Soul Foodies to Watch: Adrian Miller

Our Soul Foodie to Watch is Adrian Miller, author of 2014 James Beard Award winner for reference, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine. (UNC Press 2013)

1. What’s your food vision for (African America) in 2015? What do our priorities need to be?

Our community needs to continue the push for healthier eating and for food justice. I love the creative energy that we’re seeing from vegan and vegetarian soul foodies. I do hope that we don’t completely cast aside traditional soul food as we embrace new forms of the cuisine.

2. What inspires your culinary creativity?

I draw inspiration primarily from three sources: my mother, Johnetta Miller, who taught me how to cook; the works of Edna Lewis, and the hundreds of African American cooks (often nameless) I’ve discovered in old cookbooks, magazine and newspaper articles and oral histories.

3. What’s your best dish or drink or meal?

My standbys are mixed greens and black-eyed peas. I love cooking and eating those soul food classics. I’m also transitioning from gulping down red Kool-Aid to drinking more hibiscus aid and teas–the original red drink from West Africa.

4. What’s your favorite edible treat?

I love truly smoked barbecue, especially pork spareribs. If I could eat barbecue every day without suffering any health consequences, I definitely would!

5. What should we be on the lookout from you for in 2015?

I can’t reveal the publications at this time, but I’m writing some freelance magazine articles and blog posts on the current state of African American cooks and soul food restaurants