[Music] Sha’s house is a soul food Sanctuary I am historically the only restaurant on Staten Island to ever receive two stars in The New York Times and then he put on the top 100 best restaurants and it was done with six tables 32 seats we sell out of food every single weekend soul food is a passage it also is tied to what we are as African-Americans we’re preparing these dishes that are not new to us but we Elevate them and make those things really beautiful hello I am shaune and you are at Shaun’s house right here in Stapleton Staten Island I need you guys to get in here so we can get it together cuz it’s going to be a very busy night this is my house it is a very intimate space I will say we got a living room I started this whole project in my real house so when I got into the business of actually owning a brick and mortar it was like don’t stress it just open up exactly what you had at home so it is a packed and very busy night tonight I got a lot going on all right let’s go get the Vibes let’s get cooking so this is my station it’s a very small and tight station but just like like at home when you’re at home and you’re in your kitchen with your family you find your spot and you kind of like get comfortable I work with my husband who is so wonderful for doing so much fabulous stuff for me he preps a lot of what it is that I get done like cutting my collard greens he trims the fat on my oxtails this goes in right now I started doing oxtail probably about 10 years ago so what I decided to do is put a Twist on a cultural dish I’ve seen people do recipes where they’ve thrown ice chips into their oxtails to create whatever they consider to be more moisture I think that if you do it frozen and then you season it properly it’s going to have the moisture because has the ice already embedded in the oxtail and then I put some buan in there because that gives it a nice little seasoning is going to make it even more just I don’t know what’s the word you want delectable delicious off the hook crazy out of control like that’s just what it is a little bit of brown sugar and then I have a secret blend and it’ll have hidden spices in there that people keep trying to figure out and I never give them soul food has adopted oxtail and they do cook it in the South but this one is sort of like the Twist on the Caribbean and on the southern styled oxtail I also like to put so this is ashwaganda and so I stick these things in here sour soop leaves they do all those good things for you just like your mom used to throw mushrooms in your spaghetti that’s what that is for me soul food for me is the experience I believe that when I’m cooking soul food I become the servant of of unconditional love it’s not necessarily all about the food it’s about us making sure that we’re serving people all food is not the food that’s best for us that makes us feel good or reminds us of things that our families used to do or go through or experience and I believe that soul food does that this is Browning Sauce it’s burnt sugar and it allows for the oxtail to have its color my grandmother was a dietitian for over 40 years and I know that my grandmother taught me a lot of different recipes when I was growing up and it wasn’t necessarily about the recipes in the food it was about the technique and making sure that I could feed a lot of people at one time cuz she believed that if somebody walked in the door they needed to be able to be fed so this is a little bit of barbecue sauce so I saw that Caribbeans right they were like putting ketchup in there and I’m like so not a fan of ketchup like get the ketchup away from me the barbecue sauce has molasses it has a little bit of sugar in it this is a little bit of starch mean that’s to thicken it over time and it doesn’t sing or burn putting this starch here while it’s cooking and me not having to disturb it made the recipe better and I’m adding water into here right now because this is going to create the gravy and the broth for the oxtail literally when I put this top on here and I go put this in the oven you can forget about it stop talking to me about oxil because it’s not coming out for 4 hours this is bye-bye I told you don’t ask me about this right like we can’t ask about this because when those doors open up the oxil orders go crazy if you come here after 8:00 just order something fried that’s all I I can tell you oxtails are gone we go through probably roughly about 30 lbs a day of oxtail so we want to make sure that we get these oxtails in I’m going to pretend to be super strong it’s very heavy for now 4 hours when I tell you it has to be taken out at exactly 4 hours it has to come out at exactly 4 hours a minute over and those oxtails are like meat gravy and you might as well just throw them on French [Music] fries so Ma and cheese is definitely a soul food staple the elbows have already been cooked for 10 minutes and then I start to combine my products in here to make it fabulous I’m adding in a little bit of milk here the macaroni and cheese I started doing when I had my kids and had my family and family gatherings they were asking me to do it and I would try all these different cheeses every time that I tried it I never liked it when it came out too sharp I liked it more on the milder side what I noticed with customers is they do too people don’t want the cheese to punch them in the face they want the slight Taste of like a cheddar but they want things to be very like smooth and easy to take down you got to do what you like so I got American a mix of cheddar mild cheddar and I add a little bit of mod I don’t really think that macaroni and cheese is so much about the cheese I think it’s one the way that you take care of it and it’s how you season it I just think it should be just salt and pepper so my grandmother was like if you can’t cook with salt and pepper and it don’t taste good get out the kitchen and I’m like cool I got you but we don’t use no salt with the cute little girl holding the umbrella trying to trap us we mess around with pink salt but it’s pink it’s cute and I’m a girl and then we’re going to add the heavier black pepper I melt the cheese down just a little bit so that I can put it into the pans and layer it with more cheese and then put it in the oven so that it bakes I do pretty much all the cooking and I managed to do it because I’ve been doing it for very long time my husband we have learned how to work together and figure these things out and he FS PS in every single blank and every single Gap that I have going on in this kitchen to make sure that things are running as smoothly as possible hey babe honey husband can you get the pants for me for the macaroni and cheese I love putting them on the spot this is the beauty of marriage thanks babe you’re the best and we’re going to just layer it don’t overdo it good putting the cheese on top creates like a little blanket for it we’re going to slip these in the oven 20 minutes to cook you want to make sure that this melts down and gets nice and crispy and golden and then it’s ready to go on your plate so it’s about noon it’s time to get this Fried Chicken let’s [Music] go this is such a soul food staple right here I personally love fried chicken is probably my my vice I don’t know cuz my dad is a fried chicken fanatic he loves fried chicken and we only eat the flats my family is flat brat only and every single recipe that every single person in my family has ever done or worked on has been something that gets worked on moving all the way up into our a generation and so I believe that I’ve improved my grandmother’s version of certain recipes one of my secret sort of things that I teach people when they don’t know how to fry chicken is to do this this is is chicken broth right so I just added a little bit of bullan so I have what my husband calls magic this is just a seasoning blend that I make here it’s a secret I’ll keep some things for myself so I like to season my chicken first and you want to kind of mix it in and get it all good I like to make the smaller batches you want to make sure that you don’t Crow it so now there’s another layer of seasoning what I do is I dip them in here or what you can do if you don’t really want to mess with it and you don’t want to be crazy about it you just pour some in there so we come over here to my flour my dredge has seasoning in it this is all purpose AP regular old grandma flour I like the the the flat cuz it’s just like it looks sexy it’s cute it’s like you know it’s like a little just a flat little piece of chicken just like just bite the meat off and it’s got two little bones in there it’s like fabulous so I want to make sure that I check my cooking oil so you see it fizzling right there that means that it’s ready to go and I’m putting just about 10 10 wings on each side one of my cooking rules chicken is very chatty and it will talk to you when it first goes into the cooking oil when chicken is done it just shuts up the grease the cooking oil is quiet by the time that happens that chicken is so crispy and golden and beautiful and it was like you know when a girl put a dress on and she go like this she know she ready that’s how that chicken be doing it it be knowing it’s ready so we do a double fry technique and we do fry the chicken ahead of time and then we store it and then we bring it back out and we fry more I’m going to need to take this macaroni and cheese out because I cannot burn my macaroni and cheese I got to get it so golden it’s such a blessing so that’s done cover it and put it in a steamer so that it stays hot into temperature you want to make sure you protect your people protect your neck like lutee protect your mac and cheese it is looking like it’s done all the chicken is floating and it’s very quiet it’s like calm it’s like I’m ready to go so now we know to take it out for the people who are a part of the flat trod right here woo that’s a golden flat right there baby you ain’t messing with that so I need to fry some more of this chicken because we got to get these batches out and then we’re going to get to this cornbread [Music] this is the part that makes people so happy the cornbread I’m serving in here is the elite so like which one you want vanilla sweet potato strawberry blueberry chocolate chip Oreo banana pudding you tell me which one you want and then they’re looking at me like all crazy like wait hold on did you just name multiple cornbread I’m like yeah for me I don’t really like mess with a whole lot of stuff cornmeal sugar flour bacon powder baking soda salt this is the cornbread mix right here I do a sweet potato cornbread dessert now this sweet potato cornbread dessert is punch your mom in the face delicious like when I tell you can’t nobody beat me doing this can nobody beat me doing this these are my cooked sweet potatoes right here these are already ready as some people would say candied and then you cannot be scared of how much you put of this in here what the sauce of the sweet potatoes does is it softens it and makes it very very moist so a lot of people say oh I don’t like cornbread cuz it’s very gritty this right here will not do that when I tell you it’s fluffy literally tastes like cake it tastes like cake I do have a sweet too I’m not even going to lie to you I didn’t decide to make sweet potato cornbread like a dessert because I have a sweet tooth I made it like a dessert because I don’t bake cuz I don’t really care about the s of these things I’m going to make some strawberry cornbread it’s one of our top sellers the strawberry used to be my number one sale sweet potato kind of dwarfed it and took over I love to be spontaneous with everything that I’m doing in the kitchen because that means that I am being present and living in the moment and I’m not letting these things kind of like control me following a very I won’t say difficult time but a pivotal time in my life when I was in a coma when I woke up it said Chase your legacy and not the luxury opening up a restaurant was something I discovered I needed to do but it was very little money put into US opening up this restaurant after quitting my job being a teacher for 10 and 1/2 years walking away from all of that I came into this food business we took a huge dip for the first 2 and 1/2 years and didn’t really see any customers and then people just started to notice us and then they came from all five burrows and then it spread very quickly like wild flower all over the world so I’m going to slip my strawberry cornbread into the oven and these are going to go for as long as I let them go I kind of do like a whole look see test and it takes me roughly about 20 minutes to bake these off right I don’t really have to cook much else because like I said this is a slow process so soul food is all about patience you got to take the time out to make sure that things are doing what they do and not disturbing it real life it’s break time I’m like a child I need a nap and so honestly my husband being here sweating to the oldies sooning this fried chicken and I will be on my phone emailing and answering calls and I will be doing everything else that makes this whole empire great because I am multitasking so I need a break I’m a Diva that’s just what I need it is break time change my shoes say hi to my grandma this right here is one of the biggest reasons why I’m doing all this like I wish my grandmother would have had the opportunity to see all of what I’ve done I have a lot of like memorabilia family pictures books albums things that talk about my history and here Staten Island is not known for soul food to have a blackowned business on Staten Island and then be able to amplify black history black culture I tell people that my ancestors came here in 1799 they purchased property in 1828 as the first African-Americans to purchase land here we are a registered stop on what you to be the Underground Railroad and we are the oldest Community inhabited by its original descendants in the United States giving them that tidbit of History anybody that comes in here they are stunned their mouth is on the floor so I don’t get a history check anymore from the Department of Education and I totally need a break because I’m super duper exhausted I definitely need to take it down a minute so you guys got to give me a second let me take my hair down [Music] [Music] so right now we’re getting ready to have our very brief staff meeting kind of like keep the staff AB breast of what’s on the menu for the day so today it’s a lot of small groups groups of twos groups of Threes And A group of four and let’s communicate on 86 and things because it’s a lot of groups coming in at different times and we want to know when we sit them down we want to let them know what we don’t have stay positive and keep a smile on your [Music] face all right so it’s 5:00 the customers are getting ready to knock the door down I’m very happy that you guys came into my house but now it’s time for you to get the hell out so masika is kind of sucasa good night bye I love y’all love you I love y’all
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