Nathalie Dupree’s new book, “Southern Memories: Recipes and Reminiscences” (Clarkson Potter, $30) makes you want to pack your bags, head South and start eating.
Who wouldn’t want to sit at a table under the branches of a flowering dogwood and feast on beef tenderloin with oysters Rockefeller sauce and a salad of roast red peppers? Or settle down to a spring garden cake sprinkled with candied flowers on a brick patio rimmed with azaleas and wisteria?
If you can’t do that, you still can enjoy the recipes and the often-nostalgic vignettes that Dupree has assembled. You also can get a sense of “being there” through the evocative color photography by Tom Eckerle.
If you want a taste of the food before investing in the book, Bub City Crabshack and Bar-B-Q, 901 W. Weed St., will feature some of the recipes Friday through Oct. 24, including grits and goat cheese timbale, pork chops in Mississippi caviar, Brussels sprouts with mustard-sage butter and Coca-Cola cake. Dupree will autograph copies of her book from noon to 2 p.m. Monday.
Dupree, who lives in Atlanta, has written four other cookbooks and has been host of several cooking series on television. “Memories” is a leisurely book. The narratives paint verbal pictures of Dupree’s life in the South and the 150 recipes are a far cry from the quick-stir variety of cooking on the run.
For example, the chapter on holidays: “On Christmas Eve . . . a misty, mean rain can make it impossible to find the curb for parking, but that doesn’t daunt any of us . . . the grown-ups sip various potions, from iced tea to eggnog or bourbon and branch water. Elaborately set tables full of game, a buffet table laden with ambrosia and hot curried fruit and a ham filled with grits and greens . . . we fill our plates with ham and fixings and catch up with people we haven’t seen since last year.”
The recipes include the stuffed ham, “each slice a magnificent spiral of rosy flesh laced with white cheesy grits and flecks of dark greens”; bourbon roast turkey, with the bourbon adding “a lovely hint of flavor and color to the crisp skin”; and ambrosia, “a gift from the gods, a salad as well as a dessert,” plus others.
In a description of hush puppies, she describes the wedding supper she and her former husband shared with their families in North Carolina: “The inn’s long pine wooden tables were gleaming and the smells and sounds of foods frying from the kitchen were seductive. Platters of hot, freshly fried fish, moist inside, crunchy fried outside, were accompanied by Southern vegetables and bowls of cool coleslaw. And of course, there were heaping plates of hush puppies . . . a magical combination.”
Dupree dedicates the book to her former husband, David, and draws his mother into the narrative: “Though her son and I have long since parted, my mother-in-law still comes to (Thanksgiving) dinner, bringing her homemade tomato conserve to put over the green beans.”
In a recent telephone interview, Dupree said they have “been divorced 15 years, but we’re good friends. He had encouraged me to do this book for a long time; he said nothing like this had been done. There are antebellum books and soul food books, but I don’t know of any what you could call middle-class Southern (cook) books.”
There’s much in this book that will strike a chord for anyone who grew up or spent time in the South-Vidalia onion tart, several recipes for grits, buttermilk pie, chicken and dumplings and Brunswick stew, to name a few-but the appeal of these dishes is universal.
Dupree sums up the Southern culinary viewpoint: “Southerners don’t like to be far from their food.”
These recipes are printed as they appear in the book.
MISSISSIPPI CAVIAR
10 to 12 servings
3 16-ounce cans black-eyed peas, drained
1/2 cup finely chopped green bell pepper
1/2 cup finely chopped red bell pepper
3/4 cup finely chopped hot peppers
3/4 cup finely chopped onion
1/4 cup drained and finely chopped pimiento
1 garlic clove, chopped
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
2/3 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Salt
Tabasco sauce
Tortilla chips
In a large mixing bowl, combine the peas, bell peppers, hot peppers, onion, pimiento and garlic. In a separate bowl, whisk together the vinegar, oil and mustard and pour over the bean mixture; mix well. Season to taste with salt and Tabasco. With a wooden spoon or potato masher, mash the bean mixture slightly.
Refrigerate until ready to serve. Drain the caviar well and serve with tortilla chips.
VIDALIA ONION TART
Serves 8 to 10
Sweet Vidalia onions from Georgia are especially nice in this rich tart, which makes a wonderful appetizer or accompaniment for soup. A tart pan with fluted edges and removable bottom is best for this recipe, but a glass pie pan works well, too. Baking “blind” is a classic term used for partly prebaking a pie crust, usually for custards or delicate fillings such as this. The baked tart may be frozen.
1 recipe basic pie crust; recipe follows
2 large Vidalia onions, thinly sliced, about 2 cups
2 cups grated sharp Cheddar cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup heavy (whipping) cream
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Roll out the pastry 1/8- to 1/4-inch thick and line a 9-inch tart pan. Cover with crumpled wax paper and fill with rice, beans or pie weights to weigh down the bottom and sides. Bake the crust “blind” until it loses its translucence, about 10 minutes, and remove from the oven. Remove the weights and liner.
Arrange half the onions in the pie shell and top with half the cheese. Add a second layer of onions and cheese, sprinkle with salt and drizzle with the cream. Bake 25 minutes, or until the cheese is lightly browned. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool slightly. Cut into wedges and serve.
BASIC PIE CRUST
Makes one 9-inch pie crust
1 1/4 cups all-purpose soft wheat flour, see note
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup solid vegetable shortening
1/4 cup ( 1/2 stick) unsalted butter
3 to 6 tablespoons ice water
Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl. Cut in the shortening and butter with a pastry blender or fork until the mixture resembles cornmeal. Add the ice water a little at a time, tossing the mixture with the pastry blender or fork until it is moist and holds together. Gather the dough into a ball and flatten slightly. Wrap in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for at least 1/2 hour or longer if possible.
Note: Soft wheat flour is common in the South. If you can’t find it in northern stores, use cake flour instead.
