A Love Affair with Southern Cooking (54 page)

BANANA PUDDING

MAKES
8
SERVINGS

Country restaurants proliferate all over the South and despite their sometimes cutesy names (Ye Olde Country Kitchen, Grannie’s Pantry), most serve the good down-home cooking today’s mothers and grandmothers knew as children. Many of these restaurants serve salad-bar style so that you can heap your plate, choosing from a dozen or more “mains and sides,” then go back for dessert. Front and center here—nearly always—is a big pan of banana pudding. Some restaurants now cut corners by using vanilla pudding mixes and commercial whipped toppings. Others still make banana pudding the old-fashioned way. This is a good from-scratch recipe.

¾ cup sugar

¹
/
₃
cup unsifted all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

4 cups (1 quart) milk

1 cup half-and-half

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

75 vanilla wafers (about ¾ of a 12-ounce box)

6 medium firm-ripe bananas (about 2¼ pounds)

1 cup heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks with 2 tablespoons confectioners’ (10 X) sugar and ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

• 1.
  Combine the sugar, flour, and salt in a large, heavy saucepan. Whisk in the milk and half-and-half, set over moderate heat, and cook, stirring constantly, for 7 to 8 minutes or until thickened and smooth. Whisk a little of the hot mixture into the beaten eggs, stir back into the pan, and cook, stirring constantly, for about a minute or until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the mixture registers 160° F. Remove from the heat and mix in the vanilla.
  
• 2.
  Skim-coat the bottom of an ungreased 9 × 9 × 2-inch pan with about ½ cup of the hot pudding, then “pave” with 25 vanilla wafers, arranging the cookies side by side so that they touch one another.
  
• 3.
  Peel the bananas, slice ¼ inch thick, and layer a third of them on top of the vanilla wafers, again arranging side by side. Spread with a third of the remaining pudding, add another 25 vanilla wafers, then half the remaining bananas, each time arranging the same way. Spread with half the remaining pudding. Repeat the layers once more, then top with a final layer of pudding.
  
• 4.
  Frost the pudding with the whipped cream, set in the refrigerator, slide a small baking sheet on top, and chill for at least 1 hour before serving.
  

Everybody knew something was bad wrong with Gaten…Wouldn’t even eat a spoonful of Everleen’s banana pudding. I could have eaten the whole thing by myself…They said Gaten was in L.O.V.E.

—
DORI SANDERS
,
CLOVER

AMBROSIA

MAKES
4
TO
6
SERVINGS

Somewhere down the line Southerners lost their way when it came to making ambrosia. They filled it with canned crushed pineapple and, worse still, with mini marshmallows and maraschino cherries. In its purest form, ambrosia is nothing more than alternate layers of sliced oranges and freshly grated coconut. No empty calories here. In
Mrs. Hill’s Southern Practical Cookery and Receipt Book
(1872), however, Annabella P. Hill includes a somewhat more elaborate version. To quote: “Ambrosia is made by placing upon a glass stand…alternate layers of grated cocoanut, oranges, peeled and sliced round, and a pineapple sliced thin. Begin with the oranges, and use cocoanut last, spreading between each layer sifted loaf sugar. Sweeten the cocoanut milk, and pour over.” Here’s the recipe I like best. Note:
To make pineapple fans, slice the peeled and cored fruit into thin rings, then cut each into wedges measuring about 1
½
inches across at the widest point.

4 medium navel oranges, peeled, halved lengthwise, and each half cut crosswise into thin slices

1¼ cups unsweetened grated coconut (preferably freshly grated)

2 cups freshly cut pineapple fans (optional; see Note above)

½ cup superfine sugar

¹
/
₃
cup fresh orange juice

3 large mint sprigs (garnish)

• 1.
  Layer the orange slices, grated coconut, and, if you like, the pineapple fans in a medium-size glass bowl, sprinkling each layer with the sugar.
  
• 2.
  Pour the orange juice evenly over all, cover, and refrigerate for several hours.
  
• 3.
  Remove from the refrigerator and allow to stand at room temperature for about 15 minutes. Sprig with mint and serve.
  

AUNT EMMA’S BOURBON CUSTARD

MAKES
8
TO
10
SERVINGS

I love Tidewater Virginia, particularly that woodsy stretch undulating along the north bank of the James River (Route 5) between Richmond and Williamsburg. There are half a dozen imposing plantations here in FFV (First Family of Virginia) country, one of which (Berkeley, built in 1726) was the birthplace of one American president (William Henry Harrison) and the ancestral home of a second (Ohio-born Benjamin Harrison). Here, too, is Sherwood Forest, the home of President John Tyler. When I was a food editor at
The Ladies’ Home Journal,
I covered Tyler’s granddaughter’s debut. Two decades later, I returned to Sherwood Forest to interview Payne Tyler, the wife of Tyler grandson Harrison Ruffin Tyler, for a
Bon Appétit
article on James River plantation recipes. This unusual bourbon custard appeared in that article. The recipe, Payne told me, is one from her South Carolina family; she grew up at Mulberry Hill Plantation in Edgefield County near Aiken. The recipe was her Aunt Emma’s. It seems that Aunt Emma’s mother-in-law, Effie, could only make one thing: angel food cake, which called for a dozen egg whites. According to Payne, Aunt Emma thought that there must be a way to use up the twelve egg yolks, so she created this bourbon custard. “It’s just like eating silk,” Payne says.

4 cups (1 quart) heavy cream

1 cup sugar

12 jumbo egg yolks, lightly beaten

½ cup fine bourbon

• 1.
  Preheat the oven to 325° F. Butter a 2-quart casserole and set aside.
  
• 2.
  Bring the cream and sugar to a simmer in a large, heavy saucepan over moderate heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
  
• 3.
  Whisk 1 cup of the hot cream mixture into the beaten egg yolks, then stir back into the saucepan and cook and stir for about a minute or just until the mixture begins to thicken. Do not boil or the custard may curdle. Strain the custard into a large heatproof bowl and mix in the bourbon.
  
• 4.
  Pour the custard into the casserole and set in a large shallow baking pan. Slide onto the middle oven shelf, then pour enough hot water into the pan to come halfway up the sides of the casserole.
  
• 5.
  Bake the custard for 1 to 1¼ hours until lightly browned; the custard may not be completely set.
  
• 6.
  Transfer the custard to a wire rack and cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate for several hours or until softly set.
  

I know folks all have a tizzy about it, but I like a little bourbon of an evening. It helps me sleep.

—
LILLIAN CARTER

Only a Southerner knows that “gimme some sugar” doesn’t mean “pass the sugar bowl.”

—
ANONYMOUS

PORT WINE JELLY

MAKES
4
TO
6
SERVINGS

This is such an old-fashioned recipe that few people bother to make it any more. And that’s a shame because it’s both simple and sophisticated. I first tasted wine jelly one Sunday lunch when I was no more than ten. It had been made by the wife of one of my father’s Botany Department colleagues at North Carolina State College and it came to table in stemmed goblets snow-capped with whipped cream. Thinking that this was some new flavor of Jell-O, I dove in; then I made a face, put down my spoon, and refused to eat any more. My moratorium lasted until I’d acquired a taste for fine wine. I don’t know where wine jellies originated—England, I suspect. But I do know that from Colonial days (when gelatin had to be made at home by boiling calves’ feet) right up through the mid twentieth century, wine jellies were often served at the end of elegant southern dinners. Note:
Other wines can be substituted for port: a malmsey (sweet Madeira), for example, an amontillado (sherry), even a Marsala.

2 envelopes unflavored gelatin

2 cups water

½ cup sugar

½ cinnamon stick

One 3-inch strip orange zest

One 2-inch strip lemon zest

2 cups fine fruity port such as a ruby or late-bottled vintage (see Note above)

1 cup heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks with 2 tablespoons confectioners’ (10X) sugar

• 1.
  Soften the gelatin in ½ cup of the water in a medium-size, nonreactive, heatproof bowl.
  
• 2.
  Meanwhile, bring the remaining 1½ cups water, the sugar, cinnamon stick, and orange and lemon zests to a boil in a small, heavy, nonreactive saucepan over moderate heat, stirring occasionally. Adjust the heat so that the liquid bubbles lazily and simmer uncovered for 5 minutes. Discard the cinnamon stick and the orange and lemon zests.
  
• 3.
  Pour the hot liquid over the softened gelatin and stir until the gelatin dissolves completely. Cool 10 minutes, then stir in the port wine. Cool 20 minutes more, then set uncovered in the refrigerator and chill for several hours or until the wine jelly is set.
  
• 4.
  To serve, break the wine jelly into small pieces with a fork (they should look like garnets or rubies), then layer into stemmed goblets with the sweetened whipped cream.