How to Cook for Your Soul (pt. I)

What is soul food? As a chef, that is an essential question I face with every menu cycle. Survey 100 people and the top 3 answers on the board will probably include: southern cooking, grandma's cookies, Haagen dazs, and fried chicken. But wait a second, how can it possibly be that simple?
The term 'Soul Food' can not be condemed to mere post break-up gorging exercises or forgotten dinners with family. It is so much more than a bowl of chocolate ice cream with fudge chunks, or cheesy scalloped potatoes. Food for your soul can be very comforting, but it can be much more!

Cooking is about transformation. It's taking a group of ingredients and multiplying its value to far more than the sum of its parts. One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is the joy and satisfaction that comes from preparing a truly delicious meal for someone you care about. That is soul food. It is any thing that comes out of your kitchen to be shared. It encompasses far more than the emotion of comfort. It expresses happiness, triumph, accomplishment. Like when you put out a delicious meal despite great obstacles. It expresses love, appreciation, friendship, and even remorse when you cook for a loved one. It expresses tradition, history, culture, and belief according to geography. It expresses courtesy, respect, consideration, and recognition when shared with guests.

When you unpack the box of what emotions drive your desire to cook, you begin to see food in a completely new way. All food can be soul food. All great food is soul food. It nourishes a part of you that is beyond biological explanation. (Men, cook one suprise meal for your spouse and see for yourself.)

Putting a real part of yourself into the food you cook, that's soul food. Dedicating more time into a dish's preparation but even more to its appreciation, that's soul food. Meals that make you smile, that's soul food.
 In the words of Adelle Davis:

"We are indeed much more than what we eat, but what we eat can nevertheless help us to be much more than what we are."