Cooking from a Black Persepective

I've been hemming an hawing about if and how I wanted to do a food blog for quite some time now and I've finally decided to give it a shot when I realized how truly interested I've become in gastronomical pursuits. Everybody loves food but when you start asking for mandolin's at Christmas, a ricer, or even a melon baller, one can assume that you're a bit more serious than some about your relationship with food. Me, I'm a cautious experimenter. I mean shit, I'm Black yo! LOLNot to offend the bougie gourmands who are also of the Black persuasion but Black people have a different mind set about food. What is and isn't normally eaten would make most foodies roll their eyes at our ignorance. Some things are simple we like pork and most pork products. We do not and are not in the habit of eating anything raw or 'tartar' *affect a snooty British accent when you say it.We also like things saucy and spicier than our White counterparts. This does not mean blow-the-roof-off-your-mouth hot. We like spice – not necessarily “hot” . Seasonings that are flavourful and sumptuous with zest and kick. I’m not a fan of Tabasco (unless it’s in a prairie fire) for this reason exactly. I don't do missions to see who can withstand the hottest scoville measurement; that's so not my style. I actually make my own hot sauce that I just might share one of these days...if you're lucky ;-)
I live in downtown Toronto just steps away from Chinatown and Kensington Market, which I absolutely adore for food shopping. Many people in the city like to go to St. Lawrence Market for whatever cache they feel it lends them. I hate it. It’s too over priced, the veggies are often over ripe or rotten and it’s embarrassing to see the St. Andrew Poultry truck pull up outside and make deliveries straight from…wait for it, their slaughterhouse in Kensington market! I hate the snob factor in food. I don’t know how many people have told me that they think Chinatown is dirty or that they don’t have the same quality of food up there. For everyday cooking this neighborhood is excellent for produce, meat and fish. Of course if you’re doing high-end cooking I think the best places to go are Meat on the Beach, The Healthy Butcher or Cumbraes but I work in the arts which basically means I get paid in crumbs so unless I’m doing a fab roast beef, steak or crown roast of lamb (or get a fat raise in salary) I’ll be frequenting my market regulars. This blog is meant to be a smorgasbord of flavours and techniques, some of which I might be trying for the first time, which is kinda why I’m documenting it. I’ve also started it because there appears to be a serious lack of Black food bloggers out here. I know we can throw down in the kitchen and know we eat hearty so why don’t we blog about it?You will find that a lot of my home cooking is in the Southern tradition because as a Black Nova Scotian our roots go through the Underground Railroad. We do not have a large Caribbean population like Toronto, in fact I hadn’t even experienced curry chicken until I came to Toronto. Down home, we like black-eyed peas in our rice not pigeon peas like Jamaicans, we eat pasta and we prefer our chicken fried not jerk. That said, since I’ve come here I appreciate Caribbean cooking a lot and have perfected many dishes that even true West Indians have given me props for. This blog is purely for my pleasure. I want to experiment with a wide range of cooking styles and explore the gamut of culinary subjects, some that aren’t always politically correct but fuck it. This is my blog. With an intro like that how could I not make this recipe my first: Pot Cookies comin’ up!