Food for Your Soul - menu and recipes - includes excerpt from 'Ideas for Entertaining From the African-American Kitchen: Recipes and Traditions for Holidays Throughout the Year' - Brief Article

American Visions, April, 1999 by Angela Shelf Medearis

Although there's nothing like a savory lamb roast or a honey-baked ham for Easter dinner, folks these days are looking for alternatives. Angela Shelf Medearis, in her book Ideas for Entertaining From the African-American Kitchen: Recipes and Traditions for Holidays Throughout the Year(Dutton, 1997), presents dozens of alternative--both subtle and dramatic--in the form of holiday menus, arranged month by month.

April's Easter dinner menu features deviled eggs, lemon-roasted leg of lamb with wild rice, sour cream green beans, and strawberry pie. On the Fourth of July family reunion barbecue menu are mint tea, barbecued sausage, barbecued beef brisket, bourbon-glazed baby back fibs, and grilled chicken with pepper salsa, along with the usual side dishes. But then Medearis veers from the expected. In June she offers a Juneteenth Caribbean-style dinner menu and a "jumping the broom rehearsal dinner." January's chapter describes an Afrocentric baby shower, with sweet potato soup, Nigerian roasted pepper chicken, spinach with okra, and Nigerian-style munko (fried rice cake) for dessert.

Some recipes may sound exotic or complicated, but Medearis' emphasis is on the simple and flavorful. She does a lot of entertaining, and she has fun doing it. She transfers that sense of fun to readers by sharing her recipe and party successes; by including helpful suggestions on such details as setting a table, getting guests to mingle and selecting wine; and by offering all sorts of quick tips on entertaining.

Following is Medearis' menu for a Blue Monday party, to be held sometime around Billie Holiday's birthday, April 7. Medearis recommends it for an "attitude adjustment"; I prefer to think of it as a soothing way to settle into spring.

Blue Monday Patty Menu

Drinks and Appetizers Vineyard Crush Blue. Cheese Ball and Crackers

Main Dishes Spicy Fried Catfish Honey Chicken Wings

Vegetables Baked Scalloped Corn Brussels Sprouts in Beer Bluesy Zucchini

Breads and Desserts Aunt Florine's Jalapeno Cornbread Easy Fruit Cobbler

Vineyard Crush

Yield: 1 quart
1 24-ounce bottle grape juice, chilled
1 cup orange juice, chilled
1/4 cup lemon juice, chilled
1/2 cup sugar
1 quart ginger ale, chilled

Combine the grape juice, orange juice, lemon juice and sugar in a large pitcher or punch bowl and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Just before serving, stir in the ginger ale. Serve over ice.

Honey Chicken Wings

Yield: 6 servings "I've been told that nobody sings the word `hunger' like I do. Or the word `love.' Maybe I remember what those words are all about."--Billie Holiday

1 cup honey
1 cup teriyaki sauce
1 cup yellow mustard
1 cup butter or margarine, melted
2 tsps. curry powder
2-3 pounds chicken wings, cleaned
1 tbsp. vegetable oil, for greasing the pan

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the honey, teriyaki sauce, mustard, butter and curry powder in a large bowl. Dip each piece of chicken into the honey mixture until well coated.

Grease a large roasting pan with the vegetable oil. Place the chicken wings in the pan, wing-tips up. Pour any remaining sauce over the chicken wings. Bake for about 1 hour, basting occasionally.

Easy Fruit Cobbler

Yield: 6 servings "You can be dressed up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation." --recorded by Billie Holiday

1 cup each apples and peaches,
peeled, pitted and cored
1 cup cherries, pitted
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 tbsps, cornstarch
1/4 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tbsp. butter or margarine
1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
2 tsps. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsps. vegetable shortening
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. sugar
Whipped cream or ice cream,
for serving

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix together the apples, peaches and cherries in a large bowl with the sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice; then transfer the mixture to a 9-inch-square baking dish, heaping the fruit high in the center so that it will support the crust. Dot the fruit with the butter.

Combine the flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Using a fork or pastry blender, cut the shortening into the flour mixture until crumbly. Stir in the milk to make a soft dough.

On a lightly floured cutting board, roll out the dough to a 1/2-inch-thick square. Place the dough over the mound of fruit. Cut air vents in the top, and seal the edges securely Combine the cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar in a small bowl; then sprinkle on top of the dough. Bake for 35 minutes or until brown and bubbly Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Reprinted from Ideas for Entertaining From the African-American Kitchen: Recipes and Traditions for Holidays Throughout the Year, by Angela Shelf Medearis. Copyright [C] 1997 by Angela Shelf Medearis. By permission of Dutton.