The Southern states made their culinary reputations on such meaty dishes as fried chicken, pork barbecue and country ham. But spend any time in the South and you’ll see that the real glory of Southern cooking is in the “vegetable plate,” a feature at many restaurants and a fixture in many homes.
Crowd the supper dish with spoonfuls of luxuriously creamed corn; shreds of tender, slow-cooked mustard greens; fried pods of tiny okra; sliced yellow tomatoes, and buttered new peas–there’s scarcely room left for a chicken wing.
That’s just fine with many diners, especially in the summer when farm stands and home gardens are working overtime. But a new cookbook, “Butter Beans To Blackberries: Recipes from a Southern Garden” (North Point Press, $30), by Ronni Lundy, would be welcome even in the dead of winter.
Lundy, a Kentucky-based cookbook author, is obviously crazy about simply cooked fresh fruits and vegetables and has a knack for passing that pleasure on to the reader. With a chatty, informal narrative, personal anecdotes and excerpts from Southern fiction, Lundy draws a picture of a region where your preference in beans is an identifying trait:
“If you favor soupy pinto beans served up with golden wedges of cornbread, that probably means you come from the mountain South, while folks from the coastal regions are apt to choose highly seasoned red or black beans cooked up with rice. Somewhere in the middle are folks who like both, and are partial to white navy beans and dried butter beans as well. Although the methods of preparation for dried beans are time-consuming, even the busiest two-career families in the South still make time, especially in the damp chill of winter, when nothing says `home’ like the steam from a pot of seasoned beans.”
There are no color food photographs to enliven the text, but the recipes are easy to follow and shouldn’t intimidate new cooks. They range from the classic, such as long-cooked string beans with salt pork, and tomatoes stuffed with egg salad, but there are some new ideas here, such as crawfish corn cakes with smoked tomato sauce, and pattypan squash, leek and buttermilk soup.
We tried some really yummy mashed sweet potatoes, beautifully spiced with brown sugar and red pepper and garnished with toasted spiced peanuts. Separately or together, these two recipes were winners. Everyone also gobbled up the white Cheddar cheese grits, baked until firm, then sliced and fried in peanut oil. Tender and crispy, the grits cakes make a fine snack on their own, or could be topped with braised mushrooms or creamed shellfish for a deluxe dinner.
We finished with pie; it wouldn’t be a Southern meal without dessert. The banana cream pie got its “Black Bottom” name from a crust brushed with melted chocolate and its tender appeal from a lightly sweet banana custard filling and drifts of softly whipped cream on top.
With a dessert like this, you won’t mind finishing all your vegetables. With a book like this, the vegetables will be part of the fun.
BLACK-BOTTOM BANANA CREAM PIE
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 5 minutes
Chilling time: 2 hours
Yield: 8 servings
From “Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from a Southern Garden,” by Ronni Lundy.
8-inch prebaked pie crust
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
4 firm but ripe bananas
1 cup whipping cream
3 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1. The crust needs to be completely cooled before filling.
2. To make a pastry cream, heat the milk in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Mix together the cornstarch, sugar and egg. When the milk is steaming, drizzle some into the egg mixture, whisking as you do. Then whisk the mixture into the remaining milk. Bring to a boil and remove from the heat. Add 1 tablespoon of butter. Set aside to cool.
3. While the pastry cream is cooling, melt the chocolate with the remaining butter over hot water. Pour it into the bottom of the cooled pie crust, spreading it with a spatula to cover the crust evenly. Place it in the refrigerator to chill.
4. When the chocolate is chilled and the pastry cream is cool, peel the bananas and slice them about 1/2-inch thick. Fold the bananas into the pastry cream and pour it into the pie crust. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve.
5. Take the pie from the refrigerator at least 15 minutes before you are ready to cut it. This allows the chocolate to soften enough to make cutting easy and to bring out the full flavor. Whip the cream with the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla until soft peaks form. Spread it over the top of the pie.
Nutrition information per serving:
Calories ………… 430 Fat ………… 28 g Saturated fat .. 14 g
% calories from fat .. 55 Cholesterol … 80 mg Sodium ……. 160 mg
Carbohydrates …… 45 g Protein ……. 4.8 g Fiber ……….. 3 g
SUBTLE SUGAR AND SPICE SWEET POTATOES WITH PEANUTS
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 12 minutes
Yield: 4 servings
“Many post-World War II recipes load sweet potatoes with added sugar and flavorings. This recipe presents the potato with only enough sugar and spice to bring out its natural sweetness,” writes Ronni Lundy in “Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from a Southern Garden.”
2 large sweet potatoes
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon ground cayenne or red chili pepper
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 cup coarsely crushed toasted and spiced peanuts, recipe follows
1. Half-fill a large saucepan with water and bring it to a boil. While you are waiting for the water to boil, peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into 2-inch chunks. When the water boils, add the potatoes to the pot. Cook at a lively simmer until the potatoes are soft when pierced with a fork or cake tester, about 12 minutes. Remove from the heat and drain.
2. Add the butter to the pot and sprinkle the sugar, pepper and salt over the potatoes. Use a potato masher or fork to mash the potatoes to a creamy consistency. Mound them on four individual plates and use a serving spoon to make an indentation in the top of each mound. Place 1 tablespoon of peanuts in each indentation and serve immediately.
Nutrition information per serving:
Calories ………… 200 Fat ………… 8 g Saturated fat .. 2.6 g
% calories from fat .. 37 Cholesterol … 8 mg Sodium …….. 315 mg
Carbohydrates …… 30 g Protein …… 3.9 g Fiber ………. 3.5 g
TOASTED AND SPICED PEANUTS
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 8 minutes
Yield: 1 1/2 cups
From “Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from a Southern Garden.”
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/16 teaspoon ground cayenne or red chili pepper
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 1/2 cups fresh Spanish peanuts, shelled, skin on
1 1/2 tablespoons water
1. In a cup or small bowl, mix together the salt, cayenne and brown sugar. Set aside.
2. In a 9- or 10-inch cast-iron or other heavy skillet, heat the peanut oil over medium-high heat. Add the peanuts and toast for 8 to 10 minutes, shaking the skillet or gently stirring the peanuts with a metal spatula to keep them from burning.
3. When the peanuts are golden brown, remove the skillet from the heat and sprinkle on the salt mixture, stirring quickly to distribute it evenly. Drizzle the water over the peanuts. (Don’t dump all of the water in at once, and do be careful of sizzling splashes.) Stir or shake very gently until the water is absorbed and the seasonings “set” on the peanuts. Turn the peanuts out into a bowl and serve warm (the best) or let cool and store in a covered container.
Nutrition information per 1/4 cup:
Calories ………… 230 Fat ……….. 20 g Saturated fat .. 3.2 g
% calories from fat .. 74 Cholesterol … 0 mg Sodium …….. 165 mg
Carbohydrates ……. 7 g Protein ……. 10 g Fiber ………. 3.5 g
