A New Year’s Cooking Resolution

Photo of shrimp over grits. Be cool yes there is a recipe below.

Yesterday I suggested some unusual breakfast combination to start the New Year such as fried chicken and waffles which they used to do a Well’s Restaurant in Harlem. Likewise, at Kelly’s restaurant in Atlantic City, the queen of soul, Aretha Franklin, ordered after-hours meals of hot sauced wings and grits (coarsely ground corn). Like fried chicken and waffles, hot wings and grits sounds like the making of another great New Year Day breakfast tradition. Grits are great because like rice you can serve all kinds of food on top of them and they absorb flavors very well. There is a precedent for this in Latin American and southern culture which people served all kind of food with grits and hominy (dried corn kernels soaked with a natural lye until the hard hull comes off)Grits are made from ground hominy. It’s where I derived part of the title of my book from Hog and Hominy because hominy is so essential to American cuisine. Hominy has its roots in ancient Guatemala culture and from there is migrated to the Indians of North America who introduced it to European settlers and enslaved Africans. Today it is very popular on the menu of many southern and Latin American restaurants. Here’s a New Year’s cooking resolution; try cooking with hominy and grits this year or serving them as a side dish. Here are some recipes:

Shrimp and Grits: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=443571

Vegetarian Menudo: http://recipes.chef2chef.net/recipe-archive/56/299250.shtml

Vegetarian Pozole: http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/soup/recipe-vegetarian-posole-075578

Garlic cheese grits: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=853994