The Best Cook in the World

by Rick Bragg

  Using your fingers, grease a 9-inch cast-iron skillet with butter or lard. It’s your choice, and it will taste good either way. The butter will add another little level of flavor. If you do not own a cast-iron skillet, shame on you; go get one. If you have no lard, you can use bacon grease or any good shortening. The shortening, though, will not have the delicious pork flavor that the lard will, though it would be healthier. So, of course, would eating a salad.

  Pour the cornmeal mixture into the skillet, and bake until the top is golden brown, usually around 20 minutes. If the top turns dark brown, the cornbread will be mealy, dusty, and dry.

  “Cook it right the first time, and pay attention to the smell. You will smell it when it’s done, that kind of nutty smell. For the rest of your life, you can time it with your nose.”

  There is an art to serving it. My people never gave much of a damn about presentation. We do not build towers of green tomatoes, picked crab, and goat cheese, or fan out our quail so it appears to take wing off the rutabagas. But we are neither heathens nor Philistines, and there is something to be said for the beauty of food on a plate, no matter who cooks it or how humble it might be. Photographers love to shoot Southern food, because it is one of those rare genres in which you can almost see the flavor, almost smell it coming off the print or the page.

  Do it as Jim did it, on a plate instead of in a bowl, with that puddle of beans and ham and dollop of creamed onion and that single red potato to the side, and a generous dab or two of the cabbage-and-carrot slaw. I know this seems a little bit much, all in all. I know delicate people, those who eat a celery stick and half a rice cake and have to go lie down, will fret and perhaps tremble. I think this meal, even unadorned, might actually kill them—not over a lifetime, but instantly, like a bullet, or a subway train.

  * * *

  • • •

  I asked my mother to translate these recipes because they were Ava’s first real feast, a lesson she passed down to my mother, and because they constitute what might be my favorite meal. As much as anything in her repertoire, it is timeless, as much a part of the landscape as the pines, and the legend of the mean old man himself. It would become the meal my grandmother—and my mother, after her—cooked to celebrate birth, and to ease the pain of death, and to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims, the Baby Jesus, the leprechauns, and the Easter Bunny. Not even the invention of electricity has significantly altered the way it is prepared; only thin-crusted fried chicken, hot biscuits, and good chicken gravy, with fresh green beans and new potatoes, rival it in our history, and appetite.

  It does take hours to prepare, which is a lot of time for a plate of beans in the twenty-first century, and requires an antiquated attention to detail, to try to find that place between nothing special and just too much. Even veteran cooks concede that such a place cannot always be found, though the old man seemed to know, inherently, and so could lead others to it. My mother, the beneficiary of three generations of experience, knows there is no magic in it, knows that cooks who tend their pots with care, who do not rush, and do not settle, will find it every time, though things might get a little tedious for those who get anxious waiting for a Pop-Tart.

  As my South becomes less familiar to me, I think more and more about what the old man said about his food, about how he believed supper should be the finest time of day, a reward for climbing out of that well, or laying down one more hundred-pound sack, or stepping away from the blast furnace and into the cool of the evening, one more time. Though he, of course, used fewer words.

  • 4 •

  SWEETER, AFTER THE FROST

  Collard Greens, Baked Hog Jowl, Baked Sweet Potatoes

  Ava

  1924

  IT WAS BAD ENOUGH she had to stand at that woodstove and listen to the old man preach on food as if he was the John the Baptist of beans and grits and pigs and such. At least he kept his sermons short, plain, and to the point. The hateful truth was, it was beginning to sink in; she was beginning to appreciate the difference between food and good food. She did not appreciate her lessons enough to stop griping and stomping, but this was her natural state, in the way that grimness was his, and did not always mean a lot. But then, on top of everything else, he made her follow him into the weeds and sad remnants of the fall garden, where he preached on, curtly, about the changing season, and the position of the moon, and early frost. She walked behind him like a petulant child, and even kicked at the dirt every few steps.

  The old man turned and saw her standing in the middle of a rising cloud, her socks—she wore big, thick men’s woolen socks with her high-ankled, old-fashioned shoes—red with kicked-up dust. He just shook his head and pointed to the tumbledown shed that passed for their barn, and the mule stabled within.

  Working people, he warned her, could not afford to remain ignorant of the sky, the rain, and the chemistry of the turned earth underneath. They could not ignore the frost and pests and blight, or fail to see the potential in a seed the size of a speck of dust that could save your life if your luck was running high.

  The boy had learned how to grow a fine garden from his momma before she passed away, and before that from the old man himself, before he vanished into exile. Most of the good things were gone, of course, the tomatoes, the squash, the sweet corn, the okra. A fall garden could still feed you a good while, though, and as he talked, he gathered a good mess of collards—the best green there is on earth, he believed. While he was there, he searched for and found the last of the hot pepper, a twisty little pod of turning cayenne.

  The collards were taller than his knees, and she had been gathering them a few at a time since they first started to come in. But the old man had ignored them till now. The first frost had settled cold and silver on the garden just a day or so before.

  “They ready now,” he said.

  Just because a row of collards were tall, even as high as your hip bones, did not mean they were ready to eat, he believed.

  “You can pick collards as soon as they start to come in,” in late summer and in early fall, as the weather begins to go cool, “if they’re all you have,” he said. But though young, small collards were tender, they were a little bland. If you could wait a bit, he said, wait to pick them after the first light frost has touched them; “the frost does somethin’ to collards that just makes ’em a little bit better….I think they’re sweeter,” he said.

  He tapped his temple again, for emphasis. Remember.

  “Just this, and a pan of good cornbread, is pretty fine,” he said.

  “Is this all we’re having?” she asked.

  “Not by a damn sight,” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  He had a nice piece of hog jowl, a pound or so, slowly curing in the smokehouse. It had not cured much, but some smoke was better than none. He rubbed it all over with a little bacon grease and a heavy, logging-camp dose of coarsely ground black pepper, and set it aside.

  He needed an iron rack to slip inside the pot, to raise the hog jowl an inch or so, as the fat rendered. The girl did not have one, so he went searching. He came back with three railroad spikes—the black iron clean, not rusty. The boy picked them up in the rail yards, and when he walked the tracks; he used them as weights, in fish and turtle traps, and more. The old man rubbed them clean, then rubbed them again with some bacon grease, and lined three of them across the pot, to rest the pork on. He covered it with a heavy lid, and slid it into the baking box on the iron stove. Ava stood beside him, aghast, making a face.

  Who cooked with stuff that shook out of a cross tie when the trains roared by?

  Hog jowl is not as exotic as some people think. Granny, in The Beverly Hillbillies, introduced it to much of America in the 1960s. It is, though, exactly what the name implies: the fatty meat at the hog’s jowl. The flavor, to many, is like a cross between fatback and pork belly. It is an excellent seasoning in boiled beans, but it bakes to something close to heaven.

  The piece the old man use
d was mostly fat, but had a thin streak of lean. Salted, the lean could be a little strong, in this as in most side meat, though it was excellent for seasoning; smoked, or fresh, it was milder. There were people in the hills who believed all other parts of the hog were inferior to the jowl, and he was one of them. He had cooked them every way you could, even sizzling, dripping, skewered on a stick over a campfire. He had scored it with a knife and slow-cooked it in an iron pot outdoors, surrounded by bubbling beans. But the best way, he told the girl, was to bake it slow in its own running fat, maybe surrounded by some sweet potatoes, till all that was left was the crisp, crumbly ghost of what you’d started with.

  No one seems to recall the brand, but the woodstove in his daughter-in-law’s kitchen was a good one, a solid one, the child’s only dowry. The old man had done most of his cooking in the fireplace itself, or in outdoor kitchens, but he liked this invention, tremendously. Still, he would not give it his final seal of approval until he had tested it on some good hog jowl.

  “That’s all we do to that jowl,” he told the girl, “till we throw in the sweet taters. Now let’s get to the greens.”

  He showed her how to wash them thoroughly, and chop them so that they would cook down to pieces about the size of a playing card. Then he put them on to cook with salt, sugar, a single pod of hot pepper, and a small piece of fat. “White meat [what he called fatback] is better for collards, or a nice little chunk of streak o’ lean, but anything will do, whar it’s smoked or fresh, or salted,” he said. But there was a science to it.

  “You don’t want no real whole lot of meat in your greens. You want your greens to be seasoned, but you don’t want no big ol’ hunks of seasoning meat…don’t want your greens to get greasy, and they’ll get that way if you use too much meat.” He had heard of a Frenchman who seasoned greens with a piece of duck fat, and though that seemed a little fancy-pants to Ava, the old man surprised her. “I ain’t had much duck, but that don’t seem like no bad idea, a-tall. We shoot some ducks this winter, we’ll see about it.”

  Collards, like any green, had to be smartly seasoned; if you used salt meat of any kind for your seasoning, you should reduce the salt you added, he lectured, or they would be inedible. Greens should taste mildly sweet and hot at the same time; the sugar, working in concert with the seasoning meat and salt, would reduce their natural bitterness.

  “Why can’t you just add more sugar to your young greens, ’stead of waitin’ for the frost?” the girl asked him. It was the first logical question she had asked since her lessons began.

  “T’ain’t the same kinda sweet,” the old man answered.

  As with the beans, the amount of water, and its gradual addition to the pot, was important. He showed her how to begin with just a few cups of water, just enough to cover, and slowly add more as it cooked away; his own momma had taught him that, “to keep from washing the taste right out of good stuff.”

  If the pinto was the bean of kings, then the collard was their green. Even people who didn’t like greens liked collards, because the leaves were naturally dense, not mushy or weedy. But he said the truth about cooking collard greens was that sometimes, no matter how good a cook a person was, the greens would still taste a little strong, or the texture might be a little tough, even after two hours or more of cooking. There was some luck involved, the old man told her; there was luck involved in cooking just about anything on a woodstove, in a time when a spice rack often consisted of little more than a pepper pot and a box of salt.

  Everyone knows about potlikker; even the girl knew about it, but he told her anyway. “Save the juice in the pot’s bottom, to mix with your cornbread the next day. Hit’s better than soup, ’specially if you’ve got a few scraps of collards left.” It was a poor folks’ version of the Italian wedding soup, and a fine meal in lean times. The old man called it broth. He called every savory liquid that, whether it was from greens, beans, squash, or chicken.

  But if beans were the foundation of a poor man’s diet, greens were his apothecary. The broth from the greens, fortified with pork, was also an excellent meal for the sick, rich in iron, to get them out of the bed and back in the mill or the field, back down the ladder to the bottom of a well. No one, no one with cash money, the old man told his daughter-in-law, “has got no use for a helpless poor man. Greens is medicine. All greens is medicine. Beans will steady a body, but greens will cure one…but t’ain’t no reason it can’t taste good, too.”

  He finished the meal by peeling four sweet potatoes and, without seasoning them at all, raising the lid of the iron pot and easing them in, to cook as the hog jowl finished.

  Then, leaving the girl to watch the greens, he went to have a smoke.

  She wandered out to the porch two or three times, but was ordered inside to supervise.

  The greens were done in two hours, roughly dense and leafy, but tender. They were sweet, and hot, and savory, as the old man had predicted.

  The hog jowl crumbled to the touch. The sweet potatoes had soaked up some of the flavor, and in turn had added just a little sweetness to the pork as their flavors swirled inside the pot.

  The boy was getting used to being glad it was suppertime.

  “He started,” the girl told him, “but I had to do most of it.”

  Collard Greens

  WHAT YOU WILL NEED

  About 2 or 3 large bunches of collard greens

  1 small piece fatback or hog jowl, or about 2 slices bacon

  1 small whole pod hot pepper, such as cayenne

  1 small clove garlic

  1 tablespoon salt

  1 tablespoon sugar

  HOW TO COOK THEM

  Wash the collards at least three times; grit clings to collards, in the wrinkles at the edges of the leaves and between the stalks. Chop the small stalks and leaves into pieces about the size of your hand, and wash them once more. Do not be alarmed if you have a monstrous pile of collards; they will cook down. How much of the stalk you use—the thick, main stalk closest to the cut—is a matter of taste. My mother uses almost no stalk, though some cooks say it will add a little flavor, and a little texture, to the finished dish. She thinks such people just don’t know collards.

  You do not have to cover the collards with water. Just use 2 or 3 cups, and bring them to boil in a large covered pot. Add the fatback or bacon (if you use bacon slices, cut them into thirds), and the whole pepper, the whole clove of garlic, and the seasonings. If you must, substitute for the pepper pod three good dashes of hot, clear pepper sauce, but no more than a good teaspoon.

  Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for about 2 hours, adding water, if necessary, as it cooks out, still being careful not to drown the leaves with too much water. Stir every 15 minutes, at least. Some cooks like to use a set a tongs instead of a large spoon to move the collards around. “There should be very, very little liquid left in the bottom of that pot when your collards are done,” my mother said.

  Time is of secondary importance, she stresses, as a measurement in the cooking of collards. Texture is paramount. Cook them until the leaves are tender, but not till they disintegrate. So pay attention as they cook, and take a leaf or two from the pot and test it, after about 1½ hours. You should be able to cut easily through the collards with the edge of a fork when they are done. Collards should be leafy, and should seem, well, substantial, almost dense, and not be in shreds or ropes after they cook, as other greens can be.

  Do not confuse collards with turnip greens, spinach, or mustard greens, and never mix them. Though it is acceptable for turnip greens and mustard greens to go mushy, mushy collards are terrible. “If you want real mushy collards, open a can,” my mother believes.

  And be sure to taste when you test them for texture. If they are too bland, add a little salt to the pot.

  You do not want overpowering heat in this dish, so be careful when choosing the fresh pepper. She likes cayenne, but some people like a jalapeño, or even a serrano. A good rule is to avoid anything bigger than your li
ttle finger. And try not to break it as you stir the collards. This is a fine point, but an important one. Never, ever slice or dice the pepper—or the garlic, for that matter—as it will make those flavors overpowering.

  Dried pepper will suffice in this dish, but, again, use a whole pod. But you can find hot pepper year round now in grocery stores, about the only great improvement my mother seems to admit to in the last 30 years. My mother grows her own, in cut-down milk jugs, shaded by a rock wall.

  Many people, like me, like sweeter collard greens. You can adjust the sweetness, to taste.

  Again, try to season your collards as they cook, instead of just smothering them with extra pepper sauce on the table or in the serving bowl. It will greatly alter the flavor—not the pepper so much as the strong pickling vinegar the peppers are preserved with—sometimes to such a degree that you cannot even taste the savory greens. Stick to a clear hot-pepper sauce; if you want to slop a lot of red-pepper sauce on your greens, she believes, you should never be offered any good greens to start with.

  “I don’t know why people feel like they got to mess stuff up,” she said.

  Unlike beans, which can be cooked to a more or less reliable formula unless they are old, collard greens can be a little more complicated, as Jimmy Jim warned. “Some collards will be tough when you pick them late in the season, but they’ll have more flavor,” my mother said. “Sometimes collards can be bitter. I think it’s because of the dirt they come from. Nowadays, you can get collard greens out of season in the grocery store, but I don’t know them collards. I don’t know where they’re from, or who grew ’em, or nothin’. I like to eat my collards in season, took from our own dirt. But even odd collards is better than no collards, I suppose.”