On one such trip to Virginia, Twitty cooked at Lee's birth home, Stratford Hall, an imposing brick manor with a commanding view of the Potomac. His approach is not that of a historian, but rather a 'historical interpreter.' Twitty cooks in plantation kitchens to convey to others the story and legacy of African Americans in the South. His approach is not that of a historian, but rather a 'historical interpreter': He picks cotton, chops wood, works in rice fields and cooks for audiences in plantation kitchens while dressed in slave clothing to recreate what his ancestors had to endure. One of Twitty's projects is his 'Southern Discomfort Tour' - a journey through the 'forgotten little Africa' of the Old South. 'Living proof that African civilization was part and parcel of Southern existence,' says Twitty. Not one fried chicken or two - but unlimited fried chicken.' Moreover, during the Union blockade, when the South faced starvation, Lee praised the cowpea (also called black-eyed pea or cornfield pea) as 'the only unfailing friend the Confederacy ever had.' Ironically, it was the humble West African cowpea and the African peanut that kept Southerners fed when bread was scarce. Lee, who loved his black cook's fried chicken, once said that all he wanted was 'a Virginia farm - no end of cream and fresh butter - and fried chicken.

'Our influence across the South,' he writes, 'conquered more territory than any Confederate army ever managed.'Ī ringing statement, for which unwitting support can be found from no less than the beau ideal of the Confederacy. Twitty's prose movingly captures this momentous and profoundly personal moment and provides a glimpse of the scope and tone of his deeply researched, sometimes rambling, but altogether fascinating book that braids personal memoir, genealogy and culinary excavation to tell the story of a whole people through the lineage of their food. Their slaveholder, Blake Mitchell, immediately declared them free - even as they still held his horse in place, waiting for whatever was to come next.'

'At that moment, as the Confederacy's 150-year mourning period began,' writes Twitty in his new book, The Cooking Gene, 'my great-great grandfather and his brother counted themselves among the first black people to find out that the long nightmare of American slavery - nearly three centuries in the making - was over. He was one of the first slaves to know that the war was over. Lee emerge from McLean House in Appomattox, Va., after surrendering to General Ulysses S. When he was 15, Elijah Mitchell, Twitty's great-great-grandfather, saw General Robert E.

Michael twitty the cooking gene