A Love Affair with Southern Cooking (73 page)

Creole cuisine: With ties to France, Spain, and the Caribbean as well as to European aristocracy, Creoles developed an elegant cuisine, a fusion of these three cultures plus additional influences from Africans and Native Americans and even from the German and Italian chefs imported to cook for wealthy Creole families. (The Germans, it’s been said, introduced the art of sausage making, although the French were also well versed in
charcuterie.
) Compared to the gutsy country cooking of the Cajuns, who settled in the bayous some hundred miles west of New Orleans, Creole cooking is more refined, more sophisticated. It’s the cuisine that made New Orleans famous.

Creole mustard: Sharp, spicy mustard made from brown mustard seeds that are steeped in distilled white vinegar, then coarsely ground and heightened with a little horseradish. New Orleans trenchermen like to slather it on their po’ boys, but it’s used in countless recipes, too.

Crick (creek) shrimp: The sweet, tiny shrimp netted in Lowcountry inlets, creeks, and rivers. Dusted with floury cornmeal and deep-fried until crisply golden, they are heaven.

Crowder pea: One of the four major groups of
southernpea
, so named because the peas (actually beans) are crowded in the pod.

Crybabies: An edible pacifier. These spicy molasses cookies were once used to quiet crying infants and toddlers. In some areas, they still are.

Cush: Equal parts crumbled stale corn bread and biscuits fried in meat drippings with chopped onion. It’s a frugal main dish, but in happier times it may be served in addition to meat.

Cushaw: A large (10-to 12-pound) green-and-white–striped crookneck squash with fibrous golden flesh. Like
more familiar varieties of winter squash, cushaws are baked into pies or, sometimes, sugared, spiced, baked, and served as a vegetable. Particularly popular among Creoles and Cajuns, cushaws are believed to have been brought to the Deep South from the West Indies during the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Custard marrow: What some Southerners call mirliton.

Diamondback: Not a rattlesnake but an amphibious southern turtle used to make soup.

Dirty rice: Rice cooked with bits of liver or chicken liver. A Louisiana favorite.

Dressing: What Southerners call stuffing, as in turkey stuffing. Of course, “dressing” also means salad dressing.

Dry land cress: See
Creecy greens
.

Étouffée: A Cajun stew (usually crawfish or shrimp) served over rice with lots of roux-thickened gravy.

Fatback (also known as side meat and sowbelly): Fat trimmed from the back of a hog, usually salt-cured. Fatback containing a streak of lean (“streaky”) is often cooked along with a pot of green beans, collards, or turnip greens.

Field apricots: See
Maypops.

Field pea: A synonym for
cowpea;
its preferred name is
southernpea
.

Filé powder (also called gumbo filé and sometimes more simply, filé). An aromatic green-gray powder made of dried sassafras leaves—a Choctaw innovation used both to flavor and thicken stews, which Creole and Cajun cooks quickly applied to their gumbos. A Cajun cook I interviewed some years ago was adamant on one point: Filé powder is never used to thicken gumbos containing okra because okra does the job. When I told her that I’d seen many recipes containing both okra and filé powder, she sniffed, “Well, they aren’t authentic!”

Geechees: Lowcountry African Americans, many of whom were isolated for years on the dot-dash string of Sea Islands below Charleston. Their contribution to Lowcountry cooking cannot be overestimated. Also see
Gullah.

Goobers: Peanuts.

Green corn: Corn picked before it’s fully ripe. Southerners prize its slightly grassy flavor and like to grate the immature kernels and stir them into corn cakes, fritters, and puddings.

Green peanuts: Freshly dug raw peanuts. Farmer’s markets sell them both in the shell and out. (See Sources, backmatter.)

Grillades: Thin beef or veal steaks cut from the round, quickly browned, then simmered in a spicy tomato sauce and served with grits. A New Orleans breakfast favorite. (See recipe, Chapter 3.)

Grits: Except in the South Carolina Lowcountry where grits (from the word
grist
) is coarsely ground dried corn, grits is ground dried hominy (yes,
grits
is singular). Supermarket grits is about the texture of polenta, but persnickety southern cooks prefer it stone-ground and coarser.

Groundnuts: Peanuts.

Ground peas: Peanuts.

Guinea squash: Another name for eggplant commonly used in the Deep South (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia).

Gullah: The patois spoken by Lowcountry African Americans (
Geechees
), who influenced Lowcountry cuisine both as plantation cooks and as home cooks. Not so long ago, you could hear Gullah on the streets of Charleston as fish and vegetable vendors made their rounds.

Gumbo: A spicy Creole-Cajun stew (or soup) and culinary melding of four cultures: African (
gumbo
derives from the Bantu
gombo
), Native American, French, and Spanish. The best-known gumbos brim with crawfish or shrimp, sausages, okra (the thickener if filé powder isn’t used), tomatoes, peppers sweet and hot, onions, garlic, bay leaves, parsley, and assorted other seasonings. (See recipe, Chapter 2.)

Gumbo filé: See
Filé powder.

Half moons: Fried fruit turnovers that are also known as
mule ears
and
shirt tail pies.
But there are nuances: Half moons can be made with almost any fruit; mule ears are usually filled with sun-dried peaches; and shirt tail pies are filled with dried apples.

Hicker nuts: Colloquial for wild hickory nuts in southern Appalachia.

Hoecakes: Campfire corn breads; in days past, simple cornmeal mush (cornmeal, water, salt) was shaped into patties, laid on the blade of a hoe, and propped near an open fire to bake.

Jambalaya: You might call this a rich Creole-Cajun pilau. But rice is merely the beginning. In addition to sausage, shrimp, crawfish, chicken, turkey, or other meat—not to mention onions, garlic, tomatoes, bell peppers, and a carload of heady seasonings—jambalayas usually contain ham. Some etymologists believe that its name comes from
jamón
, the Spanish word for ham. Food historian Karen Hess
(The Carolina Rice Kitchen)
dismisses this, however, citing several early jambalaya recipes that contain no ham. She further suggests that jambalaya derives from the Provençal
jambalaia, jabalaia,
and
jambaraia
defined by Frédéric Mistral in the late nineteenth century as an Arab word. Hess suspects that Arabs may have introduced jambalaya-like dishes to the South of France during their occupation there or perhaps, she adds, it may have been Sephardic Jews, who also settled in Provence before and during the Middle Ages. Whatever its origin, jambalaya is fusion cooking at its best: the flavors of the Near East, Africa, France, and Spain bubbling in a single pot. In his
Dictionary of American Food and Drink,
John Mariani offers yet another explanation for the recipe’s name. It seems that when a gentleman stopped by a New Orleans inn late one night, the cupboard was bare. Undaunted, the innkeeper told his chef, Jean, to rustle up a little something—
balayez,
in the local patois, according to Mariani. Pleased with his odds-and-ends dinner, the guest gave it a name:
Jean Balayez
. Which over time became
jambalaya
. Apocryphal or not, it’s a charming story. (See recipe, Chapter 3.)

Jimmy: A male blue crab. The tips of its claws are bright blue; the female’s are as red as fingernail polish.

Kentucky wonder beans: A popular variety of
pole beans
characterized by its plumpness and almost nutlike flavor. In size and taste, they’re more like Italian green beans than conventional snap beans.

Lady peas: The most delicate
southernpea
; the peas (actually beans) are small, pearly, and devoid of “eyes.” Lady peas are also sometimes called cream peas.

Lard: The snowy, creamy rendered fat of hogs; the Southerner’s shortening of choice. Nothing makes flakier biscuits or pie crusts and for many Cajuns, it is the only fat to use in a roux. Another plus: Lard adds subtle meaty flavor.

Leather britches beans (also called shuck beans): Green beans that have been dried until shriveled and leathery. In the old days, fresh beans were threaded onto string and hung in the attic to dry, a method of preserving learned from the Cherokee, it’s said. Today the beans are more often “dried” in a dehydrator. Leather britches beans should be reconstituted in water before they’re cooked.

Lighten or light bread: Yeast bread, especially yeast-raised corn bread. Here’s a recipe for Old-Fashioned Corn Light Bread from Mrs. W. A. McGlamery of Clay County, North Carolina, just as it appears in
From North Carolina Kitchens: Favorite Recipes Old and New
(an uncopyrighted volume of recipes compiled fifty years ago by the state’s Home Demonstration Club women): “One quart water in a pot, let come to a boil; add one teaspoon salt, stir in cornmeal to make a thick mush. Add enough cold water to make it lukewarm, stir in meal to make a thick batter, cover and set by fire to keep warm; let rise twice and stir down; have oven hot; when it rises third time, put in oven and bake quickly.” The bread generates its own yeast.

Liver mush (also called liver pudding): A baked loaf made of ground boiled pork liver, cornmeal, sage, salt, and black pepper—a southern breakfast specialty. Before being served, it’s sliced and fried in bacon drippings or butter. (See Heirloom Recipe, Chapter 3.)

Loppered milk: Clabber.

Loquats: Also called Japanese plums, these sunny little fruits are ones that I will forever associate with Charleston, South Carolina; they seem to grow everywhere there. Depending upon variety, they can be as sweet as cane syrup or fairly sour. During their all-too-brief early spring season, loquats are made into pies, boiled into preserves, or eaten out of hand. Unfortunately, they are too fragile to ship.

Love Feast buns: Large round buns made from a rich yeast dough that in many versions contains mashed potatoes. According to Elizabeth Hedgecock Sparks, who was for many years the food editor of the
Journal-Sentinel
in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Moravian Love Feasts are held on Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, and other days of significance to the church. At the Home Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, Love Feast buns are accompanied by coffee (with cream and sugar). In
North Carolina and Old Salem Cookery
, Sparks, herself a Moravian, writes, “The idea behind the simple meal is that those who break bread together are united in the fellowship the way a family is.” (See recipe, Chapter 5.)

Marsh hen: The Lowcountry word for the clapper rail. A shy bird that hides among the reeds and salt grasses, it is difficult to spot. Still, persistent hunters bag it in season and claim to like its fishy taste.

Maypops (also called mountain apricots or field apricots): Passion fruits. One of the things we kids loved to do was stomp on the lime-green, lime-size passion fruits that grew in the red clay gullies of our edge-of-Raleigh neighborhood. They popped like firecrackers and, given their name, must have begun appearing sometime in May, although it seems to me that these tangled vines bore fruit all summer long. I remember the flesh inside being frosty-white; I guess you could say pithy. My father, a botanist, explained to my older brother and me that these were passion fruits—a delicacy in many parts of the world. I couldn’t imagine eating a maypop; of course the ones we squashed with such glee were immature. I didn’t taste mature passion fruits until many years later. When I was on assignment on the island of Madeira, I was served a passion-fruit dessert. Jacques Pépin, who happened to be on the island at the same time with his wife, Gloria, called it “Portuguese Jell-O.”

We all liked the local passion-fruit firewater much better. To me, passion-fruit flowers are incredibly delicate and beautiful. Measuring about two inches across, they are fringed in a starburst of purples, mauves, and whites. And their centers—fleshy and pale green or gold, if I’m remembering correctly after all these years—are said to resemble Christ’s crown of thorns. Hence the name “passion fruit.” According to Joseph E. Dabney (
Smokehouse Ham, Spoon Bread, and Scuppernong Wine
), passion fruits are best after the first frost. Prized throughout the Smokies, they are gathered and turned into puddings and preserves. Dabney adds that “the Amerindians, including the Cherokee, made a delicious drink of the fruit.”

Mess o’ greens: A big pot of collards, turnip greens, poke sallet, or other popular southern green cooked (“overcooked,” my Yankee mother always said) in water with a piece of side meat or streaky. The greens are usually served in little bowls with plenty of pot likker (the leftover cooking water) and a corn bread of some kind to sop it up.

Mirliton: A type of squash popular in the Deep South.

Mississippi mud: There are Mississippi mud pies and Mississippi mud cakes, both of them chocolate, both of them as dark and gooey as a Mississippi River mud bank, and both of them of fairly recent origin. I’d never heard of them until the mid 1970s. Even Mississippi-born-and-bred
New York Times
food editor Craig Claiborne wasn’t aware of them until after he’d moved north. I once ate a frozen Mississippi mud pie in Charleston, South Carolina, that was a bit different: a crushed Oreo crust mounded with chocolate ice cream mounded with whipped cream drizzled with chocolate syrup and strewn with curls of semisweet chocolate. While traveling about Mississippi, I’ve come across Mississippi mud cakes steamed in preserving jars. They look messy, but to chocoholics like me they are glorious! I shudder to think of the calories.