Tag: Southern cooking

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Sawmill Gravy

When the nation began to recover from its bloody Civil War, and on into the early 20th century, timber became the South’s biggest cash commodity. Logging camps and sawmills sprang up like mangling mushrooms in the great forests stretching from the Chesapeake Bay to Galveston. The deforestation of the southeast was an ecological calamity of continental proportions, but it provided a defeated, dispirited people with sustenance.

In my homeland of the middle South sawmill gravy is a staple for breakfast. This recipe makes a gracious plenty. Many folks I knew as a boy would keep leftover gravy, biscuits, and breakfast meats on the stove for anyone hungry until the mid-day dinner.

North Mississippi Sawmill Gravy

This recipe will give you a flavorful gravy that is light-years better than that library paste you’re used to being served on breakfast buffets or in fast-food restaurants. Purists will decry my addition of a light stock to the mixture, but if they prefer a gloopy sausage-flavored white sauce, that’s because they just don’t know any better. I’m a firm believer that starch needs unfettered water in order to bloom properly.

Brown about a half-pound pork sausage in a little oil (you can use bacon drippings if you like). Break it up very well. When quite done, sprinkle in about two tablespoons plain flour, and blend until smooth. When flour begins to brown, stir in about a cup of water. Mix well. To this add enough milk to make a thin gravy. Reduce heat and cook down to a good consistency, perhaps a little lighter than you want, since it will thicken off heat. Salt if needed. I like it with a heft of black pepper.

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Jett’s Table

My Aunt Jett learned to cook from her mother, whose people settled a wilderness. Food was their only pleasure not subject to religion. They sustained themselves and their families on corn and pork with whatever else they could grow or kill. They planted and picked, cooked and baked, dried and canned, making the most of what they had season to season, year to year, generation to generation.

Jett always had something fixed for whatever company might drop in: stewed greens, limas, black-eyed peas, or snap beans, new or creamed potatoes, fried chicken, pork chops, or breaded steak. If it were summer, she’d have fresh sliced tomatoes, fried okra, or corn on the cob.She served her meals with sliced onion, cornbread or biscuits, and sawmill gravy with sweetened tea to drink; she seasoned with streak-o’-lean, salt, black pepper,, maybe a little cayenne, and sage.

Jet’s cooking was simple, but not coarse; it had a balance and symmetry all its own, dictated by long-ago voices set in concert with the seasons. Jett thanked God before we ate, and that, too is elemental of our sustenance.

Aunt Jett (left) with her sisters Maude and Virgie.
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Fresh Pimentos with Cheese

Before bells became the most popular mild pepper, everyone grew pimentos. These beautiful, thick-walled fruits work well in dishes across the main board. For this recipe, we used both green and red pods. Halve and seed fresh pimentos. For two cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese use about a half a cup of diced peppers lightly sauteed in scant oil. Use enough mayonnaise to just moisten, a bit of granulated garlic, and chopped scallions or shallots. Salt to taste.

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Cathead Biscuits

Take two cups of self-rising flour and sift in dry a scant teaspoon of baking soda. Add 1/3 cup cold vegetable shortening and mix thoroughly until granular. Working quickly, stir in enough chilled buttermilk to make a sticky dough. Throw this dough out on a generously-floured surface, sprinkle with a scant more flour and knead once or twice, no more than enough to make a manageable mass. Roll out thick, about half an inch and cut into large rounds, at least 3″. Place the biscuits–just touching–in a lightly greased skillet or thick metal pan. Pop them into a very hot oven (450) for about a quarter an hour until golden-brown and fragrant. Brush with butter while hot.

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Mississippi’s Ark of Taste

The Ark of Taste is an online catalogue developed and maintained by the Slow Food Foundation that records small-scale quality productions of foodstuffs belonging to the cultures, history and traditions of our world. The Ark grows day by day, gathering alerts from people who see the flavors of their childhood disappearing. This is a selection of the foods in the catalogue tagged with Mississippi. Native Mississippians will find many familiar, some surprising, and likely a few objectionable. As a Calhoun County native, I’m  proud to include two sweet potato varieties.

American Native Pecan
American Paddlefish
American Persimmon
Bradford Watermelon
Cotton Patch Goose
Hayman Sweet Potato
Louisiana Mirlitron
Mississippi Silver Hull Bean
Moon and Stars Watermelon
Nancy Hall Sweet Potato
Pawpaw
Piney Woods Cattle
Shagbark Hickory
Southern Field Peas
Traditional Sorghum Syrup
Tupelo Honey
Watermelon Pickles
White African Sorghum
White Velvet Okra
Wild Gulf Coast Shrimp
Yellow-Meated Watermelon

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On the Gentrification of Southern Foods

We’ve seen black-eyed peas made into everything short of cupcakes with sweet potato icing (don’t you dare!), and if I run up on one more gourmet recipe for fried green tomatoes, I’m going to take a skillet out and start swinging at anybody with a fork. In the restaurant business it’s not unusual for chefs of one ilk or another to turn a hayseed staple into a Broadway entrée; most basic recipes are open to elaboration, and every cook has a twist; a pinch here, a dash there, a pot for this, a pan for that. If the cook’s intentions are honorable, meaning that his or her primary concern is with how a dish tastes, all the better. But if you’re putting crab ceviche over cold butter bean fritters just so you can charge six bucks more, that’s just wrong.

 

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Our Summer Salad

Within living memory this simple dish was a staple throughout the rural South, a mild fresh summer vegetable laden vinaigrette that goes well with most meats, beans, and fresh greens. Use the freshest produce you can find. Cut into bite-sized pieces, place in a glass or ceramic bowl, and toss with salt and fresh ground black pepper. Resist the temptation to use garlic and/or herbs. Add enough white vinegar to cover the vegetables a quarter way and half that amount of corn oil. Toss and refrigerate before serving. Refresh the mix with vegetables, seasonings, and liquids as needed.

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On Pimento Cheese

Robert Moss, who’s from Charleston, is a culinary historian, a geeky gaggle of food writers among whom I am gosling if not egg.

In Going Lardcore: Adventures in New Southern Dining, Moss delves into stories of Low Country dishes such as shrimp and grits and she-crab soup as well as elements of our broader Southern cuisine like bourbon, fried green tomatoes and pimento cheese. Here he becomes troublesome, claiming rum is more Southern than bourbon, that fried green tomatoes are a Yankee invention, and that pimento cheese originated in upstate New York. It’s this pimento and cheese issue I’m all over like a duck on a June bug, but before going any further, let’s turn to this matter of spelling, since I’m acutely aware that any article in Mississippi is going to be scratched over and henpecked by a pompous flock of literati. God help me if my semicolons lack weight.

Yes, I am quite aware that the it’s the pimiento pepper, but in his article “Creating a New Southern Icon: The Curious History of Pimento Cheese”, Moss notes that “In the late 1890s, imported Spanish sweet peppers started being canned and sold by large food manufacturers, which not only boosted their popularity but also introduced the Spanish name pimiento. Soon the ‘i’ was dropped from common usage, and by the turn of the century most print accounts of the peppers call them ‘pimentos’.” I’ll remind you that Moss has a PhD. (in English, no less) from Furman, and though I’m not known for my slavish allegiance to academics, like the rest of you, I always concur with eggheads when they’re in my corner. It looks good on paper.

Moss does not create another idol in this article; instead he reveals himself as an iconoclast of the first order by exposing the Yankee roots of a Southern dish Boston-based food writer Judy Gelman claims is “held sacred by Southerners”, and his research seems brutally thorough. Evangelism is clearly in play. What made pimento and cheese characteristically Southern is the use of cheddar. In memory lives the vivid image of a red hoop of cheddar sitting on the counter of a small country store under wax paper ready to be sliced and eaten with saltines and a hunk of baloney or a can of Viennas or sardines. There’s no doubt in my mind that this was the cheese most often grated and used with homemade mayonnaise for pimento and cheese in rural kitchens throughout the South. Still and all, Moss makes a valid point; if foods we consider Southern are anathematized by Yankee roots, then our idolized pimento cheese has feet of clay. My point is that we found out how to do it right and made it ours.

As to pimento and cheese itself, I’m not going to be so crass as to give you a recipe. You do it the way you like it; God knows you’re going to anyway. Pimento cheese should be devoid of controversy. It’s not; everyone thinks their version is the best. But you’re the one making it, so to hell with them. I also belong to a schismatic if not to say heretical sect who find a fresh sweet peppers from the garden as acceptable as canned pimientos, and have no problem adding chopped green onions, though I get a lot of finger-wagging over that. I just smile.

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Poke Salad

In April, 2000, the Allen Canning Company of Siloam Springs, Arkansas processed its last batch of “poke sallet” greens. John Williams, the canning supervisor at Allen, said, “The decision to stop processing poke was because we couldn’t finding people interested in picking poke and bringing it to us.” Poke processing was never a significant item in their mult-imillion-dollar enterprise, but Williams mentioned that one of the best markets for canned poke was southern  California due to the Oakies.

Euell Gibbons lauds poke as “probably the best-known and most widely-used wild vegetable in America.” In Stalking the Wild Asparagus, Gibbons writes that Native Americans and early explorers were unstinting in their praise of this “succulent potherb.”

“They carried seeds when they went back home and poke soon became a popular cultivated garden vegetable in southern Europe and North Africa, a position it still maintains. In America it is still a favorite green vegetable with many country people and the tender young sprouts, gathered from wild plants, often appear in vegetable markets, especially in the South.” In the lean years before World War II, poke salad–like ramps–was one of the first edible wild herbs to appear in the spring, lending welcome addition to a winter’s sustenance diet of dried beans, cornbread, and salt pork .

The only drawback to poke salad is that it’s poisonous. The mature parts of the plant and the roots contain significant amounts of a violent but slow-acting emetic, phytolaccatoxin. Having said that, you’re probably wondering why in the hell anyone would even consider eating it, but prepared properly, poke salad is safe and delicious. Harvest only the youngest, tenderest sprouts of poke, no more than a foot or so. Wash, stem, and trim. Add to a pot of water, bring to a boil, drain, rinse, return to pot with water, and bring to simmer with oil, a slit hot pepper pod, and a big pinch of sugar. Drain and use much as you would spinach. Euell has a poke salad dip in his book. I like it with scrambled eggs and onion, and it’s wonderful in an omelette.

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Hoover Lee Sauce

Hoover Lee was a grocer in Louise, Mississippi who created a marinade to replicate Cantonese duck. His concoction has a heavy soy background accented with garlic and ginger. These chicken leg quarters were marinated overnight and roasted in a slow (250) oven for a ninety minutes. The skin was crisp and the flesh succulent, reminiscent of the character if not the flavor of roast duck.