Taraji P Henson talks Southern food, travel and Moscato

Anytime I see a watermelon with black seeds, it takes me straight back to my grandparents’ backyard in the South. I’d bust it open as a kid. Its juice would run down my elbows and I’d have to run away from the bees. One [set of] grandparents had a livestock farm with chickens, cows and pigs, and the other had a produce garden. They lived off the fat of the land. This was in North Carolina and Maryland.

My grandmother makes a barbecue chicken that’s specific to North and South Carolina. But it’s not barbecue like mesquite or hickory, it’s pickled, like vinegar. She cuts up a whole chicken and puts it in a roaster (a pan) with a little bit of the vinegar. It’s almost like pulled pork. That’s something we all know how to make; all the kids and all the grandkids, but we can’t make it like Grandma! On the side, she’d cook collard greens with kale and turnip, mixed — she calls it salad. We’d have it with that or mashed potatoes or rice. She also raised us on Brunswick stew, which she makes in a black cauldron outside, standing over the open fire with a wooden stick. She just turned 100 and still makes it for us.

Everywhere I went in Rome, I was guaranteed to have an incredible meal and a great glass of wine. I couldn’t get over the fact that I was eating bread, pasta and pizza and I wasn’t gaining weight. Their food doesn’t have all the preservatives, everything is fresh, so I wasn’t feeling bloated. It felt like I was in the country with my grandmother again, because everywhere felt like somebody’s grandmother was in the kitchen, cooking with so much love. And in Capri, I went to Da Paolino Lemon Trees — it’s breathtaking. There was something about sitting under lemon trees and eating fresh crustaceans and langoustines straight from the ocean. I want to move to Italy.

The vegan options in Bali were… oh my god. The things they can do with jackfruit, they had me thinking I was eating steak. I was eating a lot of vegan food when I visited, and what I loved there is it’s not like America, where they try to make a vegan steak and it’s fake meat. They take actual fruit, vegetables or legumes and make it taste good. At Gdas Bali Health and Wellness Resort, I had ‘tuna’ sushi made out of papaya — they sliced it, soaked it in fish-like sauce, then served it over rice with seaweed. I didn’t miss fish at all — it was amazing.

Moscato is so versatile — it’s a fun drink. You can have it on its own or mix it. For those that aren’t sold on wine yet, it’s a great entry point because it’s easy on the palette and not too sweet. When I got my hands on a bottle of Seven Daughters Moscato [a collaboration between Taraji and Terlato Wine Group], I wanted to make a nice Sunday afternoon cocktail, so I mixed it with a pineapple and coconut juice mix, shaved coconut in it and used pineapple as a garnish — it tasted like an unfrozen pina colada. You can drink it with pretty much everything. We’ve even been making ‘Tarajiritas’!