Trifecta… and The Truth In Cooking

There is something to be said about soulful cooking. Soul food isn’t limited to but is most commonly associated with that down-home, sweet southern, heart warming cooking that we all know and love about the holidays and going to grandma’s house. Soul-food can be many different things to many different people. It’s whatever fills your stomach and warms you to your very soul. To me it is part of the trifecta that holds the whole experience together (in respective order) faith, family, and food. Alone, each one of these things can no doubt stand on it’s own, but when brought together, they become a force that is unmatched and never forgotten. As a man of faith and a chef it’s times like these that really inspire me to continue to enhance my spirituality and to continue to perfect my craft.

This will be my official first holiday season as a professional chef. Whether I am watching and learning or helping and cooking, growing up I’ve always been apart of the food preparation during the holiday season. It’s much different than cooking dinner on your every average Tuesday. There is a lot more planning, prepping, cooking, and most certainly eating that takes place. This season I’ve made it a point to really pay close attention to the whole formula of how this thing actually works: the recipes, ingredients, measurements and amounts, the cooking techniques, the times and temperatures etc. What I’ve gathered is that none of that matters. You see when my mom and grandma step into a kitchen to prepare a holiday meal there aren’t any recipes or measurements. There are specific ways of doing certain things but nothing is ever calculated. It all comes from the heart. This is no doubt where the term “tender, love, and care” was first coined – in a soulful kitchen. I call it Truth In Cooking. I’d like to say that everything is done by hand to add to the ambiance of the story, but it’s about to be 2011, so we use food processors, immersion blenders, mixers and whatever other electrical appliance we can find to cut time in half (sorry grandma). How ever it is done, the result is food at perfection. It starts on the eve of said holiday occasion that carries on through the night and through the rooster crowing and doesn’t even stop after everyones stomach has stopped growing, because we all know about the turkey, ham, or roast sandwiches that follow. Many of you know all to well what I’m talking about but we sometimes take it for granted.  My prayer is that we all get to experience the trifecta this holiday season and many more to come – Faith, Family, and Food!

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and hope you all have a very blessed and prosperous New Year.