/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>12618690
>I had an old fat black grandma next door who would baby sit me after school
In Miami, I had the old Cuban couple behind my house growing up where I got shown the right way to pick a mango (laying on a quilt under the tree and catching them as they fell, how to pressure cook a pot of dried black beans with bay leaf and dark sugar, how to rub a pork roast with bijol, sour orange, garlic and slow cook it before there was ever a caja china on the market. I remember silk covered antique chairs and pillows, real linen sheets, and silver that could have been in Versailles. I remember visiting the Cuban bakeries where loaves were still cooked on a single blade of palmetto frond to stabilize the dough and also cut into it midway during baking rather than a razor blade. I remember birthday cakes with layers of flan custard, pineapple and guava between rum soaked sponge, with fluffy boiled sugar icing as crusty as a meringue cookie with flavor of marshmallows.
These influences made my actual memphis-born paternal grandma's southern cooking seem like health food. A side of sliced ripe field picked tomatoes, parboiled to peel them first, of course. Vidalia sandwich with durkees sandwich spread. Speckled butter beans served alongside steak from the grill. Spoonbread (northern?). Slaw made with cider vinegar. BBQ pork loin cooked on a rotisserie with hickory chips. Whole hog BBQ with carolina vinegar baste. Fried okra, quickly sliced then dusted in just simple fine cornmeal sticking to the okra before frying, drained on brown paper bags. Queen corn on the cob. Mustard greens were preferred over collards or turnip, had to go to a ghetto market to find them fresh. There was an occasional frog leg in the freezer, but mostly stone crabs in there. Was not soul cooking, just a lot of fresh vegetables and higher quality meat from a butcher who aged steaks. I had to go to a restaurant to get fried liver.