From The CBC*: Fried eel and oxtail: How Black ingenuity shaped North American (food) dishes
Last edited Mon Aug 23, 2021, 09:14 AM - Edit history (1)
* Canadian Brodcasting Corporation
West Africans had a huge impact on North American cuisine, says food historian(.)
For Haligonian Wendie L. Wilson, the taste of home is eels fried up in a cast iron pan, served with cucumber, boiled potato, butter, salt and pepper.
"My father cooked up eels every once in a while as a special treat," said Wilson. "I got older and realized that most people weren't frying up eels, but that was something that we ate readily because it was usually free and they were plentiful and they were absolutely delicious."
Wilson is African Nova Scotian, a descendant of the waves of Black pioneers who arrived in the province from the mid-18th century into the early 1900s. Waves arrived after the American revolution as loyalists to the British Crown, as American refugees after the war of 1812, and from the Caribbean to work in the steel mills in Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/fried-eel-and-oxtail-how-black-ingenuity-shaped-north-american-dishes-1.6144422
There's a lot more text and some photos at the link to this article which is indeed food for thought
and just the type of article I enjoy in my quest for perspective and balance.