Meet Klancy Miller : pastry chef, cookbook author, keeper of the culture

Klancy Miller’s affection for food has been going on her entire life. It is a love affair that is rooted in childhood memories of enjoying her parents cooking and it has since manifested itself in a series of ways including a pastry degree, two cookbooks and slew of articles that have been published by organizations like The New York Times, Food52, Bon Appétit and many more.

Her latest book, For the Culture highlights the often unknown and undermined contributions Black women have made in the world of culinary arts. Throughout the book you will find plenty of delicious dishes to try and a series of profiles for culinary icons like Leah Chase, Dr. Jessica B. Harris and Carla Hall. Since its release last year, the anthology has gone on to win a special place in the hearts and bookshelves of many Black foodies along with the 2024 IACP Cookbook Award for Literary or Historical Food Writing. Amidst her busy schedule, Miller sat down with the Spice Lee Media editor and founder, Aria Brent to discuss her journey, why it’s important that books like For the Culture exist and what she’s got cooking up next.

AB: Tell me about your upbringing and what made you want to get into food.

KM: I grew up in a family eating very well. I'm an only child. My mom passed last year, but she was an amazing cook and my dad is a very good cook. I grew up eating out in restaurants with my parents a lot and eating very well at home. At first I thought, when I was a teenager I thought “Oh, maybe I'll own a restaurant someday,” but I also thought I would be president or like a surgeon or something. So there were a lot of ideas I had for myself. Fast forward to college, I went to Columbia and one of my work study jobs was working in a cafeteria and I enjoyed the experience. I worked as a stir fry cook, and I liked it and that was one of my first food jobs. As a teenager, I worked in a gourmet food store in our neighborhood and I liked that. I knew I liked food and when I graduated from college I didn't really know what I wanted to do professionally. I majored in history and I studied French and film and Political Science and Arabic– I was all over the place! So I thought I would get a job that would allow me to apply what I studied or some of what I studied and I ended up working for a non- governmental organization and I was in their Middle East programs, and I thought that would be a way for me to apply like history, because I studied Middle Eastern history and Arabic and just kind of general interests I had. While I had that job, I also was taking filmmaking classes and cooking classes, and I loved the cooking classes, and then I decided to apply for a job at a restaurant, like a part time job. I wasn't qualified for it because it was to be a line cook and the chef didn't hire me. She said I didn't have enough experience, but she would let me come in and apprentice on the weekends and that was fantastic. I really loved it and that kind of confirmed that I really love food and cooking and restaurants. I asked her about her advice for me, and she said “You don't have to go to culinary school to become a chef, but if you're interested in pastry, then I would recommend culinary school.” And I was like, “Oh, a pastry program would be fun,” and I speak French and I got the idea to go to Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. It took a while for me to figure out that's what I wanted to do. Then I was in Le Cordon Bleu. I loved it. Then a job opening came up at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris in the recipe development department and I knew I wanted to continue to live in Paris. And I thought, “Oh, this will allow me to use my food knowledge, but in a different way, like learn about recipe writing and be within the context of a culinary school and hopefully do more writing about food.” That's when I kind of pivoted to wanting to explore writing about food and I did. I mostly wrote for free. There was this blog called Bonjour Paris, and I wrote things for them and then, when I came back from Paris I started doing freelance writing those were the beginning steps for me and my food life.

AB:How did you go from freelancing to then deciding, “Okay, I want to write my own book,” which of course started off with Cooking Solo ?

KM: I did something that my mom told me about, called informational interviews.Where I would just reach out to a bunch of people I was interested in like editors at food magazines,journalists at newspapers, to ask them how they started their careers but I would literally just be like, “Can you tell me how you started?” I cold emailed all these people and a lot of people said “yes.” I would meet them for coffee, they would tell me how they began, I told them about myself and almost 100% of the time ach person I met would recommend that I speak to somebody else and they would give me the name and like number or email address for somebody. I met with Amanda Hesser while she was still at the New York Times– this was just before she was about to leave to start Food52 and she was very generous. She took me out for breakfast, we had like a three hour conversation and she told me so much about her background, and she was like, “You should speak to my colleague, Julia Moskin,” also a journalist at the New York Times, and I spoke with Julia Moskin and she was like “You should maybe want to consider ghost writing. I did a lot of ghost writing when I first started out.It can be a good way to write about food, work with chefs, get your foot in the door.” That's not exactly what she said, but it's the gist of what she said. She's like, “I'm going to give you my old agents information, and you can ask her more about ghost writing. ”So I reached out to her agent, and I thought it was going to be kind of another informational thing and my intention was just to ask her about what ghost writing is and how does one start? She immediately was like, “I've got a project for you,” and I was like, “Okay,” and in order to start that project I had to sign on to join her agency, like for her to be my agent. That project was a wine book. I would have been writing it with this very young sommelier, at that point I think she was probably the youngest sommelier in the country and she wanted to do a book, or her company wanted her to do a book and we got along great. The book never took off, but it was an interesting project. And then by this point, I had met, interviewed and written about Marcus Samuelsson and he asked me to contribute to one of his books, like ghost writing and I did that and that was cool. I also wanted to do a memoir about my time in Paris and my agent shopped my memoir book proposal around and that got rejected by like 30 publishers. I had also been working on a book proposal for Cooking Solo, and that book got purchased.That project got a green light and so that was my first book project.

AB: Why was it important for you to highlight the contributions that Black women have made to the world of culinary arts?

KM: There were a few reasons. I'll start with the fact that I founded a magazine called For The Culture: A magazine celebrating Black women and femmes in food and wine. And I did that first and foremost, because I think generally Black women are not given enough attention or their proper due and I feel like that's in general pretty much in every field. And in terms of hospitality, I feel like we are in many ways the key sources to cuisine in this country and in many countries because of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade and because of the roles that Black women have played in terms of being the shapers of cuisine and literally feeding people. And I feel like in the world of food I learned about Julia Child before I learned about Edna Lewis. And that's no disrespect at all. Like, I'm a big fan of Julia Childs but I also realized “Oh, there are more people I should know about, in addition to Edna Lewis.” Like B. Smith, I actually did grow up knowing about her thanks to my mom who subscribed to her magazine and I remember her TV show. And when I graduated from college, B. Smiths was still in business, so we went there for my graduation celebratory meal and I definitely looked up to her. But again, I felt like as I was learning more about the food world but I didn't know about that many Black women. I felt like at a certain point I should know more– so that's one reason. The other reason is related to that. The editor in chief of CherryBomb had asked me if I would be interested in guest editing an issue of CherryBomb, which is a womens centered food magazine. She asked me if I’d guest edit an all Black issue and I found that intriguing, and I was into it. And long story short, that issue didn't go forward, but we got far enough into conversations where I was starting to reach out to people. I was starting to reach out to Black women, photographers and people who I wanted to contribute.Then other people would tell me “Oh, have you reached out to this person?” And it got very exciting for me because I was like, “Oh my gosh, I'm meeting new people. I'm learning about new people, all of them are Black women and Black femmes in food.” I got more enthusiastic as the project went on and like I said, ultimately it didn't go forward but a friend of mine was like “You should do this, even if Cherry Bomb isn't the vehicle, like, you should just do it yourself.” So I was like “Yeah, wouldn't that be great if I had the money to do so ?” and so that's where it took a while. It probably took a year, if not a year and a half. So I started a Crowdfunder to underwrite the cost of the first issue of For the Culture and the timing was great. I was able to raise $40,000. The magazine went forward with the first issue. It sold out in 24 hours because I was on the Today Show talking about it, and it was fantastic. And by the time it came out, it was 2021.The Summer of 2020 when George Floyd was murdered, my publisher reached out to me and was like, “We would like to do a book,” and I was like “Well, I'm working to get this first issue of For the Culture out, and that's my priority, because it's funded. And if I do a book, I want it to be an extension of this magazine.” The book came out of my desire to center Black women and I really wanted to focus on both people you know about– or hopefully know about and have heard about and also shed light on people who I consider kind of up and coming talents. I wanted it to be multi generational, but mostly I just wanted to focus on Black women and femmes and to highlight people who I think are doing phenomenal things, and to show that there are black women and femmes doing amazing work in food and wine and hospitality, and they've been doing this work like this is a legacy that we share. I just wanted to highlight it.

AB: Can you talk to me a little bit about the importance of honoring our past as black women in food as we're looking to move forward ?

KM : A lot of things aren't new and that goes beyond gender, it goes beyond Blackness, it goes beyond food. Like, you might think “Oh, maybe this is the first time anybody's doing X,” and it's like actually, somebody else did it and it's just good to know for one's own personal education and also for the public's education. I think as a writer you want to give credit.I think it was actually Dr. Jessica B. Harris, who told me about Lena Richard. This was years ago, at this event I was at and she was speaking, and she asked “Do you know who had a cooking show?”-- I think it was like 15 years before Julia Child and she talked about all of the things that Lena Richard had done, like owned a restaurant, had her own food brand. I feel like we would refer to her kind of as having pop ups, because she would travel to different states and be at a restaurant for a certain period of time. But the fact that she had her own culinary school, she was a published cookbook author, had her own TV show, had her own restaurant, had her own line of foods– she was doing everything that people are trying to do now. Your biggest fave on Instagram probably hasn't done what she did! You know what I'm saying? I don't care if you're talking about Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray or any number of people who are huge in the food world who didn't do and haven't done what Lena Richard did in the Jim Crow South. So I feel like that is remarkable. The fact that she had a culinary school for Black domestics because she started out as a domestic. She started out working for a White family, cooking for them and understood that it's in your best interest in this line of work to be really strong and to expand your repertoire probably so you could make more money. I just think she was a genius and the fact that she was a Black woman doing this is mind blowing. And so I feel like if you're a person who wants to do something like this and if you want to start your own line of food, or if you want to open up a culinary school or own a restaurant; it's just nice to know that there's some people who've made some major accomplishments who did this before me and did it really well. And frankly– did it under harder circumstances.

AB: What’s next for you?

KM: It's two fold. On the one hand, I can't stress enough how much goes into writing a book and having it published and then touring with it. I was lucky and I am grateful to have done those things with For the Culture. I was given a bigger budget so I was able to have a book tour and promote the book and spend a lot of time promoting it. It kind of made me tired and it takes a lot of energy to do that. Over the past few months I've focused on my other writing job and also like allowing myself some rest as opposed to just immediately pivoting to another project. That being said, I am working on another project or like pitching another project. So fingers crossed that will be successful. But I'm not going to talk about what it is. I'll just say I'm working on pitching another project.