My mother, who is a great cook, says her own mother could not cook a lick.
Mama Lydie, as the grandkids called her, would also try to cook anything that moved. They lived in a small, country town in North Carolina where lots of critters roamed, so it wasn't that unusual to have raccoon or deer on the table. Mama Lydie — my mother cracks up every time she tells this story — even once tried to stew an owl.
It cooked, and cooked and cooked. All day it simmered. But it was one tough bird. It never did get tender enough to eat, my mother recalled. Not that anyone planned to eat Mama Lydie's owl stew, she always adds.
This is what "A Southerly Course," a new cookbook by Martha Hall Foose, does to you. No, not want to cook strange birds. It makes you recall those times hanging out in the kitchen with mom, hearing old stories, or hanging out with relatives at a family reunion, making new memories over home-cooked goodies like barbecued chicken, potato salad, fried fish and somebody's four-layer coconut or chocolate cake.
Foose, a chef and cookbook author, will be one of the writers featured at the Junior League of Richmond Book and Author Dinner May 3. She will also do a cooking demonstration and tasting May 4 at Classic Kitchens of Virginia on Patterson Avenue.
"A Southerly Course" is about food, friends and family and the uniqueness of the South, told with detail, humor and an appreciation for the nuances of daily living, the randomness of fulfilling relationships and a good story.
Foose, in the book's introduction, touches on integral elements of the Southern story, the impact of the cotton industry and slave economy, that have left a legacy of shame and hurt but have to be mentioned.
"Sentimentality and a heaping spoonful of nostalgia flavor our dishes as much as black pepper and Worcestershire sauce do. It tastes good but sets us up for mockery. Our regional history, fraught by the economics of cotton and all that surrounds it, is difficult to maneuver and remain on solid footing. Community through food in many ways has helped us as a region begin to reconcile ourselves with the past."
The new book is a follow-up to Foose's successful "Screen Doors and Sweet Tea," which was praised for being a good read as much as it was for the recipes and for which she won the 2009 James Beard Foundation Award for American Cooking.
"With 'Screen Doors and Sweet Tea,' I really tried to cover the iconic Southern stuff," said Foose in a telephone interview from her home in Tchula, Miss., population 2,173, where she lives on the family farm. For most of April and May she is on a book tour across the South with a side trip to New York City to be on one of the morning talk shows.
This book, she said, is a lot more personal, in that it's about her exploration of food culture, traditions and customs closer to home.
"It's more about my journey as a cook and as a Southern woman," she said.
Each recipe in "A Southerly Course" is preceded by an anecdote, sometimes talking about the recipe or ingredients and almost always mentioning someone or someplace familiar.
For instance, Foose describes the time a friend, Ernestine Williams, mother of football star Ben Williams, taught her to make skillet fried corn. The top of the pepper shaker fell off. Who hasn't done that or something similar, and as Foose recalled, figured out a way to salvage the dish.
For the glazed rutabagas recipe, she describes the friend, Jule, who inspired the dish. For the dandelion cracklings recipe, she recalls a character nicknamed Good Donny, who had a friend who made the flavorful pork cracklings. Good Donny lived up to his name when, after a casual mention of how good the cracklings were, he showed up with several more bags to share.
There are also longer two- to three-page stories, giving away more of Foose as the Southern gal instead of the French-taught pastry chef and business owner.
In one of those stories, Foose talks about the time her family moved to Jackson, Miss., and they lived around the corner from Eudora Welty, the famous Southern writer. In another, she describes a first day of school years ago when she opened the glove compartment in her dad's truck and some smelly concoction used by hunters to lure deer tumbled out and spilled on her new clothes. Another deer story pays tribute to a couple who dress deer meat, turning the game into sausage and other products.
"They are a huge part of our community," Foose said. "Deer hunting is a major sport down here. I really just adore them. And they work so hard and their work is so good. If you have 175 pounds of venison, you want to make sure you end up with 160 pounds of sausage that is really good sausage," Foose said.
Food brings people together, said Foose, who finds it just plain wrong to have the words cupcake and war in the same sentence.
A real strong argument can be made that Southern food is the only real indigenous food in the United States, said Richmond chef Jason Alley, who knows Foose through the Southern Foodways Alliance and admires her work.
"You get this real interesting blending of the first settlers, Native American food, the African influence from the slave trade," said Alley, chef at Comfort restaurant in downtown Richmond, where diners can order Southern favorites such as fried okra, macaroni and cheese, and pulled pork barbecue.
He has food stories, too. Just the other day, he said, he was telling a friend about growing up in Appalachia in southwest Virginia. In summers, a neighboring farm family invited his family to get potatoes left in the field after harvest. It was miserable, backbreaking work in the heat of summer. When they finished the lady of the house always had an elaborate supper prepared for them.
"Fried chicken and ham, somewhere between six and seven vegetables, two or three pies, cakes, cornbread and biscuits, gravy, just incredible. We would sit down to this amazing Southern feast. It was just unbelievably charitable," said Alley.
"With any sort of rich food tradition, stories and family all really combine with the food. In the South, I think it comes together more seamlessly," he said.
(804) 649-6572
Martha Hall Foose appearances
Book & Author Dinner
When: 7 p.m., May 3
Where: Greater Richmond Convention Center, 403 N. Third St.
Cost: $65-$135
Other featured authors: Ellen Brown, John Wiley Jr., Marcia Clark, Jasmin Darznik, Karen Russell
Cooking demonstration
When: 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. May 4
Where: Classic Kitchens of Virginia, 12535 Patterson Ave.
Cost: $65
Information: www.jlrichmond.org
“A Southerly Course” is about food, friends and family and the uniqueness of the South, told with detail, humor and an appreciation for the nuances of daily living, the randomness of fulfilling relationships and a good story.
Tomatoes in Leaves
Peeking out from dried leaves, last-of-the-season tomatoes can be some of the most flavorful. Here they are wrapped in leaves of phyllo pastry and baked with just a bit of Dijon mustard. Makes 6 servings.
6 small very ripe tomatoes
10 fresh phyllo pastry sheets, or frozen, thawed (each sheet about 17x13 inches)
10 tablespoons (1¼ sticks) salted butter, melted, plus more for the pan
6 teaspoons Dijon mustard
Heat the oven to 375°F. Generously butter every other cup in a 12-cup muffin pan.
Cut off the stem end of each tomato so that it will stand up cut-side down. Set aside.
Brush one sheet of phyllo dough with melted butter and stack another on top. Continue, brushing each sheet with melted butter, until 5 sheets are stacked.
Cut squares from the buttered sheets. (see Notes)
Place the squares of dough in the buttered cups, pressing firmly against the sides and bottom of the pan and leaving the corners sticking up.
Place 1 teaspoon mustard in each cup, then add a tomato, cut side down.
Bake for 10 minutes or until the phyllo is crisp and brown.
Notes: You can vary the size of muffin cups and phyllo squares to match your tomatoes, from mini muffin pans to fit cherry toms to jumbo muffin tins to fit larger varieties. For cherry or pear tomatoes, use a mini muffin pan with 2½- to 3-inch slots and cut 4-inch squares of phyllo. For plum and Roma tomatoes, use a muffin tin with 4-inch slots and cut 5-inch squares. For larger tomatoes, use a muffin pan with 5-inch slots and cut 6-inch squares.
From “A Southerly Course” by Martha Hall Foose
Bacon Crackers
This may barely qualify as a recipe. It’s not a time-saver, that’s for sure, because these take forever to assemble. That doesn’t stop my friend Neck-bone Red from dropping me a note to inquire if I am going to be bringing bacon crackers whenever she knows I’ll be at a party. I have found in my hours devoted to crafting these irresistible bowtie-shaped snacks that the way to make a bunch of them at a time is to place them on a wire rack set over a rimmed baking sheet. The rack keeps the crackers from getting soggy while they bake and are corseted by the bacon.
Makes 6 servings.
¾ pound thinly sliced bacon (about 16 slices)
42 rectangular butter crackers (such as Club or Captain’s or Waverly)
Heat the oven to 250°F.
Slice the bacon slices into thirds crosswise. Wrap each cracker with a piece of bacon, overlapping as little as possible.
Place the wrapped crackers ½ inch apart on a wire rack set over a rimmed baking sheet or broiler pan.
Bake for 1½ hours or until the bacon constricts the center of each cracker and becomes crisp. Remove the pan from the oven and allow the crackers to cool on the rack.
From “A Southerly Course” by Martha Hall Foose
Big Blackberry Jelly Roll
This cake does not take long to bake, yet it looks as if you have gone to a lot of trouble, an impression I like to give. Purchased blackberry jam makes short work of the filling.
Makes 8-10 servings.
Nonstick cooking spray
¾ cup unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for the pan
4 large eggs
¾ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
¾ cup granulated sugar
Confectioners’ sugar
1 cup blackberry jam
Heat the oven to 400°F. Grease a 15x10x1-inch jelly-roll pan with nonstick spray and line it with parchment paper. Grease again and flour the paper.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs, baking powder, and salt with an electric mixer on high speed until foamy. Gradually add the granulated sugar, beating until the mixture is thick and lemon colored. Fold in the flour with a rubber spatula and spread the batter into the prepared pan using an offset spatula.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden.
Sift confectioners’ sugar into a 15x10-inch rectangle on a clean dish towel. When the cake is done, immediately loosen the sides of the cake and turn it out onto the sugar. Peel off the paper. Starting at the narrow end, roll up the cake and towel together.
Transfer to a wire rack, seam side down, and let cool for about 10 minutes.
Very carefully unroll the cake and remove the towel. Spread the cake with the jam and re-roll. Transfer to a serving plate, seam side down, slice and serve.
From “A Southerly Course” by Martha Hall Foose
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