I thought several of the dishes were what we call ‘southern food’, which is not a surprise, we more than likely learned to cook them from African people.
All the recipes, are things that I would like.
Yes, that’s what I had thought too. I have no doubt that many of our recipes are from Africa. Most people take any recipe and adjust it to their own taste. Recipes that were brought over from “the old country”, of whomever came to America, got “calibrated” and revised along the way to suit tastes according to background.
A friend and I got into a discussion about cooking greens...she hates them, and I love them. She was telling how her grandmother cooks them,which is similar to the way my m-i-l cooked hers. We were talking about the various meats and seasonings that we knew of some folks using to flavor collard greens, turnip greens, and mustard greens.
Popular methods used dry salt pork, hocks, or pork neck bones, to boil and flavor the water before adding the greens, then added other seasoning to taste.
The only greens that I liked using salt pork were mustard greens,or perhaps a mixture of mustard and turnip greens, and I didn’t like them unless much of the fat was removed from the broth before adding the greens. I was never a big salt pork fan.
Folks used to soak the dry salt pork that had a good marbling of lean in water to remove some of the salt and either fry it like bacon, or roll it in flour and fry it crisp (my husband still likes it cooked this way when he can talk me into doing it - lol). Some even dip it in a batter and fry it. Don’t think I could handle that one!
One of my grandmothers used to make a tomato soup with tomatoes, and onions and season it with bacon drippings. She served it with big fluffy biscuits. The other grandmother served cornbread with her soups, regardless of the type.
An elderly aunt used to cook tomatoes and onions in a skillet, with butter, salt, sugar, and pepper (similar to the okra and onions recipe). When they were tender and cooked down pretty good, she would add chunked left over biscuits, and stir the mixture together. Sounds awful, but tastes good.