Alexander Smalls on Shrimp and Grits, Spectacular Sunday Dinners, and the Legacy of Heirloom Recipes (2024)

Nina Elder

That’s so interesting. So how would you describe your mother’s cooking?
My mother was what I call a salt and pepper cook. What she could do with salt and pepper was extraordinary. I mean, her food was incredibly good, but she was not a woman of lots of spices and certainly not aromatics or peppers and things like that. My father came from that type of family; everything was spicy and very much connected to West African flavors and Caribbean culture. And so it was always interesting because my father’s family would refer to my mother’s cooking sometimes as like, “Well, you know. It’s kind of like white folk cooking.”

And what did she think about that?
She didn’t care. She couldn’t care less, quite frankly. She’d just grab her pearls and go on about her business.

Hahaha. Okay, so how would Sundays unfold for you when you were growing up?
I know I talked a lot about my mother’s cooking, but if my father was in a generous mood, he would sometimes prepare his shrimp and crabmeat gravy for Sunday breakfast. That dish was usually reserved for holidays and special occasions, like Christmas morning or Easter or Thanksgiving. But there were also some Sundays that qualified for this dish. And there was nothing like my father cooking off the bacon or pork fat for this dish. You’d wake up to the smell of onions and celery and the fat, the salted fat back rendering. And I loved it because he would save the rinds for us, my sisters and me, that we could chew on with our grits and crabmeat gravy.

That sounds pretty incredible. What happened after breakfast?
We would always go to church on Sundays. My dad was Baptist and my mom was Episcopalian, but she gave in, so my family was Baptist. Sunday School was pre-church, so we had to be there like from 10 to 11. And then church service would start at 11 and it was all of that. My father sang in the choir; he had a gorgeous voice. I love church music. I love the expression of church being a part of Sunday because for me Sunday was its own special day. Church just happened to fall on Sunday, so it helped to kind of excite the whole ritual moment. You had to dress to the nines. We had our Sunday clothes and I remember there was always an inspection by my parents before we left the house to make sure we were representing the family. They would check behind our ears and make sure our collars were pressed and all that. And we were really well put together because as Mother said, “You don’t just represent yourself. You represent the Smalls family.” My mother and father were incredible dressers. Mother was a dressmaker and my father had been trained as an upholsterer and a shoemaker. He had worked for a very chic men’s store in town and did some tailoring. So they both dressed to perfection, and being their offspring, we also had to dress extremely well.

I love the visual of the behind-the-ear check. So what happened after church?
The first thing that happened when we came home was out of the Sunday clothes, and set the dinner table. Because you’re in the South and proper Southern families had dinner midday on Sunday. And then Mother and I would finish up the meal and we would set the table. The most comfortable, exciting moments were during the spring and summer time. We had a long summer season in South Carolina, so we would set up the table on the screened-in side porch and eat out there. Just wonderful. There was tons of iced tea with fresh mint that grew wild by the side of the house. And powder biscuits and sometimes there would be homemade ice cream. We’d stop at the icehouse and get the cracked ice and churn that thing. Oh my gosh. It was just wonderful.

Wow. That sounds pretty perfect. So when did you start your own Sunday cooking traditions?
I basically took that tradition with me when I moved away from home. It’s funny because when I first went away to college (it wasn’t too far from home), my mother and my father would literally bring Sunday dinner to the dormitory and drop it off.

That’s amazing!
I know. I know. And so that happened like the first two years, but then I moved to North Carolina, to the School of the Arts. But by that time I was having my own Sunday rituals myself. I would make dinner and friends would come over because I always cooked. When I got to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, I was doing Sunday soirées where I shop and cook Saturdays and Sundays. And a whole bunch of musician friends would come over on Sunday. I would lay out food and we would sing and carry on. And I did that, and I remember my teacher, my opera coach in grad school saying to me, “Boy, you’re never gonna have a career if you don’t put down that spoon and cooking all that food. You need to be studying.” And I was a horrible student but I couldn’t embarrass my mother, so I would learn my music, but I wouldn’t learn it until I had to. But, basically, Sunday dinner was one of the family trusts that I took with me when I left home. There always had to be Sunday rituals. And I own that. I claim it for myself.

Lumb crabmeat joins shrimp and a luscious gravy in this comforting dinner.

Serves 5 to 6