Easy Peas Recipes

My step-daughter is African-American and a fantastic cook. She cooks not only from experience, but also from intuition and common sense. The result is a tastebud-tingling, heart-warming, stomach-happy meal. I’m not sure that she ever uses a written recipe, unless it’s possibly a recipe she hasn’t cooked before. Even then, she has this sixth sense about cooking that helps her put a unique stamp on any recipe.

Besides being a whiz in the kitchen, she is joyful in the kitchen. Cooking for a crowd sends some home cooks into a panic, but my step-daughter loves it. Twenty people to feed? Challenge accepted and conquered – with a huge smile. Cooking at any time for any reason is natural for her. This is what “soul food” cooking is. The recipes and the preparation come from the soul, from a genuine love of taking good care of others, and giving them your very best.

But, “soul food” isn’t just that. Experience and patience play a central role in creating a comforting dish. Throwing ingredients together randomly does not produce soul food. Soul food is not a specific culture, either. It is a shared experience by cooks worldwide who see food as more than fuel and more than a pretty plate. It is even more than a nutritious dish – it is nourishing, mind, body and soul.

My step-daughter’s cooking is a perfect example. From the moment that she invites you to dinner, you can hear the joy in her voice. She is excited, she is confident, and she is already flipping through her mental recipes, wondering what would make her guests happy and how she can make the meal extra-special. She will spend all day preparing a meal, and think nothing of it. A soul cook doesn’t just want her guests to feel full, she wants them to feel loved.

That is where the unique stamp on a recipe comes in; that special something that lights up your heart as soon as you taste it. But, you can’t just throw anything into a recipe just because it is unique (See My First Disastrous Dinner for what *not* to put in a meatloaf). A unique stamp is an ingredient, a seasoning, a little twist that takes a recipe from “yum” to “NOM NOM!” This requires ingredient knowledge that comes from being in the kitchen. In soul cooking, ingredients have a reason behind them. They’re not just there because the recipe says so. The ingredients need to be not just harmonious but be genuinely delicious together. The soul cook wants the entire package to be complete. She imagines what the total experience of the dish will be, from fork to full belly to the nap after dinner.

Cooking from the soul is really what soul cooking is all about. It is an international language of love that spans all cultures and generations. It is an artless, natural compassion for others that makes the soul cook not only a master of kitchens, but a healer of souls.