Let's dedicate this dish to the late GREAT Gladys Bentley. It is also outrageously wonderful. This is a very versatile “down home cookin” type of dish. Remember that in the 20's and 30's it didn't matter how much money you had, if you were African-American, you just could not get served in most restaurants. Managements did not even have to claim “religious” privilege.
You can use any type of pork in this recipe, as long as the pieces are at least 1 inch thick, “Poke Chops is Fine”! Plain peach marmalade works great. slave used a bottle of duck sauce only because it had been on sale and was sitting there in the pantry. More on Gladys latter.
You can throw this into the slow cooker with a few ingredients you probably have right there in your pantry. Talk about finger lickin excellence!
Ingredients
- 2 lbs pork (used here were pork steaks)
- 1 green pepper, sliced
- 2 onions, sliced thin
- ½ cup ketchup
- ¾
cup fruit sauce (marmalade)
- ½
teaspoon garlic powder
- ½
cup peach chunks for garnish
Wipe
out the slow cooker and spray.
Chop
the green onion and slice the onions.
Put
the pork in the bottom of the cooker. Set on low heat.
Any
time you have to get a thick syrupy food out of a bottle, try letting
it sit for a few minutes in HOT tap water.
Spread
the onions onto the pork and add the green pepper.
In
a large bowl mix the sauce, ketchup, and garlic powder.
Pour
the sauce mixture over the other ingredients.
Cook
on low for 7
hours. 
All this takes to finish it off is some white rice to serve as a bed for this rich and juicy pork.
======================
Born
in 1907, Gladys Bentley was one of the most famous and
financially successful black women in the United States in the 1920s
and 1930s. She was a pioneer in pushing the envelope of gender &
sexuality, class & race, with parody and exaggeration.
This 250-pound, masculine, African-American lesbian, was a singer and a piano player extraordinaire. She would perform all night long in a white tuxedo and top hat. Bentley had a gravely voice and was known for inventing obscene lyrics for the songs of the day. Langston Hughes called her 'an amazing exhibition of musical energy.'"
In 1928, when Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a speakeasy, opened; Bentley put it on the map. It was one of the most raucous illegal drinking establishments in Harlem. The nightly show featured drag performers and the larger-than-life Bentley entertaining patrons with her bawdy renditions. While not exclusively gay it was perhaps the first establishment known to cater to homosexual clientele.
Billed
as: "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs," she also
appeared during the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, backed by a
chorus of men in drag.
Bentley moved to the Southern California during the late 1930s, and became the headliner at Mona's 440 Club, (perhaps the first lesbian bar in America, opened in San Francisco in 1936). Mona's waitresses and female performers all wore tuxedos.
It later became “Anne's 440”, and featured San Francisco singer Johnny Mathis. Today it is the “Club Chi-Chi”.
Gladys was billed during the 1940s as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Artist."
At her professional height, Hollywood stars such as Tallulah Bankhead would often drop by to check out the racy shows. Bentley would still perform after the demise of the speakeasy, but the flamboyance would slowly disappear under politically correct dresses.
As she aged, Bentley slowly became more conservative. The entertainment world lost this great luminary in 1960 to the flu.
She
did not leave us with very many recordings but this gives us a nice
taste:
While
you are there at Youtube, check out some of her other few recordings,
especially “Red
Beans & Rice Blues”!
Let's rediscover this legendary performer. Let us never forget our heritage.
Happy to be serving my Master Indy
socialslave
To
satisfy and restore.
To
nourish, support and maintain.
To
gratify, spoil, comfort and please,
to
nurture, assist, and sustain
…..I
cook!
Please
buy slave's cookbook:
No comments:
Post a Comment