Foodist: Cookbook Reviews

Soul Food: Recipes and Reflections from African-American Churches

By Joyce White

Soul Food is about pride and community and the special nurturing of body and soul that comes of food cooked with love and shared with enthusiasm. What better place to find such food than in the basements and meeting halls of America's African-American churches? This is a book to read as well as a book to cook from. The elegantly captured tales of who's cooking what and where these recipes come from attach a very special life-affirming meaning to the food gathered between the covers of this book. The possibility exists to cooky that special nature into the foods you prepare from this book at home.

Soul Food is a working book. That is, you will cook with this book close by in the kitchen. The recipes simply sound too delicious to avoid, like they have a built-in mouth feel all their own. True, this is food raised up out of slavery and poverty - simple food for the most part, Southern food. But simple food carries the most power at the table, because simple food allows lovingly handled ingredients to speak with their own distinct voices.

This is not food, however, that suffers from old fashioned ways of cooking. Ideas about what's healthy have changed, and the ways of bringing food to the table have changed with them. Joyce White has been most attentive to this change, and is to be commended for making certain the recipes she has collected are both healthy and delicious. Not an easy task by any means.

Catch the spirit of Soul Food, and put it on your table. You won't regret the effort for a moment.
Schuyler Ingle ...