African American Month with Sweet Home Cafe Cookbook

Sweet Home Cafe Cookbook.

February is African American month, and this month I am so excited about diverse dishes.

There is a restaurant at the the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The name of restaurant is Sweet Home Cafe, but the restaurant is temporarily closed due to Covid-19.

Naming after the restaurant, this a cookbook with the recipes of dishes that served in the Sweet Home Cafe. This book a collection of African American dishes and cooking from entire this county that turn into national cuisines.

In addition to over 100 recipes and photos, the book also passes brief histories of foods, cultivates, recipes, traditions, and traditional cookwares, including their photos from the museum collection.

Inside the book, we can find the African American salads and sides, soups and stews, main dishes, pickles, snacks, sweets, and drinks. Basically, the recipes in this book are very familiar here, such as gumbo, pies, red bean and rice, red velvet cake, po'boy, or stew tomatoes and okra.

Tomato-watermelon salad (a quick shot from page 21)

If you like Creole cuisines, this book has Creole spiced boiled peanut, spicy pickle okra, rice pilaf, duck and crawfish gumbo, fried croakers, corn hush puppies, and praline.

Photos of salads are very inviting.

They look fresh and healthy, such as field green salad, baby kale salad, and mixed green with baby turnips. I took a quick shot from the book at page 21,

After all, the most dazzling from salad section is tomato-watermelon salad. This summer salad is very easy, simple, and attractive.

I would give it a try: heirloom tomatoes, seedless watermelon, onion, tossed in the hot vinegar (extra virgin olive oil, sherry vinegar, sea salt, ground black pepper, and cayenne), and coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley.

Great combination of crisp, sweet, juicy watermelon and luscious tomatoes.