Free preview of In Grandma's Kitchen: Food and Family
in Olden Times
by Maria Cattell
Chapter 9
Grandpa's Cookin'
Dad loved to provide his family with "good groceries." He liked to remind us that "we're eatin' high on the hog," meaning literally, we're eating the best parts of the pig, and metaphorically, we're eating luxuriously. I'm guessing it was a phrase Dad brought North with him, though experts are puzzled as to its origin.
On Sundays Dad was the one who "stepped up to the console [the stove]." Often he wore his white apron when cooking and for special occasions, his tall white chef's toque. He'd spend all morning cooking Sunday dinner and all day making his tomato sauce. As we ate or when we leaned back from our meal, we'd praise the food with our family's kitchen encomia: Dad's "oohs and aahs" and "That's OTU" (out of this universe), and my contribution, made as a small child: "suitable." To you, suitable may seem faint praise, but for me, it was (and still is) high praise: "this is really good."
While the rest of us slept, Dad would be up with the sun on Sunday morning. He'd walk around the house, look out the windows and proclaim himself "monarch of all I survey." Only after he'd made coffee, eaten breakfast and mopped the kitchen floor did he move on to the serious business of the day: getting the roast in the oven for our midday meal. The roasts varied: standing rib roast of beef‒we called it by the French rosbif‒with potatoes roasted in the pan or Yorkshire pudding made with the pan drippings; leg o' lamb with garlic slivers under the skin, served with Oohs and Aahs Eggplant; chicken with stuffing, rice and giblet gravy or roasted with carrots, onions and potatoes in the same pan, or another favorite, Southern fried chicken with rice and cream gravy; roast loin of pork with sauerkraut; stuffed baked shad with grits and asparagus.
There was a spell when roast beef was so cheap we had one every Sunday, Sunday after Sunday, till we kids complained: "Rosbif! Rosbif! That's boring. Can't we ever have anything else?" Hard to imagine now, when a rosbif costs a small fortune and we have only one in a year, for Christmas dinner‒a custom begun in 1975 to assuage our nostalgia for the boring abundance of earlier years.
True to his southern roots, Dad was big on greens: spinach and poke in spring, green beans, cabbage and its kin like collards and kale, mustard and turnip greens in summer and fall. He boiled his "mess of greens" with a bit of fatback and served the greens and their potlikker with "cawnbread" (cornbread). Of course in the best Southern tradition he cooked them for a long while, because such greens only "surrender into sustenance after some time in a pot," as Lancaster's quondam food writer Kim O'Donnel put it.
"I went out and got a collard and put it in the pot for lunch. That with some 'cawn' bread is powerful good eatin'. I maintain collards and turnips were the salvation of the deep south for poor whites and blacks. The home economics girls at Drexel U. told me years ago that if man had to live on one vegetable, cabbage would be it. The collard is a cabbage that doesn't head and it is, in its pristine state, beautiful green, and after frost hits it, it is delicious and sweet" (MSG to friends John & Kay Neelley, 12/11/1973). I think Dad would have been pleased that South Carolina made the collard its official vegetable in 2011.
He made sweets too. His divinity fudge was definitely divine. For his grandkids, he made that quintessentially Southern dessert, banana pudding, a combination of custard, bananas and vanilla wafers. For a spell Dad tried out different pound cake recipes, the results varying not only with the recipes but with his degree of sobriety. But the experimentation only confirmed our preference for the classic pound cake made of nothing but butter, sugar, eggs and flour with its buttery not-too-sweet flavor. Eating pound cake was not confined to after dinner dessert. "Kuh [my mother] went for the men yesterday afternoon. They are listening to cartoons on T.V. after a lush breakfast consisting of O.J., grits, sausage and milk. We all had a piece of pound cake as a chaser" (MSG to DJSG 3/2/1974).
In the early 1970s my son Kevin, aka Big Blue, asked Grandpa to make The Lord and The Lady for his birthday. Did he get the cakes? What do you think? Did Grandpa love his Big Blue? "With a big strong love," as Grandpa liked to say.
"Dad's cooking was all about love," said my brother John, "and taking time for the slow simmering process our ancestors used," like simmering tomato sauce all day in his black cast iron witch's cauldron, more commonly called a kettle or a pot. Was that the secret of his superb sauce? Or did he use a secret ingredient? One day I asked him: "Mon Bon, what's the secret ingredient in your tomato sauce that makes it so good?" He didn't hesitate a second: "Love!"
My son Davey says, "Love was the secret ingredient in all of Grandpa's cookin'." All of us who knew him are agreed on that.
MON BON'S SCRAPPLE & APPLE
This breakfast special didn't quite rank with sausage and grits and redeye gravy, but Scrapple & Apple never lacked for enthusiastic eaters. Sometimes we had it as Sunday supper. Dad used Habersett scrapple, still made today, but sometimes I make my own (►Chapter 29).
Start scrapple frying in a medium hot skillet. Core apples (keep skin on) and cut into slices. Put a little oil in another medium hot skillet and add the apple slices. Stir the apples occasionally so they don't burn and flip the scrapple a time or two. Cook till the apples are soft and the scrapple is brown and a bit crusty. Season apples as you like. My brother David made fried apples with curry, which adds zing, but Dad's were plain. Both are tasty.
GRANDPA'S FRIED RICE
A tasty way to use leftover rice, including rice from chicken or pork bog. Good for breakfast, lunch or supper.
Put butter or oil-and-butter in a moderately hot iron skillet. Add the rice and flatten it out with a spatula. Let rice cook for 5 to 10 minutes, then‒with the spatula‒turn it over, adding a little butter if needed. It should develop a crispy brown crust. Don't let it burn. Nice with fried eggs.
SOUTHERN FRIED CHICKEN & CREAM GRAVY
Dad's fried chicken was one of his "OTU" (out of this universe) accomplishments. It was an expansive operation requiring use of his black kettle and an iron skillet or two. I don't know if Southerners in general do fried chicken better than Yankees, but Dad's was tops, with crunchy skin and moist, delicious meat. What makes fried chicken southern? My son Kevin says frying chicken in a small amount of fat, rather than deep frying it, is southern. Maybe. But in the wonderful children's book, Dragon Stew, you didn't need a dragon as an ingredient in the stew, you needed a dragon to make the stew. Perhaps it takes a Southerner to make Southern Fried Chicken‒though Yankee Kevin's fried chicken is OTU, like his Grandpa's.
Dad served fried chicken with rice and cream gravy with sliced hard boiled eggs. We're not sure how he made the cream gravy. My son Davey thinks he made it before the chicken was done, but Kevin remembers that Grandpa did it as described here. Cream gravy is also known as milk or country gravy.
Fry the chicken.
Put about 3/4" of cooking oil or lard into a heavy skillet. Heat till bubbly. Put a cup or two of flour (depending on the amount of chicken) and some salt and pepper in a paper bag and shake to mix. Then add chicken pieces, two by two, to the bag and shake them till they're coated with flour. Place chicken pieces in the hot oil. Cover. Turn once. Fry till golden. Total cooking time: 15 to 20 minutes. Drain on paper towels. If grandchildren are hungrily hanging around the kitchen, do what Grandpa Gleaton did: give them a "pre-treat" of fried chicken wings. It'll make them happy‒and even hungrier.
Make the cream gravy.
Pour all but about 3 tablespoons of fat out of the pan in which the chicken was fried. Make a roux: scrape the browned bits in the pan to loosen them, then add 3 or 4 tablespoons flour and stir. Add up to 2 cups of milk (depending on how much gravy you want) and stir to incorporate milk and roux. Simmer for a few minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add 3 or 4 sliced hard-boiled eggs to the gravy and serve it forth with the chicken, a pot of rice and some greens.
DAD'S OTU TOMATO ZOSS (SAUCE) AVEC MAGIQUES HERBES
Making tomato sauce‒which Dad called "zoss" with a long "o"‒took Dad all day. In summer the day would start with gathering tomatoes from the garden, in winter with opening tomatoes we had canned. The rest of the day involved simmering tomatoes, tasting and seasoning, nipping at vodka or the cheap wine he drank by the half gallon (it looked like urine, so we kids called it piss-wine) and napping in his den. By supper time the sauce was OTU (out of this universe) and Dad was sauced too. But drunk or sober, Dad made the best tomato sauce ever. Actually, none of us knows how Dad achieved his memorable zoss, except that he'd add to the pot Contadina tomato paste and what he called magiques herbes (magic herbs). Maybe there was some magic in Dad's herbs. It's not in his kettle. Kevin has the kettle but hasn't figured out how to duplicate the flavor of Grandpa's zoss. "Maybe I don't nod off in the den enough," he said, though I suspect it's because he doesn't drink enough vodka or piss-wine while the sauce simmers.
KEVIN'S TOTALLY TASTY TOMATO SAUCE: A LIVING RECIPE
Kev's wife Paula likes spaghetti‒"sketty," she calls it‒with tomato sauce at least once a week. In 1994 Kev gave me his recipe for a couple gallons of sauce. It called for 50 to 60 tomatoes, massacred (puréed) in a food processor, put in a pot with onions and seasonings, simmered for two days, and then canned.
Nowadays he does it differently. At the end of summer, when tomatoes are plentiful and cheap, he and Paula can many jars of tomatoes‒just plain tomatoes, no seasonings. When sketty is on the menu, dump a jar of tomatoes into a pot. "The tomatoes are pretty juicy but add love, seasonings, paste and whatnot and let it cook some more," advises Kev. "A one quart jar of 'moes + 12 ounces tomato paste + all the other stuff nicely decorates a pound of sketty or any other pasta. Seasonings and herbs may change according to what is to hand. Add onions, meat, 'shrooms, peppers, wine, and whatever. Sometimes it gets some sugar (Paula's Italian heritage), black pepper and a small pinch of cayenne. Sauce is what I call a living recipe: you just make it, no instructions needed. We never have it the same way twice." Sounds like his Grandpa's grandson.
SHIT BEANS & POTLIKKER
The best thing about shit beans was the cooking broth or potlikker and the cornbread, which made the beans palatable‒just barely. Potlikker is the spelling for pot liquor these days. You'll find it in contemporary Southern cookbooks and food histories such as The Potlikker Papers.
Maybe you have to be a born and bred Southerner to appreciate this dish. Or maybe you have to be really really hungry. Or both. Dad would gather green beans that were so old on the vine they were yellow and tough, then boil them for a few hours. My brother John dubbed them shit beans when he smelled their "fecal odor" as they cooked. Plus they were the color of chicken shit.
We kids thought "shit" described the beans' eating quality too. "Tastes like shit‒but good," as a favorite joke punchline goes, meaning it tastes awful but I'm pretending it's good so I don't offend the cook. Years later John told me shit beans tasted better once we'd named them for what they were.
Remove tips and strings from a mess of over-ripe yellowish, no-longer-green green beans. Boil them with fatback (salt pork) or a ham bone and water for a couple hours to soften them up. Serve with potlikker and South Carolina Skillet Cornbread (►Chapter 20).
MUNSEY GLEATON'S OOHS & AAHS EGGPLANT
Dad liked to serve this dish with roast leg o' lamb. If we failed to praise it, he'd say, "I don't hear any oohs and aahs." To satisfy the cook's ego, we'd interrupt our chewing long enough to say a few oohs and aahs. They weren't faked; the eggplant is delicious. Dad liked to make his chicken stock by boiling chicken legs, the bottom part with the toes, but that part of a chicken's leg is hard to come by these days since we don't raise chickens. This dish freezes well. Freeze it before baking, in a baking dish, and let it thaw before putting it in the oven. Yummy plain or with a bit of sour cream.
Sauté in a little oil or butter in a large skillet or deep pot:
1 cup chopped onions
Add more oil or butter if needed and sauté:
1 cup dry bread cubes
Add to the pot:
2 cups chicken stock
1/2 teaspoon salt
A shake of garlic powder or 1 or 2 cloves of minced fresh garlic
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Dash of cayenne pepper
Peel and dice 1 large or 2 medium size eggplants (about 5 or 6 cups) and add to the pot. Give everything a good stir, then simmer till the eggplant is mushy. Pour the mixture into a greased glass or ceramic casserole dish. Dad used a glass loaf pan. Top the eggplant with this mixture:
1 cup fine dry bread crumbs, sautéed in 2 tablespoons butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
Bake at 350° about 20 minutes, till the crumb topping is light brown. Serve with roast leg o' lamb and oohs and aahs.
DAD'S CHRISTMAS DIVINITY FUDGE
Divinity fudge is mostly beaten egg whites and sugar. It is light as air and divinely delectable. Dad dropped the divinity onto a small marble-top table to cool and set. Once the divinity-laden table was under the heat exchange hole opening into my sister's bedroom. She got out a fishing rod, dropped her line down the hole, and snagged a few pieces of heaven.
It helps to have a partner while pouring the syrup into the egg whites.
Put in a heavy pot and stir till sugar is dissolved:
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup light corn syrup
Pinch salt
Boil until mixture forms a firm ball in cold water (255° on a candy thermometer).
Beat 2 egg whites until stiff but not dry. Add syrup to egg whites in a slow steady stream while beating with a whisk (this is where a partner comes in handy). When syrup and egg whites are combined, beat in:
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Then mix in with a spoon:
1/2 cup glacéed cherries, halved
1/4 cup chopped citron
Or whatever glacéed fruit you prefer.
If candy is overbeaten and becomes dry, add a little hot water. Drop spoonfuls onto a buttered marble, or if you have no marble, drop spoonfuls on wax paper to cool and set. Then try to keep the marabunta away!
We learned about marabunta, the voracious army ants of South America, in Carl Stephenson's short story, "Leiningen Versus the Ants," which was in my high school literature book. So when a culinary delectable disappeared quickly, one of us would be sure to say: "Ah! I see the marabunta were here." I suspect marabunta is another way of saying teenage boy.