A Southern Gallimaufry
Wash and clean two pounds very small potatoes. Blot dry, toss with oil seasoned with three cloves minced garlic and a tablespoon each of onion powder, salt, and pepper. Spread in a deep pan and roast at 350, stirring every five minutes or so until the larger ones are soft through. Toss with a light vinaigrette before serving.
One day as a boy, a friend and I dared to enter his father’s tool shed, where among implements such as hammers, saws, screwdrivers, and girly magazines, we found a cabinet stocked with canned potato soup. When I asked why his daddy kept potato soup next to his chop saw, he said, “Momma won’t let him have it in the house.”
I was puzzled at the time, but now I understand. You see, a man’s house may be his castle, but his tool shed is his home, a sanctuary for the masculine spirit and as inviolate to intrusion as a nunnery. A man may keep things there which have no place in the house, even something as seemingly innocuous as potato soup.
Potato soup is neither good nor bad in itself; like Prince Hal, it is poor only in the company it keeps, and as is the case for so many of our foods, its company is often poverty itself. Memories of hard times survived among the men and women of my parents’ generation; after the hard years had ended and victory in the Good War made them members of the most affluent society on earth, they found themselves living in a world that stretched far beyond the dirt roads many grew up on, and they were obliged to learn the difficult lessons a newly-acquired middle-class life required of them.
For many, that meant ridding themselves of aspects of their lives that in this new world were not quite picture-perfect. Potato soup, to my friend’s mother, was not part of her perfect picture; it was Depression food, something people ate when they were poor and down on their luck. Now that they lived in town in a new brick house, had two cars in the garage, and she was secretary of the Twentieth-Century Club, potato soup —so simple, so basic, so very good—had been banished.
Others hearkened back, as my friend’s father did, to those days when a family’s existence was dependent upon making do. They also remembered—even as they trod the carpeted floors of the air-conditioned homes where their difficult children were growing into strangers in their midst—the foods they knew and loved, even if it were biscuits folded over a piece of fried streak-`o-lean they took to school, red-rind cheese and saltines from the store down the road, or chicken and dumplings made to stretch an old hen between ten people.
The foods you love best are often those of your childhood, and my friend’s father found the warmth of potato soup irresistible. I can still conjure up an image of this man sitting out in his shed and opening a can of soup, heating it on a little electric eye, eating it and thinking about his own Momma standing at her wood stove in a pair of old slippers, her hair limp with sweat and tied up with a penny piece of ribbon, cooking the only thing she had to cook—potatoes—into a soup for her family. I can also imagine this man reminiscing upon this while his wife teetered around the kitchen in high heels, her hair lacquered into a $5 hair-do she had redone twice a week cooking store-bought stuff on an electric range.
His wife herself probably remembered her Momma in much the same way as her husband did his, but for my friend’s mother it was a bitter memory, and her efforts to obliterate that—to her mind painful—image of poverty extended to those around her. Bound and determined to eradicate whatever she felt was coarse or common about her and others, she sacrificed upon the altar of her misguided pride the very foods that she secretly loved and learned to make at her mother’s side.
Clarify a stick of butter; mix thoroughly with a pound of finely-minced ham. Add a heaping tablespoon of dry mustard, a dash or two of nutmeg, and ground pepper to taste. Be stingy with the salt. Blend very well and refrigerate, the longer the better. Bring to room temperature before serving.
Jess Yancy, Jr. was an expressive soul with little reserve, a candor celebrated by many, but trying for my mother. It was especially difficult when they went to the movies, since my father’s tastes in films ran to maudlin melodramas.
She said he would hear about these movies from a slew of waitresses, secretaries, and beauticians-–Daddy never passed a beauty parlor without going in; he said it caught the girls at a disadvantage-–who kept him up with the latest Hollywood tear-jerkers.
He’d drag her to see films such as Peyton Place–“It’s bad Faulkner!”)–Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Daddy had a lot to say about the legal issues in that one)–and Madame X, which has his favorite courtroom scene.
“My God, Barbara! Can you imagine what she must be going through!?” he’d say in a clearly audible aside as Lana Turner took the stand. “
Mother never responded, stared with resignation at the screen, studiously avoiding the chilling glances of others. Some scenes reduced Daddy to great heaving sobs, like when they had to pull Susan Kohner off Juanita Moore’s coffin at the end of Imitation of Life.
His only child to inherit this sense of cinematic drama was my sister, Cindy, who bolted out of a Memphis theater during The Snow Queen and was half-way down Union Avenue, screaming, “She’s gonna get me!” before we finally caught up with her.
In a quart pot, stir together a half cup granulated sugar, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, and 3 ounces of good cocoa. To this add well whipped 3 egg yolks and a cup each whole milk and cream.
Blend very well and bring to heat slowly, whisking continually until mixture begins to thicken. Take care not so scorch. When thick, blend in two pats of butter and a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract.
While still warm, pour the pudding through a strainer into a bowl. Refrigerate until cold. Use a fine whisk to cream pudding before spooning into serving containers.
Of course daffodil cake doesn’t have daffodils in it any more than a hummingbird cake has hummingbirds or Girl Scout cookies have Girl Scouts. It just so happens that daffodils–unlike hummingbirds or Girl Scouts–are poisonous.
Daffodil cake is a combination sponge and angel food recipe, both made with a meringue, but the yellow parts of a daffodil cake contain egg yolks—as does a sponge cake—and the white parts do not—as does an angel food. Chiffon cakes, which appeared on tables at about the same time, are a meringue cake with oil.
You will not find an honest mix for any meringue cake in the grocery store; you’re going to have to make it from scratch, and it’s best to make on a clear day because we all know that you can’t make a good meringue when it’s raining, don’t we?
12 large egg whites
1 cup sifted cake flour or sifted all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar (total)
2 teaspoons vanilla
11/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 egg yolks
3/4 teaspoon lemon or orange extract
Finely grated lemon peel
Preheat oven to 350. Bring egg whites to room temperature for 30 minutes. Sift together flour and 3/4 cup sugar 3 times and set aside. Add vanilla, cream of tartar and salt to egg whites.
Beat with electric mixer on medium to high speed, gradually adding 3/4 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, until stiff peaks form. Sift one-fourth of the flour mixture over egg white mixture and fold in gently. Repeat with remaining flour mixture, using one-fourth of flour mixture with each fold.
Transfer half of batter to another bowl. Beat egg yolks on high speed until thick and lemon-colored. Add lemon extract, mix and gently fold yolk mixture into half of egg whites.
Alternately spoon yellow batter and white batter into a very lightly oiled 10-inch tube pan. You can work the batter with the handle of a wooden spoon to refine the marbling, but don’t let it touch the sides.
Bake on a lower rack for 40 to 45 minutes or until top springs back when lightly touched. Immediately invert onto a plate and refrigerate. Top with lemon zest and powdered sugar before serving.
Travis Milton, a native of Russell County, Virginia, high in the Alleghenys, became a chef on the East Coast. In 2010, at a New York restaurant, Milton was part of a group planning dishes that would “tell about who we are.” He wondered aloud about sourcing leather britches and greasy-backs, a type of beans common in mountain gardens.
The following afternoon, the head chef slapped a copy of Ernest Matthew Mickler’s White Trash Cooking onto Milton’s station. “He got in my face,” says Milton, “and started barking, ‘If this is what you wanna do in my kitchen then you can get the fuck out!’”
Having White Trash Cooking slammed in his face was a turning point. To overcome the stereotypes, Milton realized, he’d need to be able to tell the story of Appalachian food, but writing on the region’s cuisine was mostly focused on single mothers dressing up SPAM in a sugary sauce and other relatively recent ways that Appalachian cooks respond to the poverty that is, for most, coal’s legacy in Appalachia.
Then in 2016, Ronni Lundy published Victuals: An Appalachian Journey, with Recipes. Her work won the James Beard Foundation Book of the Year and Best Book, American Cooking awards. In Victuals, Lundy claims that European settlers adopted native Cherokee foods almost wholesale. Wild game, wild herbs and greens, nuts, and berries augmented produce from small gardens of beans, corn, and squash using the “Three Sisters” method.
Appalachians let animals range freely, keeping prized breeds adapted to the landscape. Settlers raised pigs on acorns, berries, and chestnuts, which produced the famous hams of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. After the Civil War decimated the region, residents of isolated Appalachia embraced their gardening traditions, developing thousands of hybridized varieties of apples and pears, squash, tomatoes, collard greens, and other foodstuffs.
While Victuals established a benchmark, the font and source for Appalachian food writing is The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery: Regional Memorabilia and Recipes. First published in 1984, Appalachian Cookery has little resemblance to any other publication involving Southern foods.
The Foxfire Project was the brain-child of Eliot Wigginton, a man from West Virginia who received an advanced education in the north and began teaching at a rural school in northeastern Georgia during the late 1960s. Called “foxfire” after a will-o’-the-wisp in mountain woods, his students collected folklore and customs in a series of oral histories that were first published in a 1972 anthology. Many more editions have followed as well as other volumes documenting Appalachian culture.
According to the text, some of the research and the photographic essays included in Appalachian Cookery were gathered for previous Foxfire books but were not selected for inclusion into an earlier volume. Appalachian Cookery stands out as the most complete and comprehensive record we have of the food, cooking and home life of southern Appalachia in early to mid-20th century. Most of the recipes are very simple; pound cake has four ingredients in equal measure. The book is also a primer on how to use homegrown or wild-gathered foods.
Appalachian Cookery opens a door to a world far away from arugula and alien to star anise, a world where cooking was simple but not coarse, having a balance and symmetry all its own, dictated by the lessons of long-ago voices set in concert with the rhythm of the seasons. For those of us from the upland South, these are our roots.
CRY-BABY COOKIES
Cream 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons shortening with an equal amount of sugar. Add one cup molasses and two beaten eggs. Sift together 4 ¾ cups plain flour with 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 ½ teaspoons soda. Then combine with 2 cups grated coconut, 2 cups chopped walnuts and 1 ½ cups raisins. Add dry ingredients alternately with 1 cup milk to creamed egg mixture. Drop by spoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet. Bake in a moderate (350) oven for 10 minutes. YIELD: approx. 7 dozen cookies.
This is a great late-night dish, wonderful for cold-weather breakfasts, and kids love it because its cheesy and messy and called “rabbits”.
How cheese on toast came to be called ‘rabbit’ or ‘rarebit’–the variations in spelling seem to be arbitrary–is a mystery. You have Scottish and English versions as well–but Escoffier has a recipe for ‘Lapin Gallois‘ and Brillat-Savarin provides one for a ‘Wouelsche Rabette‘.
Mix together a cup of grated cheese–Cheddar or gouda are my usuals–with a slosh of beer–let’s say 1/4 cup–a tablespoon softened butter, and a tablespoon Coleman’s mustard.
Toast thick slices of bread and place in a lightly oiled skillet, top with cheese mixture and broil until bubbling and lightly browned.
