Josephine Baker Lemon Chicken

For black history month we would like to dedicate this dish to a provocative bisexual singer of the early 20^th century, Josephine Baker. She rose from a Saint Louis slum to be the toast of Paris. A civil rights leader and war hero who may be largely forgotten today. Please read a quick story about her following the recipe. 

 

Lemon Chicken has long been a favorite in the finest restaurants of the world. Here is a quick and easy way to make this wonderful classic right on your own stove top! 

 

Ingredients:

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

3 large lemons (1 sliced – 2 zested & squeezed)

1 cup reduced sodium chicken stock

4 cloves garlic (chopped)

½ cup dry white wine

2 Tbs oil + 2 Tbs butter

¼ c. non-fat half & half

1/3 package angel hair pasta

½ tsp oregano

2 pinches red pepper flakes

Directions:

Chop the garlic.

Cut the chicken breasts sideways in half. Slave prefers this to pounding the breasts flat. The idea is to make the pieces less thick so they cook easier. 

  

Slice one lemon. The other two should be “zested” and then cut & squeezed into another bowl. Always squeeze with cut side up so less chance of seeds falling into the bowl. Stir the red pepper flakes into the lemon juice & zest along with the oregano.

Note: the angle hair pasta cooks very quickly! Only about 3 and a half minutes, so get this ready but do not start to cook it yet.

Heat the oil & butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Sprinkle salt & pepper on the chicken and add to the hot grease. Let cook about 7 minutes on each side. This should remove any bacteria and pinkness but leave the natural chicken juices. You can check with a thermometer for a temp of about 155 degrees.

 

 

Remove from skillet and lay a piece of foil over the chicken. It will continue to cook and the temp should rise another 7 to 10 degrees!

Now stir the chopped garlic into the skillet and add the lemon juice mixture. Scrape up all the browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. (This stuff tastes great and makes it easier to clean up afterwards.)

Bring to a boil with the cup of chicken broth. Stir in the wine. Let simmer down for 10 – 15 minutes stirring occasionally. This lets the sauce thicken up nicely.

Now is a good time to cook the pasta and drain it well.

Stir in the half & half, turn off the heat and replace the chicken into the pan of sauce. This will bring the chicken back to temperature and allow the sauce to soak into the chicken. You do not want the mixture to boil.

Serve with a side of green vegetable, slave used plain green peas.

The pasta was served in a large bowl to form a bed in each guest's plate.

Arrange the chicken pieces with lemon slices and drizzle some of the sauce over the top. Serve the sauce on the side so everyone can add as much as they like.

This is such a simple dish to make yet tastes so elegant.

For our music tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvaAykoPj6Y

So happy to serve my Master.

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:

The Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes by Dan White http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F315Y4I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_vAT4sb0934RTM via @amazon

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Josephine Baker

Born in Saint Louis in 1906 Josephine Baker would become one of the most influential household names on both sides of the Atlantic. This BiSexual African American was indeed a trailblazer. One of the first to star in a major motion picture, one of the first to become a world-famous singer, one of the first black women to integrate an American concert hall, and she was the first American-born woman to receive the Croix de guerre, a high ranking French military honor of prestige. Haled as a great entertainer, she made contributions to the Civil Rights Movement and lent a hand to the French Resistance in the second World War.

Amazing future for this young girl who at times lived in a cardboard box, dancing in the streets of the worst Ghetto areas of Saint Louis.

Her mother, Carrie, was adopted in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1886 by Richard and Elvira McDonald, both of whom were former slaves of African and Native American descent.

The records of the city of St. Louis tell an interesting story. Josephine Baker's mother, Carrie McDonald, was admitted to the (exclusively white) Female Hospital on May 3, 1906, as pregnant. She was discharged six weeks latter along with her baby, Freda J. McDonald having been born two weeks earlier. Obviously, there had been complications with the pregnancy, but Carrie's chart reveals no details. The father was identified on the birth certificate simply as "Edw" ... Her father may have been white—Josephine thought so, so did her family. Reports say that her mother had worked for a German family around the time she became pregnant. He's the one who must have got her into that hospital and paid to keep her there all those weeks. Also, her baby's birth was registered by the head of the hospital at a time when most black births were not.

Josephine lived her early life in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood of St. Louis, a mostly black low-income neighborhood near Union Station, consisting mainly of rooming houses, brothels and apartments with no indoor plumbing.

She left first husband, Willie Baker, when her vaudeville troupe was booked into a New York City venue and divorced him in 1925. It was during this time she began to see significant career success, and she continued to use his last name professionally for the rest of her life.

Baker was billed at the time as "the highest-paid chorus girl in vaudeville".

These performances landed Baker an opportunity to tour in Paris, which would become the place she called home until her final days.

"One day I realized I was living in a country where I was afraid to be black. It was only a country for white people. Not black. So I left. I had been suffocating in the United States.... A lot of us left, not because we wanted to leave, but because we couldn't stand it anymore.... I felt liberated in Paris."

In Paris, she became an instant success for her erotic dancing, and for appearing practically nude onstage. After a successful tour of Europe, she broke her contract and returned to France to star at the Folies Bergère, setting the standard for her future acts.

In later shows in Paris, she was often accompanied on stage by her pet cheetah, "Chiquita", who was adorned with a diamond collar. The cheetah frequently escaped into the orchestra pit, where it terrorized the musicians, adding another element of excitement to the show.

After a while, Baker was the most successful American entertainer working in France. Ernest Hemingway called her "the most sensational woman anyone ever saw."

In September 1939, when France declared war on Germany in response to the invasion of Poland, Baker was recruited by the Deuxième Bureau, French military intelligence, as an "honorable correspondent". Baker collected what information she could about German troop locations from officials she met at parties. Her café-society fame enabled her to rub shoulders with those in the know, from high-ranking Japanese officials to Italian bureaucrats, and to report back what she heard. Notes were written in invisible ink on Baker's sheet music.

After the war, Baker received the Croix de guerre and the Rosette de la Résistance. She was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur by General Charles de Gaulle.

In 1949, a reinvented Baker returned in triumph to the Folies Bergere. Bolstered by recognition of her wartime heroics, Baker the performer assumed a new gravitas, unafraid to take on serious music or subject matter.

The engagement was a rousing success, and reestablished Baker as one of Paris' preeminent entertainers. In 1951 Baker was invited back to the United States for a nightclub engagement in Miami. After winning a public battle over desegregating the club's audience, Baker followed up her sold-out run at the club with a national tour. Rave reviews and enthusiastic audiences accompanied her everywhere, climaxed by a parade in front of 100,000 people in Harlem in honor of her new title: NAACP's "Woman of the Year". Her future looked bright but was short lived and her visa was canceled in response to her Civil Rights work.

During Baker's work with the Civil Rights Movement, she began adopting children, forming a family she often referred to as "The Rainbow Tribe". Baker wanted to prove that "children of different ethnicities and religions could still be brothers."

As early as 1920, when she was 14, she had already had same-sex relationships with other vaudeville performers. We know of at least six of her female lovers, all of whom she met on the black performing circuit during her early years in the United States, as well as fellow American black expatriate vaudeville performer Ada “Bricktop” Smith and the French novelist Colette. 

 

Josephine Baker was bisexual. However she rejected any sort of LGBT affiliation. Although Baker in her later years was rumored to have enjoyed the company of many young women, she was also rabidly homophobic, and once kicked one of her adopted sons out when she found out he was gay.

However we must remember she was a product of her time. We should not impose conventional wisdom on historical figures. When learning about something in the past we do not understand, we must simply state facts and not judge by today's standards.

So during this black history month, let's take time to learn about a very complex personality of Josephine Baker.