Carla from Top Chef will fix you Chicken n’ Dumplings (while you support historic preservation and education!)

Photo: Bravo Television

Get out your datebook, people!  This is a can’t-miss event!

In honor of Black History Month, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground National Heritage Area will honor the Grande Dame of Southern Cuisine, Edna Lewis (1916 – 2006) and raise funds for their award-winning educational programs.

The night offers a meal prepared by Carla Hall from Bravo’s Top Chef, based on Lewis’s classic, soul-warming recipes.  (I must confess that Carla is my very favorite person from all the vast realm that is reality television!  Hootie hoo, Carla!)  Also celebrating Edna Lewis’s legacy will be her 86-year-old sister, as well as historian Leni Sorensen.

Who was Edna Lewis?  A review of her five-star cookbook, The Taste of Country Cooking shares:  “In recipes and reminiscences equally delicious, Edna Lewis celebrates the uniquely American country cooking she grew up with some fifty years ago in a small Virginia Piedmont farming community that had been settled by freed slaves. With menus for the four seasons, she shares the ways her family prepared and enjoyed food, savoring the delights of each special time of year.”

An Authentic Edna Lewis Winter Dinner to

Soothe the Soul and Warm the Heart

(And if Carla is cooking, it’s served with love!)

Chicken with Dumplings

(using locally raised, free-range, hormone and antibiotic-free chickens)

Glazed Carrots

Crusty Yeast Bread with Butter

Deep-dish Apple Pie with Nutmeg Sauce

(Totally “yum” — right?)

WHEN: Thursday, February 24, 2011, 6:30 pm

WHERE: The Foundation Room (Okras), 9110 Center Street | Manassas, VA 20110

Proceeds will help the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership continue its award-winning and nationally-acclaimed education programs designed to help students experience our history like never before.

The event is being held at the Foundation Room in Historic Manassas, owned by Chef Charles Gilliam, who will be assisting Chef Hall.

Event Sponsors:

Ayshire Farm

Jeff Adams, Walnut Hill Farm at Elm Spring

Charles Gilliam, Okras Bistro (The Foundation Restaurant)

Carla Hall, celebrity chef & owner, Alchemy by Carla Hall

Leni Sorensen, African-American historian

***

About Edna Lewis Edna Lewis was an African-American chef and author best known for her Southern Cuisine. She was born in a small farming settlement of Freetown, Orange County, Virginia, the granddaughter of an emancipated slave who helped start the community.  She passed away on February 13, 2006 at the age of 89.  Lewis published The Edna Lewis Cookbook (1972), The Taste of County Cooking (1976), In Pursuit of Flavor (1988) and The Gift of Southern Cooking (2003).

About Carla Hall Carla Hall cooks from the heart and balances her Southern traditions, classic French training, and holistic approach to food as an entertaining expert, and owner and Executive Chef of Alchemy Caterers by Carla Hall in Washington, DC.

About Leni Sorensen For 25 years Sorensen has lectured on African American history and the lives of women in early America. A graduate of the MA-PhD program at the College of William and Mary, she lives in rural Virginia where she teaches and lectures on culinary history.