Recipes from the heart

This weekend some of my husband's relatives are in town for a family reuion. Although we had decided not to join the reunion activities, we did have a chance to get together with a handful of relatives yesterday afternoon. One of the many topics we covered was food. It was delightful hearing this group of older African American women recount memorable dishes by their mothers and aunts.

There was the story of how one woman who grew up in a rural Missippi town was happy that her older sister who had moved to town to work had come back one weekend. Their father had just bought some beef stew meat. The older sister woke up early in the morning and cooked the stew down, really down low, getting the meat all tender and flavorful. It was so good that the other sister still remembers the dish and the love the sister poured out on it more than six decades later.

There was another story about how one woman can bake anything. Moist cakes, crisp biscuits, and ooh she would make biscuits and then use the biscuits to make pie crust for the yummiest peach pie. Sounds great, especially if the peaches were picked from the backyard too.

The lady who hosted this gathering was of course herself a good cook. Even though she had just "gotten something together quickly", the food she served at this gathering was again honest down home cooking with no cheating--baked sausage, jerk chicken, creamed corn, spaghetti salad with tomatoes and imitation crab meat. And she served her famous pound cake for dessert--buttery, moist, sweet but balanced with a slight lemon flavor. A little piece hits just the right spot after dinner.

It gets me to thinking that these Black grandmother on my husband's side of the family are cut from the same piece of silk as the Chinese grandmothers on my side of the family. OK neither of my grandmothers were good cooks because of their particular circumstances. But my great-grandmother was a passionate cook just like these other ladies we talked about yesterday. She made the dessert soups ever--red bean soup, sweet potato soup, etc. She made them whenever she felt like it, whenever I felt bad, and just because.

After hearing about all these recipes that warms the stomach as well as the heart, I decided to make some county food myself. No, not African American county food the ladies were dwelling on yesterday, although I make some finger licking corn bread myself too. But I thought about the movie The Road Home (2001, starring Zhang Ziyi) in which the young girl kept making Green Onion Pancake to send to the school, hoping to get the young teacher's attention. In the end, it did, and they were married for many, many years, running the little village school together.

So I made Green Onion Pancakes (it's actually not a pancake but a savory flatbread). Here's the very simple recipe:

2 cups flour
1 tsp sale
1 cup water

Mix together to form smooth dough. Knead on floured surface for a few minutes. Divide into 12 balls. Flatten each ball into a thin circle using a rolling pin. Heat over oil in skillet for 3-5 minutes each side. Serve warm. Goes very well with soy milk.

Feels good to close the loop on yesterday's conversation with a good country biscuit from my own tradition.