Bryant Terry

Bryant Terry is an eco chef, food justice activist, and author of Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine (Da Capo/Perseus March 2009). He has garnered many honors and awards for his work including receiving the inaugural Natural Gourmet Institute Award for Excellence in Health-Supportive Food Education. Bryant's first book (coauthored with Anna Lappé, foreword by Eric Schlosser), Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen (Tarcher/Penguin 2006), is a winner of a 2007 Nautilus Award for Social Change. Bryant contributes essays and recipes to a number of online and print outlets, and his work has been featured in Gourmet, Food and Wine, The New York Times Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, Vibe, and many other publications. Bryant completed the Chef's Training Program at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City and he holds an M.A. in American History from New York University.

Cooking Classes for the 2010 Cruise

Cooking Class 1: Soul Food Revival
Soul Food is the quintessential American comfort cuisine, yet the mere mention of it can bring frowns to advocates of healthy eating. But not anymore! Leave out the land-mined salt and refined sugar, "bad" fats, poor-quality meats and unhealthy cooking techniques, and leave in the down-home flavor. In this class Chef Bryant Terry will prepare tasty modern reinventions of his favorite family recipes from his book Vegan Soul Kitchen. Forget what you thought about soul food. These recipes use best-quality, health-supportive ingredients and cooking techniques that preserve the goodness food was born with. Recipes include: Double Mustard Greens with Roasted Yams Soup and Sweet Cornmeal-Coconut Butter Drop Biscuits.

Cooking Calls 2: Afro-Diasporic Remix
In this class participants will experience Chef Terry's passion for imagining recipes through the prism of the African Diaspora-cutting, pasting, reworking, and remixing African, Caribbean, African American, Native American, and European staples, cooking techniques, and distinctive dishes to come up with dishes that look backwards and forwards at the same time. Drawing from the aromatic spices, healthful grains, and nutrient-dense greens of the African Diaspora, the end result will be mouth-watering vegan dishes that use fresh, whole, best-quality, health-supportive ingredients and healthful cooking techniques with an eye on local, seasonal, sustainably raised real food.

Cooking Class 3: Ital Food is Vital Food
"Ital," taken from the word vital, is employed throughout Rastafarian jargon as a way to emphasize the oneness and unity of life. This concept is also applied to Rastafarians' understanding of health, food, and agriculture. Ital dishes promote a wholesome mind, body, spirit and environment, and they are as fresh as possible, free from additives, preservatives and other chemicals, and in most cases dairy free. In this class Chef Terry will guide participants in making Ital dishes inspired by the banquet of flavors found in Caribbean cuisine.