African American Books

Soul Food: Classic Cuisine from the Deep South

Sheila Ferguson

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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Regional & International -> U.S. Regional -> Soul Food

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

SouLovely 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

A delightful book full of delicious recipes with clear instructions, family histories and a whole new vocabulary of odd expressions and descriptions of food. I also bought the more famous "Sylvia's Family Soul Food Cookbook" (Sylvia has a famous restaurant in New York), but I actually prefer this one slightly more, although both are absolutely wonderful. Sylvia's book is larger, more colourful and has more photos than this unassuming book by Sheila Ferguson, but the recipes for both books are just as mouth-watering; Sheila's book has a delicious recipe for "Red Devil's Food Cake" and Sylvia has a similar one called "Red Velvet Cake", for example. It's just that "Soul Food" by Ms. Ferguson has a few more unusual and unknown recipes in it, like her recipe for "Fergy's Fried Chicken". Most of the recipes look delicious and it all depends on the skill of the cook attempting these gems I guess, but I think both books are great references on this style of cooking and both are equally perfect. I would just be more likely to give Sylvia's cookbook as a gift because it is more elegant and I'd probably keep "Soul Food" for myself. No, come to think of it, I'd keep both.

Editorial Review:

“Soul food is just what the name implies. It is soulfully cooked food . . . good for your ever-loving soul . . . the shur-‘nuf kinda down-home cookin’ that I grew up on,” writes Sheila Ferguson. Abundant in flavor and variety—ranging from classics such as barbecued spare ribs, fried chicken, cornbread, and collard greens to less well known but equally sumptuous recipes such as sweet potato biscuits, grits soufflé, and wild fox grape wine—soul food is a truly American cuisine, originated in the deep South by slaves and later shaped and expanded by the rich diversity of African-American culture.

Sylvia's Family Soul Food Cookbook: From Hemingway, South Carolina, To Harlem

Sylvia Woods

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Sylvia's Family Soul Food Cookbook begins as Sylvia recalls her childhood, when she lived with both her mother and her grandmother -- the town's only midwives. The entire community of Hemingway, South Carolina, shared responsibilities, helped raise all of the children, and worked side by side together every day in the bean fields. Perhaps most important, the community shared its food and recipes. When Sylvia set out to write this cookbook, she decided to hold a cook-off back home in Hemingway at Jeremiah Church. Family and friends of all ages shared their favorite dishes as well as their spirit and love for one another. The recipes offered at the cook-off were then compiled to create this incredible collection, along with many of Sylvia's and the Woods family's own recipes.

Here are the kinds of recipes you'd find if you visited the Woods family's home. Sylvia's daughter Bedelia is well known for her Barbecued Beef Short Ribs, which are as sassy and spicy as Bedelia herself. Kenneth, Sylvia's youngest son, has loved to fish ever since he was a child, spending his summers by the fishing hole in Hemingway. Now Kenneth's son, DeSean, enjoys fishing, too. Kenneth's Honey Lemon Tilefish, DeSean's favorite, is just one of Kenneth's special recipes presented here.

And there are many, many other wonderful dishes, too. In this remarkable cookbook, Sylvia has gathered more than 125 soul food classics, including mouthwatering recipes for okra, collard greens, Southern-style pound cakes, hearty meat and seafood stews and casseroles, salads, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, and more. These recipes are straight from the heart of the Woods community of family and friends. Now Sylvia gives them to you to share with your loved ones. Bring them into your home and experience a little bit of Hemingway's soul.

The Black Family Reunion Cookbook: Recipes and Food Memories

National Council of Negro Women

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Black Family Reunion Celebrations, organized by The National Council of Negro Women and held in seven cities across America every summer, celebrate and preserve the values, traditions, and strengths of the African-American family. Inspired by these festivals, The Black Family Reunion Cookbook contains more than 250 recipes from home kitchens across America, seasoned with warm memories and "homemade love."

Including personal reminiscences from celebrities such as Natalie Cole, Wilma Rudolph, Patti LaBelle, and Spetman College President Johnetta Cole, this unique collection reflects the local, national, and international heritage of the Black community. It offers dishes for every occasion and every taste, from African-inspired Mustard Greens with Peanut Sauce to down-home Family Famous Chicken and Dumplings, from a traditional gumbo to sophisticated Sweet Potato Smoked Turkey Bisque, and, in honor of the council's founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, her own recipe for her celebrated Sweet Potato Pie.

Hallelujah! The Welcome Table: A Lifetime of Memories with Recipes

Maya Angelou

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Throughout Maya Angelou’s life, from her childhood in Stamps, Arkansas, to her world travels as a bestselling writer, good food has played a central role. Preparing and enjoying homemade meals provides a sense of purpose and calm, accomplishment and connection. Now in Hallelujah! The Welcome Table, Angelou shares memories pithy and poignant–and the recipes that helped to make them both indelible and irreplaceable.

Angelou tells us about the time she was expelled from school for being afraid to speak–and her mother baked a delicious maple cake to brighten her spirits. She gives us her recipe for short ribs along with a story about a job she had as a cook at a Creole restaurant (never mind that she didn’t know how to cook and had no idea what Creole food might entail). There was the time in London when she attended a wretched dinner party full of wretched people; but all wasn’t lost–she did experience her initial taste of a savory onion tart. She recounts her very first night in her new home in Sonoma, California, when she invited M. F. K. Fisher over for cassoulet, and the evening Deca Mitford roasted a chicken when she was beyond tipsy–and created Chicken Drunkard Style. And then there was the hearty brunch Angelou made for a homesick Southerner, a meal that earned her both a job offer and a prophetic compliment: “If you can write half as good as you can cook, you are going to be famous.”

Maya Angelou is renowned in her wide and generous circle of friends as a marvelous chef. Her kitchen is a social center. From fried meat pies, chicken livers, and beef Wellington to caramel cake, bread pudding, and chocolate éclairs, the one hundred-plus recipes included here are all tried and true, and come from Angelou’s heart and her home. Hallelujah! The Welcome Table is a stunning collaboration between the two things Angelou loves best: writing and cooking.

Spoonbread & Strawberry Wine: Recipes and Reminiscences of a Family

Norma Jean Darden, Carole Darden

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A great first cookbook 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

My mother gave this cookbook to me when I was in college. She wanted me to learn how to cook. I was a bookworm who was more interested in history than cooking so I always resisted.

She gave me the first edition of this cookbook a small paperback with the yellow cover and the same picture of the Darden sisters. Once I began reading this book I fell in love with the idea of learning to cook.

The recipies all worked great for me but what I really loved was how they tied each person to a group of recipies and how their family history was inter-connected to cooking.

It is a great cookbook yes but an even greater celebration of family.

Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is definitely a keeper. I really wanted a good recipe for macaroni and cheese and my family loved the one that is in this book and requested that I make it again. It has that old fashioned consistency and taste just like my grandmother use to make when she was living. I can't wait to try the others. You can't go wrong with this book. If you don't know how to cook, people will think you can.

Editorial Review:

Spanning over a century of African-American life  and culture, this classic oral history celebrates  one remarkable family's heritage as told through  photos, reminiscences, and recipes--now back in  print after six years.



B & W  photographs throughout

Sylvia's Soul Food

Sylvia Woods

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Sylvia Woods has been barbecuing, baking, frying, and smothering New York City's best soul food for nearly thirty years. According to the Zagat New York City Restaurant Survey, "For down-home delicious Soul Food, this funky Harlemite is the real thing; go for great ribs, incredible fried chicken, fiery greens, and other artery-clogging Southern staples. Don't tell your doctor what you ate."

Now, for the first time, the "Queen of Soul Food" reveals her recipe secrets for more than one hundred of the authentic, stick-to-your-ribs soul food and classic Southern dishes she serves at her world-famous Harlem restaurant.

Start off with a breakfast of homemade pork sausage with eggs and the tenderest, flakiest biscuits you've ever eaten. Move on to tried-and-true soul food favorites that include Smothered Chicken, Fried Catfish with Hushpuppies, Sweet and Spicy Chicken Wings, Blackeyed Peas and Rice, and, of course, "Sylvia's World-Famous Talked-About Barbecued Ribs."

Of course, no meal at Sylvia's would be complete without a couple of "sides": Fried Green Tomatoes, Collard Greens with Cornmeal Dumplings, Candied Sweet Potatoes, and more. Sylvia's desserts are enough to satisfy any sweet tooth: Peach Cobbler, Lemon Pie, and Three-Layer Caramel Cake.

So, "if you're craving great barbecue, down-home soul food, and something uniquely New York, catch a cab up to Sylvia's, a marvelous restaurant serving up batches of great ribs, pork chops, candied sweet potatoes, and pecan pies that will satisfy the biggest eater in the family" (Passport to New York Restaurants). If you can't make it to New York, Sylvia's Soul Food will make you feel like you're there.

New Soul Cooking: Updating a Cuisine Rich in Flavor and Tradition (Melting Pot)

Tanya Holland

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Soul food embodies the best of American cooking-it's tasty, homegrown, and redolent of the country's multiethnic history. In New Soul Cooking, the Food Network's Tanya Holland redefines this much-loved cuisine, introducing fresh and healthy ingredients, modern cooking styles, and global flavors.

From Africa to the Caribbean, Brazil, and the American South, Holland shows how African flavors fused with existing cooking traditions created the basis for soul food. She combines this now traditional style with fresh flavor combinations and cooking techniques, to create soul food cooking for a new generation of home cooks and chefs.

The 90 delicious creations in New Soul Cooking-from Black-eyed Pea and Country Ham Chowder to Pecan-Crusted Boneless Chicken Breasts and Confetti Cornbread-reinvigorate the concept of soul food. Luscious color photographs of many of these dishes introduce new presentation ideas, reinforcing Holland's belief that a color palette is as important as a wonderful flavor palate.

Occasions to Savor

Delta Sigma Theta

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Recipes, menus, and entertaining tips from one of the largest, most respected African-American women's organizations in the world.

Renowned for their dedication to service, the women of Delta Sigma Theta are equally admired for their chic signature style. In Occasions to Savor, the sorority shares its entertaining savvy with everyone-Deltas and non-Deltas alike.

Lavishly illustrated, this book features more than 250 recipes compiled from members of the sorority, plus entertaining tips and suggested menus for specific occasions, including bridal and baby showers, book club meetings, an after-theater dinner, a backyard barbecue, and Christmas dinner. Featuring a full range of recipes from appetizers, beverages, salads, soups, and entrées to breads, breakfast foods, and desserts, Occasions to Savor is much more than an entertaining guide and cookbook; it's a celebration of African-American women who have made significant contributions to society.

Engaging profiles of such influential Deltas as former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan; Mary McCleod Bethune, founder of Bethune-Cookman College and founder and first president of the National Council of Negro Women; renowned choreographer Judith Jamison; and Dorothy Height, civil rights activist and chair and president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women, reveal why the women of this esteemed organization are held up both as role models and mentors and as icons of style and substance.

Black Hunger: Soul Food And America

Doris Witt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

(RAW Rating: 4.5) - Exposing the myth 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Using the history of Aunt Jemima as a springboard for researching
the affinity between African-Americans and food, BLACK HUNGER
focuses on debates that have been waged over the term 'soul food'
since the tumultuous era of the late 1960's and early 1970's.

BLACK HUNGER looks specifically at how the association of African-
American women with food has helped structure twentieth-century
psychic, cultural, sociopolitical, and economic life in America.
An association that has blossomed into a complex web of political,
religious, sexual and racial tensions between Blacks and whites,
and within the Black community itself.

Doris Witt uses vaudeville, literature, film and cookbooks to
explore how food has been used to perpetuate and challenge racial
stereotypes. Hence, the main focus is the controversy surrounding
the authenticity of soul food and stereotypical views of black
women in the United States. Witt fervidlyly contends that Aunt
Jemima was not only used to sell pancakes, but also to perpetuate
post-Civil War race and gender hierarchies, including the
subordination of African-American women as servants, and white
fantasies of the nurturing mammy.

As I read this book, I sensed Witt raising her fist in a Black Power
salute and wielding her spatula like a sword; as if Aunt Jemima had
stepped off the pancake box with vengeance and fury. BLACK HUNGER,
which began many years ago as a dissertation at theUniversity of
Virginia, is now an extraordinary book that should claim a viable
place in African American history. This is a fascinating look at the
role of food in our culture.

Reviewed by aNN
of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

Soul Food: Recipes and Reflections from African-American Churches

Joyce White

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

When Joyce White moved to New York City from Alabama, she left small-town life behind and landed ajob as a food editor at a major women's magazine. Weekends, however, found her visiting churches in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvestant, looking for a taste of home. Food has long been a part of the spiritual life of African-American churches, and what she found there, along with what she missed from home, was the comforting blend of cooking and fellowship that feeds both the body and soul.

In this warm and joyful collection, White offers more than 150 recipes for the foods that worshipers look forward to after services, and she captures the spirit of these sociable meals with warm, conversational and occasionally poignant reflections from African-American churchgoers around the United States.

"We don't just come to church service and leave," says a retired nurse who directs hospitality for a large church in Los Angeles. "Many of us stay here half the day. That way we get a chance to rub shoulders and see what is going on or going wrong with each other."

From delicious renditions of classics such as Sugar-Crusted Biscuits to updated favorites such as Black Beans with Sun-Dried Tomatoes, as well as special fare for entertaining and Kwaanza, the pages of Soul Food are alive with the spirit and love of African-American churches -- and the terrific food to be found there.