A Culinary Tribute

Unfortunately, Irene has put a damper on the dedication of the MLK Memorial and generally up the entire eastern seaboard. So while folks are waiting for Irene's fury to pass how about a meal featuring a dish from a civil rights icon or a jazz great.

Rosa Park's Featherlite Pancakes New York Nearsay...

Recently, Guernsey's Auction House began looking for an institution to buy Ms. Parks' sizeable archive. Among the slew of personal papers and correspondence, Rosa Parks' recipe for "Featherlite Pancakes" was unearthed, written on the back of an envelope from the 1st National Bank of Detroit (photo above). How freaking cool is that?

I can hardly wait to try this recipe at home and get to sample an edible piece of Ms. Parks' more intimate history. I've taken the liberty of rewriting Ms. Parks' recipe below, in a more legible, user-friendly format. Enjoy!

The recipe is here.

King Family Fried Chicken from Super Chef Blog...

St. Louis Chef Eric McNeil of Arch You Hungry, decided to go to the source. He got on the phone with Dr. King’s sole surviving sibling, Christina. She recommended to him a recipe for fried chicken that the King family loves.

(The recipe comes from Christina King Farris‘ book Through It All: Reflections on My Life, My Family, and My Faith.)

The recipe is here.

Louis Armstrong's Red Beans & Rice from NPR...

Louis Armstrong was arguably the greatest artist of the 20th century. He was also one of its greatest eaters.

The man behind "Struttin' With Some Barbecue" so often had grub on his mind that he often worked it into his song lyrics, and occasionally signed his letters "Soul Foodly Yours." More often, the signoff was "Red Beans & Ricely Yours," after his favorite food...

Armstrong's signature recipe was developed with his fourth wife, Lucille Armstrong. Famously, while courting Lucille in the early 1940s, he asked her to prepare his favorite dish as a litmus test...So satisfied was he with her take that when he appeared on The Mike Douglas Show in 1970, he brought on Lucille for a red beans and rice cooking demonstration. The couple was happily married for nearly three decades, until Louis' death in 1971.

Courtesy of the Louis Armstrong House Museum, here's Louis and Lucille Armstrong's red beans recipe, verbatim (second photo above).

The recipe is here.