A Love Affair with Southern Cooking (39 page)
Read A Love Affair with Southern Cooking Online
Authors: Jean Anderson,Jean Anderson
3 tablespoons fruity olive oil
12 ounces tender okra pods no bigger than your little finger, washed and patted dry on paper toweling
¼ teaspoon salt
1
/
8
teaspoon black pepper
- 1.
Pour the olive oil into a heavy, 12-inch nonreactive skillet and set over high heat for about 2 minutes or until almost smoking. - 2.
Add the okra and cook at high heat, shaking the skillet often, for about 5 minutes or until the okra are evenly and richly browned; they will “sing” and “hiss” as they cook. - 3.
Cover the skillet, reduce the heat to moderate, and cook the okra for 3 minutes exactly. - 4.
Drain the okra on paper toweling, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and serve.
Black-Eyed Peas with Ham Hock…Fried Okra…Country Corn Bread…Sweet Potato Pie…You talk of supping with the gods.
—
JAMES DICKEY
,
JERICHO
TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine
1922 | | A large sugar refinery is built in Baltimore Harbor. |
1923 | | Mose Lischkoff and Frank Mosher turn a sack of potatoes into kettle-fried chips. The place: the basement of a Hill’s grocery in Birmingham, Alabama. The end result: Golden Flake Snack Foods, one of the South’s biggest and best. |
| | With moonshining big business in the mountains of Virginia, Franklin County near Roanoke is nicknamed “the wettest place in the U.S.” |
| | Chef Fred Schmidt creates the Hot Brown, an open-face turkey sandwich, at the Brown Hotel in Louisville, Kentucky. |
| | Ernest Woodruff’s son Robert is named president of Coca-Cola; he reigns for nearly 60 years and builds the company into a global conglomerate. |
1924 | | Bob Melton builds a barbecue restaurant on a shady bank of the Tar River in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Today, Melton’s is synonymous with the best “East Carolina ’cue,” meaning a peppery, vinegary sauce. Some 30 years later, |
OKRA-TOMATO TART
MAKES
6
SERVINGS
What others call casseroles, Southerners often call tarts—this crumb-covered casserole, to name one. It teams three perennial favorites—okra, tomatoes, and bacon, in this case drippings—but adds a whiff of curry. Following the precedent set generations earlier by Country Captain? Perhaps. Beaufort, South Carolina, whence this recipe comes, is less than an hour north of Savannah, where Country Captain is said to have been introduced by a sea captain. The recipe here is adapted from one that appeared in a favorite community cookbook of mine,
Full Moon, High Tide: Tastes and Traditions of the Lowcountry,
published by the Beaufort Academy in 2001. I find it perfect with fried chicken, roast chicken or pork, and baked ham. It’s good, too, with boiled or broiled shrimp. Note:
Frugal southern cooks save bacon drippings to use in recipes.
2 tablespoons bacon drippings or butter
6 large scallions, trimmed and thinly sliced (include some green tops)
1 pound baby okra, trimmed and sliced about ¼ inch thick
Two 14.5-ounce cans diced or crushed tomatoes, with their liquid
1 tablespoon sugar
Salt to taste
½ teaspoon crumbled dried leaf marjoram
½ teaspoon crumbled dried leaf basil
¼ teaspoon curry powder
¼ teaspoon hot red pepper sauce
Topping
1½ cups coarse soda cracker crumbs (you’ll need about 30 two-inch-square crackers)
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons butter, melted
- 1.
Preheat the oven to 375° F. Lightly spritz a shallow 2½-quart casserole with nonstick cooking spray and set aside. - 2.
Heat the bacon drippings in a large, heavy skillet over moderately high heat 1 minute, add the scallions, and cook and stir 1 to 2 minutes or until wilted. - 3.
Add the okra and cook and stir 5 to 7 minutes or just until crisp-tender. Mix in the tomatoes and their liquid, the sugar, and all seasonings, then cook and stir for about a minute or just until the mixture boils. - 4.
Pour into the baking dish, spreading to the edge. Quickly combine all the topping ingredients and scatter evenly over the tomato mixture. - 5.
Bake on the middle oven shelf for 18 to 20 minutes or until bubbly and lightly browned. - 6.
Serve at once as a side dish.
Only a Southerner knows that red-eye gravy is breakfast food and fried green tomatoes aren’t.
—
ANONYMOUS
OKRA AND GREEN TOMATO FRITTERS
MAKES
6
SERVINGS
This is the recipe that made an okra convert of me. My niece Kim served it one Sunday and that was it. For extra flavor, substitute 1 to 2 tablespoons bacon drippings for the oil. Kim usually does.
¼ cup sifted all-purpose flour
¼ cup stone-ground cornmeal (preferably white)
1½ teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
4 baby okra (about 2 ounces), stemmed and thinly sliced (
1
/
3
to ½ cup)
1 small green tomato (about 4 ounces), cored and coarsely chopped
4 large scallions, trimmed and coarsely chopped (include some green tops)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
3 to 4 tablespoons corn oil or 2 tablespoons corn oil and 1 to 2 tablespoons bacon drippings
- 1.
Combine the flour, cornmeal, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Place the okra, green tomato, scallions, and eggs in a 2-quart measure and mix well. Pour the okra mixture into the flour mixture and stir only enough to combine—no matter if a few floury specks show. - 2.
Heat 3 tablespoons of the oil in a large, heavy skillet over high heat until ripples appear on the skillet bottom. - 3.
Drop the fritter batter from a tablespoon into the hot oil and brown 2 to 3 minutes on a side, adding the remaining oil, if necessary. - 4.
Drain the fritters quickly on paper toweling and serve as an accompaniment to baked ham, roast pork, or chicken. Good, too, with chicken, shrimp, or ham salad.
1 cup half-and-half
TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine
1925 | | Tom Huston of Columbus, Georgia, invents a mechanical peanut sheller, then a roasting process, all because farmers are paying for his mechanical help in peanuts, not dollars. |
| | Idaho native W. M. Davis buys a small Miami grocery. From that humble beginning, his heirs launch the Winn-Dixie chain of southern supermarkets through a series of mergers and acquisitions. Today, with more than 1,000 stores, Winn-Dixie is one of America’s largest food retailers. |
1926 | | Columbus, Georgia, inventor Tom Huston bags his shelled and roasted peanuts in cellophane tubes, then sells them as “Tom’s Toasted Peanuts.” And that is the start of Tom’s Foods, today a producer of more than 300 different snacks and munchies. |
| | The Mount Olive Pickle Company is founded in Mount Olive, North Carolina, and its “dills,” “bread-and-butters,” and relishes are soon number one in the South. (See Mount Olive Pickles, Chapter 7.) |
| | A hurricane wipes out Florida’s Key lime industry and they’re reduced to dooryard fruit. |
GRATIN OF VIDALIA ONIONS
MAKES
6
TO
8
SERVINGS
The sweet Vidalia onions of Georgia are immensely versatile. Here, for example, I’ve taken four pounds of them and prepared them as the French might prepare leeks. The Vidalias, I think, are even better. This side dish partners perfectly with roast pork or chicken, not to mention the Thanksgiving turkey. Forget the traditional creamed onions and serve this gratin instead.
4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter
4 large Vidalia onions, halved lengthwise, then each half sliced ¼ inch thick (about 4 pounds)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
¼ teaspoon black pepper, or to taste
¼ teaspoon crumbled leaf thyme
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
½ cup chicken broth
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
Topping
1½ cups moderately coarse soft bread crumbs
3 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons butter, melted
- 1.
Preheat the oven to 375° F. Lightly butter a 2-quart gratin dish or shallow casserole and set aside. - 2.
Melt 2 tablespoons of the butter in a large, heavy skillet over moderately high heat, add the onions, and sauté for 10 to 12 minutes, stirring often, until soft. Transfer to the gratin dish. - 3.
Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons butter in the same skillet over moderate heat; blend in the flour, salt, pepper, thyme, and nutmeg and cook, whisking constantly, for 1 minute. - 4.
Combine the half-and-half and chicken broth, then slowly add to the skillet, whisking all the while. Continue whisking for 3 to 5 minutes or until thickened and smooth. Blend in the Parmesan, taste for salt and pepper, and adjust as needed. Pour the sauce over the onions, spreading to the edge. - 5.
Quickly make the topping by tossing all ingredients together. Scatter evenly on top of the sauce and onions. - 6.
Bake uncovered on the middle oven shelf for 20 to 25 minutes or until bubbling and tipped with brown. - 7.
Serve at once.
VIDALIA ONIONS
It was a freaky year for onions in Toombs County, Georgia, back in 1931. Farmer Mose Coleman’s crop had no bite; in fact his big ivory-skinned onions were so sweet they were a hard sell at $3.50 per fifty-pound bag.
Over time, Georgians developed a taste for Toombs County sweet onions and when a farmer’s market opened in the town of Vidalia in the ’40s, appetites increased. Pretty soon these sugary jumbos—now named after the town—could be bought at the Piggly Wiggly.
I first tasted a Vidalia in the mid ’70s in New York when a colleague who’d just received a box of them served them at a dinner party. We marveled at their crispness, their juiciness, but above all their sweetness. Our hostess sent each of us home with a few to try, and soon we were introducing these unique South Georgia onions to others. And writing about them, too.
By 1977, “America’s Favorite Sweet Onion” was so popular the Vidalia town fathers decided to stage a festival to celebrate the spring harvest. It erupts every April with parades and fun for all. Thirteen years later, Georgia named the Vidalia the official state vegetable.
Today, thousands of South Georgia acres are devoted to growing Vidalias; indeed they account for 13 percent of the state’s vegetable cash receipts. Most supermarkets sell them in season (April to December) but they can also be ordered farm-fresh (see Sources, backmatter).
TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine
1926 | | Virginia ferry boat captain S. Wallace Edwards begins serving sandwiches on his Jamestown-Scotland run using his family’s salt-cured, hickory-smoked country ham. The demand for that ham is soon so great that Edwards devotes full time to it. Today, Edwards hams are a Virginia classic. |
1927 | | C. F. Sauer of Richmond, Virginia, becomes America’s largest producer of spices and extracts. |
| | Chef Henry Haussner, newly arrived from Germany, opens a restaurant in Baltimore. For more than 70 years it is where locals and visitors go for fine German food. |
1928 | | Henrietta Dull, a home economist and “The First Lady of Georgia Cooking,” writes |
| | Nashville’s Cheek-Neal Coffee Company is bought by the Postum Company and the name is changed to Maxwell House Products Company. A year later the company has a new name: the General Foods Corporation. |
SCALLOPED OYSTER PLANT
MAKES
4
SERVINGS
Southerners have always doted upon salsify—or “oyster plant,” as they prefer to call this mellow ivory-fleshed root—because its flavor reminds them of oysters. And no more so than when scalloped (creamed) and baked under a coverlet of buttered bread crumbs (to which I’ve added finely ground pecans). Serve with roast beef, veal, lamb, pork, turkey, or chicken. Note:
Salsify discolors the instant it’s cut, so waste no time getting it into the acidulated water. It also grays if cooked in aluminum, so use a nonreactive pan. Don rubber gloves before working with salsify, then pitch them out when the job’s done; if you don’t, your hands will be covered with a sticky substance that soap and water won’t remove.