The Best Cook in the World

by Rick Bragg

  “We can have it tomorrow,” the girl said.

  The boy had more iron in him than the old man had figured, to endure such a hell as this.

  He lit his pipe, and in the quiet of the little kitchen heard his own stomach growl.

  “I’ll rustle us up some dessert, children,” the old man said, rising, and did not wait for the girl’s assent.

  First he checked to make sure they had in their larder the few things he needed. They did—it was a simple dish. He quickly pulled together a biscuit dough, mixing flour, salt, soda, lard, and buttermilk, not in a bowl, not on a counter, but in the flour can itself, hunched over the bin in a straight-back chair, which the girl believed to be barbaric. Inside the bin, which he held steady between his bony knees, he shaped a depression—what amounted to a bowl made from the flour itself—and in the bottom placed his lard and his wet ingredients, drawing the dry flour down into the wet till he had his dough just right. He worked silently, almost grimly, but that was his natural state. He was actually almost happy, cooking, though his angry, desolate face and his happy, content face were eerily the same. “We’ll need biscuits for this,” was his only comment, but when the girl went to fetch the open-ended can she used to cut them out, he waved her away. He shaped them in his two hands, like a big, grim child making mud pies.

  When the girl peeked over his shoulder, she almost laughed. He had patted out what seemed to be biscuits for a dollhouse or a child’s tea party, a third the size of a real biscuit; it appeared such an odd thing, to see the rough old man’s hands, which looked like they had been jerked at the last minute from a fire and nicked with a million knives, crafting such a dainty thing. Then, in a deep pan, he made a lake of sweetened, buttery spiced milk for them to swim in, and dropped them in with a plop, making sure they were coated. It was ready for baking in less than twenty minutes, and ready to eat in thirty more, a pan of buttery dumplings steeped in a liquid thickened to something like a pale-yellow caramel, but cleaner-tasting, milder, somehow. The boy was so happy he almost floated off the chair; the girl was mystified that it came out of him, but would not admit this for another half-century or so.

  He learned it, he would say later, cooking for the men who skinned logs out of the woods, who fought each other with ax handles for sport, and worked for timber barons who considered them of lesser value than mules. He worked from the ingredients at hand, inside a kitchen tent with a dirt floor and flapping canvas walls. But, in a way, it was the best job a cook could have, because when he set this dish down on a rough table amid workingmen, he knew, and they knew, there was not a rich man in the fanciest house on the highest hill who was eating any better than they were, right then.

  Butter Rolls

  She has two methods for this, one a little harder, more traditional, and at least 150 years old. The other, much easier, is only sixty years old. “It’s new,” she said.

  She prepares her biscuit dough just as Jim did, in the way he taught her mother to do it. Because she bakes every day, she keeps her flour in a ten-gallon can, and every time she bakes a pan of biscuits or needs other dough, she shapes a bowl of dry flour inside the flour can itself, pours her wet ingredients and fat into the depression, and uses the ends of her fingers to push the dry dough down and pull the moisture up the sides until she has just the right consistency. But this is not something you want to try right away: you run the risk of contaminating your flour. Better, for the first twenty to forty years or so, to use a clean, flat surface, such as an un-nicked cutting board or a large, separate bowl. Some use the clean countertop itself. “The flour is your bowl, and don’t say ‘depression’; just say ‘make a hole in it.’ ”

  “If you already know how to make biscuit dough, you won’t need me,” she said, “not for the first part. But I guess it wouldn’t hurt to tell it.”

  The Traditional

  WHAT YOU WILL NEED

  for the biscuit dough

  3 to 4 cups self-rising flour

  4 tablespoons lard or Crisco

  ¾ cup buttermilk

  ¼ cup water

  for the sweetened, spiced milk

  1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

  1 can (12 ounces) sweetened condensed milk

  ½ cup whole milk

  1 cup sugar

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1 stick unsalted butter, kept cold

  HOW TO COOK IT

  First lay out a sheet of wax paper, and another sheet, both large enough to hold or cover a dozen or more small biscuits. You will not need a traditional baking sheet for this recipe; you just want something to lay the biscuits on as you make them, “before you take ’em swimming,” she said.

  Sift the flour, all of it, into a large bowl or whatever work surface you choose for mixing your dough. Some of our people keep a large wooden cutting board just for this, or use a clean countertop. Sifting is mandatory, even for self-rising flour. The sifting will catch any impurities in the flour, and mass-milled flour will have some mysterious specks here and there.

  “I sift all my flour,” she said. “Some people don’t, and I eat their bread, but I don’t really want to. You know, I just do it to be polite.” But, she concedes, she usually points it out.

  In the mound of sifted flour, use your fingers to create another bowl. Leave about an inch or two of flour at the bottom of the flour bowl. The idea is that the wet ingredients never actually touch the bottom of the bowl, or board.

  “Reach and get a handful of lard or Crisco,” she instructed. “My hands are not real big. I guessed at the four tablespoons.” Work, break, or squeeze the Crisco into pieces, into the bottom of the depression. “ ‘Hole,’ ” she said.

  Carefully pour most of the buttermilk and water into the depression, or hole, saving just 2 tablespoons or so, in case your mixture goes a tad dry and you need to moisten it. Gradually work the flour into the liquid and fat, pushing the flour down with your fingertips from the sides into the wet ingredients.

  “Pull it from the sides, and work it into the liquid and lard in the bottom till it begins to get more firm. You don’t want sticky, and you don’t want dry, neither, but right in the middle.”

  The lovely thing about this is, if you have pulled the dry flour into the liquid gradually, it is hard to miss the consistency you are aiming for. You want to be able to roll the finished dough into rough balls, no bigger around than half-dollars, then flatten them slightly between your hands, so you have biscuits no bigger around than silver dollars.

  Do not worry about waste. You can sift the leftover flour, and reuse the flour that is still perfectly dry.

  Pat out about a dozen small biscuits, or a few more if you have some dough left over, and lay them on the wax paper. Sprinkle about half the cinnamon, but no sugar, lightly over the top of the biscuits—they will be sweet enough—and cover with the other sheet of wax paper.

  Now it is time to make the bath. Into a clean bowl, pour the sweetened condensed milk; then fill the empty can with whole milk and add that to the bowl. You could ask why she does it this way, instead of measuring it into a cup, but she would only tell you because she just does. Add the sugar, the vanilla, and the rest of the cinnamon to the pool. Do not try to mix the cinnamon thoroughly, meticulously. “It will just make you mad,” she said. “Cinnamon likes to trail and clump and swirl.”

  Cube the whole stick of butter, and let it go swimming in the milk mixture.

  “That’s why we call ’em butter rolls,” she said.

  Preheat your oven to 350 or 400 degrees, “depending on whether your oven runs hot or not,” she said.

  Pour the liquid into a 1-quart baking dish or pan, about 8 by 8 inches—though the shape does not matter—and gently drop the biscuits one by one into the liquid. Take your fingers and press each one down in the liquid, then let it bob back up.

  “You want them wet, but do it just before you put ’em in the preheated oven, at the last second, so they won’t get too mushy or soggy.”

  Do
not crowd them as you place them in the dish. Leave space between them, about an inch or so. This does not have to be exact, but if you squeeze them in, “they will gum together, and just not do right,” my mother said. “This is the most important thing in this, I believe. It won’t hurt nothin’ if one or two of ’em sticks together; you just don’t want ’em covering the whole pan as they cook.”

  When I asked her to be specific about the oven temperature, she snorted at me.

  “How in the world do I know how their oven cooks? I ain’t never been in their house, and I don’t even know who they are.”

  Bake about 15 to 20 minutes, depending on the mysteries of your oven. Then—and this is a little tricky—take a large spoon and turn each little dumpling over. It should be coated in the thickening liquid, and so should remain moist for the remainder of the cooking time. Cook another 10 to 15 minutes, until the liquid has formed a thick soup, not evaporated completely or cooked to a true caramel, but till the milk has cooked up into the biscuits and they have begun to brown just a little on top.

  “You want ’em done, not somethin’ soggy, but golden brown and still kind of creamy and buttery. The soup needs to be still thin enough to spoon out and drizzle some on the butter rolls.”

  They should be moist throughout, more like a buttery dumpling than a flaky biscuit. Sometimes she sprinkles a little more cinnamon on them at the end, but sometimes she does not. If they seem a little gooey, she says, “then they’re prob’ly just about right.”

  “How long, in minutes, altogether?” I asked her, pressing.

  “How would I know?” she said. “Just till they’re right.”

  Her wild guess was about 30 to 40 minutes or so, in all, “but you have to check, and smell. You’ll know they’re ready by the smell.” When I asked what that smell is, she just said, impatiently: “Good.”

  Serve them while they’re hot, or throw them out. They should be sweet, but not sickening, treacly; the first thing you should taste is the butter.

  “But be careful, ’cause they can burn you.”

  I told her we could just leave that to common sense.

  Some people, she explained, “don’t have none.”

  She looked at me a little longer than was necessary.

  The Cheatin’, Whoppin’ Version

  “Came up with this ’un on my own,” she said.

  This recipe is quicker and easier, and still tastes very good; even I can make these. She fought against it for a while, she and her conscience, to see so much family history compressed into a cardboard tube. But she knows that many younger people, whippersnappers of sixty or seventy or so, may be intimidated by having to make real biscuits, or just believe they have something better to do, and may never attempt it otherwise.

  First follow the directions for the milk mixture, as given in the traditional recipe, and set it aside.

  Now, in shame, walk to refrigerator, retrieve a tube of canned biscuits, and—following directions on the label—peel off the outer label and whop the tube smartly on the edge of the counter; try not to drop the biscuits on the floor when they open in that alien, unnatural way.

  I have never had a gallbladder go bad, or appendicitis, but I think it is probably something like this. “I don’t care if I open a million of ’em. It just don’t look right,” my mother said.

  My mother has the usual biscuit chef’s snobbery about canned biscuits. She believes they are all but useless for breakfast, and especially for breakfast sandwiches, like a sausage biscuit. They don’t even look like biscuit, any more than a bowl of plastic fruit looks like a curb market. But with a little sleight of hand, to hide the processed, uniform, somewhat mechanical nature of the average whop ’em biscuit, they can be useful in a limited way. “And this might be the best use of a canned biscuit I can think of,” she said.

  You will divide these biscuits into quarters, so a tube of small canned biscuits, a ten-count or so, will more than do. Do not try to doll them up, pat them out, or shape them in any way. You will just have a tacky mess.

  “And don’t worry about how they look. Sprinkle ’em with some cinnamon if you want to, and drop ’em in the milk. They won’t be pretty at first, not like them pretty little real biscuits. They’ll look fine when it’s done.”

  You may have more so-called biscuits, or dumplings, and smaller ones than in the traditional recipe using whole, real biscuit, but this is fine, too. But, again, be careful not to crowd the biscuit pieces, or they will gum together and create a single slab, just like the real biscuits.

  Bake roughly the same way, remembering to press them down into the milk at the beginning, and to turn them after 15 minutes or so. Again, it will depend on the stove, and also on the brand of biscuit, so keep watch as they brown.

  Hide the biscuit tube in the trash, and “put the butter rolls on the counter on top of a pot holder, or on the stove eye, and let ’em cool a bit. Won’t nobody know no different…but, you know, the cook.” Pray about it, she said.

  The somewhat ragged texture of the torn-up canned biscuit pieces will brown in such a way that, she says, “it’ll look like you meant it to be that way.”

  Like the preformed pie shell, it is a small sin, and one of those rare, rare shortcuts that actually lead somewhere good, instead of to a bleak dead end, like vacuum-sealed macaroni salad, or fast-food fried chicken, or a microwaved anything.

  “The only reason I even mention it is, I know a lot of people wouldn’t never cook this if I didn’t, and these butter rolls is a whole lot better than no butter rolls a-tall,” she said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ninety-two years before, with the glow from the iron stove warm on their backs, the mean old man and his boy ate their butter rolls in thick ceramic soup bowls, with spoons rescued from an old army mess hall. They made sure to scoop out some of the thickened, sweetened, buttery milk from the bottom of the pan, and spoon it over the dumplings. It was the only way to eat them right, “to just kind of drizzle it on there,” the old man said. Old people like to do that to young people in my family, like to tell them how to eat their food; they figure that, since they had the good sense to cook it, they should surely know how it should be eaten, too. They will lecture, in the middle of a delicious mouthful, “You just ain’t eatin’ that right.”

  Ava, after being told to use a spoon and a bowl, ate hers in a saucer with a fork, and would for seventy years, just to get even in some small and pointless way, till she could plot a better one. You had to know her.

  It was just the beginning, of course. Some people give up on a good grudge after a while, maybe because the weight gets to be so heavy over time, or else the accumulated years make it a little slippery in the mind. And then there are people like my maternal grandmother, who could carry a grudge the size of a pachyderm around till Kingdom Come. It does not matter if their feelings about a thing, or a person, decline or improve in time; it’s how they felt in that moment, in that misbegotten sliver of time, that endures, and they will bring it up at least once a week forever, till their minds just collapse around it. How dare that old rascal show her up like that, in front of her half-starved husband, by cooking something so good?

  But there was no denying it, she would admit to us one day, many, many days from then: it was a fine and delicious thing the old cuss laid upon their table, maybe even the best dessert she had ever tasted, and her people were wizards with German chocolate cake and pineapple upside-down cake and chocolate and lemon pies. Even people who don’t really like food like a little dessert—ask them, and see if they don’t. Even very skinny people, supermodels and swimmers and the like, enjoy a good, rich, sweet butter dumpling, for the same reason that a sick dog with no appetite will always eat a can of sardines.

  She knew, as she left the old man and boy that night, sitting quietly by that warm stove, that she probably needed to say something kind, maybe even make some slight gesture of friendship or at least civility toward the mean old man, maybe even go
so far as some halfhearted stab at gratitude. But the beautiful thing about her, all her long life, was, she truly did not give a damn what she was supposed to do.

  “That baking pan,” she said to them, as she went to bed, “is gonna be hell to clean.”

  • 2 •

  “SALT IS GOOD”

  Cream Sausage Gravy, Buttered Grits with a Touch of Cheese, Sliced Tomato, the Perfect Fried Egg

  My grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, and his baby brother, Shulie

  1924

  THE NEIGHBOR saw the girl wandering in the overgrown pasture near her house, and asked her if he could be of assistance. She did not seem to be in distress, merely searching for something.

  “Sir,” she said, “I hear there used to be an old well hereabouts.”

  “Yes, young miss,” he replied.

  Then the neighbor, a bashful farmer, just stood there.

  “Well?” she asked.

  Ava did not suffer fools, either, and she was quick to decide if someone might be one.

  “Miss?” he replied.

  “Well, where is it?”

  “It used to be right yonder,” he pointed, to the remains of an abandoned, broken-down house that had almost been reclaimed by the pine saplings, tall weeds, and gathering vines.

  “Well,” the girl said, “did it get up and move?”

  “Did what move, miss?”

  “The well.”

  “No, miss,” he replied, beginning to think he should have minded his own business and kept walking. “It was filled in, not too many years ago. It was dangerous. A couple people fell in, I heard.”