A Love Affair with Southern Cooking (49 page)

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 cups cold water

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup stone-ground white cornmeal (see Note above)

2 cups milk

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

• 1.
  Position the shelf in the middle of the oven and preheat to 425° F. Spoon the oil into a 2-quart soufflé dish and set on the middle oven shelf while you proceed with the recipe.
  
• 2.
  Bring the water and salt to a boil in a large, heavy saucepan set over moderate heat. Slowly whisk in the cornmeal and cook, stirring constantly, for about 2 minutes or until thick and pastelike.
  
• 3.
  Remove from the heat, add 1 cup of the milk, and beat until smooth and creamy. Next beat the eggs in, half at a time, then blend in the remaining 1 cup milk.
  
• 4.
  Remove the hot soufflé dish from the oven, pour in the batter, and return to the middle oven shelf. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until the batter bread is puffy and brown and quivers slightly when you nudge the dish.
  
• 5.
  Rush the batter bread to the table and serve with plenty of butter, salt, and freshly ground black pepper.
  

HUSH PUPPIES

MAKES
3
TO
3½
DOZEN

It was bound to happen: hush puppy mixes and hush puppy “shooters.” I prefer to make mine from scratch and to drop them into the hot fat the old-fashioned way—from a rounded teaspoon—instead of from a spring-loaded “gun” that shoots the batter out in squiggles.

I’m not exactly sure where I ate my first hush puppy, probably on Chesapeake Bay. We sometimes roared across “the little bay” from our summer cottage to eat at some little fish house in Whitestone or Irvington, Virginia. Or maybe it was on one of our jaunts to the Carolina coast.
Wherever, whenever, I couldn’t have been more than eight or ten. From then on, I’ve ordered hush puppies every chance I get—with fried fish, of course, but also with fried chicken and pulled pork (barbecue). For me the perfect hush puppy is fine-textured and light, not too sweet and with just a whiff of onion. And it must come straight from the deep-fat fryer. Any languishing on a steam table turns it leaden in seconds.

As with so many southern recipes, there’s a story to explain this one’s amusing name. Said to date back to the days of Reconstruction after the Civil War, these little corn bread fritters were stirred up by fish camp cooks, fried in deep fat, then tossed to quiet the hounds while their masters ate. In
Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History
(1987), John Egerton, an author for whom I have profound respect, writes that hush puppies originated in Florida, probably “in the general vicinity of St. Marks…an old fishing village on the Gulf Coast south of Tallahassee.” Note:
You must use a floury, stone-ground cornmeal when making hush puppies. Those made with granular meal will fly apart in the hot fat.

Vegetable oil (for deep-fat frying)

2½ cups sifted stone-ground cornmeal (preferably white)

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

1¼ cups buttermilk

¼ cup finely grated yellow onion

1 large egg

• 1.
  Pour 2 inches of oil into a deep skillet, insert a deep-fat thermometer, and set over moderate heat.
  
• 2.
  Meanwhile, combine the cornmeal, sugar, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a large bowl, pressing out all lumps and making a well in the middle of the dry ingredients.
  
• 3.
  Whisk the buttermilk, onion, and egg together in a small bowl, then pour into the well in the dry ingredients and stir briskly to mix.
  
• 4.
  When the oil in the skillet has reached 375° F., scoop the hush puppy batter up by rounded teaspoonfuls and ease into the oil. Fry, no more than 6 to 8 at a time, for 2 to 2½ minutes, turning as needed, until richly browned on all sides.
  Note:
  Keeping the temperature of the oil as close as possible to 375° F. is key, so adjust the burner heat as needed. If the oil is too cool, the hush puppies will be greasy; if it’s too hot, they will burn before they are done inside.
  
• 5.
  As the hush puppies brown, lift to paper toweling with a slotted spoon. Also skim any small bits from the oil, and continue frying the hush puppies until all are done.
  
• 6.
  Serve hot with fried fish or shellfish, fried chicken, or pork barbecue.
  

Lucia insisted that they have a regular hour for breakfast just like they did for other meals…a regular breakfast made for other regular habits.

—
FLANNERY O’CONNOR
,
THE CROP

AUNT BERTIE’S CRISPY CORNMEAL PANCAKES

MAKES
4
SERVINGS

My niece Kim has been bragging about these light-as-air “corn breads” for years and urged me to include them in this book. They come from her mother’s side of the family (my brother was Kim’s dad). I never met Aunt Bertie (who died at 79) but like her many sisters, she was a good southern cook. I recently drove down to Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, where Kim shares a barn-red bungalow with her older sister, Linda, to watch her make Aunt Bertie’s cornmeal pancakes; I’d never tasted them. Like Aunt Bertie, Kim’s a “by guess and by gosh cook.” She rarely resorts to precise measures because she instinctively knows when something’s right or wrong. This time I made her use measuring cups and spoons for this old word-of-mouth recipe. Kim has improved the original by using self-rising cornmeal and her pancakes practically rise off the plate. Linda’s boyfriend, Eric Eibelheuser, a transplanted New Jersey–ite now working in North Carolina, joined us the day Kim tested Aunt Bertie’s cornmeal pancakes and, like the rest of us, was blown away by them. “You could make a meal out of these!” he said. Quite so. Serve them for breakfast, lunch, or supper accompanied by sourwood or tupelo honey or, if you prefer, homemade muscadine, damson, or fig preserves. Note:
Kim says that only a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet will do for frying the pancakes. She pours in about
¼
inch of vegetable oil, then sets over fairly high heat until it’s “spitting-hot.” Kim’s skillet is small—only eight inches across—so she must cook the pancakes in three batches. In my ten-inch skillet, I can do it in two.

½ cup unsifted self-rising, stone-ground yellow cornmeal

¼ cup unsifted all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

¹
/
₈
teaspoon black pepper

²
/
₃
cup cold water (about)

¹¹
/
₃
cups vegetable oil (for frying)

• 1.
  Combine the cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt, and pepper in a medium-size mixing bowl, then whisk in just enough water to make a batter slightly thicker than pancake batter.
  
• 2.
  Pour the vegetable oil into a 10-inch cast-iron skillet and set over moderately high heat for about 2 minutes or until ripples appear on the skillet bottom.
  
• 3.
  Reduce the heat to moderate and fry the pancakes in two batches, dropping the batter into the skillet by rounded tablespoons, spacing them well apart, and browning 45 seconds to 1 minute on each side or until crisp and golden. Drain on paper toweling.
  
• 4.
  Serve the cornmeal pancakes hot with honey, jam, or preserves. No butter needed, although Aunt Bertie usually put out a plate of butter as well as a pot of honey and jars of homemade jams and preserves.
  

HOT DINNER ROLLS

MAKES
2
TO
2½
DOZEN ROLLS

Florence Soltys, one of Chapel Hill’s most accomplished hostesses, often serves these rolls at luncheons and dinners. The recipe, she tells me, is one that she remembers her Tennessee aunt, Rhoda Gray, making when she was a child. Florence also tells me that she descends from two old East Tennessee families: the Grays on her father’s side and the Hills on her mother’s. “We were hill people who settled around Cades Cove,” she adds. That nineteenth-century village is now a major attraction of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The dairy farm where Florence spent her childhood—“not far from Gatlinburg”—is still in the Gray family. Her brother, a retired veterinarian, now runs it. Note:
This rich yeast dough can be shaped into cloverleaf, fan-tans, Parker House rolls, pan rolls, anything you fancy. I personally favor cloverleaf rolls.

1 cup milk

3 tablespoons butter or vegetable shortening

3 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

One ¼-ounce package active dry yeast dissolved in ¼ cup very warm water (105° to 115° F.)

1 large egg, lightly beaten

4 to 4½ cups sifted all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon butter, melted

• 1.
  Heat the milk in a small, heavy saucepan for about 3 minutes over moderate heat or until it steams. Pour the milk into a large heatproof bowl and mix in the butter, sugar, and salt; cool until an instant-read thermometer registers 105° to 115° F.
  
• 2.
  Mix in the yeast mixture, then the egg, and finally 4 cups of the flour. Mix well by hand, adding more flour as needed until you have a soft but manageable dough; this will take about 3 minutes.
  
• 3.
  Shape the dough into a ball, place in a large buttered bowl, turn in the bowl so the buttered side is up, then cover with a clean, dry cloth and let rise in a warm, draft-free spot for about 1 hour or until doubled in bulk.
  
• 4.
  Punch the dough down, then shape into cloverleaf rolls, fan-tans, Parker House rolls, or pan rolls—whatever you fancy—placing in greased muffin pan cups or on greased baking sheets. Cover with a clean, dry cloth and let rise in a warm, draft-free spot for about 45 minutes or until doubled in bulk.
  
• 5.
  Toward the end of rising, preheat the oven to 375° F. Brush the rolls gently with the melted butter and bake on the middle oven shelf for 15 to 18 minutes or until lightly browned.
  
• 6.
  Serve hot with plenty of butter.
  

Food—two banana cakes and a baked ham, a platter of darkly deviled eggs, new rolls—and flowers kept arriving at the back, and the kitchen filled with women…

—
EUDORA WELTY
,
THE GOLDEN APPLES

SWEET POTATO YEAST ROLLS

MAKES
2
DOZEN CLOVERLEAF ROLLS

This recipe is adapted from one sent to me by the North Carolina SweetPotato Commission. This southern state tops all others in the production of sweet potatoes and the commission’s mission is to spread the gospel of the golden tubers: their impressive nutritional value, their round-the-calendar availability, their easy-on-the-budget price, and, not least, their delicious versatility.