Southern Grilling Season

It's starting to get chilly here in Piedmont North Carolina. To me, that means I need to get in as much outdoor cooking as possible before grilling season ends. Of course there's no official grilling season, but to me it corresponds with the yard mowing months ... which, throughout most of the South, is mid-March through mid-October. So, yeah, even though I'm kind of making up this whole grilling season thing, I think most people would instinctively follow the same sort of guidelines.

Granted, you don't have to limit yourself to mild weather if you really want some fire-cooked beef, poultry, veggies or fish. I once interviewed chef Daniel Orr about his cooking philosophies, and he told me he would often bundle up and go light up the grill even though his patio was covered in snow. That's a man who loves grilled food!

While you won't find me cooking outside in a winter wonderland, I do love grilling on cool fall evenings. And my current favorite is cedar plank-grilled salmon.

The cedar really does enhance the flavor of the fish. I definitely recommend it. Just follow the instructions on the plank packaging and soak them before using.  

While the salmon tastes wonderful on its own, my recommendation is to create a salmon-spinach Cobb salad:

Salmon-Spinach Cobb Salad

4 cups fresh spinach greens

1 medium salmon fillet

1 hard-boiled egg

1 Roma tomato

2 slices of low-fat bacon

cracked black pepper, to taste

handful of croutons

2 Tbsp. of Marie's Creamy Italian Garlic dressing

Wash and dry the greens. Flake the salmon in with the greens. Slice the egg and tomato and add to salad.  Crumble the bacon over the salad. Add pepper, if desired, and a handful of croutons. Top off with dressing and toss.

This salad is yum. It's very savory. I love it; I hope you will, too!

Movie Menu Inspiration: 'The Help'

Update added at bottom.

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about movie menu inspirations. So when I saw that Southern Living had a post called "Southern Recipes Inspired by The Help," I secretly hoped they had been reading Savor South. Who am I kidding? I know they haven't. However, I still love the idea behind this piece. They have compiled 27 of their classic recipes in a slideshow, detailing the connection each dish has to the novel/movie.

I can see already that I'm going to have to try the buttermilk biscuit recipe. I'm on a personal quest to make the perfect biscuit. Like Jason, I'm biscuit-challenged. But I'm determined not to let them best me. I will make delicious biscuits. I will make delicious biscuits. I will make delicious biscuits! And I think I'll try their recipe to see if it's the perfect combination of ingredients I've been looking for.

Another recipe on their inspiration list that jumped out at me was the Tuna Salad with Lemon Aioli . It looks yummy and delicious. Or is it just the incredible bread bowl presentation I'm drawn to? Either way, I'm going to have to try both the recipe and the bowl. Look for a similar presentation at the next party I host.

Now, if the movie has as many food references as this list leads me to believe, I'm going to have to run see it soon! My co-bloggers loved the book. So ... between their recommendation of the story and my preoccupation with biscuits exceptional character development, I'm sure to want to see the film.

UPDATE: In piddling around on Twitter today, I came across this awesome food blog called The Cooking Bride that started 'The Help' Southern Cooking Series. Check out this post where she offers a bacon pimento cheese recipe!

What's Your Movie Menu Inspiration?

The Pioneer Woman just had a post on Truvy's Cuppa Cuppa Cuppa cake from Steel Magnolias. Yes, Steel Magnolias. A film that, despite the melodrama and phony Southern accents, is still an enjoyable watch--due mainly to the trifecta of Dolly Parton, Shirley MacLaine and Olympia Dukakis.

Anyway, Ree (the Pioneer Woman) has a bit of a love affair with the movie and has successfully recreated Truvy's recipe.

But it made me wonder: What about the bleeding armadillo cake? You know, the red velvet groom's cake atrocity served at Shelby's wedding reception in the movie.

Well, as it turns out, the Internet is lousy with armadillo cakes. There are how-to guides and Flickr galleries. I even found a bakery called Red Velvet Armadillo Bakeshop. Basically, if you have the inclination to bake and decorate such a thing yourself, you have plenty of online help and inspiration.

So, I got to thinking ... What are some other movie-inspired recipes I'd like to try (either out of food lust or novelty's sake)? Hmmm. I might need ideas. What are some that you'd like to try (or have tried)? Let us know!

As for Meesies, I'll Take Cheesies

Today on their Facebook page, Garden & Gun highlighted this aricle on cheese straws. Not only does it go into a little bit of history on the Southern snack, it also includes a recipe. Oh boy! I love cheese straws; and if you'll remember, I added Salem Bakery's to my Southern gift basket.

Of course, nothing beats homemade. And while the Garden & Gun version does look good, I can't help but be reminded of my Great Aunt Ruth's recipe. Although hers weren't called straws or baked in stick form (they were biscuit-like and called Cheesies) they were still the same basic creation. So, I dug out an old church cookbook, and ... lo and behold ... I found the Cheesies recipe. And because I know you'll love these, too, I'm going to share the details with you:

Cheesies

Ingredients
1 stick margine
1/2 lb. sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. Tabasco sauce
1 1/2 c. corn flakes

Directions
Cream margarine, add grated cheese and work in the flour to which salt has been added. Add Tabasco sauce and mix in corn flakes. Mixture will be crumbly. Form into small balls and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes or untill dry and lightly brown. Serve with chicken salad, fruit salad or punch. Triple ingredients for a large party batch.

Pucker Up!

A friend recently told me about an article she’d read that said people who love lemon are typically not chocoholics, and chocoholics often don’t care for lemon.

I love lemon. And I love chocolate. But given a choice between the two, lemon would be the winner.

All this talk of lemon made me think of the lemon meringue pie my grandmother used to make. And with Memorial Day coming up and it being the unofficial start of summer, what better time to enjoy the tart, refreshing taste of a family favorite?

Here’s my Mamaw Penry’s recipe, in case you want to give it a try.

Lemon Meringue Pie

1 8- or 9-inch graham cracker crust

3 eggs, separated

1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk

½ cup lemon juice

¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

1/3 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium mixing bowl, beat egg yolks. Stir in condensed milk and lemon juice. Pour into shell.

In a small mixing bowl, beat egg whites with cream of tartar until soft peaks form; gradually add sugar, beating until stiff but not dry.

Spread meringue on top of pie, to the edge of shell. Bake 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. Cool. Chill thoroughly, and refrigerate leftovers.

Quesadillas Are the New Grilled Cheese

If 50 is the new 40 and burgundy is the new black, then quesadillas are the new grilled cheese. 

Why? Because I say so.

While I'll always love grilled cheese sandwiches, I've discovered that quesadillas can be just as easy and cheesy as the go-to American classic. Instead of bread, use flour tortillas, and instead of American cheese, use a Mexican blend. Grill it over a heated, buttered pan and you have flour-dairy goodness. Of course with a quesadilla, you will most likely want other ingredients in addition to just cheese and tortillas. But the beauty of this Tex-Mex gem is that you can put anything and everything in it. Using ingredients you have on hand will add to the efficiency of preparing it--and also give you a chance to get creative.

For the quesadilla above, I used some cooked shrimp I already had on hand, a small can of mushrooms, red onions (caramelized) and Texas Pete. I came up with that combination on the fly, but you wouldn't know it. It was quite excellent (although the picture hardly leads you to believe that fact), and I'm craving it now as we speak.

If you want to replicate it, follow these instructions:

Cook shrimp (I already had boiled some earlier that day and thus had some on hand. You can cook yours with your mixture, if you like.) Slice red onions and cook in olive oil over medium-high heat until caramelized. Add shrimp to the pot with the onions. Add one 6.5-oz. can of sliced mushrooms to the shrimp-onion mixture. Add approximately 1/2 Tbsp of Texas Pete. Turn to medium heat and stir occasionally.

Meanwhile, melt 2 Tbsps. of butter on a hot griddle or pan, place one fajita-sized flour tortilla (I used whole-wheat) on the pan and press for 30-60 seconds. Flip and do the same to the other side. Remove the tortilla from the pan and repeat these steps with another tortilla. After crisping both sides of the second tortilla, sprinkle a few handfuls of shredded Mexican cheese blend over it. On top of the cheese, add a couple of scoops of the shrimp-mushroom-onion mixture. Top off with more cheese. 

Place the previously grilled tortilla on top. Press. Flip the entire quesadilla and press again (approximately 30 seconds). Remove from pan and cut into quarters. Top with sour cream and more Texas Pete.

Simple and yummy. Seriously ... if I can do it, you can too.

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.

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.

Pinto Beans and Politicking

Nothing tastes more like home to me than a steaming bowl of pinto beans and hot cornbread slathered with melted butter. Born and raised in rural West Virginia, I spent many winter afternoons sharing this meal with my grandparents, Emery and Birdie Mae.

My grandmother Birdie Mae dished up pinto beans from an iron pot she kept simmering for hours on the gas stove. The only seasoning she added was a slab of bacon or ham hock with salt and pepper. It was my grandfather Emery’s favorite meal.

Between bites of beans, Emery liked to talk about local and national candidates coming up for election. As soon as he started to speak, Birdie would shake her head with annoyance. “There he goes politicking again,” she’d say, wiping her hands off with a dish cloth and fleeing the kitchen.

Emery preferred lots of diced onion and crumbled cornbread in his bowl of beans. But pinto beans also taste delicious when garnished with sweet, tangy Southern Chow Chow Relish prepared from finely chopped green tomatoes, peppers and onions.

As a native West Virginian, pinto beans and cornbread are part of my Appalachian heritage. But no matter where you call home, a good bowl of pinto beans is a hearty meal that’s guaranteed to warm you up—body and soul.

Pinto Beans

How to prepare: Start with a 1-pound package of dried pinto beans. Dried beans must be soaked before they are cooked. Soak overnight, or use the quick-soak method. Overnight soak: Rinse beans well and cover with an inch of cold water. Soak beans overnight at room temperature. Quick-soak method: Rinse beans well, put in a saucepan, and cover with an inch of water. Bring to a boil, simmer for 2 minutes, then cover and let stand at least 1 hour.

How to cook: Cover and simmer beans in water used for soaking. Check periodically, cooking until tender. Add water as needed. Season with a ham bone, a couple of minced garlic cloves or chopped onion, and salt and pepper to taste.

Cornbread

1 cup self-rising flour
1 cup self-rising corn meal
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/4 cup shortening or vegetable oil
dash salt

Sift flour and add salt; stir in corn meal. Add eggs, milk and shortening or oil. Beat with electric beater until just smooth, about 1 minute. Do not overbeat. Pour into greased iron skillet and bake in hot oven at 425 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Patricia Porter, Salt Rock, WV