Kitchen Accents, A four-post food history series based on Joan Adams, "From the Kelvin Kitchen: The Creole Way," The Chicago Defender, November 3, 1934
Filé
Food Writer Joan Adams traced creole cuisine to French and Spanish settlers in early Louisiana, credited the Choctaw with filé, the ground sassafras leaves that once thickened gumbo over open fires, and named okra its modern stand-in. Missing from her account are the enslaved West Africans who carried okra, and likely the word gumbo itself, into Louisiana kitchens.
[Side Bar]
Adams set this side dish beside her gumbo discussion in The Chicago Defender. Lettuce leaves cooked with peas echo a French technique, here folded into a Creole frame for Chicago readers learning to make modest produce taste like a restaurant plate.
Creole Green Peas
Ingredients
3 cups shelled peas
1 small white onion
2 lettuce leaves
2 tablespoons butter
½ teaspoon sugar
Salt
Directions
Bring one pint of boiling water to a boil; add the onion and cook five minutes, then throw in the peas, which have been well washed and picked over; add butter and sugar and cook until the peas are tender and the water has evaporated, leaving only the butter. Add salt to taste five minutes before the peas are done, and, if the water cooks away before peas are tender, add a little more boiling water.
Joan Adams, "From the Kelvin Kitchen: The Creole Way," The Chicago Defender (National edition), November 3, 1934, 7.