PHILADELPHIA — Hot pepper sauce watermelon salad, a blend of the fibrous summer fruit plus a generous helping of crunchy cucumbers doused with salt, apple cider vinegar, and hot sauce, sits at the heart of chef Chris Scott’s definition of Amish soul food cooking.
“My grandmother used to take watermelon, hit it with some salt and hot sauce, and she would eat it ice cold,” the "Top Chef" alum and owner of Harlem hot spot Butterfunk Biscuit Co. said in a recent Zoom chat. “It is that classic mix of German and Dutch sweet-and-sour flavors blended with soul food that defines Amish soul food. And I’m telling you, it was the bomb.”
This “bomb” recipe is one of 92 featured in Scott’s new cookbook, "Homage: Recipes + Stories from an Amish Soul Food Kitchen." "Homage" is more than a picturesque book filled with scrumptious-looking meals like lemonade-buttermilk fried chicken and peach cobbler. It’s a history of soul food cooking with essays like “The Story of the Birdman” that shares how enslaved Black men, who raised chickens on Southern plantations, were behind the introduction of the quintessential all-American meal of fried chicken.
