A Love Affair with Southern Cooking (17 page)
Read A Love Affair with Southern Cooking Online
Authors: Jean Anderson,Jean Anderson
BARBECUE
Arguably the best barbecue in the state, perhaps the South, maybe the world.
—
Morgan Murphy,
Southern Living,
on Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q, Decatur, Alabama
Of course, every southern state believes its barbecue to be “the best in the world” and as a Tar Heel, I devoutly make that claim for North Carolina.
Fellow Tar Heel, fellow cookbook author, and good friend James Villas agrees: “Generally, I’m so prejudiced about NC ’cue that I don’t even seriously consider the stuff in other states—except the resolutely superior dry-rubbed ribs in Memphis.”
Even in North Carolina there are two factions: easterners insist that their peppery, smoky, vinegary pit-cooked whole hogs beat the Lexington or western-style shoulders swabbed with a thicker sauce containing—dare I say it?—a smidge of tomato. Whether eastern-style or western, “pulled pork” is what most Tar Heels prefer—smoky bits of meat, plucked from the bones and served with sweet slaw and hush puppies straight from the deep-fat fryer. I do admit, however, to hankering for an occasional plate of ribs.
As a rule, the farther south you travel, the thicker, the redder the barbecue sauce, and some South Carolina pit masters add a bit of mustard. Once again Villas agrees: “You’re probably right about sauces getting thicker and more tomatoey the farther south you go…Georgia really piles on the tomatoes.”
I seek out barbecue wherever I travel and am pleased to say that some of it has been superb. Particularly memorable was a plate of chopped barbecue I ate some years ago in the western Kentucky town of Cadiz. It had the perfectly balanced sweet-sour, smoky pit-cooked taste I associate with North Carolina’s best. Blindfolded, I don’t think I could have distinguished it from the revered pulled pork of Lexington, North Carolina.
Every Tar Heel has a favorite barbecue joint and will pit its ‘cue against all others: Lexington Number One in Lexington, Stamey’s in Greensboro, Short Sugar’s in Reidsville, Melton’s in Rocky Mount, Parker’s in Wilson, Flip’s in Wilmington, Wilber’s or Scott’s in Goldsboro, Skylight in Ayden. To which I’d add the A & M in Mebane and Scott Howell’s Q Shack—the new go-to place in Durham.
Note:
’Cue connoisseurs eagerly await the reopening of Ed Mitchell’s in Wilson, shuttered by legal problems several years ago. To them, its Eastern-style, pit-barbecued whole hogs are incomparable.
Unique among barbecue joints, Q Shack serves six styles of barbecue—North Carolina pulled pork; Texas chile-rubbed beef brisket; mesquite-smoked chicken, turkey, or beef sausage; and St. Louis–cut pork ribs—all of them prepared fresh every day and all of them “tender as a mother’s love.”
Talk about eating high on the hog.
TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine
1818 | | Peanuts are grown commercially for the first time in North Carolina in the sandy flats around Wilmington. |
| | Kentucky stages its first agricultural fair at Lexington. |
1820 | | Napoleon’s nephew, Prince Charles Louis Napoleon Achille Murat, flees Bourbon France and buys a townhouse in New Orleans and a sugar plantation near Baton Rouge. An enthusiastic cook, he concocts an alligator tail soup and a turkey buzzard stew. |
1820s | | Baltimore surpasses Philadelphia as the country’s busiest flour-milling center. |
| | Agricultural reformer Edmund Ruffin begins publishing results of experiments on his Virginia farm. To salvage depleted soil, he recommends crop rotation, good drainage, proper plowing, and the use of fertilizer. Many heed his call and within 30 years, Ruffin is both commissioner and president of the Virginia State Agricultural Society. |
1821 | | The U.S. buys Spanish Florida, which includes parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, for $5 million. |
SMOTHERED PORK CHOPS
MAKES
4
SERVINGS
Because today’s leaner pork tends to toughen and dry as it cooks, many beloved southern dishes have suffered. One solution is to use meat from hogs that haven’t been put on low-cal diets. This updated recipe is an excellent way to ensure pork’s succulence. The original says to cook the chops for an hour after they’re browned—a sure bet for dry, rubbery pork. I’ve slashed the cooking time by two thirds, and yes, the pork chops
are
done. Moreover, they’re supremely juicy and tender.
½ cup unsifted all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons salt, or to taste
½ teaspoon black pepper, or to taste
½ teaspoon dried leaf thyme, crumbled
½ teaspoon rubbed sage
Four 1-inch-thick center-cut, bone-in pork chops (2 to 2¼ pounds)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large yellow onion, halved lengthwise, then each half cut crosswise into thin slices
1½ cups chicken broth or water (I prefer broth)
1½ cups converted rice, cooked by package directions
- 1.
Combine the flour, salt, pepper, thyme, and sage in a pie plate, then dredge each chop well on both sides. Reserve the dredging flour. - 2.
Heat the oil in a large, heavy skillet over high heat for 2 minutes or until ripples appear on the skillet bottom. Add the chops and brown for 4 to 5 minutes, turn, and brown the flip sides for about 3 minutes. Lift to a plate and reserve. - 3.
Reduce the burner heat to moderate, add the onion to the skillet, and cook, stirring now and then, for 3 to 5 minutes or until limp and golden. Blend in 3 tablespoons of the dredging flour, add the broth, and cook, stirring constantly, for 3 to 5 minutes or until the mixture bubbles and thickens. - 4.
Return the pork chops to the skillet, spooning the onion gravy on top. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes, turning the chops at half-time, or until an instant-read thermometer stuck into the meatiest part of a chop registers 150° F. Taste the gravy for salt and pepper and adjust as needed. - 5.
Divide the rice among four heated dinner plates and top each portion with a pork chop and plenty of onion gravy.
I heard it said that the “architecture” of Atlanta is recocola.
—
JOHN GUNTHER
,
U.S.A
.
OSSABAW PORK
It’s the pork of the past and it may be the pork of the future.
Weary of “the other white meat” from mass-produced hogs that have had the fat and flavor bred out of them, chefs are excited about the Ossabaw pork now being produced on a few boutique farms in the Carolinas, Georgia, and Virginia. Unlike supermarket pork, its succulence and flavor closely resemble that of Spain’s prize Ibérico pork.
There’s good reason for this. Ossabaws, small feral hogs free-ranging on Ossabaw Island (second largest of Georgia’s Golden Isles), descend from the Ibéricos brought to the Southeast nearly five hundred years ago. Columbus introduced them to Hispaniola on his second voyage, in 1493, and De Soto loosed herds of them in Florida in 1539, reasoning that they would proliferate and provide meat for colonists to come.
And so they did, roaming the South and eventually intermingling with the English breeds introduced later. George Washington, a man who took pride in his hams, raised Ossabaws at Mount Vernon, allowing them to forage for acorns as did the Ibéricos of Spain (after all these years, they can again be seen in the Mount Vernon barnyard; a few have even been spotted in Williamsburg).
But the Ossabaw Island Ibéricos were isolated, thus these bristly, leggy, prick-eared, pointy-snouted, black or spotted hogs are a near DNA match. What’s unique about them is that their fat is mostly monounsaturated and nearly liquid at room temperature—an anomaly food chemists are studying. Is Ossabaw fat the new olive oil? Can it, like olive oil, actually raise the levels of “good” cholesterol and lower the risk of heart disease? So far no one knows.
While praising the texture and taste of Ossabaw pork, chefs complain about the consistency of its fat. So farmers like Eliza MacLean of Cane Creek Farm in North Carolina’s Piedmont are crossing Ossabaws with other breeds—with Farmer’s Hybrid, for example, a cross favored by Niman Ranch, purveyor of quality meats. MacLean’s aim: To firm the fat without losing that singular Ossabaw succulence and flavor.
With demands for Ossabaw pork growing, traditional hog farmers are paying attention. Unfortunately, breeding stock is so limited the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy considers the numbers “critical.” Moreover, writes
New York Times
reporter Peter Kaminsky, “Slow Food USA has placed the Ossabaw on its metaphorical ark of endangered breeds that have been singled out for preservation.”
Now quarantined, the feral Ossabaws cannot be taken off their Georgia island. Yet hunters are allowed to kill them because they eat the eggs of loggerhead turtles, an even more endangered species.
Mainly available to chefs at present, Ossabaw pork is beginning to show up at farmer’s markets down south: bacons, chops, roasts, sausages. Everything but the squeal.
PORK CHOPS WITH PECAN AND ONION STUFFING
MAKES
6
SERVINGS
Southerners have always had a penchant for stuffing things: tomatoes large and small, bell peppers, eggplant, yellow squash, mirlitons, fish, shellfish. Pork chops too, of course. This recipe, my own, teams pork and pecans, a felicitous combination, but I often substitute peanuts (see the Variation that follows). As with the previous pork chop recipe, indeed with any pork chop recipe, choosing pork that hasn’t had the succulence bred out of it is key. Otherwise, the chops will toughen and dry. Note:
If things are to move smoothly, prepare the stuffing first; it can wait but the pork chops can’t.
Tip:
Toast the pecans before you chop them: Spread in a pie pan and set on the middle shelf of a 350° F. oven for 10 to 12 minutes or until fragrant. But watch carefully lest they burn.
Stuffing
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium yellow onion, moderately coarsely chopped
1 medium celery rib, trimmed and finely diced
2 medium garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 cup finely chopped, lightly toasted pecans (see Tip above)
2 cups coarsely crumbled stale, dry, firm-textured white bread (4 slices)
1
/
3
cup coarsely chopped parsley
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
¾ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper 3 to 4 tablespoons hot chicken broth (about)
Pork Chops
Six 1¾-inch-thick, bone-in pork loin chops, 1 rib per chop (about 5 pounds)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ cup hot chicken broth
- 1.
Preheat the oven to 350° F. - 2.
For the stuffing: Heat the oil in a large, heavy skillet over moderately high heat for about 2 minutes or until ripples appear on the skillet bottom. Add the onion, celery, and garlic; reduce the heat to moderate; and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes or until the vegetables are limp. Mix in all remaining ingredients, adding only enough chicken broth to hold the stuffing together; it shouldn’t be wet. Scoop the stuffing into a small bowl and reserve. Scrape the skillet well, then wipe with paper toweling so that you can use it to brown the chops. No point in dirtying two skillets. - 3.
For the pork chops: Using a small sharp knife and beginning on the outer curved edge (the one with the thin layer of fat), cut a pocket into each pork chop that’s about 4 inches
wide and 2½ to 3 inches deep. If you can sweet-talk your butcher into doing the job for you, so much the better. Pack the reserved stuffing into the pockets in the pork chops, dividing the total amount evenly. - 4.
Heat the oil in the skillet over moderately high heat for 1 minute, then brown the chops in two batches, allowing 3 to 4 minutes per side per chop. Remove from the heat, then lay the pork chops on their sides in an ungreased 13 × 9 × 2-inch baking pan. Sprinkle with the salt and pepper and pour the hot chicken broth into the pan around the chops. - 5.
Cover the pan snugly with foil, slide onto the middle oven shelf, and bake for about 40 minutes or until an instant-read meat thermometer, inserted halfway through a top chop, touching neither filling nor bone, registers 145° F. Remove the chops from the oven, lift off the foil, and let stand for about 10 minutes. - 6.
To serve, arrange the chops on a heated large platter and spoon some of the pan drippings over all.
Variation
Pork Chops with Peanut and Onion Stuffing:
Prepare the recipe as directed but in the stuffing, substitute 1 cup finely chopped dry-roasted peanuts for the pecans and reduce the amount of salt to ¼ teaspoon. Taste the finished stuffing and add a little additional salt, if needed.
Note:
The peanut stuffing has more crunch than the one made with pecans.
TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine
1823 | | In Kentucky, James Crow distills bourbon whiskey from a sour mash of corn. He calls it Old Crow. |
| | Grapes are found growing wild along North Carolina’s Catawba River, a labrusca variety found suitable for making wine. |
1824 | | Mary Randolph’s cookbook, |
1825 | | Pierre Simeon Patout plants grapes on his Louisiana plantation, then switches to sugarcane. Today Enterprise Plantation is America’s oldest working sugarcane plantation. |
| | Using seeds that were said to have come from Cuba, French nobleman Odet Philippe plants a small grove of grapefruits in Pinelas County, Florida. They are thought to be America’s first grapefruits. Some historians believe that Philippe arrived here ten or more years later and that his grapefruit seeds may have come from the Bahamas or perhaps Jamaica. |