Just Cookin: Scampi Cod Filets

Sometimes you just get a hankering to flex your cooking muscles.  Know what I mean?  When you really love food and all things culinary, every so often the itch gets into your cookin hand and you have to scratch it by trying something new.  This happens to me most frequently when I've watched too much Food Network ie Chopped or Man Fire Food.  Marathon binges following Andrew Zimmern around the world or globetrotting along with Anthony Bourdain (God rest his soul) often have the same effect.

So, I decided to try to elevate some "old folks" food.  And let me tell you, I think I nailed it.

Third or fourth option.

I gotta be honest, nobody picks baked fish first.  They just don't. In our community, the only times you really see folks eating baked fish is after they've been told by a medical professional that they need to lay off of the fried foods.  It's a sad, sad thing to witness the "turn down."  Now I don't mean the kind of "turnt down" that the young folks are used to! Save em Jesus!  Just kidding. Not really.  What I mean is watching someone who clearly wants a plate of sweet, crunchy fried fish have to option for the baked version because their weight and therefore their sugar or pressure is up too high.  And, this version of the old baked fish dish would not help them at all, unless they're going keto (which I recommend) because it's loaded with butter.

This entire dish starts with cod fillets.  I chose cod because it's meaty and has a good flavor of its own.  Tilapia is also a good choice for this dish, but remember that Tilapia is much milder than cod and takes on the flavor of the seasonings and sauces it's prepared in.  Make sure your fish as is dry as possible before you start cooking.

Dry fish is liberally seasoned with old bay and a good smoked Spanish paprika.  I buy my spices at Lucky's Market and I've found that the superior quality has made my food taste much better.  Don't let your sister Kelli question the amount of seasoning either.  What does she know?  She's never even cooked the dish!  Little sisters!  Season the fish and set aside.

Usually bland as bland can be, I decided to scampi this dish as a way to really bump it up and add loads of flavor (and calories)  For novices I say scampi is not very hard to do.  Now, there are a number of versions but the simplest and I think tastiest require only three or four ingredients.  Actually now that I've counted them, it's six ingredients, but it's still quite simple.

Classic scampi ingredients are Italian parsley (qtr cup chopped)  3 large cloves of garlic, chopped.  I use Pinot Grigio mostly because I like the flavor, Yellow Tail is one of my favorites.  So 3/4 cup of white wine, fresh lemon juice, 3/4 stick of butter and 1/8 cup of good olive oil rounds out the ingredients.

Hotness

Now comes the cooking and I cannot stress enough that you need to work with an adequately hot pan and oven.  Pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees and go ahead and combine your oil and butter into a good pan...iron if you have one.

Once your butter and oil is sufficiently hot, in go the fillets.  Saute them quickly on each side only flipping them once.  Don't be afraid to crowd the pan a little if necessary since the bulk of the cooking happens in the oven.

You're not trying to fully cook the fish on top of the stove.  You just want to get the cooking going and seal in (as much as possible) the spices on the fillets.  I'm talking less than a minute on each side, flipping the fish to the second side and then leaving them alone.  The next time you touch the fish will be when it's done.

Once the fish is flipped and cooking on the hither to uncooked side, add the parsley, garlic, wine and a good squeeze of the lemon into the hot pan and transfer it into the oven for 7-8 minutes or longer depending on the thickness of your fillets.  What you come away with is simply, glorious.

I actually did this preparation twice and it worked well both times with thinner and thicker fillets.  And that SAUCE.  Spoon it over the fish with some good basmati rice and that's divine eating right there.

So, in my closing to this food sermon (hope I wasn't too long winded...shout out to Pastor King) some of the best food that I've cooked has been when I take an old staple and give it some "UMPF" with good technique and classic flavors.  I just hope my old folks at the MCL would approve!

Enjoy,

Kev

Goodbye Tony.

It's been a couple of weeks now since Anthony Bourdain took his own life in a hotel in France, and I'm still not sure where I'm at with this.  Of course my heartfelt prayers are with his family, particularly so with his young daughter.  Because this is such the tragedy, I'd decided to let it sit there for a moment, before I tried to figure out how to or even if I would deal with it.  In the end, I simply couldn't NOT say....something. 

I thought at first that as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that I had an obligation to use this platform to do all in my power to offer words to any that might be listening or reading, be they followers or just passers by as they make their way through the volumes of pages on the internet that are surely arising in tribute to Anthony.  So, I'll try.  Hopefully, these few words that I offer with all of the humility that I can, hopefully they mean something to someone that needs to hear them.  If not today or tomorrow, then perhaps, someday.

In my opinion, Anthony Bourdain was a genius. Like most, he was also terribly flawed and yet he did not let the challenges of his own vices disqualify him from sharing his genius, even if only for an all too short time.

I am not so self assured as to try to ever suggest that I have any idea of the weight of the thoughts, fears, pain, or whatever other dark catalysts that drove Tony to his ultimate end.  I've had my valleys, some of them filled with deep despair and depression and I only escaped them with the love and help of my God and others that his grace placed in my life. It was coming to understand that no matter the situation, God Always Loves You, that helped me and helps me through to this day.  So, I wouldn't dare speak a single word that could be construed as judgement of a man that in spite of his own demons still was able to inspire so many with his incredible take on culinary journalism.

So, I'll stop typing and simply take a moment and be thankful that Tony did share his genius with us.  He did achieve in spite of his challenges, and in so doing it made a difference to me.  It really did.

Kevin

Daddy Duties & Crabby Patties (Crab Cakes)

Being a father is for me, almost indescribable. The great honor that God gave me that he would entrust to me as protector, counselor, provider and model for his presence in the lives of the most precious and perfect children he's ever made (I'm biased) is as clear a declaration of his eternal and perfect love for me as anything ever could be.  Not a single day goes by when I don't thank him for my babies.  He's even added to my brood some new creatures, as I call them i.e. grand babies that seem to think they are Power Rangers and their Oji-San (me) is some kind of super villain that they have to figure out a way to subdue with their really not so good kung fu moves.  Please Lord, hurry and send me a granddaughter!  But I digress.

Like all good fathers, God gave me a father's heart.  I love my kiddos so much that they hardly even recognize it when I'm being tough on them, but we still get the desired results.  My  hope is  that even when I am guiding and correcting, all they feel is the love.  My sisters would likely tell you that I'm just a big old pushover, especially when it comes to my daughters and to be honest, there is some merit to that.  I admit that there are times when I'm mostly helpless against them, especially when they play the Daddy Duties card.  My girls and my dude, they are fantastic people, and though they have access to everything I have and own, they don't really ask for much, so when they do ask I enjoy going out of my way to do all that I can to give them what I can. They deserve it and much more.

So, when my youngest daughter asked me to make some crab cakes and bring them down to her when I visited her on campus, she was invoking her Daddy Duties Rights and let me tell you, she got them crabby patties (as we tend to call them)

Our crab cake recipe starts with diced red and yellow bell peppers seasoned with smoked paprika and a little Old Bay saute'd in butter.  Wet and dry ingredients include dry and prepared mustard, mayonnaise, eggs, more Old Bay, dry parsley flakes, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce and fresh lemon juice.

I don't think I told anyone but her aunt Monica, but I had a pretty hard time with my youngest daughter moving away from home to go to college.  My eldest did her collegiate thing at a university here in town and so my access to her wasn't really interrupted in the same way as with the baby girl.  Let me tell you, I struggled.  I don't tell her this, but I think she knows it.  I thank God that she chose a university that was relatively close to home though cause had she moved out of state....!  I know.  I know.

Mix all of the wet and dry ingredients into a bowl and set aside while you pick the shell fragments out of at least a pound of lump crab meat.

Let go already, right?  Nope.  Ain't happening.  My children may as well accept it and I think that they mostly have, but one simple truth they will experience regarding their Dad aside from I love Jesus and I love them is that I'm going be in their lives in an imminent, Daddy kind of way until the day I die.  And unlike my dear grandmother Betty Jean Clark (may she rest in heaven forever) did to me, I'm not going cut them off from my cooking when I get old and tired of feeding folks!  Of course she was well within her rights to do so but man, I missed and do miss my grandmother's phenomenal cooking. Not simply because of how good it was, but because of how it connected us together and how it could only come from her.  To this very day without fail, every single time I see, smell or taste cornbread dressing, I think of my grandmother Betty Jean and my mother Sandra who took the recipe and blew it away!

Add the cooled peppers, the wet & dry ingredients mix and some panko bread crumbs to the lump crab and gently fold them in, taking care to mix them without breaking the lumps, then let sit in the fridge to set up for an hour or so.

I want my children to feel and remember forever how loved they are and were by their Dad through vehicles that will outlive me in their lives.  Not just memories, but sensory objects that take them backwards in time.  Like when Ty was 4-years old and I stood her in a chair so that she could learn to cook cheese eggs like the ones she loved at Waffle House.  Or when my son told me he wanted to learn to cook shrimp and grits and I showed up one day out of the blue with all of the ingredients and he had to do all of the cooking as I stood there and fed him instructions.  He NAILED it, by the way.

Form the cakes up into patties and coat each side lightly with more panko bread crumbs then fry in butter over medium heat until golden brown on both sides.

Here are all of the ingredient amounts:

Sauté half a red and half a yellow bell pepper in butter with some smoked paprika and Old Bay seasoning. 1 Heaping Table spoon good Mayo, 1 regular table spoon mustard, 1 egg (two if they are small) 2 table spoons Old Bay seasoning, 1/2 fresh lemon juice, 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, half teaspoon dry mustard, 1/8 cup of FRESH parsley chopped fine or a heaping tablespoon of dry parsley flakes, a few shots of your favorite hot sauce, 1 half cup of panko bread crumbs. I also coat the outside of each crab cake with panko crumbs before I fry them in butter!

On this journey of discovery and introspection about what constitutes Soul Food and what Soul Food means by way of import and impact to me and others that love it, I've come to agree that part of what makes it "Soul Food" is the heart with which it is prepared.  Me, I have a Dad's heart that I put into every meal that I prepare for my loved ones, especially my babies and creatures. Does this mean that  it's possible that every meal can be Soul Food?  Could be.  If you put your soul into it.

Kev

To the East my brother, to the East. Shakshuka.

Never did  I say it.  Not one time.  Not even once did I ever say that the only place in the world where one can find authentic soul food is in America.  My dear children, I have not said that, will not say it and firmly don't believe such a statement to be true.  Cause it ain't.  Yes, I did say "ain't."

Now, what I have tried to communicate is that I believe the proposition that there are two major categories of food that qualify as "Soul Food" these being  Orthodox and Unorthodox.  Often I will refer to them as "Soul Food Proper" and "General Soul Food."  These two differ in that one is composed of traditional dishes that came about as a result of disenfranchised people taking what was given to them because their social standing denied them access to certain foods, and elevating the ingredients they did receive into something now widely and even globally recognized as quality fare.  This is my description of Orthodox or Soul Food Proper.

However, I also believe that there is an entire category of foods in every culture that qualify generally as Soul Foods in that culture RATHER than the foods that would be considered "Fine Dining" foods.  These are the ones often made from cheaper ingredients or have strong familial and traditional history.  They are sometimes comfort foods or even street foods that vendors have been selling for generations to the working and poor people of their homeland.  

There is also a legitimate argument that Soul Food is whatever food that one puts their own heart and soul into when making it.  I know that my dear daughter, Nicole understands this.  She's the first to inform people that don't quite get why we love to fellowship, cook and eat together that among  our family's love languages is food, cooking and fellowship.  My baby gets it because she's lived it.  Some foods and food experiences touch our soul because of where they take us and who they connect us to.  That is why I think Shakshuka is definitely a Soul Food.

Shakshuka starts with fresh ingredients.  I use Roma tomatoes, jalapeno for heat, onions and mushrooms to add a meaty bite.

Ask any of the millions of people that eat Shakshuka if they consider it a Soul Food and after they are done smiling (or even while they are smiling) at the thought of this North African and Middle Eastern staple, they will tell you that it most certainly is.  Spicy.  Sweet.  Warm.  Comforting. Home.  These are but a few of the terms I've heard when describing Shakshuka, and now I see why it's becoming so popular here in the West.  But it's not just the hipsters that are loving this dish.

Because Shashuka is essentially eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce, in many places it's generally associated with breakfast.  However because of its versatility of potential ingredients it's always found its way to lunch, brunch and dinner tables.  Shakshuka is typically spiced heavily with cumin and garlic.  I decided to forego the Harisa and instead go with a variety of peppers to get my heat on.  Some versions of this dish include potatoes, artichokes and even meats like sausage.  I think I'm gonna get more creative the next time I do a Shakshuka, cause meat is ALWAYS on the menu for a brotha!  Sorry Vegans.  Not sorry.

Add all of the fresh, chopped ingredients to a cast iron pan along with cumin, salt, black pepper, paprika sauteing them together before adding the tomatoes and cook down to a nice thick but still moist consistency.  Make sure to taste!

Although good canned tomatoes can be used in place of fresh, I honestly never considered not using fresh tomatoes since I could actually find some that looked quite good.  Of course whole canned tomatoes cook down much faster, so there's that if you're in a hurry and using them is not quite sacrilegious.

Scoop out pockets in the sauce to add the eggs.  Do NOT break them or you've blown it!  Then, reduce the heat and let simmer covered until your eggs are just done.  Remember the eggs are gonna keep cooking so be ready to serve just before they reach your desired doneness.  Add salt, pepper and cilantro and you're in there.

My best advice is to go fresh with this dish, at least the first time.  And oh yeah...get a nice baguette and toast up some slices to eat with this baby!  Here's one of my favorite recipes.

 

Stretch your cooking wings and give this one a try.  It's worth it!

Kev

Bow Down. The Soul Food King has arrived.

Pan Fried Chicken   The Undisputed King of Soul Food.

Worthiness. Easily one of the finest qualities and even character attributes or accomplishments we can ever assign to anything.  Worthiness is a pinnacle.  It is an ultimate validation. 

What gives a person or a thing this particular quality?  What are "Worthy Making Properties?" My guess is that, it depends.  It depends on what we are considering worthiness...of.  To truly unpack and discuss worthiness we must (in my humble opinion) consider any thing, person or entity's worthiness as it corresponds to the antecedent of the proposition  "Because he, she, it, they are............"  followed by "therefore he, she, it or they are worthy of..........?  Here's an example or two.

Because God is absolutely, morally and ontologically perfect in his boundless love, justice and character, therefore he is worthy to be worshiped and served by all of the things he has created.

Here's another one. 

Because The Sweet Ohio State Buckeye Football team is an incredible, winning and championship program far surpassing the U of Xichigan, therefore they are worthy of fandom.

Don't fight it UM fans, it's science.

Worthiness is a quality or state of being that comes as a result of meeting some standard that is usually quite lofty.

I therefore propose to you, my dear readers, that Pan Fried Chicken has done just that, and so is worthy to be considered The King Of All Soul Foods.  Long may he reign.

Good fried chicken starts with fresh chicken, seasoned and dry brined for at least 30 mins and  dredged in seasoned flour. Of note, I do not use seasoned salt on my chicken, instead opting for a down south tradition of regular table salt.  But I do use seasoned salt in the flour.   Along with my other savory blend I add a good smoked paprika and a good chili powder on the chicken being careful to add them one at a time and hand mix the salt and each of the spices onto the washed chicken.

*Seasoning TIP... Always salt first and separately from the other seasonings.  On my chicken I rub the salt in by hand, working it through the wings.  When salting this way you can and should use more than the normal amount of salt without fear of over salting.

And It's Not Even Close

For the last few years I've been asking a lot of questions.  Seems to me that doing so is a great way to get information, so I'm the guy in the room that raises his hand.  I had to stop doing it at the end of Bible Study because I got the feeling that the people that were ready to go home didn't appreciate me and my questions adding another half hour to the class.  One of the questions that I've really enjoyed asking people of all walks of life is a rather simple one.  It occurred to me that in cooking there are a number of ingredients that come in three's and are considered to be the "Trinity" for that particular kind of  or region of cooking.  

To be clear, this is not an analogy to the question of a religious Trinity...but I'd be happy to have that discussion with you offline. This is, however an attempt to identify foods within what people commonly and without leading consider to be the three most necessary, irreplaceable and sacrosanct foods in all of soul food.  So, I asked grandmothers (of as many ethnicities that I could find) I asked teenagers, friends, co-workers, millennials, chefs, cooks, writers, artists, filmmakers, church folk and atheists one question.  "What are the three foods in the Soul Food Trinity?"

Many of the answers I got were for some reason, predictable.  But, others were downright bizarre.  My co-worker Helena, a dyed in the wool millennial actually included pizza in her soul food Trinity.  Pizza.  Of course others cited more standard fare like Collard Greens.  Fried Okra.  Catfish. Baked yams. Gumbo. Chitterlings (chittlins). Fried Cabbage. Rice. Gravy. Potato salad.  Someone even picked Koolaid, which I would have called a bit racist had that person not been Black.

The answer I got far and away more than any other food item and usually the first one out of their mouth was Fried Chicken.  This perception alone of its popularity and sense of necessity to be included in any soul food discussion makes it worthy not only to be in the Soul Food Trinity, but to be its head, seeing that most people believe that the quintessential soul food meal must include fried chicken.  You may bow now.

Let the dregded wings sit a few minutes before frying them in a pan of hot oil of your choice.  I chose wings because cooking time is much shorter than most if not all of the other pieces.

The history of fried chicken as we now eat it, battered or coated with a crunchy crust that comes by being fried or deep fried in oil, seems to have its origins in Europe (Scotland)  and West Africa.  Both have their own tradition of frying the bird in oil, but the Scottish version had no spices (is anyone shocked by that?) or coating whereas the African version was heavily spiced.  These two came together like so much American soul food  did in the atrocity of the slave south where slaves cooked for their masters and added spices to the fried and coated chicken.  A delicacy at the time, few slaves actually got to sample their own wares.  But, that didn't keep the popularity of the dish from exploding world wide.

Some version of fried chicken can be found in cultures and destinations all over the world.  Many of whom are influenced by the version we love. This is yet another example of the humble beginnings of food greatly influenced by the traditions of disenfranchised persons still rising in spite of and in an unquenchable fashion as described by the late poet supreme,  Dr. Maya Angelou.

I'm not gonna lie to you, as I write this I'm well aware of the ugly stereotypes that for decades have pervaded the American perception of  some mystical connection between black people and fried chicken and other beloved southern and soul foods.  I'm "woke" as my beautiful daughter, Ty might say.  Heck, I've been "woke" for darn near 40 years now and one thing has not changed.  I love me some fried chicken.  Say what you want, me and that yard bird got special affections for one and other, and I anticipate that this is a "till death do us part" kind of situation.  Is it my all time favorite food?  No, it's certainly not that.  But when it comes to soul food, it's irreplaceable.

So, this is my first fried chicken post.  As much as I love fried chicken you can rest assured, it won't be my last.

Kev

Foodways, Black Panther and Chicken Yassa

Chicken Yasa

Sabbatical is often a necessary thing.  It allows us to recharge and reconnect with that which is truly important.  It is an opportunity to set aside the maddening and to reach for the sublime.  Sometimes, you have to seek peace of mind first, and that I've found is in the author of all peace.  With that done, I'm back.  And I'm back with a big one.

While I took the time away I became a better student of food, the culinary arts and practices and soulfood in particular.  I'd like to think that I even became a better writer and cook, as well. My dear friend James Gilmore doubts my skills, but he's young and hardheaded so he kinda gets a pass.  Shout out to The November Company for doing such a fantastic job on the pilot for an upcoming project, by the way.  Anyway, it was during my sabbatical that I found myself growing, my love for God deepening and my internal soulish sense of self...reaching.  I hadn't yet realized it, but this entire blogging venture has been an exercise in me doing just that.  Reaching for something.  It wasn't until I began working on my next theologically inspired book and then went and saw the movie Black Panther, that I started to put the pieces together.

Sidebar.  If you're one of the 4 people in North America that hasn't gone to see The Black Panther movie,  you simply don't know what you're missing.  Especially if you're black.

Me and the peeps at Black Panther

Baby Dora Milaje.  Representation matters

To be transparent, I've been aware of the reaching of my soul pointed upward toward God and inward in the inspection and apprehending of the gifts and talents he's placed in me for some time, but this was different.  For the first time in many years, I felt quite clearly  my soul...reaching backward.  Not back as into the old life that I had prior to the transformation, not back into symbolic Egypt, so to speak.  But, back into a time and place and way of living and of a people.

One of the most important tropes that the Black Panther movie explored and illuminated into images was and is that of an untouched and undisturbed people of The Continent.  It is a kind of fantastical, counter historical, hypothetical proposition of what people who look like me and my family might have lived like had our ancestors not been brought as chattel slaves to this country.  I think that it is a worthy proposition to explore, one that might hold answers to how we reach and finally achieve another, more sustainable and viable brand of unity, today.  

As my mind reached back to the land of my ancestors (or at least some of them..more on that in another post).  I realized that had the circumstances that created of what we now know as "soulfood proper" might not have ever given rise to it at all.  In fact, the foods that the slaves were denied by virtue of their position in society might well have been the very foods these same ancestors dined on without prohibition.  Under those circumstances it is possible that without colonization, immigration or a strong trade between the continents like in the fictional Wakanda, that African foodways might never have been established here in the "new world."  But I'd still be eating Chicken Yassa.

Dinner In Wakanda

Webster defines "Foodways" as  "the eating habits and culinary practices of a people, region, or historical period" and this I think is a quality definition.  However, folklorist Jay Anderson's description of Foodways is even better.  In an essay from 1971 he wrote that  "foodways encompasses the whole interrelated system of food conceptualization and evaluation, procurement, preservation, preparation, consumption and nutrition shared by all the members of a particular society."  Thank you Wiki.

Imminent food scholar and historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris is partly to blame for this post because when I went reaching back to The Continent to find a food item to use as a goal post that I would attain to that represented a very accessible dish, it was Dr. Harris that provided me inspiration.  In an interview about her excellent book, "High on the Hog" she was asked "What African dish that you've eaten is your favorite?"  Without hesitation Dr. Harris replied, "Chicken Yassa."  And the chase for me, was on.

To say that Chicken Yassa is a popular dish is a big understatement.  This African version of lemon chicken, or perhaps we might say "the original version" of lemon chicken is in my opinion better by light years.  Yes, I am also a nerd.  A West African dish mostly associated with Senegal, Yassa is heavy on the onions and crushed garlic in the marinade of mustard (I used organic brown mustard and I loved it) along with hot pepper flakes, bay leaves, salt, vegetable oil, black pepper and of course, fresh lemon juice, the marinated chicken and onions sits overnight (for the best flavor) and then goes into a pan to be browned.

The final steps in this incredible dish are to remove the browned chicken and place the entire marinated onion garlic mixture into the pan to be sauted until the onions are caramelized.  This part cannot be rushed and the smells your kitchen will experience are simply...sublime.

Finally, the chicken pieces are added back into the abundance of sauted onions along with some chicken stock to finish cooking and the dish is done.  Chicken Yassa is always served with a starch and that is usually rice.  The beautiful part of this is that any protein can be cooked in a Yassa fashion. and the variations using fish are quite common.  Below is the recipie that I adapted for my dish.  I decided to omit the olives but will likely give them a try next time.

Try this dish.  It's worth your time to learn it.  Maybe while you're doing so and chopping more onions than you could have ever imagined any single dish would require, maybe you find yourself reaching back or up or within to find something that touches, moves or inspires you. 

I did.

Kev