Culinary professional Cheryl shares her family’s favorite recipes, from desserts to main courses. She also shares cooking lessons her own mother taught her!
What are your favorite family recipes? What makes them so special?
I think my favorite family recipe has to be one of my braised oxtail recipes. For eight years I was my mother’s caregiver, though she recently passed away after battling lung cancer for 14 ½ years. Oxtails were always one of her favorite things to eat, so I began coming up with recipes for them. We also found that my daughter loved them too. When she was about two, she would clean those oxtail bones so well, you would not even know there had ever been meat on them!
Slow Cooker Caribbean Oxtails
What are your top three favorite cookbooks?
My go-to cookbook is the classic Joy of Cooking. It has everything you need, is easy to follow and should be in every home. Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet and Mangoes & Curry Leaves by Jeffery Allford & Naomi Duguid are stunningly beautiful books about different kinds of cuisines in Asia. I just like to look at them! I also like the books of Rick Bayless, Diana Kennedy and Nigella Lawson.
What are your favorite easy and quick recipes?
Quick and easy often involves pasta in my house. You can take pastry, freezer and leftover items and add them to cooked pasta and you have a meal! I always have good canned tomatoes and beans in my pantry. I also have a favorite tomato and basil pasta sauce from Trader Joe’s in my pantry. Sometimes you just don’t have time to make your own pasta sauce, so there is no shame in having a good one you love.
How do you like preparing vegetables?
I am lucky that my daughter loves vegetables. I like to steam broccoli or asparagus, sauté chard or kale with a little garlic, or roast asparagus with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Green salads are also a favorite in my house.
What are a few cooking lessons that your mom taught you?
Mom was an old school cook, which meant everything was cooked to death! Well done meat and fish, vegetables cooked to mush! But she made a mean macaroni and cheese and collard greens. Her pound cakes were much sought after too.
Lemon Glazed Pound Cake
–
Meet the blogger:
I am a graduate of the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. Since graduating I have been a caterer, a food stylist, a food photo editor, a personal chef, a recipe developer, a recipe editor and mommy. I am a single mom to a very precocious six-year-old girl who loves to help mommy in the kitchen.
Black Girl Chef’s Whites | Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Email: cheryllee@culinoir.com