Soul Food vs Southern Food

[OneGrassRoot]

I just thought this was interesting.

If you stop by La’Wan’s Soul Food Restaurant in south Charlotte for collards and macaroni & cheese, there’s something important on your plate. It’s a small cornbread muffin. Soft and tender, almost cake-like, with a bit of chewiness to the crust and a flavor that’s just a little sweet.

Now drive over to Lupie’s Cafe on Monroe Road and you’ll get a big square of cornbread, 3 inches across, white with a yellow tinge. Firm, almost coarse, with a crisp top. Sweet? Not a bit. It’s defiantly not sweet.

La’Wan’s corn muffin and Lupie’s cornbread are humble things. But they represent something deeper: The dividing line between black Southerners and white ones. As examples of one of the defining staples of Southern food, they also are a marker of food history that speaks volumes about origins and identity, about family and what we hold dear.

It also raises a question: So many Southern food traditions are shared by both races. Most Southerners, black and white, revere fried chicken, pursue pork barbecue and exalt their grandmothers’ garden vegetables. So why is there such a fundamental difference between two styles of one basic bread?

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/food-drink/article68763427.html#storylink=cpy

[stonecutter357]

1. I am from childersburg Al.

And I make a pone of corn bread every day. Most of the time it's buttermilk corn bread .

[alfie]

2. I am a white Ga. native

There is nary a grain sugar in cornbread...what I ate as a child or what I cook now. I have always attributed sweet cornbread to folks from further north.

[ZombieHorde]

3. I was not expecting to read an article on the history of corn bread today,

but here we are.

[brer cat]

5. Priorities!!

Corn bread is just as important as who is misbehaving in the primaries. Never sweet, buttermilk or sweet milk, and once in a while SW style with green chilies hits the spot.

[OneGrassRoot]

7. I was surprised to see it too...lol

It was posted in an anti-racism FB group along with a "Food Justice" conversation.

[Number23]

16. It's a really interesting and welcome addition to this forum

Corn bread as a topic is welcome here by me!

[OneGrassRoot]

22. Good to know! :)

The topic of food and culture is fascinating!

[Warpy]

4. I lived all over the country, but I've noticed the difference for a very long time

and I'll make both types, sweet and savory, but mine is always yellow and dense, the batter poured into a screaming hot frypan and shoved into the oven. There's a sweetness to the savory cornbread but it comes 100% from the caramelization of the crust in contact with the pan. What you'll notice with mine is that the flavor of the corn is front and center, that pale yellow cakelike stuff is not for me.

I'd call it Boston Irish cornbread but nobody I knew back there made the stuff unless it came out of a Jiffy box.

[awoke_in_2003]

11. Cast iron is essential...

I have 3 different sized skillets and a Dutch oven. The wife has had her tortilla warmer for 30 years or more, and I think she got it from her grandmother

[Warpy]

12. My wrists got too bad to handle cast iron

but I'm managing fairly well with Calphalon with 30 years of gunk to make it nonstick.

A neighbor who's a great cook now enjoys my cast iron except for my Le Creuset ovens/soup pots. I can manage those with a forearm under each side.

[awoke_in_2003]

13. Le Creuset

The high end cast iron. All of my stuff is Lodge, though it is still made in America

[Warpy]

14. I had an 8 inch Lodge and 12 inch Wagner. I miss them but my wrists don't.

the two Le Creuset ovens were open stock and on sale, but still idiotically expensive.

I did have a thrift shop Le Creuset skillet in the 70s. It was the best I've ever used, I'd just dodge the big chip on one side. Eventually the rest of the coating failed, but it was great while it lasted.

[SusanCalvin]

6. I vote for the gritty, non-sweet kind.

Because it's what I grew up with and am used to.

[stonecutter357]

9. I grew up with gritty Cornmeal from this place..

http://www.kymulgagristmill.com/

[SusanCalvin]

10. Way cool!

[BlueMTexpat]

8. What a fun article!

Thanks for posting!

[Tarheel_Dem]

15. Cornbread is where I peel away from my culture. I HATE sweet cornbread. I don't want bread....

that tastes like cake. Give me white cornbread, made in a black cast iron scorching hot skillet, preferably heated with some bacon or fatback, so that crunchy crust develops. My Mom & her Mom both made it that way. My paternal Gram, and her offspring, preferred sweet.

[Number23]

17. Girl, I love ya but I also LOVES me some hot, fluffy, buttery, SWEET cornbread

Like a slighty gritty corny cake. That's good eating!

[Tarheel_Dem]

18. Give me "GRITTY", cooked in bacon fat, and I'm in heaven. And if you throw in some pinto beans.....

mixed with some chopped Vidalia onion, I'll follow you anywhere. The closest thing to sweet cornbread, that I can actually swallow, might be hushpuppies, but the crap that comes out of that Jiffy box ain't cornbread AFAIC.

P.S.: I like my cornbread dressing the same way. Some might call it stuffing, but I prefer dressing.

[Number23]

19. I love HUSH PUPPIES!!!

Oh my GOD, you got me jonesin' for some Captain D's up in here now!!

And those cheddar bay biscuits at Red Lobster! Oh dear God.... who cares about the damn lobster! Gimme the biscuits!!

[Chitown Kev]

20. THESE are the important things in life

My jones right now is for some fried chicken, black-eyed peas w/smoked ham hocks and...gotta have the gritty corn bread with my black-eyed peas...but my Granny made both the gritty and the sweet corn bread...ALWAYS in a cast iron skillet...and if she fried some meat in those skillets, you had better not touch em'...don't mess with her seasoning in those skillets

Baby, BYE. Y'all are NOT hearing me.

[Number23]

31. "Y'all are NOT hearing me"

Oh no, darling. I hear you LOUD AND CLEAR.

My Big Mama (Biggie for short) was from Macon, GA and there was no such thing as black eyed peas (or collard greens) unless they were DROWNING in ham. The ratio was actually 12:1 ham to beans! I truly think the damn beans were completely superfluous. And if you tried to increase that ratio to 10:1 by putting some more beans on your plate without the ham, oooo the side eye!!

[Chitown Kev]

40. Would have to be Virginia ham

since that's the saltiest ham that I can think of...

I've had people fix their black-eyed peas like that but I do pass on that OVERLOAD of meat...besides, the flavor is ALL in that juice...sometimes, I like to crush the bread in the beans or sop the juice up with my cornbread...

Don't get me started on the greens being the one portion on your plate to be eaten with your hands, either.

[Tarheel_Dem]

21. Girl, you don't know nothing 'bout no hushpuppies. I guess everyone figures their region's are....

the best. But NC is just as noted for it's hushpuppies as it is for the BBQ. My heart dropped to my toes the day that Fox Seafood announced they were going out of business. It's been 15 years or more, and people are still in mourning. Folks would stand in line for hours. We all loved their seafood, but it was the hushpuppies that kept you coming back. I don't know what they put in 'em, but you didn't mind waiting for 'em. As my grandma would say, "they put their foot in that".

[Number23]

32. I can totally see mourning the demise of a great hush puppy for 15 years

Considering how rare a perfectly made hush puppy is -- or a perfectly fried piece of fish for that matter -- I totally get it.

[OneGrassRoot]

23. ^^^ THIS

I have the cheddar bay biscuits recipe!!!! You can get it online now.

Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[SusanCalvin]

24. Hey, fellow cheddar bay biscuit fans!

Our local Red Lobster is at the low end of mediocre, but I love those biscuits!

[bravenak]

36. OMG

I'm eating my blackened catfish with sweet cornbread and a buncha delicious greens. And here you guys are doing this!! Perfect!

[Chitown Kev]

38. And you just HAD to come up in here and relay ALL of this information

about what you're eating R-A-T now, lol

[bravenak]

41. Of course!!!

[Recursion]

28. Captain D's!!!!!

I knew the girl at the register in high school, so I would just go in and she would give me the fried batter cracklings for free.

Damn I miss that place.

Side note: my dad lives in West Point, MS. Last time I went there, the headline in the town newspaper, in 50 point font like it was WW3, was "Captain Ds opens on main street"

[Number23]

33. "in 50 point font like it was WW3"

Boy, don't front! You know good and damn well your heart skipped two beats when you learned that Cap D's was coming to town! And on MAIN STREET, no less!

[Quayblue]

30. "Yall Northern Gals..."

A South Carolinian said to me once. Lol. I love my sweet cornbread, but gimme some hot water cornbread with some collards/spinach greens and I'm going in.

And some fried green tomatoes....or oxtails with tomatoes and okra. I'm HONGRY.

And every time I think about cheddar biscuits, I think about that Boondocks episode.

[Number23]

34. "I think about that Boondocks episode."

Boondocks covered Cheddar bay biscuits??! Oh, I gotta see that!

[Quayblue]

35. yes girl Season 1. Katt Williams episode.

He gon be all right. I hope you watch it.

[PDittie]

25. I like both

The sweetest cornbread I have had came from a Luby's cafeteria. Honestly, all this time I thought they were using some of that slightly fermented sweet corn to produce the taste. And yes, it does seem more like cake than bread.

As long as mine has a little jalapeno in it and a slightly singed crust, I'm not complaining.

[aikoaiko]

26. I've been learning a lot from Michael Twitty's Afroculinaria

http://afroculinaria.com/

About Twitty:

(Haaretz) —
...
Twitty, 37, grew up in Washington, D.C. A cook and culinary historian, he is African-American, openly gay and a skullcap-wearing Jew. At present he is in Israel where he will be giving a master class in cooking on Sunday as part of the annual Jewish Film Festival at the Jerusalem Cinematheque (one of its themes this year is culinary theater).

Twitty is currently at work on a book he has titled “The Cooking Gene,” a historical survey of the cuisine of the American South. He’s been teaching in Hebrew schools for 12 years, preparing boys and girls for their bar or bat mitzvah in Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist synagogues. (He switches skullcaps to meet the head-covering style of each stream of Judaism.) Twitty also takes part as an actor in historical reenactments at Southern plantations, dressed in slaves’ clothing and cooking like his ancestors did.

Confused about his identity? He will do little to put you at ease, because this is who he is; if you can’t handle it, you don’t interest him. “Recently, when I was in the process of selling my book – HarperCollins bought it – another publisher, who shall remain nameless, they loved the idea of me talking about food and cultural roots and introducing my family tree and culinary justice,” Twitty tells the City College students. (In the college’s Jewish studies program there are many Arabs, blacks and Latinos – in fact, 95 percent of the students are not Jewish.)

“But the editor who made the final decision on whether the book will be published or not – she basically said, ‘Okay, what about this Jewish part? Can we just get rid of that?’ And she basically told my agent: We will give him a fabulous book deal if he just won’t wear his kippah in public, or talk about it in any radio interviews. And I said, I hope you told them to … And she said: Yes, I told them you won’t go for that. I said you’re damn right.”
....
Read more: http://forward.com/culture/211347/michael-twitty-black-jewish-foodie-talks-culinary/#ixzz44OLlXiff

[The Polack MSgt]

29. Thank you for the Afroculinaria link

This conversation and your link in particular made my morning.

Peace

[Recursion]

27. Great article, thank you

The differences between "soul" and "southern" (ie, southern white) are subtle but tremendously important. Both are excellent cuisines, though, and I look forward to re-acquainting myself with them when I'm back stateside in a few months...

[bravenak]

37. I make mine sweet and I just follow my grandma's ways.

I just cannot eat non sweet cornbread. I had no idea why, thank you, this was interesting.

[Chitown Kev]

39. Interesting...I tallked to my Mom about this today

According to her, Granny NEVER made sweet cornbread.

But when I was growing up, I know she made it because she used Jiffy mix to do it (but she doctored that Jiffy mix up, according to her...so it was still sweet)

My Granny's onion cornbread (cast iron skillet, of course) was ALWAYS made from scratch. She used to make that more often for her kids than her grandkids, but that was always a treat.

We also had a pretty good conversation about how Granny's cooking changed over the years as she got older...but it was ALWAYS good.

[bravenak]

42. I might be able to eat me some of the onion cornbread.

Maybe with some beans and ham and yeah. I'm interested.

[Quayblue]

43. Good article. kicked!