Most of us take “Sunday best” to mean the clothes reserved for church or other occasions that might call for pulling out the ironing board and shoeshine kit.
For Adrienne Cheatham, the term goes much deeper than that.
In her debut cookbook, she traces the practice of dressing up on Sundays to a time when the plantation church was the rare place Black people were permitted to congregate. Through segregation, she writes, putting on nice clothes to go out in public became a way of demanding acceptance and respect.
That tradition informs a style of cooking that began in the kitchens of her extended interracial family in Chicago and Mississippi, evolved under the tutelage of famed chefs Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin in Manhattan and Marcus Samuelsson of Red Rooster in Harlem, and culminates in her spruced-up riffs on homestyle favorites presented in “Sunday Best: Cooking Up the Weekend Spirit Every Day” (Potter, $35).
Cheatham’s white mom and Black dad were raised on opposite sides of Chicago, she writes, and met as ”rebellious” 20-year-olds working in the city’s Oscar Meyer plant. Their families eventually overcame prejudices and maintained close relationships even after her parents divorced.
As students at the historically Black Florida A&M University, Cheatham and her sister started a tradition with their friends they called Cheatham Soul Food Sundays, consisting of familiar foods like fried catfish and collards, often tweaked to suit various tastes.
Culinary school followed, then an internship at Le Bernardin. Competing on Bravo’s “Top Chef” helped her find and hone her own culinary voice, and inspired her to start a dinner party pop-up in Harlem called Sunday Best. The Butter Bean Hummus, Stout and Soy-Roasted Chicken, Trinity Rice Pilaf, Charred Okra with Roasted Tomatoes, and No-Churn Strawberry Shortcake Ice Cream deliciously express that ethos, and have whetted my appetite for more.
Through each enticing chapter, Cheatham reinforces the lesson she learned from her chef mentors: “There’s no right or wrong when it comes to defining your style, but once you determine what it is, you wear it with confidence and run with it!”
Susan Puckett is a cookbook author and former food editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Follow her at susanpuckett.com.
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