A Love Affair with Southern Cooking (67 page)

¾ cup water

4 tablespoons (½ stick) butter

2 teaspoons cider vinegar

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon peppermint extract

¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 drop yellow food coloring

3 drops green food coloring

• 1.
  Place the water, butter, and vinegar in a large, heavy saucepan and insert a candy ther-mom-eter. Set over low heat and as soon as the butter melts, mix in the sugar. Heat slowly without stirring until the mixture reaches 267° F. This may take as long as 35 or 40 minutes. Meanwhile, generously butter a large baking sheet and set aside.
  
• 2.
  Set the candy off the heat and add the peppermint and vanilla extracts and the yellow and green food coloring. Do not stir.
  
• 3.
  Pour the hot candy onto the buttered baking sheet and cool until you can make a thumb-print in the surface. With lightly buttered hands, gather the candy into a ball and knead in the flavorings, food coloring, and melted butter; it won’t have combined with the candy.
  
• 4.
  When the candy is stiff enough to pull, stretch into thin strands, then reshape into a ball. Continue pulling, twisting, and reshaping until the candy takes on a silvery sheen and becomes too stiff to pull.
  
• 5.
  Quickly stretch and twist into a rope about 1 inch in diameter, then, with buttered kitchen shears, snip crosswise at ½-inch intervals.
  
• 6.
  Wrap each mint in wax paper, place in an airtight canister, and allow to “season” for about a week. Taffy-stiff when they go into the canister, the mints will emerge at week’s end as soft as butter creams.
  

…three times a day she spread that enormous table with solid food, freshly baked bread, huge platters of vegetables, immoderate roasts of meat, extravagant tarts, strudels, pies—enough for twenty people.

—
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
,
HOLIDAY

SUGARED AND SPICED PECANS

MAKES
6½
TO
7
CUPS

With pecans being one of the South’s principal crops, southern cooks not only know dozens of ways to prepare them but also continue to dream up new recipes. Spiced pecans, as far as I know, belong to the latter half of the twentieth century, as do their countless variations. This particular recipe is my own. Serve as a snack, add to a tea table, or pass at the end of an elegant dinner. Some people like to serve spiced pecans with cocktails but I frankly find them too sweet to pair with drinks.

4 cups pecan halves

2 large egg whites, beaten until frothy with 3 tablespoons cold water

1½ cups sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ teaspoon black pepper

• 1.
  Preheat the oven to 250° F. Spritz a large rimmed baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray or, if you prefer, use a nonstick baking sheet. Set the pan aside.
  
• 2.
  Dip the pecans, about half of the total amount at a time, in the beaten egg whites, then place in a large sieve to drain. Meanwhile, combine all remaining ingredients and divide between two large plastic zipper bags.
  
• 3.
  Shake the pecans briskly in the sieve to drain off the excess beaten egg whites, then place half of them in each of the zipper bags of spiced sugar, seal, and shake well to coat.
  
• 4.
  Spread the pecans on the baking sheet and bake on the middle oven shelf for 15 minutes. Stir well and again spread the pecans on the baking sheet.
  
• 5.
  Reduce the oven temperature to 200° F. and bake the pecans 2 hours longer or until glistening and richly browned, stirring and spreading every half hour or so.
  
• 6.
  Remove the pecans from the oven, break apart, spread on a clean baking sheet, and let stand at room temperature for at least an hour or until crisp and dry.
  Note:
  Stored in an airtight container, these spiced pecans will keep “fresh” for several weeks.
  

Four states claim pecan pie for their own—Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia. I have eaten this incarnate richness in each…my choice goes to the Georgia pie.

—
CLEMENTINE PADDLEFORD
,
HOW AMERICA EATS

R
ight up until World War Two (perhaps I should say until war’s end), many southern cookbooks devoted almost as many pages to food preservation as they did to food preparation. Occasionally even more. There’s good reason for this.

The South is hot six to eight months out of twelve (year-round in South Florida); therefore, conserving food safely was every cook’s preoccupation before home freezers revolutionized their lives. So was “putting food by” for the family to enjoy in fallow winter months. Because the South was largely agricultural, food was “home-grown.” And that meant meat and dairy as well as fruits and vegetables.

I find the scope of food conservation in
The Receipt Book of Harriott Pinckney Horry, 1770,
breathtaking. This South Carolina plantation matron teaches not only how “to keep tomatoes for winter use” but also how to extend the shelf life of butter as much as a month by adding a finely pounded blend of salt, sugar, and saltpeter: one ounce per pound of butter. There are also directions on how “to preserve small green oranges” and “dry peaches” plus something I’ve never heard of: “To Mango Muskmellons or Cucumbers”—basically brining and pickling with garlic, horseradish, ginger, and mustard seeds.

I’m not so sure about the “mango-ing,” but Horry’s walnut “catchup” and mushroom “catchup” are recipes I’d like to try. The second comes from her mother, Eliza Lucas Pinckney, as does this recipe for Mushroom Powder:

Take 4 lb. Mushrooms that have been squeez’d and dry them with a little spice [possibly allspice, nutmeg or mace, and black pepper] in the Sun or Oven, and Powder them for Made Dishes.

Mary Randolph (
The Virginia Housewife,
1824) tells her readers how to cure bacon, beef, and herring. She also offers a recipe for oyster “catsup,” which, she says, “…gives a fine flavour to white sauces, and if a glass of brandy be added, it will keep good for considerable time.”

Randolph doesn’t neglect the more conventional pickles, jams, and brandied fruits, nor do Lettice Bryan
(The Kentucky Housewife,
1839) and Sarah Rutledge
(The Carolina Housewife
, 1847). All three show how to make a variety of “spirits,” and Bryan, under “Domestic Liquors,” shares such quaint recipes as rose brandy, raspberry cordial, and gooseberry wine.

In my few years with the North Carolina Agricultural Extension Service, my first job was to teach 4-H Club girls how to can what they had grown—usually tomatoes, cucumbers, butter beans, yellow squash, peaches, and apples. To be honest, they knew more than I.

Later, as the extension’s woman’s editor in the Raleigh office, I coauthored (with food preservation specialist Rose Ellwood Bryan) step-by-step pamphlets on the correct way to make jams, jellies, and so forth. I even doubled for Rose Ellwood on UNC-TV demonstrating how to can peaches—LIVE for one solid hour with no breaks or commercials. Unfortunately, I became so rattled that I canned the pits instead of the peaches, then got the silly giggles. That ended any dreams of a television career.

Every summer when I was little, my mother flew into an orgy of watermelon-rind pickling using a recipe supplied by a southern friend (you’ll find that recipe on Chapter 7). And during World War Two, she faithfully preserved much of what my father grew in our Victory Garden: strawberries and tomatoes, for sure, but also asparagus, corn cut from the cob, and an end-of-summer soup made of garden gleanings. The jiggling gauge on the lid of Mother’s big pressure canner scared me to bits because I’d heard tales of nasty explosions.

Canning and pickling fell from favor after the war, but once again, thanks to the recent proliferation of farmer’s markets and the dewy produce they sell, Southerners are trying their hands at what their grandmothers had done almost on auto-pilot. Today’s plunge into pickling and preserving, however, has little to do with necessity as it did in grandmother’s day. It’s mainly for fun. Or maybe to take the blue ribbon at the state fair.

Fortunately, twenty-first-century picklers and preservers can use food processors to speed the slicing, dicing, chopping, and puréeing—no matter how old the recipe. That’s something those eighteenth-and nineteenth-century food conservationists would surely have welcomed.

JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE PICKLE RELISH

MAKES ABOUT
6
HALF-PINTS

When I worked as an assistant home demonstration agent in Iredell County, North Carolina, I loved to prowl the countryside and ferret out the local food specialties. Early on I discovered Dixie Dames, a small shop just outside Statesville that sold heavenly homemade pickles and relishes. If memory serves, there were two Dixie Dames (elderly sisters) and the things they sold were made from handed-down family recipes. There were Plantation Circles (watermelon rind pickles the color of celadon) and bread and butter pickles, but my own favorite was the Jerusalem Artichoke Pickle Relish. Jerusalem artichokes, which run wild all over North Carolina, are a type of sunflower in no way related to the prickly green globe artichokes. The Jerusalem part of their name is said to be a corruption of
girasole
,
the Italian word for sunflower. These artichokes are faun-skinned, knobby tubers, supremely crisp, nut-sweet, and low in calories because their starch (inulin) is a form that the body cannot metabolize. Today they’re sold as sunchokes and nearly every green market sells them in season (fall and winter). The recipe that follows is my attempt to reproduce that wonderful Dixie Dames Jerusalem Artichoke Pickle Relish of my youth.

2 to 2½ pounds Jerusalem artichokes, skins scraped off and the tubers coarsely chopped (you will need exactly 1 quart of prepared artichokes)

1 pint coarsely chopped cored and seeded red bell peppers (about 4 large peppers)

1 pint coarsely chopped yellow onions (about 3 large onions)

1 gallon cold water mixed with 1 cup pickling salt (brine)

¹¹
/
₃
cups sugar

2½ cups cider vinegar

1½ tablespoons mustard seeds

1 tablespoon ground turmeric

• 1.
  Place the artichokes, peppers, onions, and brine in a large nonreactive kettle, cover, and soak at room temperature for 3 hours. Drain in a cheesecloth-lined colander, then bundle in cheesecloth and squeeze as dry as possible. Return to the kettle, discarding the cheesecloth.
  
• 2.
  Wash and rinse 6 half-pint preserving jars and their closures and submerge in a large kettle of boiling water.
  
• 3.
  Bring the sugar, vinegar, mustard seeds, and turmeric to a full rolling boil in a large nonreactive saucepan, then boil uncovered for 1 minute. Pour over the relish and mix well.
  
• 4.
  Lift the preserving jars from the boiling water one by one and pack with relish, leaving ¼ inch head space at the top.
  Tip:
  To avoid spills, use a wide-mouth canning funnel.
  Run a thin-blade spatula around the inside of the jar to release air bubbles; wipe the jar rim with a clean, damp cloth, then screw on the closure.
  
• 5.
  Process the jars for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath (212° F.). Lift from the water bath; complete the seals, if necessary, by tightening the lids, then cool to room temperature.
  
• 6.
  Date and label each jar, then store on a cool, dark shelf several weeks before opening.
  

On a hot day in Virginia, I know nothing more comforting than a fine spiced pickle, brought up trout-like from the sparkling depths of the aromatic jar below the stairs of Aunt Sally’s cellar.

—
THOMAS JEFFERSON

CUCUMBER STICK PICKLES

MAKES ABOUT
6
PINTS

Some years ago when I was sleuthing out some of the South’s best home cooks, I was told to look up Mrs. Ivan Dishman of Sugar Grove, North Carolina; that’s up in the Blue Ridge not far from Boone. Better known as “Miz Nannie Grace,” she was famous for her pickles and relishes and was kind enough to share several old family rec
ipes with me. For these pickles she said she “just grabbed cucumbers out of the garden as they matured.” The ones to use are the little Kirbies or pickling cucumbers, which are rarely waxed. For Mrs. Dishman’s special relish, see Blue Ridge Sweet Red Pepper Relish.

22 Kirby cucumbers, each about 5 inches long (approximately 5 pounds)

3 quarts boiling water

1 quart cider vinegar

3 cups sugar

3 tablespoons pickling salt

2 teaspoons celery seeds

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

¾ teaspoon mustard seeds

• 1.
  Scrub the cucumbers well in cold water, then trim, cut into 4½-inch lengths, and quarter each piece lengthwise.
  
• 2.
  Place the cucumber sticks in a large, heavy kettle; add the boiling water, cover, and let stand for 4 to 5 hours.
  
• 3.
  When ready to proceed, wash and rinse 6 one-pint preserving jars and their closures and submerge in a large kettle of boiling water.
  
• 4.
  Combine the vinegar, sugar, salt, celery seeds, turmeric, and mustard seeds in a small, heavy nonreactive saucepan; bring to a boil over moderate heat then reduce the heat to low and simmer uncovered for 5 minutes.
  
• 5.
  Meanwhile, lift the preserving jars from the boiling water one by one and pack with the cucumber sticks, standing them on end and wedging as tightly as possible.
  Note:
  For prettier jars, Mrs. Dishman rings the most attractive
  cucumber sticks around the outside, then fills the center with less-than-perfect pieces.
  
• 6.
  Ladle the boiling vinegar mixture into each jar, covering the cucumber sticks completely but leaving ¼ inch head space at the top. Run a thin-blade spatula around the inside of the jar to release trapped air bubbles; wipe the jar rim with a clean, damp cloth, then screw on the closure.
  
• 7.
  Process the jars for 10 minutes in a boiling water bath (212° F.). Lift from the water bath; complete the seals, if necessary, by tightening the lids, then cool to room temperature.
  
• 8.
  Date and label each jar, then store on a cool, dark shelf several weeks before opening.