The cafeteria where I work has suddenly discovered ethnicity. This past week the menu dedicated each day to different cultural foods, Monday was “Mexican Day!” with some sort of chicken tortilla layered mess in a pan with beans and rice on the side. Polish day we got pirogis, cabbage rolls and kielbasa and 'kraut. Wheee.
Thursday threw me for a loop, though. African-American Day, with ‘southern-fried chicken, glazed ham and navy bean soup with corn bread’ for our culinary pleasure. Alas, no greens or chitlins. :rolleyes:
Granted, I’ve always heard the stereotypes about fried chicken and watermelon, blah blah, but seriously? This is now Black food, or always was and I’m simply late to the party? It’s like institutionalized ignorance served up on styrofoam.
Sounds like they’re confusing Southern cuisine for African-American (and I speciically mean African-American in this instance) food although there *is *a large overlap.
It likely involved whatever the food service corp put on it, looked crispy/sugary from what I could see.
It just seemed particularly funny here in Detroit, half the population are transplanted southerners who came north to work in the factories when the mines shut down. Southern and African-American food do have too many overlaps, IMO, to really be considered separate categories. Quite a few of the usual suspects got miffed at the labeling, I just thought it was dorky.
Although I did have fun calling Mom and thanking her for raising us all multi-culti.
You must use the magic keywords: *Coca-Cola Ham. * BTW, this is pronounced “Co-Cola Ham.” It is the best thing in the world (okay, maybe Maryland Fried Chicken is better).
I’m sorry, I clearly missed something…since when did ‘African-American food’ become ‘cola-cola food’? Do no black Americans glaze ham with anything else?
I was always under the impression that Southern American/ African American cooking were practicly the same thing. That is, early southern kitchen workers (on the plantations or estates) were likely African American. Deep fat frying was supposedly brought over from Africa. The kitchen workers incorporated their cooking techniques with the available ingredients and equipment.
What tastes good, tastes good, simple as that. The bigwig plantation owners feasted on shrimp and other fine foods while the 'po folk used the same cooking techniques on more available foods.
A big 'ol ham shank, soaked in water for a few days then coated in sugar to reduce the saltiness doesn’t sound unreasonable for a poverty level feast. Likewise I could see a southern white family subsisting on what is largely regarded as “soul food”.
My guess is that at some point in history, the income gap grew and " 'po folk" food became, “colored folk” food. Still the overlap remains. Knew many a white southern boy when I was in the service that would kill for a plate of batter fried chicken gizzards.
No no no. One of the famous, or perhaps infamous, bits of Southern cooking is using Coca-Cola for glazing a ham. I couldn’t tell you what it tastes like, as I don’t think any of my grandparents have ever made it when we’re around, and I know Mom never has.
Huh? Of course there’s black food. What the hell do you think “Soul Food” is? And since black people were the majority population of the antebellum south, naturally the cooking of southern white folk influenced and was influenced by that of black people.
But even up here, a lot of black people I know have close ties to the south - family or birth - and yeah, a lot of them eat southern-style cooking.
It’s a well-known ingredient in Southern Jewish cooking to use a can of Co-cola to marinate a beef brisket, along w/ a packet of onion soup and a ton of other spices for 24 hours before cooking slowly. And it just having been Rosh Hashana this past week, I got to have a few nibbles of the good stuff while working at a friend’s house… mmmm-mmmm!
So what’s the difference between soul food and white southern food? I (a white southern girl) head over to a local soul food restaurant when I have a taste for Grandma food. The only two things on the steam table that grandma never cooks are oxtails and chitlings. Glazed ham? Check. Mustard and turnip greens? Check. Cornbread dressing with turkey gizzards? Check. Sweet potatoes in all their wonderful variations? Check. Gumbo? Check. Has my little white grandma been cooking soul food all these years or are there differences that I’m missing?
Soul food is food eaten by poor Southerners of all colors, not just black Southerners. One of my favorite meals (beans, cornbread, rice, fried potatoes, turnip greensa and iced tea) is pretty much the epitome of soul food and I’m as white as they come.
A hijack, but a local “southern” restaurant now offers a weekly all-you-can-eat special on chicken fried steak with mashed potatos and cream gravy. I figure they could just save time by lining up all their regular customers in the parking lot and shooting them in the heart.
Well now I’m curious, as I love to cook. How do Haitians or Dominicans cook ham? I assume they have pork on the island, right? What about Jamaicans? I usually cook ham on my smoker, so I’m not familiar with using Coke other than to mix it with Bacradi to pass the time while it cooks. hic
Since we’re on the subject how did Black people come to serve their spagetti with the sauce and pasta already combined? Where the White folks tend to serve them seprately?
Incase it’s not obvious: I’m speaking in general terms…
