Cooking Class Time Travel

My co-bloggers and I love food. That’s probably pretty evident by the fact that we have a blog devoted to the subject. But we don’t just appreciate the visceral experiences of food—the tastes, sights and smells (which we certainly do)—we’re also fascinated by historical, cultural and (yes, Alton Brown fans) scientific topics tied to food. Let’s just say we’re food nerds. We admit it proudly. So when we found out Old Salem, a preserved, Colonial-era Moravian village in Winston-Salem, N.C., was having a cooking class based on 18th century Moravian recipes and cooking methods, we signed up pretty quickly.

For the food anthropologists among us, Moravian culinary traditions from the 18th and 19th centuries still influence the kitchens of the northwest Piedmont region of North Carolina to this day (primarily, Forsyth and Davidson Counties). For instance, there’s a chicken pie recipe (which is not a pot pie, thank you very much) that is only found in this particular region. And, of course, I’m convinced that Moravian sugar cakes laid the foundation for one of Winston-Salem’s more famous foods, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, but that’s a post for another day.

So, getting back to our little excursion back in time, let me share with you exactly what goes down during a period cooking class--a Holiday Hearthside Cooking Class, to be exact.

Foods Prepared:

Carolina Snowball

Sliced Peach Pudding

Marzipan Candies

Kitchen Tools, Utensils and Servingware:

Fireplace

Cast-Iron Cooker

Handmade Pottery

Straw Whisk

Balance (for measuring)

Soap and a Bucket of Room-Temperature Water (for handwashing)

Hand-forged Steel Forks and Knives

Recipes:

(You'll see that old recipes are anything but exact--at least compared to today's precise formulas.)

Carolina Snow Balls

Anna Paulina Schober (1805-1821) Salem, NC

Swell rice in milk, strain it off, and having pared and cored apples, put the rice around them, tying each up in a cloth; put a clove or cinnamon in each, and boil them well.

Sauce for Snow Balls

The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse, 1774

Take a quarter pound of fresh butter melted thick, a glass of white wine, a little nutmeg, a beaten cinnamon, made very sweet with sugar; boil all up together and pour it into a bason [sic]. Send it to the table.

Sliced Apple Pudding

Kentucky Housewife, 1839

Beat six eggs till light, and stir them into a quart of sweet milk, with enough flour to make it a good batter, four ounces of butter, four of sugar, a glass of brandy and two powdered nutmegs. Pare and slice very thin from the cores half a dozen well-flavored apples, and put them in the batter, stirring and mixing them evenly through it. Put it in a buttered dish, or pan, and bake it in a moderate oven. Eat it warm, with cold cream sauce, or butter and sugar, flavored with lemon. A peach pudding may be made in the same manner.*

What We Learned:

Human beings, regardless of century, find creative ways to cook efficiently and add interest to recipes.

Folks used to eat with the knife rather than the fork. The fork was only to hold down food while cutting, and was dangerously sharp.

Washing your hands in a communal wash bucket filled with tepid water is pretty disturbing to those of us who prefer not sharing germs with others.

It takes a while for the 21st century palate to adjust to foods with little salt or sugar.

A marzipan candy can be a metaphor for the life of whomever is making it. (I have to say, this is my philosophy, not that of the Moravians.)

I crack under pressure and cannot whisk eggs properly or pare an apple quickly when others are watching. Michelle and Jason are pros at it all!

I’m very thankful for ovens and microwaves and hot water and whisks that aren’t made of straw … and about a hundred other things.

Every cooking class should be taught by someone in costume. It just helps; I don’t know why. Ok, it doesn’t really help—I just like seeing people in costume.

*We actually used peaches in our class

100 Ways to Cook Southern

Here at Savor South, we love Southern Living. For me personally, it's as much a go-to guide for recipes as the Betty Crocker Cookbook was to housewives of the 1950s. If I'm looking for a new recipe--Southern or not--I always peruse the cooking section of their site first. And my scrapbook cookbook (a binder of recipes I've collected over the years) is largely comprised of recipes I've torn from their pages or printed from their site. Do yourself a favor and spend some time looking at some of their dishes. You might want to get started with this menu of recipes: 100 Ways to Cook Southern.

They have compiled a list of foods that are either quintessentially Southern or traditional with a Southern twist. Some of the recipes are region-specific (like low-country, for example), and some have South-wide appeal. Looking over it, I noticed many favorites of mine. For example, Brunswick Stew (featured in the picture above), Pimento Cheese, Buttermilk Biscuits, Grits, Po-Boys, Chicken and Dumplings, Macaroni and Cheese and shrimp anything. I really could go on and on. And I have to say, there's not a recipe on the list I wouldn't try. And a few I have tried, with marvelous results. A favorite of mine, which I often prepare for holiday parties is the Warm Turnip Green Dip.

I always get complimented on this dish; and, confidentially, I could eat the whole thing myself and never share it with anyone. But since I'm sure that would add 5 pounds to my frame right on the spot, I don't.

Another recipe of theirs I've tried that's had (almost) as equally good results is their King Ranch Casserole:

And I look forward to trying many more, such as their Cheese Straws, Beer-Batter Fried Pickles, Tomato Gravy and Coca Cola Cake.

If you'd like to spend some time drooling, please check out these recipes. They even have a recipe for making Southern Sweet Tea. Although, if you're a Southerner, you probably perfected this beverage years ago.

Smokehouse Lane

I visited my hometown lately and had to go here:

Now, you might be wondering what's at Smokehouse Lane. Well, this:

And this:

Which are usually topped with one of these:

It might not look like much, but it's delicious pulled-pork barbecue, chopped and on a bun (or in a tray) with barbecue slaw and hot sauce or smokehouse sauce (known to locals as "dip").

It's all cooked over a pit here, a place where magic truly happens:

Yes, it's the modest, marvelous, mouthwatering, much-copied barbecue that can be found nowhere else but:

Oh yeah!

Lexington-style barbecue at Lexington Barbecue, one of many (but, arguably, the best) barbecue restaurants in Lexington, N.C.

Speaking of Biscuits (and we usually are) …

In this year’s list of Saveur Magazine’s Fascinating Saveur 100, which is an annual list of culinary finds, innovations and novelties, Biscuitville made No. 96. The writer refers to the breakfast chain, which is headquartered in Greensboro, N.C. and peppered throughout North Carolina and Virginia, as “an old-fashioned gem in a modern world.” And their product as “the quintessential Southern biscuit.”

I think that’s a pretty fair statement.

The article then links to this piece at A Continuous Lean, where Michael Williams explores the restaurant even further:

“This past weekend I was in North Carolina and couldn’t miss the always delicious and still privately held regional chain Biscuitville. To me, Biscuitville is the Southern breakfast equivalent of the West coast burger mecca In-N-Out … everything on the menu is great and terrible for you.”

Oh lawsy. I think I need to go to Biscuitville ASAP. You know, for blog research.

And, oh yeah, don’t forget to check out the rest of the Saveur 100. No. 100 is one of my all-time faves and a Southern summer staple, the tomato sandwich!

Biscuit-Challenged

Being a born-and-bred Southerner, it’s with some trepidation (and embarrassment) that I admit to being biscuit-challenged.

I just wasn’t fortunate enough to inherit the biscuit-making gene that my grandmothers put so often to good use. Try as I might, every effort I make at creating light, fluffy biscuits results in my being rewarded with a pan full of dense little discs suitable only for use as doorstops.

In fact, the only edible bread I’ve been able to make is what my grandmother Juanita called a hoe cake. She made one whenever she was out of “light” bread (her term for store-bought loaf bread). There’s no recipe for her hoe cake; it consists simply of self-rising flour, shortening and milk, mixed together in varying amounts until the “right” consistency is reached. She usually baked it in a small metal frying pan, whose handle had broken off years before, until it was golden brown and looked like a big, fluffy … well, biscuit.

But once in a while, usually on special occasions like Easter, Thanksgiving or Christmas, she would make Angel Biscuits. Sort of a hybrid biscuit and yeast roll, I can still see them put aside to rise in a muffin tin, three little round balls in each cup, like a cloverleaf. The best part, though, was when they were fresh from the oven, broken apart, smeared with butter and light as an angel’s wings.

I will admit, too, that I have never tried to make my grandmother’s Angel Biscuits. But with Easter on its way, it might be just the special occasion to give them a try.

(Note: Although the recipe calls for rolling the dough and cutting it with a biscuit cutter, my grandmother shaped it into little balls, putting three in each cup of a muffin pan to form a cloverleaf roll.)

Angel Biscuits

1 package active dry yeast

2 Tablespoons warm water (105 to 115 degrees)

1 cup shortening

5 cups self-rising flour

¼ cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups buttermilk

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Cut shortening into flour, sugar and baking soda with a pastry blender until mixture resembles fine crumbs. Stir in buttermilk and yeast mixture until dough leaves side of bowl (dough will be soft and sticky). Turn dough onto generously floured cloth-covered board. Gently roll in flour to coat; shape into a ball. Knead 25 to 30 times, sprinkling with flour if dough is too sticky. Place dough in lightly greased bowl; cover and refrigerate at least 3 hours but no longer than 3 days. Use as needed.

Roll or pat dough ½-inch thick. Cut with floured 2-inch biscuit cutter. Place about 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Let rise in warm place until double, about 1 hour.

Heat oven to 400. Bake until golden brown, 12 to 14 minutes. Immediately remove from cookie sheet. About 3 ½ dozen biscuits.