, economic and ethnic make-up of Bed-Stuy over the last few decades, or in Brooklyn more generally, make themselves felt throughout the food?

Nicole A Taylor Yeah. Oh my gosh, that was a fun book, The Last O.G. Tracy Morgan's character, obviously. Well, some people don't know Tracy Morgan, the actor, was never incarcerated, but he did grow up in Bedford-Stuyvesant. And I was honored to write this book. It was kind of, I got chosen, but I didn't know the project. It was very weird. We'll have to have a whole other podcast about writing this book. But I was very excited because I lived in Bed-Stuy, so there were some things in the book that are directly from this neighborhood, like community gardens. So I am a person who actually when I first moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant, I was a member and then became an employee of the defunct organization called the Brooklyn Food Coalition. So I was very much for a period of time embedded into food justice work in Bedford-Stuyvesant. So I got a chance to put that in the book in a very indirect way, but a direct way. I also got a chance to guide the book positively with this balance of what's happening now in terms of gentrification and what is pure and what is always going to be, and how the neighborhood has been rooted in a community and Blackness for so long. So I was very lucky that the producers of the book let me chime in on making sure that there was a balance of saying, nah, we can't put that in there. This is not how Bed-Stuy is happening. Or let's put this in here, let's reference this place or thing because it really speaks to old Brooklyn, you know, old Bed-Stuy.

Krishna Paul “You're the Greatest Mac and Cheese” made me want to go in the kitchen and create this dish.

Nicole A Taylor The book is very fun, right?  

Krishna Paul I love the names in the book.

Nicole A Taylor Thank you. Some of the names are cultural, what I call, winks. Some people get it and some people don't. I think I have an “All You Need Salad,” which is like the salad of, oh my gosh, what's his name? So Fine? Rapper? Mary J. Blige. “You're all I need to get back.” … I'm having a brain lapse. Method Man! Method Man. He's in The Last O.G.

Peter Enzinna Yeah, yeah.

Nicole A Taylor So I got a chance to name the salad. “All You Need Salad,” which was a reference to his song with Mary J. Blige. Method Man is not playing himself. He's playing someone else in the thing. So it was cool. It was cool. It was a fun, fun project that I was able to put some Black culture, some Bed-Stuy culture, some Brooklyn culture in the mix.

Peter Enzinna And it dovetails like you said, you know, when you moved here in 2008, things were already being kind of plucked and spread out, gentrified in that way. Like you said, the mason jars and the napkins and everything. So, getting to speak to the history of that specific time period.

Nicole A Taylor Yeah, and the show is about that. I mean, Tray is coming back to his neighborhood and he's working at, like the local coffee shop. It's a hilarious show that kind of pokes fun at something that's really real. So I had to balance that out with what’s for real, for real. And what's fun, but also making sure to grounded in what was really happening in Bed-Stuy. So that was cool.

Riann Roca So what would you say defines Brooklyn food or more specifically Bed-Stuy food for you?

Nicole A Taylor Ooh, Brooklyn food. I feel like you can go to Bay Ridge and get great Palestinian food. You can get great pizza in Bed-Stuy from Saraghina to Locales. You can get great Thai food. There's a new Thai spot that just opened in Bed-Stuy. Like, you can find all the food, all the places. Little Russia in what I call the South Pole in South Brooklyn. I feel like you can stay in this borough and eat food from all around the world.

Bedford-Stuyvesant food has changed so much. When I moved here in 2008, literally, Ms Dahlia’s was the first coffee shop that was near my house. It was on the corner of Nostrand and Halsey, and it's now a health food store. And Bed-Vyne Brew was one of the first bars, and Voodoo, which is no longer which, was next door to Ms Dahlia’s. Those were the first three spots that I frequented a lot. So much has changed. Bed-Vyne Brew is still there. They have a Bed-Vyne Cocktail now. 

What I will say that's very unique to Bedford-Stuyvesant, in the midst of all the gentrification here, there's so many Black-owned businesses, Black-owned food spots, Dick and Jane's. So there is a vibrant Black-owned business community that's just not Soul food. I just named a beer garden. I just named cocktails, bottle wine bar. Dick and Jane's is a food spot. You have, of course, your traditional Caribbean food. You have Peaches. There's a montage. But I would say what I love about this neighborhood the most and why it's so beloved and it is my home is that you still see Black economic, social and political and business power in the neighborhood. And to just describe the food and the people in Bed-Stuy, I would say warm, diverse and very, very Brooklyn. [Laughs] For sure.

Peter Enzinna So when you go out to eat, are you interested in the thought processes and personality that went into your food, or are you just looking to eat and enjoy?

Nicole A Taylor You know, I will tell you if I am working, I want to know the thought process. And if you know, I'm working on a project and I need to eat a lot of French food because I'm working on a Caribbean brasserie concept, I want to know the process. But I'm out with friends or I'm getting to know someone, I've learned over the last few years, particularly after the pandemic, let the other person choose. Let them choose the food. Even if it's going to be sucky. [Laughter] Let them choose a spot, because ultimately I want to connect with the person that I'm there with. And to not judge it. Because I'm just, I'm in that place supporting a business, but also I want to be present for the person that I'm with. So yeah, it's typically one or the other. I would say more so later. I've been trying to do more of just like, relax girl. Relax, Nicole. Enjoy your friend. Enjoy this moment.

Peter Enzinna Yeah. Turn off the critic mad scientist brain.

Nicole A Taylor One hundred percent.

Riann Roca I don't consider how part of research for a cookbook—I mean, maybe it's obvious, but it's not just reading the books—you actually get to try a lot of the food. It sounds great.

Nicole A Taylor One hundred percent. If I am creating, you know, icebox cake for a cookbook, I all of a sudden like will text some food friends and say, ‘Who has icebox cakes on their menus?’ You know, ‘What restaurants can I go to in the city?’ And I'll just like for like a whole month, I'm like, going to nothing but these spots. And a lot of times, people won't even know. They're like, ‘Why are we meeting here?’ Or my husband is like, ‘Why are we going way in the city to this ice cream spot?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, so I'm kind of working on a story about this, this, this.’ But yeah, it's way more than just getting in the kitchen, creating a recipe and putting it down. You have to be inspired.

Peter Enzinna I would say take them to a bunch of different places and make them guess what it is you're looking for, guess the through line.

Nicole A Taylor Totally. And then they see me writing notes and they're like, ‘Are you working?’ [Laughter]

Peter Enzinna There’s something going on here.

Krishna Paul We know that you're a big reader. Can you share what you're currently reading or anything that you've finished reading recently that you have loved?

Nicole A Taylor Oh my gosh. So one of the books that I just checked out from this branch … It was Historically Black Phrases, from ‘any one of your little friends?’ or—it's so funny for me to read this—’who all going to be there?’ I thought it was hilarious that the authors put all of these very traditional Black sayings, anecdotes some would call AAVE, into a book and just gave this backstory on that. So, I've been reading that, which is just a fun, fun book. Yeah. So I've been reading that and what else? I read a lot of audiobooks as well. I listen to audiobooks because I have a small kid. And it's just easy when I'm taking a shower to listen to audiobooks. So, I started reading, When Crack Was King, which is kind of heavy, but it's a super important. So those are the two. And of course, my kid comes to the library once a week, so he usually checks out two or three books. So I should make a list of what he's checking out all the time.

Peter Enzinna And we go through a lot of my house too. And I'm like, sometimes my son will reference something that we read weeks ago, and it'll take me a minute to jog back and remember which one it was.

Nicole A Taylor Yeah, I think it is a Portuguese book called I Climb that we read like four or five times, which is super cool.

Peter Enzinna Nice.

Riann Roca So now our favorite and last question. Are you a coffee or tea drinker?

Nicole A Taylor Oh, man. Coffee all day long. Oh my gosh, I have to have my coffee or I have a headache. Actually, I have an alarm that goes off at 2:30 every day for my afternoon coffee. And it's actually a Solange song. People are like, ‘Oh my gosh, what's going on with your phone? You playing Solage?’ I'm like, no, this is coffee break.

Peter Enzinna Something very important that's going on here.

Krishna Paul So I think we're half / half for coffee and tea.

Peter Enzinna Finally, another coffee drinker. I feel like after our last episode with Brooklyn Tea, we were like ..
Nicole A Taylor Brooklyn Tea has great tea.

Krishna Paul They really do.

Peter Enzinna Big shout out to Brooklyn Tea. But, man, I'm with you on the coffee.

Nicole A Taylor Coffee all day long.

Riann Roca So if you could sit down with anyone from the past or present and share a cup of coffee with them, who would it be?

Nicole A Taylor Past? One hundred percent Zora Neale Hurston. Yeah, I feel like we have … we could spill a lot of tea, okay?

[Laughter]

Peter Enzinna Or coffee.

Nicole A Taylor Or coffee. Yeah. Zora Neale Hurston, I mean, from now, that is super tough. Oh, my gosh, that's super tough. You know what I'm going to say? Kamala Harris. Yeah. I mean, listen, I like her, I got her, I like her, and guess what? My student loans are kaputzo, thanks to Biden and Harris. So yeah, I would sit down with her. She's a huge food person. She's a huge foodie. So yeah, those are my two.

Peter Enzinna Awesome. Thank you so much for sitting down with us.

Riann Roca Yeah. Thank you, Nicole. This was a lot of fun.

Nicole A Taylor Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Riann Roca That was Nicole A Taylor, James Beard Award-nominated food writer and cookbook author of Watermelon and Red Birds, The Up South Cookbook, and The Last O.G. Cookbook.

Krishna Paul We hope you enjoyed this episode of Bed-Stuy Tea. We hope to bring you more conversations with writers, artists, creators, and more from around the neighborhood. We appreciate you listening.

Peter Enzinna Our opening and closing music, which you're hearing right now, is ‘It's Yours’ by King Sis.

Riann Roca For more information about the podcast and the library, check out the BPL website at BKLYN Library [dot] org. You can find other podcast events and of course ebooks, books, and much, much more.

Krishna Paul Thanks from all of us at Macon Library. We'll be back soon with more Bed-Stuy Tea.

[Music]

Adwoa Adusei Borrowed is brought to you by Brooklyn Public Library. This episode was written by Fritzi Bodenheimer and hosted by Peter Enzinna and me, Adwoa Adusei. Virginia Marshall produced this episode. Bed-Stuy Tea is co-hosted and co-produced by Peter Enzinna, Krishna Paul and Riann Roca. You can read a transcript of this episode at our website, BKLYN Library [dot] org [slash] podcasts, and we'll put a link in our show notes to our BKLYN Community Audio feed.

Peter Enzinna Brooklyn Public Library relies on the support of individuals for many of its most critical programs and services. To make a gift, please go to BKLYN Library [dot] org [slash] donate. 

Adwoa Adusei Our Borrowed team is made up of Virginia Marshall, Adwoa Adusei Fritzi Bodenheimer, Robin Lester Kenton, Damaris Olivo, and Ali Post. Jennifer Proffitt and Ashley Gill run our social media. Our music composer is Billy Libby. Meryl Friedman designed our logo. Our thanks to the Bed-Stuy Tea team.