Ice cream can tell centuries of Black stories—just ask chef Lokelani Alabanza.
—is a nostalgia junkie. “I collect recipes and recreate them [through ice cream]. It’s like collecting antiques but with food,” she explains. One look at her vintage cookbook collection, which features volumes penned by Black chefs over the last century and longer, and it’s clear she has a fascination with the past.
“How can I feed this to you?” she thinks when something inspires her. “How can I get this into an ice cream flavor?”Alabanza has been amassing old cookbooks for as long as she can remember, combing estate sales and antique malls, or just receiving them from people. “Everyone knows, Loke wants the old books,” she laughs. But the books form her professional roadmap, each dog-eared page and underlined word an insight into a cook’s soul.
But the California native did not hit her stride until she moved to the South five years ago. “I didn’t realize how this is a place of preservation of food stories and traditions,” she marvels. For Black Southerners, food is interwoven into identity. “Church picnics! Ten different versions of a green bean! The dessert table! I didn’t see that sense of tradition growing up out West.”Seeing Black cookery in an elevated light gave Alabanza a new appreciation for her late grandmother, who hailed from Chattanooga, Tenn., and to whom she was very close. Her grandmother was a wonderful cook, but didn’t leave behind any written recipes. Cooking these other women’s recipes heals her longing for connection.
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