A Love Affair with Southern Cooking (45 page)

SHRIMP ASPIC

MAKES
6
SERVINGS

One of my best New York friends was fellow Southerner Anne Mead, who grew up in Dillon, South Carolina. Like me, she lived on Gramercy Park; like me, she loved to cook; and like me, she wrote a cookbook. Called
Please Kiss the Cook,
Anne’s is a collection of family favorites, the recipes her doctor husband and two sons like best. Most recipes are southern (no surprise here), among them this refreshing aspic, which her mother liked to serve at bridge luncheons on sultry Dillon days. Note:
I heat the tomato juice by microwave in a large measuring cup in which I can also make the aspic. Saves on dishwashing.
Tip:
For better flavor, use fresh shrimp, not frozen or canned.

2 envelopes unflavored gelatin

½ cup cold water

2½ cups tomato juice

1 tablespoon finely grated yellow onion (a Microplane is the tool to use here)

1 teaspoon prepared horseradish

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

½ teaspoon salt

¹
/
₈
teaspoon ground hot red pepper (cayenne)

1½ cups finely diced cooked, shelled, and deveined shrimp (about 10 ounces cooked, shelled, and deveined shrimp or 25 to 30 medium-small; see Tip above)

½ cup finely diced green bell pepper

½ cup finely diced celery

6 iceberg lettuce cups

• 1.
  Spritz a decorative, nonreactive 6-cup ring mold with nonstick cooking spray; set aside.
  
• 2.
  Soften the gelatin in the cold water in a small ramekin. Meanwhile, heat 1½ cups of the tomato juice in a 2-quart ovenproof glass measuring cup by microwaving for 5 minutes at 50 percent power or until steaming.
  
• 3.
  Scoop the softened gelatin into the hot tomato juice and whisk until dissolved. Mix in the remaining 1 cup tomato juice, the grated onion, horseradish, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and cayenne. Set uncovered in the refrigerator for 1 to 1½ hours or until the consistency of unbeaten egg white.
  
• 4.
  Fold in the shrimp, bell pepper, and celery and ladle into the mold. Set uncovered in the refrigerator and chill for several hours or overnight until firm.
  
• 5.
  When ready to serve, divide the lettuce cups among six salad plates. Unmold the aspic by dipping quickly into hot water, then inverting on a large plate.
  Tip:
  If the platter is wet, you’ll find the unmolded salad easier to center.
  
• 6.
  Cut the aspic into six wedges and bed on the lettuce. Pass a small bowl of mayonnaise.
  

Variations

Shrimp Aspic with Fresh Tarragon:
Prepare Shrimp Aspic as directed, but fold in 1 tablespoon finely minced fresh tarragon (or dill) along with the shrimp, bell pepper, and celery.

Crab Aspic with Fresh Herbs:
Prepare Shrimp Aspic with Fresh Tarragon as directed, but substi
tute ½ pound lump crabmeat for the shrimp, carefully removing bits of cartilage and shell.

Basic Tomato Aspic:
Prepare Step 1 of Shrimp Aspic as directed. In Step 2, increase the amount of tomato juice to 2¼ cups and the grated onion to 2 tablespoons; also add 1 tablespoon each ketchup and fresh lime (or lemon) juice, and ¼ teaspoon celery salt. Omit Step 3. Pour the aspic into a 4-cup mold that has been lightly coated with nonstick cooking spray and proceed as the recipe directs. Makes 4 servings.

MRS. B’S APRICOT CHIFFON SALAD

MAKES
6
TO
8
SERVINGS

Mrs. B was Mrs. Pegram Bryant, my first landlady. After college, I worked for a spell in Iredell County, North Carolina, as an assistant home demonstration agent, headquartering in the county seat of Statesville. Like many small southern towns, it was a social place; family mattered. So I was lucky to land in the garage apartment of the socially prominent Bryants. Mr. B owned a local newspaper and Mrs. B descended from a distinguished Statesville family. Although Mrs. B rarely cooked, she spent hours in the kitchen supervising her maid, Dorothy. I was often asked to join the Bryants for midday Sunday dinner (the only time I drank sweet tea from silver goblets) and that’s where I first tasted this apricot salad. I complimented Mrs. B on it and asked for the recipe, and she obliged. I use a large decorative ring mold instead of the little individual molds Mrs. B fancied; I turn it out on
a large round platter and wreathe it with finely cut lettuce. Mrs. B never served mayonnaise with her apricot salad and neither do I. Note:
I’ve added a teaspoon of unflavored gelatin to Mrs. B’s original recipe for two reasons: First, there’s an enzyme in pineapple (bromelin) that weakens gelatin and second, can sizes have changed since Mrs. B gave me her recipe; instead of the 15-ounce can of apricots she called for, I’ve substituted two 8
½-
ounce cans—a larger amount. That extra teaspoon of gelatin strengthens the gel.

Two 8½-ounce cans syrup-packed apricot halves, liquid drained and reserved

One 8-ounce can syrup-packed crushed pineapple, liquid drained and reserved

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

One 3-ounce package orange-flavored gelatin

1 teaspoon plain gelatin

¾ cup boiling water

¾ cup heavy cream, softly whipped

2 cups thinly sliced iceberg or romaine lettuce

• 1.
  Lightly coat a decorative, nonreactive 6-cup ring mold with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
  
• 2.
  Mix the reserved apricot and pineapple liquids with the lemon juice and reserve. Pulse the apricots briskly in a food processor until finely chopped and reserve also.
  
• 3.
  Dissolve the two gelatins in the boiling water in a medium-size metal bowl, stirring often to make sure that there are no undissolved lumps in the bottom. Mix in the reserved fruit liquids. Set uncovered in the refrigerator for 45 to 50 minutes, stirring now and then, or until the consistency of unbeaten egg white.
  
• 4.
  Using a hand electric mixer or a whisk, beat the partially congealed gelatin until frothy, then fold in the reserved apricots, crushed pineapple, and whipped cream.
  
• 5.
  Spoon all into the ring mold, smoothing the top. Set uncovered in the refrigerator for about 2 hours, then cover loosely and let stand overnight or until firm.
  
• 6.
  When ready to serve, quickly dip the ring mold into hot water, loosen the salad around the edge and central tube with a small knife or thin-blade spatula, and invert on a large round platter. Wreathe the lettuce around the edge.
  
• 7.
  Cut into wedges and serve.
  

The fields surrounding the towns and groves were plentifully stored with Corn, Citruels, Pumpkins, Squashes, Beans, Peas, Potatoes, Peaches, Figs, Oranges, etc.

—
WILLIAM BARTRAM
,
TRAVELS OF WILLIAM BARTRAM
,
ON SEMINOLE CROPS IN FLORIDA
, 1773

I
n the Colonial South, corn breads gradually gained favor as indeed they did elsewhere about early America. Usually they were thick cornmeal-and-water pastes flattened into rounds (pones) much like those the local tribes made.

According to early eighteenth-century Virginia historian Robert Beverley,
pone
descends from the Indian word
oppone,
and in some fine homes it was chosen “over wheat bread.” Often pones were baked on the blades of hoes propped up in front of the fire (hoe cakes) or simply buried in embers (ash cakes).

Yet to settlers accustomed to wheat breads, “any form of bread made with corn instead of wheat was a sad paste of despair,” writes Betty Fussell in
The Story of Corn
(1992). “Sad” because corn breads, nearly impossible for the inexperienced English colonists to leaven with yeast, remained flat and heavy.

Over time, however, good southern cooks—many of them plantation cooks—learned to add a little wheat flour to their cornmeal batters and to lighten cornmeal pastes with beaten eggs, a technique used to this day for batter bread (spoon bread). The combination of sour milk or buttermilk and soda was another effective leavener, for biscuits as well as for corn breads.

Both North and South can boast of their own regional corn breads, but there are differences: As a rule, Northerners prefer yellow cornmeal, Southerners white. Northerners also tend to sweeten their corn breads while Southerners prefer a salty tang. None of the three corn breads in Mary Randolph’s
Virginia House-wife
(1824) contains a grain of sugar.

And in the nearly three dozen corn bread recipes in Sarah Rutledge’s
Carolina Housewife
(1847), I find only three that call for any sweetener: Chicora Corn Bread (1 tablespoon of brown sugar to a quart of milk and “as much cornmeal as will make a thick batter”); Indian Cakes (2 tablespoons molasses to a pint of milk and “meal enough to make a thick batter”), and Corn Muffins (1 tablespoon sugar to “three pints of cornmeal…and a pint of blood-warm water”).

What also distinguishes
The Carolina Housewife
are its thirty recipes for rice bread, among them a johnny cake made with rice—altogether appropriate for the Lowcountry, where rice plantations flourished until the Civil War. According to culinary historian Karen Hess, in “large stretches of the South, Indian pone was the more usual name for cornmeal cakes while johnny cake was customarily made of rice.”

Right up until World War Two, many southern cooks baked fresh bread for breakfast, dinner, and supper—usually biscuits or corn bread. But for special occasions there might be batter bread, sweet potato rolls, or Sally Lunn. Whatever the bread, it was given place of pride at the table.

My mother, transplanted to the South several years before I was born, made superb yeast breads but her particular favorite was yeast-free Boston brown bread, which she steamed in recycled Rumford baking powder tins. The rattle of those cans in Mother’s big enamel kettle is a sound I’ll never forget.

I didn’t share Mother’s passion for Boston brown bread. What I craved were the fresh-baked biscuits and corn breads nearly everyone else in our Raleigh neighborhood ate several times of day. Of course nearly everyone else was southern born and bred.

Our round-the-corner neighbor, Mrs. Franklin, taught me how to make skillet corn bread and corn pone when I was in grammar school, explaining that for really good corn bread, I’d have to get some stone-ground meal from Lassiter’s Mill clear across town. Mother indulged me although she never really cared for corn bread herself.

I didn’t taste hush puppies until I was in high school, and I couldn’t wait to try them at home. Ignoring Mrs. Franklin’s advice, I used granular supermarket cornmeal, and the hush puppies shattered the second they hit the deep fat. I didn’t perfect the recipe until years later when I was writing
The Doubleday Cookbook
.

Corn breads continued to fascinate me during my growing-up years and became a near obsession while I was at Cornell; they were practically unheard of in Upstate New York. In a surge of culinary evangelism, I made corn breads the subject of my experimental cookery thesis and got an A. I still have that thesis, snug in its brown binder, and I refer to it now and then. Even today, the information remains rock-solid.

Fortunately, stone-ground cornmeal, both white and yellow, is more widely available than it was during my childhood (see Sources, backmatter). My own competence has improved, too; I now make batter bread without trepidation. Ditto crackling bread,
hush puppies, and half a dozen other southern classics.

I’ve also developed a light touch with biscuits (thanks to Cornell food chemistry courses) and I bake them as often as I dare using lard, the southern shortening of choice. But they’re off-limits whenever I’m trying to shed the pounds that recipe-testing inevitably packs on.

In the pages that follow, you’ll find an authentic assortment of some of the South’s best breads—everything from Wild Persimmon Bread to Sweet Potato Biscuits to yeasty, high-rising Sally Lunn to Hush Puppies and Cracklin’ Bread.

Most are easy, many are quick—just what you need to complete a proper southern meal.

BLACK WALNUT BREAD

MAKES A
9 × 5 × 3-
INCH LOAF

Not so long ago whole families would head for the woods to gather black walnut windfalls; my father, brother, and I often did on crisp autumn days. Finding black walnuts was fun; shelling them and extricating the sweet nut meats wasn’t, but we persisted. As I’ve said many times, my mother wasn’t a southern cook but she was a collector of southern recipes, among them this black walnut bread. It was one of the few southern recipes that she actually made. Sometimes she’d substitute wild hickory nuts for black walnuts; there was a tall hickory tree just outside our front door. If Mother had neither black walnuts nor hickory nuts on hand, she’d use pecans from the two pecan trees in our backyard. Note:
It’s no longer necessary to gather your own black walnuts; you can order them online (see Sources, backmatter).

1½ cups sifted all-purpose flour

¼ cup sugar

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 cups bran flakes

¾ cup coarsely chopped black walnuts, wild hickory nuts, or pecans

½ cup seedless raisins or dried currants

1 cup milk

1 large egg

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

½ cup molasses (not too dark)

1 teaspoon baking soda

• 1.
  Preheat the oven to 325° F. Coat a 9 × 5 × 3-inch loaf pan with nonstick oil-and-flour baking spray and set aside.
  
• 2.
  Sift the flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg together into a large mixing bowl. Add the bran flakes, black walnuts, and raisins; toss 4 to 5 times to dredge the nuts and raisins, then make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients.
  
• 3.
  Whisk the milk, egg, and vegetable oil in a small bowl until creamy. In a separate small bowl or 2-cup measuring cup, combine the
  molasses and baking soda; the mixture will fizz—proof that the soda is good and fresh. Pour the molasses mixture into the well in the dry ingredients, then add the milk mixture and stir only enough to combine. It’s good if a few floury specks show; they prove that you haven’t overbeaten the batter.
  
• 4.
  Scoop the batter into the pan, spreading to the corners, and bake on the middle oven shelf for about 1 hour or until nicely browned, springy to the touch, and a cake tester inserted in the middle of the loaf comes out clean.
  
• 5.
  Cool the loaf in the upright pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, loosen around the edge with a thin-blade spatula, then turn out on the rack and cool to room temperature before slicing.
  Note:
  This bread freezes well. Wrap snugly in plastic food wrap, overwrap in aluminum foil, date, label, and store in a 0° F. freezer. Serve within 3 to 4 months.
  

WILD PERSIMMON BREAD

MAKES A
9 × 5 × 3-
INCH LOAF

This recipe is adapted from one created by Laura Frost, once the chef at Sleddon’s in Southern Pines, North Carolina. That restaurant is gone now—but not memories of the delicious food served there. For tips on gathering and puréeing wild persimmons, see About Wild Persimmons, which precedes.

2 cups unsifted all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground mace

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup coarsely chopped pecans, walnuts, or black walnuts

1 cup wild persimmon pulp

½ cup milk

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter, melted

• 1.
  Preheat the oven to 350° F. Lightly coat a 9 × 5 × 3-inch loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
  
• 2.
  Sift the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, and salt together into a large mixing bowl. Add the pecans, toss well, then make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients.
  
• 3.
  Combine the persimmon pulp, milk, eggs, and melted butter in a small bowl; pour into the well in the dry ingredients and stir only enough to combine.
  
• 4.
  Scoop the batter into the pan, spreading to the corners, and bake on the middle oven shelf for about 45 minutes or until nicely browned, springy to the touch, and a cake tester inserted in the middle of the loaf comes out clean.
  
• 5.
  Cool the loaf in the upright pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, loosen around the edge with a thin-blade spatula, then turn out on the rack and cool to room temperature before slicing.
  Note:
  This bread freezes well. Wrap snugly in plastic food wrap, overwrap in aluminum foil, date, label, and store in a 0° F. freezer. Serve within 3 to 4 months.
  

MANGO-PECAN BREAD

MAKES
a 9 × 5 × 3-
INCH LOAF

I picked this recipe up years ago on one of my many trips to the Sunshine State and am ashamed to say that I don’t remember the source. As a food and travel writer, I am forever collecting leaflets and brochures, many of which contain uncredited local recipes. In any event, this is my tested version of this unusual Florida quick bread. Tip:
Because mangoes—even dead-ripe mangoes—are so fibrous, the best way to mash them is to pulse in a food processor. Aim for a texture that approximates cottage cheese.

2¼ cups sifted all-purpose flour

¾ cup raw sugar or granulated sugar

1½ teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

¼ teaspoon salt

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans or walnuts

½ cup seedless raisins

1 cup coarsely mashed fresh mango (you’ll need one 14-to 16-ounce mango; see Tip, which precedes)

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

½ cup vegetable oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1.
  Preheat the oven to 350° F. Coat a 9 × 5 × 3-inch baking pan with nonstick oil-and-flour baking spray and set aside.
  
• 2.
  Whisk the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt together in a large bowl. Add the pecans and raisins, toss well, then make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients.
  
• 3.
  Combine the mashed mango, eggs, oil, and vanilla in a 2-quart measure; pour into the well in the dry ingredients and mix only enough to combine. The batter should be lumpy.
  
• 4.
  Scoop the batter into the prepared pan, spreading to the corners, and bake in the lower third of the oven for 50 to 55 minutes or until the bread begins to pull from the sides of the pan and a cake tester inserted in the middle of the loaf comes out clean.
  
• 5.
  Cool the bread in the upright pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then loosen around the edge with a small thin-blade spatula and turn out. Cool the bread right side up to room temperature before cutting.