A Love Affair with Southern Cooking (72 page)

MAYHAW JELLY

MAKES ABOUT
4
HALF-PINTS

My Mississippi friend Jean Todd Freeman and I both worked at
The Ladies’ Home Journal
in New York and both lived in the West Village. Jean loved to throw dinner parties and it was at one of these that I first encountered mayhaw jelly, a quivery hillock the color of a Pink Perfection camellia. North Carolina, where I grew up, is too cold for mayhaws to flourish—a variety of hawthorne that thrives in swamps farther south, loses a flurry of white blossoms in early spring, then bears tart red “berries” in late April and early May (botanically, mayhaws are closer to apples than to berries). After Jean returned to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, she always brought a jar of mayhaw jelly whenever she flew up to New York to visit. Southern women, she told me, have been making it since Civil War days. This recipe is adapted from one offered by the Georgia Cooperative Extension Service. How do you serve mayhaw jelly? With butter on straight-from-the-oven biscuits or corn bread.

1½ pounds fully ripe mayhaws

½ pound barely ripe mayhaws (these are needed for pectin, which is what makes jelly gel)

4 cups (1 quart) cold water

Sugar (¾ cup for each cup of mayhaw juice)

• 1.
  Place all of the mayhaws and the water in a large nonreactive saucepan, set over moderate heat, and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat so the mixture barely bubbles and simmer uncovered, stirring often, for 10 to 15 minutes or until the mayhaws are mushy. Do not boil or overcook the mayhaws because you’ll destroy some of their natural pectin.
  
• 2.
  Mash the mayhaws with a potato masher, then pour them and all of their liquid into a jelly bag suspended over a large heatproof bowl or into a footed colander lined with several thicknesses of cheesecloth set in a large bowl. Be patient and let the juice trickle through at its own speed. If you force the juice through by pressing the mayhaws, you will cloud the jelly. When all of the juice has been extracted, measure and jot down the exact amount.
  
• 3.
  Return the juice to the saucepan, now rinsed out, and for every cup of juice, mix in ¾ cup of sugar. Insert a candy thermometer.
  
• 4.
  Set over moderately low heat and bring to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Adjust the heat so the mixture bubbles gently, then cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, for about 15 minutes or until the mixture reaches the jelling point (218° to 220° F.). You can also try this “sheeting” test to determine if the jelly is done: Take up a spoonful of the hot jelly mixture and if the drops run together, forming a solid sheet as they fall from the spoon, the jelly is ready.
  
• 5.
  While the jelly cooks, wash and rinse 4 half-pint preserving jars and their closures and submerge in a large kettle of boiling water.
  
• 6.
  When the jelly is done, skim off the froth, then ladle the boiling jelly into the hot jars, filling each to within ¼ inch of the top.
  Tip:
  To avoid spills, use a wide-mouth canning funnel.
  Wipe the jar rims with a damp cloth and screw on the closures.
  
• 7.
  Process the jars for 5 minutes in a boiling water bath (212° F.). Lift from the water bath; complete the seals, if necessary, by tightening the lids, then cool to room temperature.
  
• 8.
  Date and label each jar of jelly, then store on a cool, dark shelf for about a month before serving.
  

HOT PEPPER JELLY

MAKES
6
HALF-PINTS

Wherever I travel about the South, I’m reminded of the popularity of hot pepper jelly. It’s a farmer’s market staple to be sure, but I’ve also seen it for sale in gift shops and thrift shops, at local candy stores, even in barbecue joints and mom-and-pop cafés—little jars stacked up by the cash register. Often the jelly is the pride and joy of the owner’s mother or daughter. And often it is excellent. I’ve bought many a jar, cradled it in my carry-on luggage, then served it with cocktails as good southern hostesses do, shimmering atop cream cheese–spread crackers or melbas. Or
even easier, as “Hot Jezebel,” nothing more than a large block of cream cheese liberally blobbed with hot pepper jelly. Most of my southern cookbooks, particularly the little church or club fund-raisers, include at least one recipe for hot pepper jelly, some of them flecked with diced peppers, others as clear, as sparkling as fine rosé. Some of these jellies are as hot as West Hell, others more tepid. That’s what I prefer. If you have an asbestos palate, add a little hot red pepper sauce to the mix. Note:
Choose unwaxed peppers for this recipe; wax will affect the jelly’s texture, flavor, and clarity. Your jelly will have better color if all the peppers are red; green jalapeños and serranos will redden as they ripen. Just set them on the counter for a couple of days or pop into a brown paper bag with an apple; that will hasten the ripening.
Tip:
Wear rubber gloves when handling hot peppers and keep your hands away from your face.

8 large red bell peppers (about 3 pounds), stemmed, cored, seeded, and quartered

4 medium jalapeño peppers, stemmed, cored, seeded, and quartered (see Note and Tip above)

2 small serrano peppers, stemmed, cored, seeded, and quartered (see Note and Tip above)

2 medium garlic cloves, crushed

6 cups sugar

½ cup white (distilled) vinegar

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

½ to 1 teaspoon hot red pepper sauce (if you prefer a “hotter” jelly)

Two 3-ounce pouches liquid pectin

• 1.
  Wash and rinse 6 half-pint preserving jars and their closures and submerge in a large kettle of boiling water.
  
• 2.
  Cut the bell peppers, jalapeños, and serranos into 1-to 1½-inch chunks and pulse in two batches in a food processor or electric blender at high speed until very finely chopped.
  
• 3.
  Line a large fine sieve with several layers of cheesecloth and set over a glass or ceramic bowl. Scoop in the chopped peppers, add the garlic, and press out as much juice as possible; if necessary, bundle the peppers in the cheesecloth and wring out the juice. You will need 2 cups; if there is insufficient pepper juice, round out the measure with tap water. Discard the peppers.
  
• 4.
  Pour the pepper juice into a deep, nonreactive 2-gallon kettle. Add the sugar, vinegar, lime juice, and, if desired, the hot pepper sauce. Bring to a boil over high heat, adjust so the mixture bubbles easily, then cook uncovered for 5 minutes, stirring now and then.
  
• 5.
  Mix in the liquid pectin and as soon as the mixture returns to a rolling boil, cook for 1 minute exactly.
  
• 6.
  Set the kettle off the heat. Quickly skim off the froth, then ladle the boiling jelly into the hot jars, filling each to within ¼ inch of the top.
  Tip:
  To avoid spills, use a wide-mouth canning funnel.
  Wipe the jar rims with a damp cloth and screw on the closures.
  
• 7.
  Process the jars for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath (212° F.). Lift from the water bath;
  complete the seals, if necessary, by tightening the lids, then cool to room temperature.
  
• 8.
  Date and label each jar of jelly, then store on a cool, dark shelf for about a month before serving.
  

My nephew, Lee Bailey, thought my [pepper] jelly so good and so unique that he strongly urged me—fairly forced me, in fact—to start selling it…Now I put up about 400 jars a week.

—
FREDDIE BAILEY
,
AUNT FREDDIE’S PANTRY

When one has tasted watermelons, one knows what angels eat. It was not a southern watermelon that Eve took, we know because she repented.

—
MARK TWAIN

The following are defined or discussed elsewhere: Benne Seed, Calas, Catfish, Cathead Biscuits, Chicken Bog, Chicken Mayonnaise, Court Bouillon, Cracklin’s, Cracklin’ Bread, Cymlings, Dumplings, Groundnuts, Hominy, Hoppin’ John, Hush Puppies, Jerusalem Artichokes, Key Limes, Limpin’ Susan, Maque Choux, Mayhaw, Mirliton, Muddle, Muscadine, Pine Bark Stew, Pressed Chicken, Red-Eye Gravy, Rock, Sally Lunn, Sawmill Gravy, Scuppernong, She-Crab, Shirt Tail Pies, Smithfield Ham, Sonker, Spoon Bread, and Sugar Cake. See the index for page numbers.

Alligator pear: What many Southerners call the avocado because it’s pear-shaped and its skin is alligator-like: pebbly, leathery, and green.

Andouille: This most beloved of Cajun sausages—smoky, peppery, and 100 percent pork—is integral to gumbos and jambalayas. It’s made throughout Cajun country but La Place, Louisiana, claims to be “The Andouille Capital of the World” and stages lively festivals to prove it.

Ash cakes: The simplest of corn breads and an old Appalachian favorite: Mix enough stone-ground cornmeal with water to make a thick mush, shape into cakes a little bigger than hamburgers, ease onto the hearth, cover with white-hot ashes, and bake until done. Brush off the ashes and serve as a sop for pot likker.

Awendaw (also incorrectly spelled Owendaw): A Lowcountry spoon bread made with grits. It’s named for Awendaw, a small community about halfway between Charleston and Georgetown directly north, where Indian and African cultures merged.

Baby backs: Spareribs cut from a very young pig. Q-masters I know say they’re too lean and flavorless for first-class barbecued ribs.

Batter bread: The Tidewater Virginia name for “spoon bread.” In some parts of the South, it also means a thin-enough-to-pour corn bread batter baked in an iron skillet. (See Maria Harrison’s Batter Bread, Chapter 5.)

Battered: Food (chicken, for example) dipped into batter before it’s fried. Some old-time southern cooks also consider dredging to be “battering.”

Batty cakes: A corruption of “batter cakes.” These are old-fashioned pancakes or griddle cakes made with stone-ground cornmeal. Sometimes they are served for lunch or supper with butter; more often they show up at the breakfast table with butter plus sweet sorghum, honey, or molasses.

Beaten biscuits: “I can still hear the pounding of that dough out-of-doors atop an old tree trunk,” Craig Claiborne writes of his Mississippi childhood in
Craig Claiborne’s Southern Cooking
(1987). “That dough” was beaten biscuit dough and according to Claiborne, “it was beaten at least 200 times” until very stiff and
white. Only then was it rolled thin, cut into small circles, and baked until the color of parchment. Unfortunately, beaten biscuits are seldom if ever made at home anymore; they’re too labor intensive. In the old days, southern families had a faithful cook with a strong arm. Or failing that, a beaten biscuit machine: a marble slab with a double roller through which the dough was cranked again and again until it blistered. I remember beaten biscuits being a supermarket staple when I was growing up in Raleigh. They came twelve to a carton, and, I believe, they were manufactured someplace in Maryland. Accustomed to flaky buttermilk biscuits, I never liked beaten biscuits—too tough. Besides, they were always served cold. To my southern friends, however, they were the daintiest, most delicious biscuits in all creation, especially when split and filled with slivers of Smithfield ham as thin as onion skin.

Beignet: Pronounced ben-YAY, this is the New Orleans equivalent of a doughnut. Holeless and square instead of round, these pillows of deep-fried dough served with lavish dustings of confectioners’ sugar have been a staple at the city’s French Market for nearly 200 years. Some food historians believe that Ursuline nuns, arriving from France early in the eighteenth century, brought the recipe for beignets with them. Others credit the Cajuns for introducing beignets to Louisiana. The traditional accompaniment? Steaming mugs of café au lait, the dark Louisiana coffee with chicory mellowed with hot milk.

Biloxi bacon: Mullet, so nicknamed along the Gulf Coast because this “trash fish” supports the masses in summer while, as one local wit put it, the Yankees (or “snowbirds” seeking summer) sustain them in winter.

Boudin: A popular Louisiana sausage that may contain cooked rice as well as pork shoulder, pork liver, onions, and assorted spices. Made the traditional way, the mixture is stuffed into natural hog casings. In Cajun Country, boudins are made at
boucheries
or hog-butcherings. And sometimes grilled and served there, too.

Bouilli: Beef brisket. Creole cooks simmer it into soup, hash it for breakfast, and sometimes serve it as the main course of a family meal.

Burr artichoke: The true artichoke; what we know as the French or globe artichoke.

Busters: Crabs just beginning to molt. Cajuns, who consider busters a supreme delicacy, lift off the hard cara-paces, leaving barely developed “soft shells” underneath.

Butter beans: Baby limas.

Café brûlot: Lightly sweetened dark New Orleans coffee aromatic of orange zest and cinnamon. Laced with brandy and flamed in a
brûlot
bowl, the coffee is served in demitasses.

Cajun cooking: The spicy cuisine developed by the Acadians (French deported from Nova Scotia) who settled around the Atchafalaya Swamp and bayous west of New Orleans nearly 250 years ago. Crawfish and shrimp predominate in Cajun recipes as do peppery sausages, smoky hams and bacons, and tomatoes right off the vine. But onion, garlic, and green bell pepper, a good Cajun cook once told me, are “The Holy Trinity of Cajun cooking.”

Calamondins: The tiny, tart fruits of citrus trees that have become popular house plants. Sometimes called “Chinese oranges” because they’re believed to have originated there, calamondins grow well in Florida. In addition to being ornamental, they make superlative marmalade.

Carolina Gold: The yellow-husked rice once grown in the South Carolina Lowcountry; it helped launch the planter aristocracy and made men rich. The Carolina brand rice sold in nearly every supermarket is not Carolina Gold; apart from name, it has little in common with the rice that had been the choice of Chinese emperors.

Cat: Catfish.

Chayote: Another name for
mirliton
.

Cheney briar: The Lowcountry word for a nasty, invasive, sharply thorned vine known elsewhere as smilax. The baby shoots, I’m told, taste like asparagus and occasionally show up in local farmer’s markets.

Chicory: The practice of roasting the fleshy root of endive and adding it to coffee dates back to eighteenth-century Europe and it may have been the French who introduced coffee with chicory to New Orleans. No one can say for sure. What is known, however, is that to stretch precious coffee during the lean Civil War
years, cooks routinely added roasted chicory grounds because chicory was available and it was cheap. To this day, Louisianans prefer coffee with chicory to “everyday American,” although those unaccustomed to this dark brew find it excessively bitter.

Chincoteagues: The exquisitely briny Chesapeake oysters taken off the Virginia island of Chincoteague. Some connoisseurs consider Chincoteagues to be the East Coast’s finest oysters.

Chinquapins: I always thought that these tiny, buttery acorns came from an oak tree. Not so. They’re the “fruit” of a variety of chestnut that grows throughout the South. There was a large chinquapin tree in our front yard when I was a child, and I loved to gather the little brown acorns and string them into necklaces. My father told me that they were edible, also that people liked to roast them just like peanuts. I never tried this, although I did munch a few raw chinquapins; to me they tasted bitter. I’ve subsequently learned that chinquapins were an important food among Native Americans, who pounded them into meal, pressed them into oil, boiled them into “milk,” and no doubt ate them raw or roasted. Frugal mountain folk still use chinquapins much as they would wild hickory nuts or black walnuts.

Chit’lins: Chitterlings or the small intestine of a hog. Cleaned, boiled, and then fried, chit’lins are particularly popular among country folk.

Christophene: Another name for mirliton.

Clabber (also called bonney-clabber or loppered milk): Thick soured milk the consistency of yogurt. Spooned over cornmeal mush along with molasses, cane syrup, or sugar, it was (and still is) a breakfast favorite in many parts of the South but no more so than in the Louisiana bayous—Cajun Country. In North Carolina, clabber is used to make pancakes (clabber cakes); and when topped with heavy cream, sweetened with sugar, and strewn with freshly grated nutmeg, it is eaten for dessert. (See Heirloom Recipe for Bonney-Clabber, Chapter 6.)

Coal yard: A cup of black coffee; the term was popularized early in the twentieth century, or perhaps even earlier, by New Orleans African Americans.

Collation: In New Orleans, a tea party or a coffee.

Coon: A racoon; some southern country folk still trap them and eat them.

Cooter: Believed to be a corruption of
kuta
(West African for “turtle”), a cooter is a sea turtle. Before sea turtles became an endangered species, Lowcountry cooks made a specialty of cooter soups. Today they’re more apt to use terrapin (an amphibious turtle found in brackish water)—if they make turtle soup at all.

Corn pone: In its simplest form a corn pone is nothing more than a thick-enough-to-shape mixture of cornmeal, baking powder (or soda), salt, and water or buttermilk. Patted into burger-size rounds, pones are browned on a well-greased griddle, baked till done “clean through,” then served with greens—to sop up the pot likker. But there are more elaborate corn pones, too. One old Outer Banks recipe from Mrs. Rebecca Burrus of Dare County—printed in
From North Carolina Kitchens: Favorite Recipes Old and New
, an uncopyrighted collection of recipes from the state’s Home Demonstration Club women—is sweetened with sugar and molasses, then set to rise overnight. Too soft to shape, the batter is baked in a Dutch oven, uncovered for the first two hours, then with the lid on for another hour. Mrs. Burrus accompanied her Pone Bread recipe with the following note: “As far back as the oldest Hatteras resident can remember, pone bread has been considered a treat. It was first cooked in fireplaces, in iron pots, with hot coals on the lids, and later, in modern ovens. No camp meeting was complete without several of these, and not many Sundays passed without each home having a pone bread, cooked the day before. This bread packs well and keeps for a week or more (if well hid)…In the days before freezer lockers and short hunting seasons, all the thrifty islanders had a barrel of salted wild fowl, which made an excellent stew, and its gravy was enjoyed over the pone bread. Any gravy is good with it, however.”

Country ham: Before refrigeration, farmers used salt to preserve their hams. Over time, they’d add assorted seasonings to the “cure” and soon each family was zealously guarding its own secret recipe. At hog killing time, they’d rub fresh hams with their secret blend, then let them stand until the salt and seasonings permeated the meat. Only then were hams hung in the smokehouse—usually over smoldering hickory coals. Known
as a “dry cure,” this method produces mahogany-hued hams, firm of flesh and intensely salty-smoky of flavor. The most famous (and some say the most elegant) country ham is the Smithfield (see Baked Virginia Ham and Smithfield Ham, Chapter 3). But there are some other mighty fine southern hams, too, among them the Edwards Hams of Surry, Virginia; A. B. Vannoy Hams of North Carolina; Benton’s Smoky Mountain Country Hams of Tennessee; and Colonel Bill Newsom’s Aged Kentucky Country Hams (see Sources, backmatter).
Note:
The big packing-house hams—what Southerners call “city hams” or “pink hams”—are wet-cured. That is, they are either immersed in brine or, as is more likely these days, injected with a salt solution. Many of these mass-produced hams now carry “water added” phrases on their labels.

Coush-coush caillé (also spelled couche-couche and cush-cush): A crusty skillet-browned cornmeal mush and Cajun breakfast staple. In years past coush-coush was accompanied by clabbered milk, but these days it’s more often served with sweet milk and sugar or cane syrup and bacon.

Cowpea: The preferred name for this big family of beans is
southernpea
according to Elizabeth Schneider in
Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini
(2001). One of the food world’s most diligent researchers and careful writers, Schneider is the absolute authority on fruits and vegetables.

Crawdads: Crayfish or
crawfish
(see below).

Crawfish: Colloquial for crayfish throughout the South. Cajuns tell a charming story about the origin of crawfish: It seems that when the British began deporting the French from Acadia (Nova Scotia) some 250 years ago, lobsters swam alongside the ships. But by the time they’d reached New Orleans, they were so tired and hungry they’d turned into crawfish. Settling west of New Orleans among the bayous, the Cajuns raised crawfish cookery to high art. Today, crawfish farming is big business in Louisiana, with buckets of them being shipped far and wide. (See Sources, backmatter.)

Cream peas: See
Lady peas.

Creecy greens: A bitter wild cress of the mustard family also called winter cress (because it’s a cold-weather green) and dry land cress (because it grows in meadows and along roadsides). Old-time southern cooks boil creecy greens with a piece of ham or side meat just as they would collards or turnip salad. But those less wedded to tradition pick it young and toss it into salads. Finding fresh creecy greens isn’t as easy as it once was, but you can grow your own. You can also buy canned creecy greens (see Sources, backmatter).