A Love Affair with Southern Cooking (64 page)
Read A Love Affair with Southern Cooking Online
Authors: Jean Anderson,Jean Anderson
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1¼ cups (2½ sticks) butter, slightly softened
1 pound light brown sugar
5 large eggs
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 cup moderately finely chopped hickory nuts, black walnuts, or pecans
- 1.
Preheat the oven to 325° F. Butter and flour a 10-inch tube pan well, then tap out the excess flour. Set the pan aside. - 2.
Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together onto a piece of wax paper and set aside. - 3.
Cream the butter in a large electric mixer bowl at moderate speed for 1 to 2 minutes or until fluffy, then add the brown sugar gradually, beating all the while; continue beating until light. Beat the eggs in one by one. - 4.
Add the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the dry and beating after each addition only enough to combine. Stir in the vanilla and the nuts. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, spreading to the edge. - 5.
Bake on the middle oven shelf for 1 hour and 20 to 25 minutes or until the cake begins to pull from the sides of the pan and the top springs back slowly when touched. - 6.
Cool the cake in the upright pan on a wire rack 15 minutes, then loosen around the edge and the central tube, and turn out on the wire rack. Cool completely before cutting.
BOURBON
I’ve been drinking “bourbon and branch” ever since I reached the age of consent but I’m ashamed to admit how little I knew about it. I certainly had no idea that Abraham Lincoln had two ties to Kentucky’s best.
One: To earn money during farming’s off-season, Lincoln’s father worked in a bourbon distillery. Two: Throughout the Civil War, Lincoln’s top general, Ulysses S. Grant, had a ready supply of Kentucky bourbon. Reminds me of the old Bob Newhart routine in which Lincoln says something like, “Find out what brand Grant drinks and send a case to each of my other generals.”
The spirited story of bourbon begins shortly after the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 when, in an effort to restore calm, the young U.S. government offered sixty acres of land west of the Alleghenies (later Kentucky) to each settler who would build a permanent home there and raise corn.
Feisty Scotch-Irish distillers from western Pennsylvania to Georgia eagerly accepted, realizing that the corn they were required to grow could replace some of the rye in the whiskey they’d been making. Moreover, fermented and distilled corn would be easier to ship and sell than the grain itself. The result? A happy marriage of Old World tradition and New World corn. In barrels stamped
BOURBON
(to indicate Bourbon County’s various river ports), the new Kentucky distillers began shipping corn whiskey down the Ohio, then the Mississippi, to New Orleans.
Before long, bourbon was being prescribed for medicinal purposes, and to keep the quality of what he sold both high and consistent, Louisville druggist George G. Brown began selling standard-proof bourbon in sealed bottles. A milestone.
Soon there was another. In the mid nineteenth century, Scottish physician-chemist James C. Crow introduced the sour mash process, a method still used for all straight bourbons. Some of the fermented (sour) mash drained from one batch of bourbon is added to the next along with the yeast. It’s a way to check bacterial growth and produce bourbon of consistently high quality.
In 1964, the U.S. Congress declared bourbon “America’s Native Spirit” and decreed that only whiskey made in the United States that met certain requirements could be called bourbon. It must:
- Be made from a mash of at least 51 percent corn (often more is used) mixed with barley and another grain (usually rye but occasionally wheat).
- Be aged for at least two years in charred new oak barrels; if aged for less than four, the number of years must be stated on the bottle.
- Never contain any additive that alters the bourbon’s flavor, color, or sweetness.
- Never have a final distillate of more than 160 (U.S.) proof; this must be cut to 125 proof or less before bourbon can be barreled. It is bottled later at various proofs.
Bourbon can be made anywhere in the United States, but only Kentucky is allowed to print
its name on the label as place of origin.
Although the mixture of grain, type of yeast, degree of char on the barrels, aging time, even barrel location in the warehouse vary from brand to brand and account for differences in color, taste, proof, and finesse, one ingredient remains constant among Kentucky distillers: the state’s natural limestone-rich water.
And this, most would agree, is what makes Kentucky bourbon America’s best.
KENTUCKY BOURBON CAKE
MAKES A
10-
INCH TUBE CAKE
Marion Flexner, an Alabaman by birth and a Kentuckian by adoption, tells a little-known tale in her classic
Out of Kentucky Kitchens
(1949). To quote: “This cake isn’t a native Kentuckian at all, and Dame Rumor asserts with authority that a certain Frankfort matron (about 25 years ago) coaxed a famous New York maître d’hôtel to give her the recipe by crossing his palm with a lot of silver.” I wonder. Savannah-based southern food historian and cookbook author Damon Lee Fowler doubts the “palm-crossed-with-silver” story and believes that Kentucky bourbon cake may descend from early southern fruitcakes, which, like this one, have a pound-cake base. The Rich Fruit Cake in Mary Randolph’s
Virginia House-wife
(1824) is similar, although it contains more dried fruits and brandy instead of bourbon. Ditto several recipes in Lettice Bryan’s
Kentucky Housewife
(1839). I find an even closer match in the Kentucky Cake in
The Blue Grass Cook Book
(1904) by Minnie C. Fox; egg whites are used instead of whole eggs and the nuts are lacking. In my many years in New York I never once encountered bourbon cake, and I had to travel to Kentucky to try the dense pecan-and-raisin-filled Christmas favorite that the Bluegrass State calls its own. The only liquid ingredient? Good Kentucky bourbon. Note:
Use a 10-inch tube pan to bake this cake, a light-colored one to discourage overbrowning; and butter and flour it well. You’ll note that the oven temperature is unusually low—250° F.—and that the cake bakes for at least 2
½
hours. That explains its fine texture. Some southerners wrap the cooled cake in a bourbon-soaked cloth and let it “season” for a week or so, adding more bourbon as needed to keep the cloth moist. I find that unnecessary; the cake’s plenty spirited without it.
Tip:
If the butter is refrigerator-cold, you can cream it to uncommon fluffiness.
4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
3 cups lightly toasted pecans, coarsely chopped (10 to 12 minutes in a 350° F. oven)
3 cups seedless raisins
1½ teaspoons freshly grated nutmeg
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 pound (4 sticks) butter (no substitute) (see Tip on Chapter 6)
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups sugar
6 extra-large eggs, separated
¾ cup bourbon
- 1.
Preheat the oven to 250° F. Generously butter a 10-inch tube pan, dust with flour, then tap out any excess flour and discard; set the pan aside. - 2.
Place ½ cup of the sifted flour in a large bowl, add the pecans and raisins, and toss well; set aside. Whisk the remaining 3½ cups flour, the nutmeg, baking soda, and salt together in a second large bowl and set aside also. - 3.
Cream the butter and vanilla in a large electric mixer bowl at low speed for 3 minutes, scraping the bowl often, then raise the mixer speed to medium and cream 2 to 3 minutes longer or until light and fluffy. Scrape the bowl well, set the mixer at moderately low speed, and add the sugar gradually. Raise the mixer speed to high and beat hard for 3 to 5 minutes or until fluffy and almost white, pausing several times to scrape the bowl. - 4.
With the mixer at low speed, add the egg yolks one by one, beating well and scraping the bowl after each addition. With the mixer still at low speed, add the sifted dry ingredients alternately with the bourbon, beginning and ending with the dry—four additions of the dry and three of bourbon are about right. - 5.
Using clean beaters, whip the egg whites in a separate clean bowl until soft and billowing—the stage just before soft peaks. Fold about a fourth of the beaten whites into the batter to lighten it (it’s very thick), then fold in the balance—gently—until no streaks of white or yellow remain. By hand, fold in the dredged pecans and raisins and all dredging flour. - 6.
Scoop the batter into the pan, smooth the top, and rap once or twice on the counter sharply to release large air bubbles.
Note:
Kentucky cooks often decorate the surface of the batter with pecan halves and candied red and/or green cherries before the cake goes into the oven. A nice touch at Christmastime. - 7.
Slide the cake onto the middle oven shelf and bake for 2½ to 2¾ hours or until it begins to pull from the sides of the pan, feels springy to the touch, and a cake tester inserted midway between the central tube and the edge of the pan comes out clean. - 8.
Cool the cake in the upright pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes. Carefully loosen around the edge and central tube with a small, thin-blade spatula and invert on a wire rack. - 9.
Cool the cake to room temperature, then, before cutting, invert on a round plate so the cake is right side up. This cake needs no frosting.
Note:
If you don’t intend to serve the cake right away, wrap in plastic food wrap—or, if you prefer, in a bourbon-soaked cloth—and store in an airtight tin. That’s the Kentucky way.
MORAVIAN GINGERBREAD
MAKES A
13 × 9 × 2-
INCH CAKE
This recipe is a downsized family version of the gingerbread served at Salem Tavern in Old Salem, a faithfully restored eighteenth-century Moravian town in North Carolina’s rolling Piedmont. What makes this gingerbread different is that the ginger is freshly chopped. I do the chopping in a food processor, a shortcut those efficiency-minded Moravians would have welcomed.
1¼ cups (2½ sticks) butter, slightly softened
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup molasses (not too dark)
½ cup finely chopped peeled fresh ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch of ground cloves
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
3½ cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
- 1.
Preheat the oven to 375° F. Grease and flour a 13 × 9 × 2-inch baking pan well. Tap out the excess flour and set the pan aside - 2.
Cream the butter in a large electric mixer bowl at moderate speed about 1 minute or until fluffy. Gradually beat in the sugar. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition. Now mix in the molasses, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. - 3.
Combine the baking soda and vinegar and beat into the butter mixture. By hand add the flour alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with flour and stirring after each addition only enough to combine. - 4.
Spread the batter evenly in the pan and bake on the middle oven shelf for 45 to 50 minutes or until a cake tester inserted in the middle of the gingerbread comes out clean. - 5.
Transfer the pan of gingerbread to a wire rack and cool to room temperature before serving. - 6.
Cut into squares and top, if you like, with drifts of whipped cream, scoops of vanilla ice cream, or, better yet, scoops of dulce de leche ice cream.
OLD VIRGINIA GINGERBREAD
MAKES
12
SERVINGS
This old family recipe was given to me by James Harrison of Coggins Point Farm on the south side of the James River. He was the father of my friend Maria Harrison Reuge, who, with her French husband, Guy, owns Mirabelle, a first-rate restaurant in the little Long Island town of St. James. Some years ago when I interviewed Mr. Harrison about old Virginia recipes, he told me that his father “always called this ‘molasses bread’ because he thought it tasted more like molasses than ginger.” What’s unique about this gingerbread is that it’s baked in custard cups, inverted on dessert plates, then topped with Brown Sugar Sauce (recipe follows).
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup molasses (not too dark)
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
1 cup loosely packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs, separated
½ cup milk
- 1.
Preheat the oven to 350° F. Spray twelve 8-ounce custard cups with nonstick cooking spray and set aside. Sift the flour, ginger, and cinnamon together onto a piece of wax paper and set aside also. - 2.
Combine the molasses and baking soda in a small bowl and let stand while you proceed with the recipe; it will fizz and foam. Cream the butter in a large electric mixer bowl at moderately high speed for 1 to 2 minutes or until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the sugar, then, with the mixer running, add the egg yolks one by one. - 3.
By hand, fold the sifted dry ingredients in alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the dry. Blend in the molasses-soda mixture. - 4.
Beat the egg whites to soft peaks, then fold into the batter until no streaks of white or brown remain; easy does it. - 5.
Scoop a scant ½ cup of the batter into each custard cup, then arrange the custard cups, not touching, on a large baking sheet. - 6.
Slide the baking sheet onto the middle oven shelf and bake the individual gingerbreads for about 25 minutes or until springy to the touch and a cake tester inserted into the middle of one comes out clean. - 7.
Transfer the gingerbreads to a wire rack and cool in the upright custard cups for 5 minutes. Using a small thin-blade spatula, carefully loosen each gingerbread around the edge and invert on a dessert plate. - 8.
Top each individual gingerbread with Brown Sugar Sauce and serve.