(upbeat music) (guitar music) - This is Cooking with Brontez.

I'm here with one of my favorite people, Sarah from Miss Ollie's.

I've been eating their food for ten years.

- Yeah.

- Ten years.

I know you're from like the "Deep South".

- That's right.

- From Alabama to like I feel like black cuisine that probably would be more normal on the east coast.

On the west coast it takes this like total fine dining edge, just because of how California like does it and stuff.

And I've always been really interested in how black food gets translated here.

- I feel that one of the things we don't do as Miss Ollie's is we don't do all this like manicuring of food, and chives and all of this, and then you know a (indistinct) of cornbread.

We just keep it like how it is served.

The ingredients are going to be local because we try to do that.

But there are key ingredients like the ackee, which actually comes from Haiti and peppers which we bring in from the Caribbean.

But the base of it is going to be local.

You know, local produce.

But I think a lot of, unfortunately black chefs have been forced to play to a white palate.

- Well.

The palette's going to be very black today.

(Laughing) What are we making today?

- Today we are making one of my favorite dishes and a dish that my father used to make every Sunday because it was good for soaking up alcohol.

And it's called saltfish and ackee.

- Saltfish and ackee, let's get it popping.

- So your Mise en place or your prep, you're going to slice these up, de seed them.

This is a hot pepper so try not to get your hands on the seeds.

Cherry tomatoes, onions sliced, and then some herbs.

And the star of the show in this dish is called salt cod or known as bacalhau, or salted fish.

And I boil some of that off to take the salt out of it.

So it's not too salty.

A lot of people in the Caribbean didn't have fridges.

So fish, fresh cod or fresh filets of fish, were packed in salt and left in a larder.

And then the other star of the show is ackee.

And ackee is a fruit that you primarily find in Jamaica and Haiti.

It's a distant relative of the lychee.

So it's a pod that opens up and then lets out this fruit.

(rock music) So we're boiling it.

This is the second boil.

So it removes a portion of the salt, which it's being preserved in.

And then I'm going to flake it up.

And then that will go back into the dish.

- We're taking these little tomatoes here and we're going to stem them.

And to stem them means you take the stem off.

I hope that didn't stem from trauma.

West Indians are very literal people so when we say stem them it means move the stem out of the tomato.

- Tell me about literalness.

I remember going to Ms. Ollie's with a date once, and you had that fried chicken with all the stuff in it, like the coriander, like seasoning stuff.

I was just like, we're like yeah, what's that called?

And you're like, well, you know where I'm from we have this thing called seasoning.

(Laughing) We thought you were being funny, but you were like, no, it's like literally means these things and I always thought that was hilarious.

- So we're going to let these cook down and get nice and sort of caramelized.

And then you're going to add your hot pepper and then your onions.

And this here is called broadleaf thyme or Cuban oregano.

Just pull those two and rip them and they go in there.

This is really used for lot of cooking or medicinal purposes.

It makes great tea, which is good for digestion.

It also adds this element of generous like musty flavor profile infused.

- And oregano and thyme that we're pulling.

- And your salt cod.

- Okay cool.

We got salt cod.

- And then tomatoes will go in at the end.

And then we're going to let her kind of stew down.

The liquid from the tomatoes we're going to help that happen.

- We got ackee.

Oh wow.

It looks like corn pops or corn puffs.

What's the, what's the cereal?

Corn pops - I don't know.

What you want to do is pour half of this in.

And try not to break them up, we want them to keep their shape.

- Oh, okay.

Nice.

- And then on low heat.

(rock music) So you find where it is.

And then we're going to refry them one more time after that.

So and then the ancestors without feeding them like this full meal.

It's really just to honor them.

- I know exactly who was there, he like tapped me on the shoulder.

Boy, you better give me that food.

Okay?

- We've got one, two three, for you guys.

Some olive oil.

- We have the dish here and we got our faithful camera person, Micah.

Like, ah that's Micah.

Ah!

Lots of grub.

We done even gave some food to the ancestors.

Thank you so much, Sarah.

- You're welcome.

It's a pleasure.

- And you're watching cooking with Brontez.

Thank you.

Bon Appetit.

- Thank you.

- Oh my gosh.

Yes!

Thank you for watching Cooking with Brontez.

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