"soulfood" news and stories

When my dear friend Yukari brought my red velvet cake the other afternoon, I thought I must have died and gone to some sort of sugar-baked heaven. I asked her where she discovered this bizarre, deep red, Satanic looking concoction. Apparently it's all over Brooklyn, and she'd found out about it while working in the Buttacup Lounge.

For the unfamiliar, red velvet cake is party punch red and coated in thick white frosting. It's an equally decadent relative of chocolate cake. My own limited run-ins with it haven't yielded particularly chocolatey tasting encounters, but its richness and snowy cream cheese dressing could satisfy any chocolate lover's deepest desire.

A sort of red-velvet-legend attributes this cake to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City. A guest ordered a slice and liked it so much that she asked for the recipe. The hotel gave it up and billed her $100. Furious, she spread the recipe around in chain letters.

I've read any number of pieces waxing rhapsodic about collard greens cooked the soul food way - about how delicious was the "pot likker" (I've really seen it spelled that way! honest!), about how wonderful the house smelled when you set the smoked pork products to cooking. About how nothing says comfort like the rich, tender, porky piles of essential vitamins and minerals. I doubted, but I figured I must be missing out on something really great. So, on slow cooking day, I set out to make soul food-style greens.

Neither my expensive Italian market nor my lower-priced supermarket had smoked ham hocks (and I was secretly relieved!) but they did have suggestion #2: smoked pork neck.

Here's how the recipe goes: you boil the smoked pork neck in several cups' water for hours until it's falling off the bone. I used one pound, although most recipes call for two. You clean, destem, and chop lots of collards - three to five bunches. I used three. You combine the mess and let it cook, stirring occasionally, until the collards are tender. Salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste.

I just don't love this. I didn't enjoy the smell, and I really could barely finish my serving of collards. My mom liked them, and so did a friend who's into soul food. Everyone else looked at them askance. I'll keep cooking collard greens - but I think I'm going to stick to my Mediterranean-inspired version.

[Photo Sarah Gilbert. And disclaimer: I totally stole the title idea from Love My Crock]

Newsweek recently featured an article about African-American chefs, restaurateurs and nutritionists that are trying to reinvent classic soul food dishes while keeping health in mind. Some shifts are simple: baked chicken instead of fried chicken; collard greens flavored with smoked turkey instead of ham hocks. Others, like the dishes of featured caterer Lindsey Williams (grandson of Sylvia Woods of Sylvia's in Harlem), deviate a little more. Williams' new cookbook Neo Soul was released this month by Penguin. Newsweek focues on dishes like veggie croquettes with tofu sour cream and Thai sesame dressing, but some of Williams' recipes listed by Penguin--trout stuffed with collard greens, okra gumbo, and "neo" sweet potato pie--sound a little more grounded. Another interesting item mentioned in the article was the Soul Food Pyramid, created by Hebni Nutrition Consultants in Orlando, Florida. Unfortunately, the Hebni site doesn't really let on too much about what's contained in the pyramid.