Nadine Muhammad (left) and husband Ali prepare their speciality, Sister Nadine's bean pies.
(John Bohn/Globe Staff)
Her pie business is full of beans
Nadine Muhammad (left) and husband Ali prepare their speciality, Sister Nadine's bean pies.
(John Bohn/Globe Staff)
Six years ago, Nadine Muhammad gamely tried her hand at her mother-in-law's most highly praised dessert recipe. What Muhammad didn't know was that she'd soon be using a pie pan to bridge a cultural divide. Sister Nadine's World-Famous Bean Pie hit market shelves earlier this year. Now the world can taste what her husband, Ali, grew up on. It's a dessert that remains iconic in some of Boston's African-American neighborhoods.
Bean pie may sound like an improbable dessert - and it is. The filling starts with cooked navy beans, which Muhammad makes from the dried version. Pureed in a food processor with butter, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg, the beans are poured into a pie crust and baked.
The substantial golden bean pie still evokes smiles of recognition in urban African-American communities across the country. Its origins are lost in conflicting legends, but the bean pie was a staple dessert promoted by the black Muslim mosques and bakeries that decades ago were the hubs of neighborhoods like Boston's Grove Hall. Muhammad began baking bean pies in the kitchen of her Dorchester home. She used the same recipe her husband's mother, Florence Berry, had used in her own home kitchen in the 1960s and '70s, baking bean pies for sale. The aromas attracted people.
"Neighbors started knocking at the door asking, 'What's that smell?' " Muhammad says. The nostalgic dessert proved popular. "I used to make 50 pies and I would have a fit because the pies were taking up all the space in my house," she says. A year ago, Muhammad moved Sister Nadine's World-Famous Bean Pies to a kitchen space in Jamaica Plain's nonprofit culinary idea lab, Nuestra Culinary Ventures.
Like kimchee in Korea or cassoulet in France, the diminutive pies, filled with sweet, spiced beans, are cherished as a sort of national dish by the Nation of Islam. "I'm sure I had bean pie even before I became Muslim," says Boston native Hassanah Tauhidi. Tauhidi now lives in Washington, but in the '70s and '80s, she remembers the fish restaurants and bakeries the Nation ran in black neighborhoods. "They would do fish fries and then a slice of bean pie, so everyone just knew about it," she says.
Earlier this year, Tauhidi produced a brief documentary film on the bean pie. Many of the people she interviewed are Muslim, but Tauhidi said the dessert's popularity crossed religious lines. "These were black-owned businesses," she says. "Everyone knew you could go there. The fish houses, the bakeries - people just knew that they were honest people, that the food was wholesome, it was good, and they could be trusted. That was a positive thing for the community."
Roxbury-based children's book writer Haywood Fennell Sr. was in Harlem during the 1960s when Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X were icons for young African-American men. He remembers hearing how Ali visited a bakery in his 115th Street neighborhood and loved to get bean pies. Fennell never converted to Islam, but his hero's taste for bean pie had an impact. "The [Nation of Islam leaders] were talking about it's OK to love yourself, don't feel bad because you're an African-American," he says. "Those things mean something, and then to have a piece of bean pie after that, that is real good."
Now, few bean-pie bakers are left, but it remains well-loved. At Mecca's, a Grove Hall boutique, bean pies are displayed in a glass-doored refrigerator case next to energy drinks and bottles of water. Owner Tiffany Williams, who has been carrying Nadine's pies "from the beginning," said it's one of the store's most popular items. "A lot of my customers, their age ranges between 30 to 60, so the nostalgia is there," she says.
Muhammad is now trying to juggle entrepreneurship and a family of four children, some of whom help her with her business. Every Sunday she bakes at the Nuestra kitchens to fill the week's orders. She now bakes 400 to 500 pies a week. "We balance it out somehow," she says. "When it's time to bake we get together on that seventh day."
Her 12-year-old daughter Najah presses crust into pie pans, while Khalif, 4, and 7-year-old twins Alaila and Ali watch or do schoolwork. Ali senior wraps the pies and adheres the labels, which bear Nadine's smiling face, a picture taken on her wedding day.
Soon, the rest of Boston will be smiling, too.
Sister Nadine's World-Famous Bean Pies ($5.99 for a large size, $2.49, small) are available at 
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