A Love Affair with Southern Cooking (13 page)

MAKES
8
SERVINGS

I’d heard of Frogmore Stew for years but didn’t taste it until I made it myself. I picked the recipe up a few years ago while in the South Carolina Lowcountry on article assignment for
More
magazine. My subject: Suzanne Williamson of Beaufort, who with husband, Peter Pollak, had just restored a small Palladian manor built when George Washington was president. When I asked Suzanne if she was familiar with Frogmore Stew, she nodded. “It comes from Lady Island just over the bridge.” Others, among them John Martin Taylor, respected Lowcountry culinary historian and author of
Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking,
insist that Frogmore Stew originated on St. Helena Island. I drove the length of Lady Island as well as adjoining St. Helena Island but found no Frogmore, although my map clearly showed it. Turns out it’s only undergone a name change; Frogmore is now St. Helena. Frogmore not only had once been an
important crossroads linking the Sea Island plantations and Beaufort but also had been headquarters for a bustling terrapin and caviar business. According to
Full Moon, High Tide,
a cookbook published by the Beaufort Academy, it took its name from “an ancestral English country estate.” Whatever the origin of Frogmore, the namesake stew remains a Lowcountry staple. More shrimp and sausage boil than stew, it’s bubbled up in outdoor cauldrons and served on plank-and-sawhorse tables spread with newspapers. There are many versions, some of them gussied up with potatoes, bell peppers, and tomatoes. But the simplest suits me best. This one is downsized for home kitchens.

4 quarts (1 gallon) cold water

4 medium yellow onions, quartered lengthwise

2 tablespoons Old Bay Seasoning or crab boil

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon hot red pepper flakes, or to taste

1 pound kielbasa, dry-cured chorizo, or other spicy link sausage, cut into 1-inch chunks

6 medium ears sweet corn, shucked, stripped of silks, and cut into 2-inch chunks

3 pounds medium-large shrimp in the shell (about 20 per pound)

One 12-ounce can lager beer

• 1.
  Pour the water into a 4-gallon Dutch oven or stockpot. Add the onions, Old Bay seasoning, salt, and pepper flakes and bring to a boil over high heat.
  
• 2.
  Add the sausage and boil uncovered for 5 minutes; add the corn and boil 5 minutes more. Finally, add the shrimp and the beer. Adjust the heat so the liquid bubbles gently, and boil uncovered for about 5 minutes or just until the shrimp turn bright pink. Taste for red pepper and add more, if needed. Frogmore Stew should be moderately “hot.”
  
• 3.
  Using a slotted spoon or mesh skimmer, ladle into large soup plates, making sure that everyone gets plenty of corn, sausage, shrimp, and onion. Spoon a little of the cooking liquid over each portion, if you like (discard the rest or save to use in soup later). Serve with crusty chunks of bread, coleslaw, and ice-cold beer.
  

To the present day I retain a nostalgic hunger for these cockcrow repasts of ham and fried chicken, fried pork chops, fried catfish, fried squirrel (in season), fried eggs, hominy grits with gravy, black-eyed peas, collards with collard liquor and cornbread to mush it in, biscuits, pound cake, pancakes and molasses, honey in the comb, homemade jams and jellies, sweet milk, buttermilk, coffee chicory-flavored and hot as Hades.

—
TRUMAN CAPOTE
,
THE THANKSGIVING VISITOR

You’ve got to continue to grow, or you’re just like last night’s corn bread—stale and dry.

—
LORETTA LYNN

CAJUN SHRIMP OR CRAWFISH GUMBO

MAKES
6
TO
8
SERVINGS

Cajuns, I’m told, serve gumbo at least once a week: gumbo z’herbes, perhaps (a green gumbo made with collards and spinach), chicken gumbo, shrimp or crawfish gumbo. This particular recipe is adapted from one given to me by Miss Tootie Guirard, a lively Cajun lady from St. Martinville, Louisiana, whom I profiled some years ago for
Family Circle
.
I spent about ten days with Miss Tootie and she was emphatic about the proper way to prepare gumbo. “Don’t rush your roux,” she warned at the outset. “It must brown very slowly in a heavy pot.” She works her roux for at least thirty minutes until it is as red, as brown as iron rust. She also thickens her gumbo with okra, not gumbo filé (powdered dried sassafras leaves). “I’d never use both,” she said. And one final caution: “Never cook okra in an iron pot because it will turn black.” Tip:
This gumbo is a great make-ahead and thus is ideal for a dinner party. Cool it, then refrigerate until about twenty minutes before serving. Reheat slowly in an
uncovered
Dutch oven. According to Miss
Tootie, shrimp and crawfish should never cook in a covered pan because they will disintegrate.

Okra Thickener

¼ cup lard, ham or bacon drippings

1 pound tender young okra, stemmed and sliced as thin as possible

One 8-ounce can tomato sauce

Roux

3 tablespoons lard

¹
/
₃
cup unsifted all-purpose flour

Gumbo

2 large yellow onions, finely chopped

1 large green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and finely chopped

3 large celery ribs, trimmed and finely diced

1 large garlic clove, minced

10 cups (2½ quarts) cold water

2 teaspoons salt, or to taste

¼ to ½ teaspoon ground hot red pepper (cayenne), depending on how “hot” you like things

¼ teaspoon black pepper

1½ pounds medium-size raw shrimp (or crawfish) in the shell

4 quarts (1 gallon) boiling water mixed with 1 tablespoon salt

¼ cup thinly sliced green scallion tops

¼ cup coarsely chopped Italian parsley

2½ cups converted rice, cooked by package directions

• 1.
  For the okra thickener: Melt the lard in a large, heavy, nonreactive Dutch oven (I favor enameled cast iron) over moderately high heat. Add the okra and brown lightly for 10 to 12 minutes, stirring often and scraping any slices that stick to the spoon or the sides of the Dutch oven back into the lard. Reduce the heat to low and cook the okra uncovered, stirring often, for 30 minutes. This is hard work because okra is so sticky, but persist.
  
• 2.
  Add the tomato sauce and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 2 hours or until the okra mixture is very dry and comes together in a ball. If it threatens to burn at any point, slide a diffuser underneath the pot. Also reduce the heat to its lowest point.
  
• 3.
  While the okra cooks, prepare the roux: Melt the lard in a second large, heavy, nonreactive kettle over moderately high heat. Blend in the flour, reduce the heat to low, and work and stir the roux for about 30 minutes or until it is a rich rust-brown.
  
• 4.
  For the gumbo: Mix the onions, bell pepper, celery, and garlic into the roux; turn the heat off; and as soon as the sizzling stops, cover and let stand for 15 minutes. Add 4 cups of the cold water to the roux, set over moderate heat, and stir for 3 to 5 minutes or until thickened. Add the remaining cold water, adjust the heat so the liquid bubbles gently, then simmer uncovered for 30 to 40 minutes or
  until reduced by about half. Mix in the okra thickener, salt, cayenne, and black pepper and simmer uncovered over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour.
  
• 5.
  Meanwhile, boil the shrimp in their shells for 1 minute exactly in the boiling salted water. Drain, rinse, shell, and devein. Halve any shrimp that are large.
  
• 6.
  When the gumbo has cooked for 1 hour, add the shrimp and cook uncovered for 10 minutes. Stir in the scallion tops and parsley. Taste for salt and adjust as needed.
  
• 7.
  To serve, mound about a cup of the rice in the middle of six to eight heated jumbo-size soup plates and ladle the gumbo on top.
  

All the land we traveled over this day, and the day before, that is to say from the river Irvin to Sable Creek…thirty thousand acres at least, lying altogether, as fertile as the lands were said to be about Babylon, which yielded, if Herodotus tells us right, an increase of no less than two or three hundred for one.

—
WILLIAM BYRD II
, 1728;
NOTED WHILE SURVEYING THE VIRGINIA–NORTH CAROLINA LINE