Juneteenth

Juneteenth holds special meaning for chef Stephen Jones. Jones grew up in Chicago and moved to Phoenix in 2008, making his name at restaurants including Tarbell's and Blue Hound Kitchen & Cocktails before striking out on his own with The Larder + The Delta, a food court stall at DeSoto Central Market. Jones relocated The Larder + The Delta to its own space in 2018, earned a four star review from The Arizona Republic in 2019 and was named a semifinalist by the James Beard Foundation for "Best Chef — Southwest" in 2020.

Jones' contemporary Southern food is deeply rooted in his African-American heritage. To celebrate Juneteenth, he shares his thoughts on what the holiday means to him, how he celebrates history through food and how the restaurant industry and food media can improve their depictions of Southern foodways.

He also shares a recipe for okra pilau, a contemporary take on one of his favorite dishes that represents both his personal history and the roots of AfricanAmerican cuisine.

It was a big deal growing up as a kid. The family would all get together, lots of food, lots of hanging out. It seemed like a party, but you felt like there was a deeper meaning to it. My grandparents would explain to us what it meant and what it was about, made us understand what was going on. And it was very, very important to them that we knew what the day represented.

I don’t think it’s fully trickled down yet. I don’t think we’re even halfway there. A lot of it ties into the movement that’s going on now. White America still needs to understand and have some real hard conversations within themselves to realize that you weren’t the first people here. There are people who have been doing this for a very, very long time. Cultural appropriation has been happening all across the board, and it’s still happening.

You look at what’s happened with Southern food over the last 15 years. It took a farmer from South Carolina and a white chef from West Virginia (Glenn Roberts of Anson Mills and Sean Brock, former chef at Husk) to bring this thing to the forefront, and the world just thought that they were the biggest thing since sliced bread. And don’t get me wrong, those are two individuals I hold with great respect. They’re colleagues; I’ve had the opportunity to meet and talk with them both, and they both understand and know the role that they have played and that they are playing within the resurgence of Southern food. But they also both understand that they’re just trying to tell their methods, their Southern food. And people — whether that be the media, whether that be individuals, or whomever — have deemed them the saviors of Southern food and, honestly, neither one of them really wants that accolade. got complacent and didn’t really care, and for the most part probably still don’t care, where their food comes from. They just want something that’s right in front of them and fast.

One hundred percent, it bothers me. We need to fix that disconnect. We need to understand that there are African-American farmers out there doing great things. It’s not just the Bob McClendons of the world or anyone else. There’s a lot of small Nigerian farmers in Arizona. I met this woman just randomly. She messaged me and I messaged her back and she has a tiny little half acre, quarter acre and she’s from Botswana. And she’s doing all kinds of melons and stuff like that. That’s great. Those stories are out there.

I started thinking about what Juneteenth represented to me, and what it looked like for me growing up, and what I know it looks like for the AfricanAmerican culture. So I’m going to invite some friends, a couple of African-American chefs (Jacob Cutino and Keenan Bosworth), and we’re going to just have a good time and put together a small menu. It’ll be just for the Juneteenth menu. We’re going to run it at the restaurant for Friday.

We’re going to tell stories with our guests, and we’re going to serve dishes that we grew up eating and what those dishes mean to us. I know I’m doing okra pilau, which is also known as okra rice. I’m using the Charleston Gold rice out of South Carolina, locally grown okra, a little bit of black garlic.

We’re going to take a step back and kind of slow down and have a good time and tell stories of what Juneteenth means to each of us. Hopefully people walk away a little more educated, and the real goal is to walk away with an understanding of how Juneteenth needs to be a national holiday.

It’s a dish that would be eaten in the fields, because there was an abundance of rice and it was low cost. Rice, you know, was always given to slaves. They could make it and they could pull from it all day. And there was plenty of okra in the field that they would harvest, and they would keep a few for themselves. Eating plain rice all day every

Stephen Jones, owner and executive chef at The Larder + The Delta restaurant in Phoenix, is seen by his take of Okra Pilau on June 12. From Stephen Jones of The Larder + The Delta Serves 4 people 1 pound Texas red okra (cut into rounds) 1.5 cups Charleston Gold rice (Anson Mills, South Carolina) 4 cups water 1 tablespoon kosher salt 4 dried bay leaves 1 cup packed washed okra leaves, if you can get them (if not, don’t worry about it) 1 bulb of black garlic 1 tablespoon canola oil 1 tablespoon toasted benne seeds 1 teaspoon unsalted butter Salt and white pepper to taste Bring the 4 cups of water and kosher salt to a boil. Add rice and bay leaves, give one or two stirs and place a lid on the pot. Once the rice begins to boil, shut off the heat and set a timer for 14 minutes. (Do not open the lid.) After 14 minutes, remove the lid and invert the rice onto a sheet pan or cookie tray to dry out. Remove the black garlic from the skins and — working with a knife — smush the garlic against your cutting board until a paste forms. Continue with the whole head of black garlic until you have a fluid, sticky paste. Stack the okra leaves together, as if layering them. Run your knife through the leaves to give them a rough cut. Place a saute pan on medium-high heat and allow it to get hot for at least 4 minutes. Add the canola oil to your pan, allow it to come to its smoke point, then add the okra and allow it to sear and achieve color, roughly 2-3 minutes. Add a tablespoon of the black garlic paste and deglaze the pan with cup water to finish cooking the okra. Add 2 cups of the cooked rice and gently toss to combine, adding the okra leaves (if using), benne seeds and salt and pepper to season.