Episode 151 High Production Values: Fabienne Toback & Karis Jagger
Aired: Saturday, May 29th 2021
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HOSTED BY Dana Cowin
High on the Hog is an extraordinary documentary that is destined to re-shape our understanding of the African American influence on food in this country. Based on Dr. Jessica B. Harris s book of the same name, the Netflix series is essential, honest, moving, painful and joyful. On this episode of Speaking Broadly, Karis Jagger and Fabienne Toback, the show s producers, give listeners behind the scenes insight into the production; from what it felt like to walk on the red clay road trod by the enslaved in Benin to pitching the idea for getting it made.
Netflix s High on the Hog reveals how Black cooking is the bedrock of American food
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High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America. Episode 1, “Our Roots”. (L-R) Pictured: Dr. Jessica B. Harris and Stephen Satterfield. ()
High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America. Episode 1, “Our Roots”. ()
The macaroni pie is ready, so steamy and golden you want to reach through the television screen to scoop up a big helping. Historian Leni Sorensen hovers over a kitchen hearth at Monticello, the Virginia plantation built by Thomas Jefferson. She uses a pot hook to remove the cast-iron lid and reveal the casserole dish inside the baking vessel. “Oh, it’s sizzling,” she says, the sound audible in the background like distant applause.
Stephen Satterfield, the host of the new Netflix docuseries, shares his experience participating in a screen adaptation of Dr. Jessica B. Harris's work, the power of film to shift and reclaim narratives, and the beauty and joy of the African food diaspora.
Wed 26 May 2021 05.00 EDT
Netflixâs new food travelogue series, the four-part High on the Hog, will make you ravenous in every way. For the culinary delights with which it is stuffed to bursting, for its nuanced intelligence, its joy, its pace; for the expertise of its presenter, the chef, food writer and former sommelier Stephen Satterfield, for his extraordinarily ego-free warmth; and, most of all, for its profound difference in spirit and content from almost everything that has gone before.
High on the Hog is adapted from a 2011 book of the same name by the historian and author of numerous specialist cookbooks about African American cuisines, Jessica B Harris. It traces the influence and endurance of African food and cooking traditions on the US as it journeyed with the people, including Satterfieldâs ancestors, trafficked and enslaved from one continent to another. The programmeâs producers, Fabienne Toback and Karis Jagger, came across Harrisâs book when th