Soul Food

Textkit Community Open Board
1

For 11 years I lived in Texas. I wasn’t there by my decision in the first place, and unlike my younger sisters, I never took to the place. I couldn’t handle the heat, the fire ants and hostile shrubbery (mesquite’ll mess you up good), nor the - with apologies to Baptists - Southern Baptists and associated Evangelicals asking me what I considered rude and intrusive questions about my religion (always trouble in my case).

Eventually I came back to my home territory, Wisconsin, land of frigid winters, well-defined seasons, a landscape of mixed prairie and limestone cliffs and hills, to my people, farmers who can drive a tractor at a 45 degree angle along a hill without freaking out, and who make their long ‘O’ sound without the /w/ off-glide (the characteristic feature of the dialect in the movie Fargo).

But I had friends in Texas, and I learned a love of Southern food (Texas isn’t quite The South, but it shares with it many cultural traits).

A member of my circle of friends, her husband and their charismatic little boy are moving to Alabama, so we had a party for them. It was decided all southern food would be involved. I was put in charge of the greens.

If there’s anything better than a well-made mess o’ greens I just don’t know what it is. (For non-US-citizens: collard greens are a leafy relative of cabbage. It’s not a delicate vegetable, and takes 20-30 minutes cooking minimum. It is not, however, as thuggish as kale. The usual Southern preparation involves remote cuts of pork, usually smoked. Some use straight fatback, however.)

Sometimes here I’ve raved about exotic foods. Jeff has commented on the proper approach to Indian food. More directly related to the greens, Kopio and I have chatted about the edgier parts of pig. And making collard greens got me to thinking about the frankly magical use of sometimes marginal ingredients that so often define the heart of a regional cuisine. In my home range, smelt, a disgusting little fish, transformed, can be the center of a community event.

So what food defines your home territory?

2

We seem to eat a lot of Asian food (not to mention a strong Italian & Greek influence) and have somehow translated this into a sort of Asian/Mediterranean mix! But one piece of very Australian food is the yabbie (or is it yabby? - it seems to exist in both spellings!) . It’s a freshwater shellfish like a small fat lobster. Very tasty, once you get past the initial strange appearance. There is also a lot of interest in some of the “bush food” and having eaten kangaroo stuffed with native herbs and roasted over coals I can certainly recommend it! (This was very kindly done for us by the Aboriginal people while we were staying in central Australia).
Your comment about the long cooking time for the collard greens sounds like an Australian joke - to cook a galah (a kind of parrot) you boil it for 3 hours with an old boot, then you eat the boot! I know galahs are quite muscular but I don’t know anyone who has ever eaten one!

3

You left out pie-floaters, Carola. :wink:

4

Just the name gives pause.

5

Being a major metropolitan area, there are all kinds of food around here (I once ate food in an Afgani restaurant run by relatives of Karzai himself). To narrow the scope, I will just talk about my neighborhood, or rather neighborhoods since I’m on the border of two districts.

SUNSET DISTRICT : This is the residence of the middle class. One gets the impression that one is in a suburb, except the houses are too closely sandwiched together. There are all kinds of ethnicities here, along with representative restaurants. The largest and more influential group, in terms of influencing the neighborhood, are the several-generations-in-America Chinese. They have done far better than other groups at preserving their culture due to their bulk, but they have been in America long enough to diverge from mainstream Chinese culture (to what extent, I cannot tell you having never been in China).

There is a paticular area of the Sunset, which I call “Little Canton” where Cantonese overpowers English as the primary language (fortunately, anglophones like me can also get by). The local snack food is dim sum and tapioca drinks, as well as variously other Chinese-American treats one can hunt for in the grocery stores. The fortune cookie, which after all was invented in this city, is offered at every restaurant along with the tab. Being vegetarian, I only eat in the Buddhist restaurants which have all developed their own tofu and gluten based mock-meats. Having never eaten much meat, I cannot tell how authentic they taste, but many of them taste good.

HAIGHT-ASHBURY : There are two Haight streets : the Haight where the tourists go, and the Haight where the locals go. I ignore many of the buisnesses because they only sell, in my opinion, tourist junk. Restaurants are the places where these two Haight streets are most likely to merge. The places where I go, as a local, are a good Thai place, a pan-Asian noodle house, Escape from New York Pizza (with their creative Gourmet and U Say Potato pizzas), and occasionally an omelette place.

At home, I mostly eat variations on pasta, couscous, (brown) rice, bread, or veggie meats. My family gets most of its food from the local Korean groceries (which are very international in their scope) and Trader Joe’s.

There are a few local plants growing in the city which are edible. My mother likes fennel, I occasionally take some redwood sorrel and miner’s lettuce (after washing, of course), there are blackberries growing everywhere to be plucked and when the nasturshum (I don’t know how to spell it since I only use the word orally) flowers are in bloom I take some of the nectar. It seems odd that there is actually food growing wild in the big city, but their primary nutritional value is vitamins and minerals.

6

Geez, hard to say. I live in an area with a lot of diversity, it seems like you can find almost anything if you just knew where to look. I guess I eat/cook mostly Asian or Italian foods. And of course “American” food, whatever that is. :open_mouth:

Sunset district: Are you talking about that little commercial strip on Irving? Or one on Noriega? I’ve never heard of an area of the Sunset called “Little Canton”. :frowning:

Haight: I remember going to a hole-in-the-wall sausage place next door to the Torenado. Can’t remember the name of it though. :confused:

7

hmmmm,

Soul Food AND mesquite? Somewhere near Waco?

Texas is great.

THere’s nothing too exotic here though. My wife and I do like Greek food (go figure). Great resturaunt here called saffron Grill. Of course we have the best BBQ in the world Hard 8 Cafe.

8

I am the only one who calls it Little Canton - my invention. I am referring to Irving - the Noriega strip (if you mean the one in the 20-something avenues, if you mean another one I don’t know it) is less lively and less Chinese.

9

I passed by Waco often on my way between suburbs of Dallas (especially the Land Of Gar) and Austin, where I went to college.

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Ahhhh William…just the mention of collard greens is enough to make me salivate!!!

I’m a sucker for a good mess of greens. There probably isn’t any food that disagrees with me more, that I will still eat a bunch of, in spite of the cost :blush:

Nothing too outragous where I live. I do have to say we probably have some of the very best and freshest salmon in the US (Bert might be able to beat me here though…but he’s in Canada), so our seafood is great, we also have phenomenal oyster here in Washington state…my personal favorite being the Neah Bay variety (they are small and sweet and make the best shooters EVER).

Another thing that we do very well in this area is Vietnamese food. I absolutley love Pho (beef noodle soup). I get mine straight up like the Vietnamese do (with the tripe and fatty tendon), at my favorite Pho spot the owner smiles when I come in…it’s the same every time…Large #12 with an order of salad rolls (or fish balls if I’m feeling randy)!

That’s most of the local fare…nothing too exotic.

As far as Texas goes…I went there last November and I loved it. The food, the people, the Baptists (of which I am one…don’t worry Will, no offense taken :wink: ), the BBQ especially. We went to a place on the River Walk in San Antonio that had all you can eat BBQ…REAL BBQ, I’m talking brisket (my personal fave), baby back, chicken, okra (the greatest vegtabke in the world when it’s breaded and fried), and cornbread. It was soooo good they had to haul me outta there in a wheelbarrow :blush: :blush:

Anyhow…I got ramblin…food and Greek are two things I get very excited about.

11

Ah, so it’s your very own neologism. I used to shop on Irving aeons ago. Now I just go to Ranch 99 in Daly City where it’s more parking friendly. :laughing:

12

Me too! Mmmmmm, yum! There’s something comforting about it … kinda like really good spaghetti & meatballs.

13

Well, I’m currently living in Italy and I love pizza, yum, yum

otherwise I don’t really know… :stuck_out_tongue:

14

One of my favorites is gravy and biscuits. It is good with any meal. Add a meat (chicken, cube steak, bacon, ham,…any will do) and you have good eatin’. My mouth is starting to water just thinking about it.

Rhuiden

15

biscuits.

I know that biscuits are something Americans and Brits (and possibly Canadians and Aussies) get confused about: the Brit ‘biscuit’ when sweet being equivalent to a cookie, when savoury or unsweetened equivalent to a cracker.

So what is an American biscuit? Is it like a scone, or a griddle-cake, or a Scots pancake?

Phylax

16

Apparently the most popular dish in Britain is not in fact Fish and Chips, but the Indian dish Chicken Tikka Massala - I say Indian, though apparently it is a dish unknown on the Subcontinent: invented here in Blighty by Indian (or possibly Bangladeshi) restaurators.

For my soul food I would probably opt for an English Sunday dinner roast, either lamb, or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding (not for nothing are my countrymen known as ‘rosbifs’ by a number of our European friends).

Sussex, where I am living, is known for inventing two desserts:

  1. Sussex Pond Pudding, a spongy suet pudding with a lemon inside it (see http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/r_0000001446.asp )
  2. Banoffee Pie, a dessert invented at the Hungry Monk restaurant in Jevington, about ten miles east of here, in the’70s (see http://www.hungrymonk.co.uk/pages/banoffi.htm ) *****

But since I come from a Lancashire family, mill workers as far back as I have been able to trace them, I’d also have to include that famous one-vessel dish Lancashire Hotpot - http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/r_0000000797.asp

***** We were holding a street party once, and my neighbour Paul had elected to make Banoffee Pies. I visited him in his kitchen, and he said, “I’ve made four big ones. Do you think that will be enough?” I replied, “No, Paul. There is no such thing as enough Banoffee Pie.”

17

You left out pie-floaters, Carola.

What about that other wonderful Australian invention, the Peach Melba?

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I was not familiar with some of the terms used by the British. I found this on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scone_(bread). From this, it seems that American biscuits and British scones are very similar.

Rhuiden

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Excellent! Thank you, Rhuiden :smiley: : that sorts it out nicely!

Phylax

20

I live in the same city as William A. does and I’ll say that we have an enormous selection of fine dining establishments. We are a big college town with a decent foreign population. One can walk down a single street in this town and go around the world for food. Literally: Chinese, American, Veitnamese, Thailand, Italian. All within 10 minutes from each other and that isn’t even one of the GOOD streets to walk down for restaurants. I’d say the only food we don’t represent properly are the eastern european countries (Hungary–alas!), South American cuisine, and central asia. We do have a Russian place, but it is strictly dumplings. We used to have a better Russian place, but they went out of business. Man, they had an awesome interpretation of beef stroganoff that used the a paprika/onion/sour cream sauce instead of the prototypical beef broth/onion/sour cream sauce. It was vastly superior. Their borscht was killer…

Since I grew up in and around restaurants, I learned how cook exceedingly well. I can make all sorts of food from around the world (sushi is probably my favorite, then Indian food, then Hungarian food). I spent a long time learning the intricacies of Indian cooking and I have the waist line to prove it. :slight_smile:

I’m pretty skewed regionally for food due to my overindulgence of around the world cuisines… I’d say region-wise, a Wisconsionite probably has a serious command of bratwursts, brandy, and cheese and could expound endlessly about catagories and flavors of just those three things. Fish boils (usually haddock and cod) are much more commonly found north of Madison, but you’ll find fish fry(haddock, cod, perch, walleye) anywhere in the state on a friday. Even the “foriegn” restaurants will have a fish fry filtered through their cultural cuisine. No lie, I’ve seen deep fried salmon roll specials at sushi places here only on fridays…

And truth be told, I had some brandy in a cherry pie my wife and I made a week ago, ate brats the day after, and had 5 different types of cheese on crackers the day after that. Then, we went to a sushi place, I made a chicken pot pie, and then went Indian. :slight_smile:

It is truly hilarious because once I really began preparing high quality dishes for my wife, she became snobbish about food and refuses to eat at places like McDonald’s and other nasty quality food places. I swear I’ve created a monster in her. :slight_smile: I’ll mention something about being tired after comming home and macaroni and cheese looks good, but then somehow end up making a 4 hour indian dish in the kitchen grinding 15 spices by hand wondering if the traditionally cooked rice I’m making needs to get more butter or not.

She can be persuasive sometimes… :slight_smile: