Soul Food Sides

Rick: what does pickling lime do?

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

Damfino! I'm a consumer in that area, not a producer. All I really know is that lime pickles bring back wonderful memories. You can find them at farmers' markets and such all over the south. If I knew of a commercial producer I'd recommend him! On the other hand, you can come to Natchitoches and get all the goodies you want at our green market. (Oh: Paul, I spent a wonderful year in K-town. Glsd to see that someone else understands barbecue!)

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Originally posted by Sundancer7

Rick: what does pickling lime do?

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

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used to make lime pickles every year. they are also known as crystal pickles because the lime makes them semitransparent. The lime also helps to make them crisp. It is the usual way of making watermelon rind pickle. I remember having a pot of cucumber chunks soaking in lime water sitting in my kitchen. It was a process that took a couple of days, soaking & rinsing but they were worth it!!

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Originally posted by ocdreamr

used to make lime pickles every year. they are also known as crystal pickles because the lime makes them semitransparent. The lime also helps to make them crisp. It is the usual way of making watermelon rind pickle. I remember having a pot of cucumber chunks soaking in lime water sitting in my kitchen. It was a process that took a couple of days, soaking & rinsing but they were worth it!!

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OCDREAMR:

Thanks a lot for the explanation. I have been trying to figure out what the lime was for. Seems simple now, crisper, transparent etc.

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

Bushie:
You can imatate a Canadian ordering "Slap your Mama down Pie" by dramatically over-enunciating every single sylable and tightening your bum cheecks just ever so slightly. And say it with out the least speck of guile. My own special blend of prairie/Canuck accent has a nausiating uber cheeriness to it. By the way, I now live in the Midwest and people here ask me if I am from France, England or Germany atleast once a week.

The next time I venture to the south, which I hope will be very soon, I will seek out that type of pickles and those apples. If any one is in need for a recipe for Borst that servs 100 just let me know .

Jessicazee- if you are following this stream you iniciated what are the names of the soul food resturants in Milwaukee. I have heard of Mr. Perkins and I am dieing to get there but what other places have you visited?

Got me! My grandmother made 'em, I ate 'em. My guess is that it made them crispy--almost brittle. Hard to describe. You should be able to find them at a farmer's market in Knox County somewhere. I'm a Tennesseean and found them all over the state when I lived there.

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Originally posted by Sundancer7

Rick: what does pickling lime do?

Paul E. Smith
Knoxville, TN

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Milwaukee Soul Food:

-Grant's Soul Food on North Ave.
-Speed Queen BBQ on Walnut
-QF&H on MLK Dr.
-Sir Desmond's way out on Good Hope Road
-Park View Cafe on Green Bay Avenue
-Junior's just up the road on Green Bay
-Boobie's Place on...um, can't remember just now...

Here's a link about some of them: http://www.onmilwaukee.com/dining/articles/soulfood.html

Let's talk Collards ...
I got a decent recipe, I gotta tell you ...
Credit Due to "The New Low-Country Cooking: 125 Recipes for Coastal Southern Cooking with Innovative Style" -- by Marvin Woods (Author); Made collard lovers out of many people who didn't have any soul, before they tried these ...
3 # Collards, 'picked' & cut into 1 inch ribbons
3 Tbsp of vegetable oil (I used some pork/bacon renderings)
1 tsp fresh rosemary
1 tsp fresh sage
1 medium onion fine dice
1 large carrot fine dice
1/2 cup white balsmic vinegar ( I had Champagne Vinegar)
Hot sauce to taste ( Half a bottle of Tobasco & more Frank's Durkee Red Hot)
Water to cover ( Chicken Stock )
Method sweat onion & Carrot in fat, add herbs, then Collards to wilt. Cover with liquids.
Done in 45 min, but some like them softer, so cook longer. No Hock or Ham bone to limit
Cholestrol. I included Smoked turkey tails & jowl to increase cholestrol.
Bring on the Cornbread

To jessicazee it was very generous of you to ofer such a thorough list. The article was great and I am headed out this weekend to as many of the places mentioned as I can.

Cool! You'll have to give the full report. I'm thinking about going to Boobie's tomorrow.

Pigface, your recipe is excellent and Ishould be on your diet except I ain't. I always add bacon fat or something similiar. It is healthier the way you do it, but it is tastier the old southern way.

I love greens and way plant them every late fall and they are avilable for us all winter and spring.

Paul e. Smith
Knoxville, TN

Anyone who enjoysTURNIP GREENS and has opportunity to do so should try the Ole Sawmill Cafe just off I-40 in Forrest City, AR. The Sawmill, open daily from 5A to 9P and offering both order from menu and all you can eat buffet dining (breakfast, lunch, dinner) has many great soul food or country cooking dishes (fried catfish, fried chicken, big variety of vegetables, cobblers & bread pudding are particularly good), but its one dish which is the best I've ever eaten anywhere in my entire life (even better than that which my mother and grandmother cooked fresh at home) is TURNIP GREENS. I don't know how they cook them so deliciously. I've twiced talked with the lady who cooks them and she says she doesn't do anything special, "just cooks them like she likes them and hopes the customers will". I think she's just being modest, for she surely has a special talent. Obviously they are starting out with quality greens (even though I'm sure they are canned or frozen from some commercial source rather than being fresh), for I've never found any which are old, tough, bitter, stringy, or anything of that nature. Two things I'm sure which add to their being so good are the most generous helpings of salt pork (what we used to call "salt meat" or "streak of lean/streak of fat") and of medium sized, medium hot, light green whole peppers which she cooks in them. I still think most credit goes to her "special touch", though. No matter what I'm eating at the Ole Sawmill, I always have to have a big bowl of those TURNIP GREENS on the side.

Anyone who likes and is planting or buying SWEET POTATOES should try to get the Georgia Jet variety of sweet potatoes if at all possible. Without a doubt they are the best, most delicious (no matter how cooked) of all sweet potatoes. They are always so sweet and flavorful and are never stringy.This is not only my opinion but also the opinion of everyone I know who has tried the Georgia Jets.

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Originally posted by scbuzz

Fried okra (not the heavily breaded type)
Turnips (the root)
Rutabaga's (?sp)
black eyed peas
field peas (I make a concoction of field peas with fresh tomatoes, fresh vidalia onions, hot peppers, vinegar, salt and pepper)

Sorry I messed up and didn't get my reply included in above posting, but I'm kind of new to this. Anyway, just wanted to comment that I surely agree with scbuzz' listing of great foods. Field peas of all sorts but especially purple hull peas are so delicious as not to be believed. I've never had them in the concoction you describe, but they are wonderful just cooked as peas alone (and then add to or eat with them onions, peppers, boiled okra, vinegar, pepper sauce, whatever you like) or cooked with peppers and/or onions and/or okra. I'm sure the tomatoes cooked in them would be great, for fresh sliced tomatoes to go along with them (and some of the wonderful cornbread described elsewhere in this section) make for heavenly eating. And if you run out of field peas and have left some pot likker and cornbread, just crumble that cornbread into the pot likker, stir in a little vinegar so that it sort of "curdles" and you have some eating as good as or maybe even better than the purple hulls themselves.

No, he means pickeling lime. Lime pickles are extra sweet with spices and a bright green in color. Some people also call them Crystal Pickles. All my relations in KS and MO make them (but I am pickeling-retarded). You can get lime wherever they sell canning supplies and I generally see it in a 5 lb sack like you get sugar in. I think even Wal-Mart sells it

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Originally posted by Lovie

Rick F. do you mean the chemical slack lime? I know that they use that to make totillas sometimes but I have never heard of it used in pickles. Where do you get such and item? And how do they differ in taste? I know that it will be diffacult to describe.

mmmmmmmm Liketoeat, I loved the Sawmill Cafe when we were there. The breakfasts were wonderful also......


As far as Lime Pickles, the best comparision I can give them is that they get a kind of hard candy look about them, glossy and transparent. They are ultra crisp and sweet and tangy, and ideally an unnatural emerald color, although we have done some for Christmas and made red ones too, by adding instead of green, using cinnamon red hots. Quite festive side by side on a relish tray, with some golden curry pickles.

As we are located in the midst of a big melting pot area, our soul foods are varied:amish creamed dried corn, skillet corn and cornbread with cracklins, soup beans, pinto beans and green beans with ham, bacon , salt pork or all three; collard greens, mixed breens or dandelion greens; sushi, dirty rice or rice pudding......we vary everything and love it all.

went to buffet the other day and when i got to the table and looked at my dish---fried green tomatos,corn pudding,corn bread,mac and cheese with ribs and lemonade--realized that everything i ate but the ribs were Yellow. Hmmmm--wondered what brought that on-it was GOOD though!It later occured to me that i cant think of a yellow food that i dont like!

What?!?!??!!? No one has mentioned chittlin's!?!?!?!? Correctly spelled "chitterlings"....can't say that I blame ya! YUCK!

OK. Here I am going to display my dumb Canuck card. Could you please explain what "chittlin's" are? Let me refraise that, I know what they are made of but how are they prepared? Are they a side dish? I have been to the south a couple of times and frequent soul food resturants but I have never seen them on the menu. I have seen them in the grocery store but what do yo do with them? As to yellow food, mustard is #1 for me. Has any one else visited the Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb Wisconsin? Do you eat mustard with chittlins?

Lovie, all I know is they stink like home made sin. You have to "clean" them. Most down here use white vinegar(oh this makes my stomach turn, the smell never seems to leave), you boil them with salt, pepper, a little vinegar, celery, bell pepper. Nasty, nasty. I like chicken livers, gizzards, and even crave the simmered turkey neck during the holidays, but pig intestines.....shoot me first. A lady I work with has a whole lotta soul. Her Dad refuses to let her Mom cook them inside.

There is a soul food place here in Houston, "This Is It!" , that has them on the menu daily. I shut my eyes when I pass them on the steam table line.

I used to work for Park's Sausage. One of the products they sold was chitlins'. They sold them partially prepared. The days they did the cooking you knew you couldn't walk out of the door, the smell would get to you, this in a manufacturing area yet, it was worse than anyother smell! You couldn't smell them cooking inside due to the insulation of the area where the cooking took place. Whenever they did a run on anything - sausage, scapple or chitlins', they would cook up a batch to taste test it. They would come into the offices & offer samples. I always declined the chitlins'. An interesting side note to this is that at the time I worked for them, Park's was situated on Russell St. They had to move to make way for the Raven's stadium! Now the parking lot where many a sausage is cooked while tailgaiting is the same place where many a sausage was made! "More Park's Sausages, Mom, Please!"

redtressed, enjoyed so reading of the variety of "soul food" available in your area; all sounds great. And glad you got to try the Sawmill when in Arkansas. I've always really enjoyed it, most especially Fri. thru Sun. due to the best variety of entrees being offered on those days. Their greens are always out of this world good. As for the chittlins', though I've been around where they were being cleaned (out at the very back of the lot) at hog killing time, and though I've sold commercially prepared ones, chittlins' and 'possum are two things I've never gotten up enough nerve to taste, much less eat - though the Gillette chittlin' supper is a (if not the) top notch annual political event in the state. Come to think of it, politicians and chittlins' are a natural combination, having so much in common. PS Typo correction

Pork neck bones and sauerkraut!

Gotta be greens and mac 'n cheese and cornbread.

The best of the former locally is at the famous Frenchy's Creole Fried Chicken on Scott near UofH and TSU. Great fried chicken and greens. Several knockoff restaurants serve stuff almost as good - Little Frenchie's, Frenchey's. Percy Creuzot made the mistake of putting his recipes on line for a while. I had 'em bookmarked, but didn't print them out and they're no longer there . I've also had some great greens at Mikki's Soul Food Cafe and Catering.

I like greens with a lot of flavor and most importantly not overcooked.

The best mac 'n cheese I've had locally is probably Thelma's or Pearl's.

A local restaurant reviewer has reviewed soul food restaurants several times and commented that proprietors tell him the biggest selling side is okra and tomatoes. Sometimes the dish includes a little whole kernel corn. Thelma does an incredible version of that with stewed tomatoes, some crawfish tails and smoked sausage . But it varies, sometimes you get so little crawfish you can hardly tell it's there, other times, the dish could be a main course. Sometimes she just seems to use tomato sauce instead of stewed tomatoes, as do many places, but with the sausage it has a smoky taste that is awesome . If you go to Thelma's, which is known as a BBQ place but really is a soul food restaurant, get the okra and tomatoes with the catfish.