A Love Affair with Southern Cooking (51 page)

Variation

Love Feast Buns:
Among the Moravians, these puffy, faintly spicy buns are served at special Christmas and Easter services called Love Feasts. They’re still baked the traditional way in the Winkler Bakery’s brick ovens and when their yeasty scent comes wafting out the door, hungry customers line up on the street to buy their fill. To prepare the buns: Omit Step 1 of the Sugar Cake recipe. Follow Steps 2 and 3, adding ¼ teaspoon each ground mace and freshly grated nutmeg along with the first ½ cup flour. Proceed as directed in Step 4, then, with well-buttered hands, shape the dough into a ball, place in a well-buttered large bowl, cover with a clean, dry cloth, and allow to rise in a warm, draft-free spot for about 1 hour or until doubled in bulk. Punch the dough down, then roll to a thickness of ½ inch on a well-floured pastry cloth using a well-floured stockinette-covered rolling pin. Cut into 2½-inch rounds with a floured biscuit cutter. Knead the scraps into a ball, then roll and cut as before. Arrange the rounds on well-greased baking sheets, spacing at least 3 inches apart. Cover with a clean, dry cloth, and set in a warm, draft-free spot until doubled in bulk—about 45 minutes this time. Bake the buns in the lower third of a preheated 350° F. oven for about 15 minutes or until golden brown. Transfer to wire racks at once and brush generously with melted butter—you’ll need 2 to 3 tablespoons. Makes about 1½ dozen buns (including rerolls).

PAIN PERDU (LOST BREAD)

MAKES
6
SERVINGS

Known elsewhere as French toast, this Louisiana brunch and breakfast classic deliciously recycles stale French bread. In New Orleans, I’ve even seen it made with brioche. The recipe here is my attempt to duplicate the Pain Perdu made to order every morning at a funky little motel near Bayou Teche; I spent a week there years ago while on article assignment in Cajun country.

¼ cup light cream or half-and-half

4 large eggs

½ cup sugar

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

¹
/
₈
teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

12 slices stale French bread, each measuring about 4 inches across and 1 inch thick

1 quart vegetable oil (for deep-fat frying)

Confectioners’ (10 X) sugar (for dusting)

• 1.
  Beat the cream, eggs, sugar, lemon zest, vanilla, and nutmeg in a large electric mixer bowl at moderately high speed for about 2 minutes until thick and creamy.
  
• 2.
  Place 3 to 4 bread slices in the egg mixture, let stand for 15 seconds, then turn the slices and soak the flip sides for another 15 seconds. Transfer the dipped slices to a wax paper–lined baking sheet. Repeat until all slices are saturated with the egg mixture. Cover with foil or plastic food wrap and refrigerate for several hours.
  
• 3.
  When ready to proceed, pour the oil into a large, deep skillet and insert a deep-fat thermometer. Set over moderate heat and bring the oil to a temperature of 380° F. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 250° F. Also line two baking sheets with foil and set aside.
  
• 4.
  When the oil reaches 380° F., ease three slices of soaked bread into the skillet and fry until a rich golden brown; this will take 1 to 2 minutes per side if you keep the temperature of the oil as close to 380° F. as possible. Drain the browned slices on paper toweling, then transfer to foil-lined baking sheets and set in the oven to keep warm. Repeat until all of the slices have been browned.
  
• 5.
  To serve, overlap two slices of Pain Perdu on each of six heated plates, dust with confectioners’ sugar, and serve at once with heated cane syrup or maple syrup.
  

CALAS (RICE FRITTERS)

MAKES ABOUT
2
DOZEN

To quote
American Cooking: Creole and Acadian
(a Time-Life Foods of the World cookbook by Peter S. Feibleman), “Before the turn of the century, the cala woman vending
‘Bella cala! Tout chaud!’
(‘Nice cala! Piping hot!’) was a familiar sight along the streets of the French Quarter of New Orleans.” The cala women, the book continues, have disappeared. But not the spicy rice fritters they sold; they’re now a Sunday brunch specialty at several New Orleans restaurants. In a Raleigh
News & Observer
article, food writer Fred Thompson tells of the calas he enjoyed pre–Hurricane Katrina at the Big Easy’s Old Coffee Pot Restaurant. When asked about calas, his waitress replied, “Oh, sweetie, you have now hit on sumpin’ mighty good, real eating. Rice like you never had ’fore now. Better than beignets. This is the original black people’s food.” Sunday, it turns out, was the cooks’ day off in New Orleans, so to earn a little extra money, they’d make calas, take to the streets, and sell them.

²
/
₃
cup sifted cake flour (preferably a silky southern flour like White Lily or Martha White)

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg or ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¹
/
₈
teaspoon salt

2 large eggs lightly beaten with 1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups cooked long-grain rice, at room temperature (measure lightly packed)

Vegetable oil for deep-fat frying (2 to 2½ quarts)

Confectioners’ (10X) sugar (for dusting)

• 1.
  Whisk the flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt together in a large bowl. Add the egg mixture and whisk just until combined; fold in the rice. Do not overbeat or your calas will be tough. Cover loosely and let stand at room temperature for 20 minutes.
  
• 2.
  Meanwhile, pour the oil into a deep-fat fryer or large kettle at least 4 inches deep, insert a deep-fat thermometer, and set over high heat until the oil reaches 350° F.
  
• 3.
  Working with about a third of the cala mixture at a time, drop from a rounded tablespoon (or better yet a No. 24 spring-loaded ice cream scoop) into the hot oil, spacing the calas well apart. Fry for 3 to 4 minutes, turning as needed until evenly browned and keeping the oil as near to 350° F. as possible. Lift to paper toweling to drain.
  
• 4.
  Dust the calas with confectioners’ sugar and serve warm for Sunday breakfast or brunch with drizzlings of cane syrup or maple syrup.
  

S
outherners have always been sweet on desserts. Is it because, prerefrigeration, some desserts were so loaded with sugar they wouldn’t spoil at room temperature? Or because sugarcane was (and still is) grown in the Deep South? I suspect a bit of both.

Then, too, there’s the sweet-tooth English heritage of the original Virginia and Carolina colonists. Early southern cookbooks are freighted with rich English creams, plum puddings, fruitcakes, and cheese cakes—not cheesecakes in the New York sense, but cheese-less “curds” as in the achingly sweet lemon curd (“cheese”) that goes into lemon chess pie. As a culinary term the word
chess,
some suggest, may be a corruption of “cheese.”

As the colonists came to appreciate New World foods and observed how simply local tribes prepared them, they began to improvise. Take sweet potatoes. Although they had been known in England as far back as the fifteenth century, few sweet potato recipes appear in English cookbooks. Nor do I find any mention of them in
Food in England
(1954), Dorothy Hartley’s comprehensive survey of English cookery that begins with the Bronze Age. In early southern recipe books, however, sweet potato cakes, puddings, and pies proliferate—usually in old English recipes given a new ingredient and a new spin.

The same can be said of wild persimmon puddings; cakes and confections made with pecans instead of almonds; cinnamon-y pies with sliced green tomatoes doubling for apples; and, not least, Kentucky bourbon (corn whiskey) displacing brandy and/or wine in various English desserts.

Introducing the 1984 facsimile edition of Mary Randolph’s original
Virginia Housewife
(1824), food historian Karen Hess writes: “As important as local Indian contributions were, the transformation of Virginia cooking cannot primarily be attributed to them. It is only when we ask whose hands did the cooking that we get a satisfactory answer…”

Among the South’s landed gentry, those hands were black, hands familiar with ground-nuts (peanuts), benne (sesame seeds), and rice, all of which arrived in the South early on and landed in a variety of sweets—particularly in South Carolina.

Unlike the Virginia colonists, many of the English who settled the South Carolina Lowcountry had been living in the Caribbean and brought their slaves with them. So there were French (Creole) influences in and around Charleston as well as in New Orleans, home of beignets, pralines, and king cake (a spicy ring frosted in Mardi Gras purple [for justice], green [faith], and gold [power] that is served on Twelfth Night, the day the gift-bearing Magi visited baby Jesus. A miniature baby Jesus effigy is baked into the cake, or sometimes a tiny trinket, or even a dried bean. The one who gets the hidden treasure is blessed with good luck. But he must also bring the king cake to next year’s party.) The Huguenot impact on southern cooking may have been less significant, although in
The Carolina Rice Kitchen
(1992), Karen Hess traces several rice puddings back to France.

The dessert chapters in southern cookbooks both old and new often outweigh nearly every other (here, too, I’m afraid). But then, Southerners have always prided themselves on their ice creams, puddings and pies, candies, cakes, and cookies.

And why not? We have them to thank for such American classics as Lady Baltimore Cake, Lane Cake, Robert E. Lee Cake, Japanese Fruitcake, Benne Wafers, Peanut Brittle, Key Lime Pie, and Black Bottom Pie, not to mention the whole delicious repertoire of chess pies.

You’ll find them all in the following pages.

So on a typical Thanksgiving…we’d have baked chicken, fried chicken, smothered chicken, turkey, Creole gumbo, dirty rice, white rice, collard greens, stuffed bell peppers, macaroni and cheese, cornbread, rolls, sweet potato pie, pecan pie, apple pie, muffins and cake.

—
DONNA L. BRAZILE
,
COOKING WITH GREASE: STIRRING THE POTS IN AMERICAN POLITICS

…I said, “I’d be glad to. But what is a pound party?” “Everybody brings a pound of something. Sugar, or butter, or candy, or a cake. A cake’s fine. Such as that.”

—
MARJORIE KINNAN RAWLINGS
,
CROSS CREEK

PEACH COUNTRY COBBLER

MAKES
6
TO
8
SERVINGS

From early July through mid September, farmer’s markets and side-of-the-road stands offer tree-ripened peaches by the bushel. It’s a precious time for southern cooks, a time of cobblers and crisps, pickles and pies, jams and preserves. If Southerners have a favorite peach, it’s probably a toss-up between the white-fleshed Georgia Belle, the hardy golden Sunhigh, and the Elberta, a free-stone, honeysuckle-sweet hybrid developed in Macon County, Georgia, in 1875. Note:
Instead of making the topping the old-fashioned way, modern southern cooks are more apt to use a food processor. Here’s how: Pulse all the dry ingredients briefly to combine; sprinkle the diced butter evenly on top and pulse until the texture of coarse meal. Drizzle the milk over all, then pulse just enough to form a soft dough: Three to four brisk zaps should do it.

Peach Mixture

¾ cup sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

6 cups sliced, peeled, and pitted firm-ripe peaches (3¾ to 4 pounds)

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon butter

Topping

1½ cups sifted all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons baking powder

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

5 tablespoons ice-cold butter, diced

¾ cup milk

Optional Accompaniment

1 pint vanilla ice cream or 1 cup heavy cream, softly whipped

• 1.
  Preheat the oven to 400° F.
  
• 2.
  For the peach mixture: Combine the sugar and cornstarch in a large nonreactive pan, pressing out all lumps. Mix in the peaches, lemon juice, and butter, and bring to a boil over high heat. Cook and stir for 1 minute, then set off the heat.
  
• 3.
  For the topping: Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, lemon zest, salt, and nutmeg in a large bowl. Add the butter and, using a pastry blender, cut in until the texture of coarse meal. Drizzle the milk over all and fork quickly just until a soft dough forms—no matter if a few floury specks show.
  
• 4.
  Scoop the peach mixture into an ungreased shallow 2½-quart casserole, spreading to the edge. Drop the topping by tablespoons on top, spacing evenly.
  
• 5.
  Bake on the middle oven shelf until bubbly and golden brown, 30 to 35 minutes.
  
• 6.
  Serve warm or at room temperature, topped, if you like, with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.
  

SURRY COUNTY SONKER WITH MILK DIP

MAKES
12
SERVINGS

Sonkers are cobblers unique to Surry County, North Carolina, which abuts the Virginia state line just where the foothills begin their climb toward the Blue Ridge. No one I queried could tell me the origin of this unusual dessert, of the milk dip that traditionally accompanies it, or even of its name. But there are theories. Some say the name has to do with the way the sonker’s made; that makes no sense to me. Others believe that it comes from the looks of the sonker: It sometimes sinks a bit on cooling. Is “sonker” by chance colloquial for “sinker?” There’s no arguing, however, that sonkers have been made in Surry County as long as anyone can remember or that grans and great-grans could “stir one up in a jiffy.” To celebrate the sonker, Surry County stages a festival early every October on the streets of Mount Airy (Andy Griffith’s hometown and the Mayberry of his popular TV series). What goes into a sonker? Sweet potatoes are popular but so are peaches, blueberries, blackberries, and especially strawberries, a Surry County specialty.

Pastry

3 cups sifted all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup firmly packed cold lard or vegetable shortening

1 large egg lightly beaten with 2 tablespoons cider vinegar

2 tablespoons butter, melted

3 tablespoons sugar

Filling

1 cup sugar

¹
/
₃
cup unsifted all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon apple pie spice or 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon mixed with ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 cup water

½ cup (1 stick) butter, melted

½ teaspoon almond extract

8 cups (2 quarts) blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, pitted dark red cherries, or peeled, pitted, and thinly sliced peaches (about 4½ pounds peaches)

Milk Dip

½ cup sugar

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch

3 cups milk

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

¹
/
₈
teaspoon salt

• 1.
  For the pastry: Whisk the flour and salt together in a large mixing bowl, then, using a pastry blender, cut in the lard until as fine as possible. Add the egg-vinegar mixture, then fork briskly to form a soft but workable dough. Shape into a ball, divide in half, then shape each half into a round about 1 inch thick.
  Wrap in plastic food wrap and refrigerate for several hours.
  
• 2.
  When ready to proceed, preheat the oven to 350° F. Lightly grease a 13 × 9 × 2-inch baking pan and set aside.
  
• 3.
  For the filling: Combine the sugar, flour, and spice in a large mixing bowl. Whisk in the water, melted butter, and almond extract. Add the fruit and toss well to mix.
  
• 4.
  To assemble the sonker: Roll each half of the pastry dough on a lightly floured surface into a 13 × 9-inch rectangle. Using a sharp knife or pastry wheel, cut one pastry rectangle crosswise into 1-inch strips and the second rectangle lengthwise into 1-inch strips. Reserve five nice 13-inch strips and seven pretty 9-inch strips.
  
• 5.
  Press the remaining strips over the bottom of the baking pan so they cover it completely. Slide onto the middle oven shelf and bake for 12 minutes; do not brown. Remove from the oven and raise the oven temperature to 375° F.
  
• 6.
  Scoop the fruit mixture on top of the partially baked pastry, spreading to the corners. Top with the reserved pastry strips, crisscrossing them in a lattice design. Brush the pastry strips generously with the 2 tablespoons melted butter, then sprinkle with the 3 tablespoons sugar.
  
• 7.
  Return the sonker to the middle oven shelf and bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until bubbling and nicely browned.
  
• 8.
  Toward the end of baking, prepare the milk dip: Combine the sugar and cornstarch in a medium-size heavy saucepan, then whisk in the milk. Set over moderate heat and cook,
  whisking constantly, for about 3 minutes or until the mixture thickens. Remove from the heat and whisk in the vanilla and salt.
  
• 9.
  Cool the sonker for about 10 minutes (especially important if it’s made with berries or peaches), then cut into large squares. Arrange on heated dessert plates, and pass the milk dip so that everyone can help himself.
  

Variation

Sweet Potato Sonker:
Prepare the pastry as directed above. While it chills, boil 8 to 9 scrubbed, unpeeled medium-size sweet potatoes (about
³¹
/2 pounds) in a large, heavy saucepan for 20 to 25 minutes or until almost tender. Drain the potatoes, cool, then peel and slice thin (you will need 8 cups sliced potatoes). Finish the sonker as directed, substituting 1 cup apple juice for the water, ½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar for the 1 cup granulated, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract for the ½ teaspoon almond extract. Bake as directed and serve with the milk dip.

SPICED BLACKBERRY AND CORNMEAL COBBLER

MAKES
6
TO
8
SERVINGS

This imaginative recipe comes from chef John Fleer of The Inn at Blackberry Farm in the foothills of the Tennessee Smokies. Some years ago I spent several idyllic days there on assignment for
Gourmet
and of all the desserts I tried, this cobbler was a distinct winner. As the inn’s name suggests, blackberries grow wild there (as they do over much of the South). Their flavor is more intense than that of cultivated berries and if you can find them, by all means use wild blackberries for the cobbler. Many farmer’s markets sell them in season, as do roadside vendors. Garden blackberries can of course be substituted for the wild as can dewberries, blueberries, or raspberries. Note:
Masa harina
or tortilla flour is more widely available than ever; look for it in specialty food shops, Hispanic groceries, or in the “international section” of your supermarket.
Tip:
This cobbler can be made several hours ahead of time—no need to refrigerate.