Soul Food

Focus: Chilli Cheese Dip, queso for people from the midwest. Its an absolute brick of melted velvetta and rotel but I always ate it during football games and enjoyed it. Some people had it as a side, we had it as a meal.

 

Focus: Pot roast with mashed potatoes, green beans, carrots and GRAVY. My grandma made this every Sunday. It's pretty 1950s basic, but that meal is my family time. My grandma would put it in the oven, we'd go to church...I'd come home to tear off my constricting panty hose and dress to chow down.

My grandma's dressing (aka "stuffing" to Yankees). Our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners practically revolve around it. I've started helping my mom with it...it's a lot of cornbread, biscuits, etc and enough butter to make Paula Deen blush. Also...this chocolate cake that she made for everyone's birthdays.

 

I have so many. Roasting a chicken with potatoes and whichever classic vegetable is in season at the time, then turning that chicken into matzo ball soup. Deli, whether it's a DIY spread of meat and cheese at a family member's house or going out for sandwiches. Katz's has become kind of a tourist trap, but my dad's side of the family has been going there since they came to the U.S so a meal of pastrami on rye, pickles, and a Dr. Brown's black cherry soda is a thread between three generations. Blintzes were my grandma's speciality, and some combination of those, pierogi, latkes, and borscht is one of the meals I have memories of from since I was first starting to make memories. Lasagna was the first grownup meal I learned how to make on my own, so I've been making it since I was 10 and every time I make it now I have these cute little flashbacks of making it when I could just see over the counter. My dad makes incredible roast beef and I never make it for myself because then I'd have to eat roast beef for, like, two weeks, so I only get to eat it once a year when I come home for the holidays and it always give me those warm fuzzy "I'm home" feelings. And, while not a homemade thing, I get that same soul food feeling whenever I go to a bakery or someone's house with an assortment of cookies like these:

Spoiler

That picture doesn't quite capture what's in my heart but it's the closest to representing all the different kinds of cookies I'm talking about. I've always called them "Brooklyn cookies" because they remind me of visiting my grandparents, but I've come to learn they're actually just Italian cookies. I don't think they can claim the black and white cookie, though.

As for recipes, my grandma's blintzes are a well-guarded family secret, and I don't even know what to say about my specialities of roast chicken, matzo ball soup, and lasagna. They're always the best version anyone's had of them (*hair toss*) and when I try to tell them how I make it they say it's basically how they've tried to make it and it comes out totally differently. I have no idea what I do. It must be all the ~love~

 

I make a brisket like my mother taught me for Passover. I make it bigger each year and somehow, it still all gets eaten. I also don't limit it to Passover. I make it whenever the fuck I please. The recipe isn't really written down so it morphs through the years.

Mine is much more heavy with wine in the broth and the Rosemary comes from my garden. It's an 8 hour process in the oven at low temps served over kasha varnishkes or egg noodles if that's your thing.

I enjoy a smoked BBQ brisket of course. But this braised kosher style is the stuff of gods.

I also love a good rack of ribs with French fries and Mac and cheese. But BBQ these days is way over priced and not worth the money. $50-$70 for two at a lot of places? No thanks.

 

Grilled chicken breast. 7 minutes on each side. Once each side is ready, place a tomato directly on the chicken still on the grill, then a slice of avocado and then a slice of Swiss cheese over the top to keep it all in place.

Granted, growing up we grilled out everything imaginable. Now that I'm out on my own, living with my fiancé, this is what we cook out when it's been a tough day. Throw in some roasted corn -- mine with crushed red pepper, hers with lemon pepper -- and a couple cold beers, and it just melts your bad day away...

Spoiler: Deliciousness

 

Definitely pot roast just as TX described. Most of my soul food is meals my dad used to make. At the top of the list is stuffed peppers with homemade sauce- the last meal he made us before he died.

My homemade sauce and meatballs are up there also, because I got the recipe from him, and I've been making it for so many years that I have many newer memories associated with it. Nothing like a cold Sunday in December with football on TV and a pot of marina bubbling on the stove.

 

Lamb pot-roasted shanks, covered in mint and currants. I also can say beef pot roast is another, as well as pretty much any sort of stew. Elk steaks are another. Homemade cranapple butter on hot fresh-baked bread.

 

Lefse. But only my Grandma's. It's a Scandinavian pastry thing, kinda like a really thin flatbread, and she used to put butter, sugar and cinnamon on it. I've had it elsewhere and it's just not the same as she made. She passed away 12 years ago and it sucks that my kids will never get to experience it.