Best Food Writing 2013 (35 page)

Ironically, we're heading out on the road to get . . . “home.” Home cooking. Not the roadside diner kind, and most emphatically not the homey stuff that restaurant chefs are peddling these days, with their “house-made”
salumi,
bacon, pickles, bitters, honey, gin, charcoal, mead, candles, and aprons. Little exhausts me quicker. I'm looking for the habits and the eccentricities of the true amateur.

I've been working on a cookbook for Prune, my restaurant in New York, and the question of the home cook comes up often as I aim to be hospitable and useful to my perceived reader. So I've begun to wonder, who, exactly, is the home cook these days, and what and how
is he or she cooking? If I ask readers to measure by weight rather than volume, to tackle something that feeds 30 and takes a whole weekend, or more simply, to season with nothing more exotic than salt and pepper, will my book quickly end up in the remainder bin?

The only way to discover the truth of this imagined home cook is to get into the home kitchen. And so I invited myself over for dinner in seven homes across five Southern states, all connected to friends, and all agreeing to ignore my chef self, the photographer with me, and the magazine I am writing for, and to just cook as they usually do.

Day 1: Birmingham, Alabama

Soon after we land, Penny and I are at the lake house of Nicky Barnes with what I've come to call—lovingly and with a wink—“the doctors' wives.” It's way more complicated than that, including the fact that one of the doctors' wives is no longer married to “the doctor,” and that Jorja, the friend for life who invited me to dinner, isn't cooking, isn't married to a doctor, and we are not even in her home. What's important is this: The women who
are
cooking, Nicky and Lisa, each have four children, cook in their homes at least four nights a week, and have the means to buy whatever groceries they need.

When Penny and I arrive (plenty of daylight!), there is pimiento cheese. I read the handwritten recipe, admiring its awesome specificity of ingredients (
Duke's
mayo,
Kraft
Monterey Jack,
Mt. Olive
brand pickles, but just for the juice), and the charming absence of specificity when it comes to how to make the stuff. There are no measurements, and the instructions are clumsily out of order; it's a classic home “recipe,” attributed to a friend as simply “Margaret's Pimento Cheese.” For the main course, we have excellent turnip greens from the Junior League of Birmingham cookbook, and a roast chicken dish with tomatoes, basil, and balsamic vinegar that Lisa cooks very well, with natural ease. It's a relief to see she isn't faking for this magazine or chef-ifying for the chef.

I'm struck by Nicky's handwritten, scribbled-over, paper-clipped kitchen notebook, some equivalent version of which we will find in every home we visit. In Nicky's case, it's tidy, short yellow sheets, mapping out the week's meals so that she knows exactly what to get at the store. I had wondered if mothers are still keeping these kinds of books, which—it sounds so archaic, and even antifeminist, to say—
might someday be passed on to their daughters at their weddings. I am gladdened to see that they are, and even gladder, in Nicky's case, that hers will be passed on to one of her four sons!

Day 2: Sullivan's Island, SC, and Savannah, GA

In the very early morning, Penny and I slip out of the lake house where we've spent the night—each with our own guest room, bathroom, and fresh bar of Lever 2000—get the GPS programmed, and hit the road. By mid-afternoon (slanting golden sunlight!), we're in South Carolina, arriving at the Sullivan's Island home of Ginny Deerin to cook “joyfully for oneself,” as she put it to me in an e-mail. Ginny is a Katharine Hepburn-esque empty nester who cooks for herself so emphatically that she has conceived of, and been encouraged toward, a cooking-for-one television show. I am thrilled to meet a woman like her, since, as anyone who regularly cooks for oneself can attest, it is not that joyful a proposition.

Ginny's philosophy is actually much like my restaurant cooks' approach to family meal: It's the dovetail between
What have I got that needs to be used up?
and
What do I feel like eating?
Except that Ginny truly enjoys the added inspiration of looking through cookbooks, magazines, and websites. So for her it's not only
What have I got?
and
What do I feel like?
but also
What would Melissa Clark at
nytimes.com
do?
On this particular day, she has dug up sesame seeds, rolled oats, an ear of grilled corn, and a knob of ginger.

Her fast and loose attitude toward called-for ingredients is a blast of genuine home cooking that I am giddy to see in action. This is perfect data if you are in the midst of writing a cookbook and want to know how your end user feels about your strict ingredient list. In our case, the biscuits Ginny wants to bake are supposed to be made with buttermilk. She doesn't have buttermilk, so she pulls out a small container of milk. The milk, though, is a full two weeks past its expiration date. Undeterred, and unwilling to make that trip to the store for an ingredient she lacks, she gives it a deep sniff, deems it viable, and adds it to the dough after a further souring with a tablespoon of vinegar.

Another recipe we are cooking with calls for sorghum syrup, which she also doesn't have, so she uses maple. The cookies she wants to make require twice the amount of rolled oats she has. They also call
for pine nuts, but she has only pecans, and again, only half of what's listed. Ginny uses liquid measuring cups for dry ingredients and her 40-year-old electric egg beater instead of a shiny Kitchen-Aid mixer, and every single thing we cook together—whether pork loin, biscuits, root vegetables, or cookies—gets thrown into the 450-degree oven. She just turns it on and goes!

In Ginny's happy hustle is the quintessence of home cooking. Here is the voice and the eccentricity of an unintimidated, joyful home cook.

She has a sturdy sensibility that, at a couple of junctures, reminds me of the cooking I grew up with in rural Pennsylvania. I have consumed more than my fair share of “perfectly good” past-date milk, soured with vinegar and repurposed. And I have eaten more bruised, wilted, molded-over treasures from the pantry than anyone I've ever met, because my mother fed a family of seven with the same ingrained mentality as her French wartime parents, constantly making more than there was with what there was—albeit with professional-grade skills. It's only serendipity that what I grew up eating—bones, claws, stinking cheeses, vegetables pulled from our garden—has come into vogue in the food “scene.”

Penny and I drive in the deepening black of the Southern night until we arrive in Savannah. We speak into an intercom, then punch in a security code, and the heavy gate slowly pulls back and lets us in to drive beneath enormous live oaks. Mrs. Laurie Osteen, her husband, Chris, and their impeccably well-groomed youngest daughter greet us at the door of their majestic riverfront home and lead us into the kitchen. On the highly polished counter, typed and formatted, are three pristine copies of the recipes that Mrs. Osteen will cook for us.

Chicken simmers in Riesling while Mr. Osteen expertly makes us gin and tonics, which I consider as much a part of home cooking as the glistening white three-tiered coconut cake practically levitating under its glass dome on the counter. We have a comfortable and lively dinner on the porch, drinking the same Riesling in which the chicken was braised, made more seamless by the fact that Mrs. Osteen considered two important factors for the meal: reliability and ease. She's made that delicious chicken a hundred times, and it requires nothing of the hostess that might hijack her away from the
table, where the best stories are told. When the cake is served, I am held rapt by the tale about how Mrs. Osteen may have killed the local priest with it (he was diabetic; what to do?). Do not let that deter you from making it. It is worth the peril.

Day 3: Davie County, North Carolina

The next lunch finds us at the Cooleemee Plantation House, located between Mocksville and Lexington, North Carolina. When we arrive for the family potluck that my friend Jay has arranged, there is a woman frying chicken in two cast-iron skillets. Stephanie is in street clothes, with a regular apron, but she's using restaurant-style kitchen tongs and an insta-read thermometer. It doesn't register as odd, because I am so attracted to the golden chicken, as is Penny, who's got her camera out in seconds. But then I admire the tiny beans another woman is stirring, and she says, “I don't ever cook butter beans that are but any bigger than a squirrel's ear.”

It's a charming thing to say. Almost rehearsed.

She pops a knob of fat in another skillet, slides it into the oven, and taps the door shut.

“Bacon fat?” I ask, eager to get the exact details of everything I will be eating.

“Yes, that's Benton's fat, which has a different flavor profile than Nueske's, which, of course, I use for other things.”

What home cook talks about the nuances of the “different flavor profiles” of cult bacon makers? And why is that woman probing her fried chicken with a health department-approved thermometer? I start to worry. Meanwhile, Penny looks genuinely happy for the first time on our trip. We've got good light, handsome food, and a house that enjoys US National Historic Landmark status.

“GH, this is awesome!” she says as I ferry dish after dish onto the porch for her to shoot. While she whistles in photographer heaven, I slide down into a silent writer's ditch.

“There's no story here,” I whisper. “These people are foodies.
Chefs!
I. Am. Dying.” Penny giggles at my suffering. I am awed by the food—it's impeccable—so much so that I ask for every recipe, eat everything on the table, and have third helpings of the chicken. But it's researched, perfected, and way too articulately explained. In place of handwritten recipes, two of the potluckers generously give me
their published cookbooks! I ask Jay what happened to our abiding idea of home cooks at a family potluck.

“They chickened out,” he explains. “And I didn't want to let you down.”

Day 4: Chapel Hill, North Carolina

I am slightly wary of professionals the following day when we arrive at the Alexanders' in Chapel Hill for a lunch of shrimp and grits. Lex is a professional, but I already know that. He spent 30 years in the retail end of the food business, including sourcing items for Whole Foods Markets to brand. I invited myself over expressly to see what his cooking would be like given his uncompromising respect for exceptional and responsibly sourced products, but I don't want two ringers in a row. Thankfully, I am put at ease when I see his wife, Ann, chop the flat-leaf parsley and then wash it, rinsing the flavor down the drain. (A professional would wash first, dry well, and then chop, just moments before using.)

So I let myself loose in the pantry and, as I expected, there is excellent chocolate, tomato chutney, an Italian fish sauce. The grits Lex is stirring come from a mill in nearby Graham. Their cooking represents exceptionally well something I have seen throughout the trip: a hybrid use of grocery-store convenience products combined with from-scratch elements to create a dish. The only difference here is that the convenience products are of the highest quality. And it reads in the bowl. The Alexanders' shrimp and grits—complex and deep and wholly satisfying—take the blue ribbon.

Day 5: Berryville and Nellysford, Virginia

We have breakfast the following morning in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley with the unmistakably genuine Jean “Maw Maw” Hinson, whose home lies in the middle of horse pasture in Clarke County. Maw Maw is waiting for us in her immaculate kitchen, a Teflon pan of Depression-era tomato gravy on the stove, covered with a glass lid.

When it comes time to prepare the Hungry Jack pancakes that go with the gravy, Maw Maw laughs with a little shrug. She is happy to welcome us, but also amused and a bit baffled at what she could possibly have that a magazine would want. “I'm not sophisticated,” she says. When she presents the tomato gravy, she shrugs again and
adds, “It's not even a recipe, really. It's just two ingredients—the two ingredients we had growing up. We grew tomatoes and we had a cow, so we had butter.”

The way those ingredients work together—the sweet, bright, acidic tomato with the soft, creamy butter—stops us in our tracks. After decades of tasting long-cooked, deeply reduced tomato sauce with a paste base or, conversely, the almost inviolable summer pairing of heirloom tomatoes with fruity olive oil, Maw Maw's ripe tomatoes, gently and briefly simmered with sweet butter and served on pancakes like a fruit, knock us out. The gravy is exceptional. Haunting. Of all the excellent cooking we've eaten on this trip, this is the certain thing I will be cooking from now on in my own home.

We end our road trip an hour away in the Rockfish Valley, with dinner at the home of stonemason James “Fuzzy” Monnes. The property sits on a hill, terraced with substantial vegetable gardens. Hand-built cabins and sheds are nestled throughout, all lopsided, all piping chalky pastel-blue smoke from their wood stoves and fireplaces. There's an instant affection here. Maybe it's the fact of Fuzzy's smiling and Technicolor wife, Cathy, with her glowing red hair and turquoise eyes and her golden shawl. Or maybe it's his luminescent daughters, Mary Pearl and Sally Rose. The latter opens her arms and says, “Welcome to Appalachia!”

“Welcome to ‘The Monnestary,'” Fuzzy adds.