Carla Hall - Carla Hall’s Soul Food

To all my ancestors, whom I call upon daily for strength and inspiration.

In memory of George Hall.

Contents

Ive been eating soul food all my life and cooking it my whole career. I dont just know soul food. Soul food is in my soul. This book is a collection of my favorite recipes. It combines easy weeknight meals centered on seasonal vegetables with rich celebration dishes for special occasions. Even though the recipes have roots in history and heritage, theyre my present-day twists on the classics and my original creations.

By definition, soul food refers to the dishes of the Cotton Belt of Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama that traveled out to the rest of the country during the Great Migration. (The term itself came around the middle of the twentieth century.) You know what travels well? Fried chicken. Mac and cheese. Delicious, but not what anyones meant to eat every day. Im here to redefine soul food, to reclaim it.

Soul food is the true food of African-Americans.

The roots of our cooking are in West Africa. And from there, the American South, from the slave ports along the eastern coast to the southern border. We relied on seasonal vegetables, beans, and grains, with meat on rare occasions. Lets be clear: those were horrible times of suffering under the most unspeakable evil. I dont want to romanticize any of it. Not even the food. Remember, we didnt get to choose what we ate. But we made the most delicious dishes from what little we had. And what we cooked for the slave owners effectively became what we know as American food today.

After emancipation, African-Americans relied on the land and water for their daily meals. Collards in winter, peas through spring, tomatoes come summer. Chickens were for laying eggs, not frying. Fish and shrimp were abundant for coast and river folks. We lost that connection during the Great Migration and in the decades since as industrialized convenience food has made us unhealthy and sick. Our celebration foodssmoked whole hogs, candied yams, caramel cakebecame what we ate all the time. We forgot about all the amazing daily meals we created from greens and beans and grains.

This book shines a light on those everyday foods my people were eating for generations in the South. That, my friends, is as much soul food as our celebration meals.

You may be wondering, Whats the difference between Southern food and soul food? Easy answer: black cooks. And Im one of them. A lot of the dishes, seasonings, and techniques are the same, but theres an extra oomph in soul food. Its like the difference between a hymn and a spiritual. Both sound beautiful and express the same message, but the spirituals got a groove. Southern foods delicious any which way, but when its made in the Black-American tradition with influences from Africa and the Caribbean, it delivers the kind of warmth and joy that makes you want to get up and dance.

I got that soul food in my bones. I was born into it in the South, with roots that go back generations. I grew up dunkin cornbread into pot likker at the table, snapping green beans for church suppers, slicing chess pie at every baby shower and graduation party. At my very core, Im always going back home to Tennessee when it comes to what I cook and eat. Ive got a Nashville-born-and-bred palate, which marries heat and spice with tart and tangy and a sweetness thats not too sugary. Coming from that heritage, I got a hold on the food with the soul that bears its name.

For this book, I tried to imagine what my ancestors would be cooking from the farm if they were alive today. By looking to our roots, Im showing you how delicious and healthy true soul food is. African-Americans were cooking farm-to-table centuries before it was a label to slap on hip restaurants. Foraging, pickling, preservingthats how we survived. Our farms were all organic. You think you discovered kale? Child, weve been eatin those greens for hundreds of years. Im going back to all that.

The bulk of this book is vegetable-centric weeknight recipes so comforting they taste like big ol hugs. Just like the celebration foods. Even though I dont think you should eat feast foods every day, I still love em. Youll find my spins on the celebration foods thatve been passed down by black cooks for generations for Sunday suppers, holidays, Juneteenth, family reunions, and parties.

Everything in this book will be fresher and lighter than most recipes out there. Thats how Ive always cooked. Im never consciously thinking about how to cut calories or fat or anything like that. What I am always doing is trying to make the main ingredients shine as much as possibleand that results in lighter dishes.

Granny, my greatest inspiration in the kitchen, raised me on good-for-you soul food. Granny was a dietician at a hospital and prepared meals at home for her husband, who needed heart-healthy dishes. She never skimped on flavor or made anything too lean, but cut back where she could. Im pickin up the torch and adding my own twists to Grannys dishes. The recipes in this book capture all the soulfulness of soul food but dont make you feel like youre gonna die afterward.

Or during the cooking process. I keep it all easy. Mama didnt teach me how to cookbecause she didnt know how to cook well herself. Neither of my grandmothers taught me either, even though they both whipped up the best food Ive had to this day. So if youre not experienced in the kitchen, I know where youre coming from cause Ive been there. I want present and future generations to preserve true soul food, and I know the recipes need to be easy for that to happen. Ive made the dishes in here super-simple after years of streamlining meals for busy home cooks as a host of The Chew. For all the everyday dishes, I keep the cooking times short and cut out extra pans and fuss wherever I can.

This book is about so much more than food. It collects and re-creates soul food memories. My personal ones, of course, but also communal ones among African-Americans. By drawing on memories in the kitchen, I re-create not only the taste of the dishes, but also the deep joy and comfort in sharing them. Now thats cooking with love. Anyone making this books recipes will feel like theyre at the family table and taste the deep roots of the food. This isnt just a collection of anonymous recipes, its an intimate taste of true soul food.

Soul food needs to continue growing and evolving as a cuisine, and I hope this book is a part of it. Even though my Southern palate remains at the root of my cooking, my experiences with international cuisines and my farm-to-table instincts result in dishes that simultaneously have big, satisfying flavors but also feel bright and light.

Yes, this book celebrates soul food. And that means it celebrates American food. Because thats what soul food isa cuisine created on this land. This book champions delicious dishes everyone will love and will show you how to embrace it as your own.

THE JOURNEY

Nashville was a great place to grow up. Maybe itd be nice to retire there too. But I needed to be somewhere else in between. To get some perspective before I could come back. Mamas from a well-respected doctors family and raised me and my sister, Kim, on the good side of town. Still, I got slurs thrown at me. Some boys even spat on me.