- April 24, 2024
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The same as recipes from Staff Writer Wayne Grant's 'country-cooking'-style family , soul food recipes are handed town through generations.
BY WAYNE GRANT | STAFF WRITER
Outside the Historic New Bethel AME Church on Saturday, ribs and chicken were slowly cooking over oak wood, sending a tantalizing aroma out onto the breeze.
It was the day of the Soul Food Festival Fundraiser and I was looking forward to eating my fill of home-cooking prepared by the church members. But I had two questions in mind.
One: Why is it called soul food? And Two: What are the similarities to the “country cooking” I enjoyed in my native Tennessee?
When I arrived, I saw chicken being fried after being coated with flour and seasoning, leaving it crispy outside and moist and tender inside.
Aha — my first clue. That’s how I remember the fried chicken of my youth. I can picture my mother rolling it in the flour and can hear the sizzle as it hit the frying pan.
Talking to the church members, I learned that the important thing about soul food is that it’s made with a lot of tender loving care.
“Dinner time is when families come together and talk to each other and pour out their hearts to each other,” said the Rev. Reginald Johnson Sr. “The food is prepared from the soul. It makes it special.”
Erlene Turner, steward of the church, said many of the menu items are part of black heritage.
“The owners ate the top part of the hog and the slaves had the bottom part,” she said. “The black families took what they had and made it tasty for everyone to enjoy.”
This is the 19th year for the Soul Food festival, which is always on the last Saturday of February to celebrate Black History Month. On the following Sunday, the church members wear traditional African clothes to the service.
When it came time to go through the serving line, my plate was heaped with flavorful food. I had a choice of black-eyed peas, macaroni and cheese, baked beans, yams, corn on the cob, potato salad and several other sides and desserts. Meat choices included ribs, chicken and ham.
For the truly devoted, there were also hog maws (intestines), collard greens and pigs feet.
Turner said the recipes are available on the Internet but they're just not the same. Soul food cooking methods are passed down through generations, she said, usually without being written down.
“They would say, 'Add a little bit of this and a little bit of that,'” she said.
When adding ingredients, they would go by taste, not measurements. That’s why the slogan at the Soul Food Festival is “We’re often imitated but never duplicated.”
That reminded me of when I tried, with mixed success, to learn how to cook okra, fried chicken and corn bread from my mother. She would laugh at me for carefully measuring ingredients and calculating cooking times.
I would ask how much salt to use. “Just a smidgen,” she would say.
I would ask how long it should be cooked. “Until it’s done,” she told me.
I’m now convinced that I grew up on soul food.
