The Best Cook in the World

by Rick Bragg

  She did not even tell him I told you so.

  William, Edna, and Juanita, who was still toddling, stood with her on the porch. When her man and boy passed from sight, she picked up the small, bloody bundle of meat and threw it as far into the yard as she could, then, after a second or two, sent the little boy, William, to fetch it back to her. They would put it in salt, or hang it to smoke, tomorrow.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next year, ’34, seemed more like legend than anything else, from a safe distance. My brother Sam, who is older but whose memory is better than mine, remembers sitting with my uncles and aunts and other kin who were just little children in that time, listening to them tell what it was like to be hungry, not just late for supper, but hungry. What he remembers most was the old fear in their voices, and how raw it seemed, even after so much time. Whole careers had passed, mortgages had been paid, children raised, and even a little money saved in the bank, but, even though they were sitting in a warm house, far and safe away, at a table that sagged with food, it seemed just outside the door. “They said they’d walk through a cornfield and pick through the stalks on the ground,” he said. “They’d gather the cotton that didn’t open, and prize it out and throw the husk in the fire, and sell just that least little bit of cotton back to people, or try to do it.”

  “I was born after this,” my mother said, “and I was glad of it. In my whole life, myself, I never remember being really, really hungry. I mean not truly hungry, where it gnawed on you. But I missed the worst of it, what Momma and James and William and Edna, and I guess Juanita, all went through, though I guess Juanita was too little then to tell much about what was happenin’. That was when Daddy was gone the longest, when they sent him off.”

  The relatives who had a little extra helped when they could; they gave a limp sack of flour or meal, or some end pieces of bacon, and a few potatoes, or a sack of okra. Ava became farm labor in a time when people were being told not to grow cotton in the first place; there was no market, no need. She became a house servant for people who could barely pay their own bills and paid her in pocket change. She took in sewing, and made quilts to sell till there were no scraps or rags left to piece them together from. In the summer, she hired out to chop cotton for the few farmers who put it in the ground; in September, she hired out again, to pick it. But it was never enough. The boys tried to be the fishermen and hunters that their daddy was, and failed. They were just too small, all of them, to be much help then, but they dragged sacks beside their mother when the season came. It was hard times for everyone, of course, but harder with a man in jail, which was like being a widow till the parole came through. The old people sang about deliverance across the rows, but Ava did not have much hope left anymore. Things had been so bad for so long, it seemed not an aberration, a thing to survive, but just the way it was and would be.

  The songs Ava sang that had always been an escape, a way to lift her spirits, were now a prayer.

  Let us pause in life’s pleasure and count its many tears

  While we all sup sorrow with the poor

  There’s a song that will linger forever in our ears

  Oh, hard times, come again no more

  The garden did not do well without Charlie’s expertise. They ate what they called “poor’do” five days a week. Ava baked a pan of cornbread for one meal, then saved any leftover bread for the evening meal, mixing it with anything and everything to give it taste—the juice from poke salad, greens, boiled back meat, lard, sorghum, whatever they had. She mixed it with water, and baked or boiled it. They were down to two laying hens, and guarded them like gold; there was no broth anymore, so there was none of the golden porridge the old man had made. Children around them grew sick from scurvy and dysentery, but by some small miracle all Ava’s surviving children were spared. She would grieve every single day for the rest of her life, but found a terrible joy in the fact it was just the one, just the one.

  The two boys, James and William, took on work with their uncle Newt, who seemed immune to the Crash of ’29 and the awful decade that followed. He owned his own land and made a good living farming, with a big field of corn, a pasture full of cattle, a pen full of hogs, and a smokehouse full of meat. They peeked inside it when old Newt went inside the house, and day after day they thought the old man might give them a little of his largesse to take home to their momma, but he did not.

  He paid them, a quarter or so now and then, enough for their mother to buy beans, enough to keep them alive. At night, they told stories of the smokehouse, of the slabs of white meat in salt and the big hams slowly, slowly melting, dripping, curing in the smoke, and it seemed like something from a fairy tale. They feasted on it in their dreams, night by night. They feasted on it, and suffered.

  The one thing they always seemed to have was sweet potatoes. It was a grand year for sweet potatoes, which flourished in the ground of their garden and in the gardens of their neighbors. At the little country stores, sweet potatoes spilled out of the bins, thousands and thousands of them. Ava roasted hundreds of them, as Jim had shown her, both in the baking box and nudged up against the hot coals in the fireplace. The children did not whine. The older ones were too wise as to what was happening around them, and the littler ones were too hungry.

  One day, Ava found herself staring into the small spice rack in her kitchen, at the simple things the mean old man had taught her about seasoning. They were covered in dust now, the vanilla flavoring with its lid glued almost shut by age, the cinnamon, an ancient little tin of nutmeg. Her man had been gone less than a year, but it seemed like she was beginning to forget much of what the old man had taught her about the joy of food, the pleasure in eating. She was ashamed of herself.

  The worst of it was, the children’s ignorance of their situation was being scrubbed away, day by day, meal by meal.

  She had only a little flour left, enough for about one pan of biscuit, or…She had butter, and milk, and a little sugar and molasses, which the children ate sometimes with their biscuit. And she had a fifty-pound sack of excellent sweet potatoes.

  “What we gon’ have for supper, Momma?” the boys asked her, not knowing how such a simple question could cut in those days.

  It occurred to her, breaking her heart, that the children, even as young as they were, had learned not to trust that she could put good food on the table anymore.

  “Well,” she said, “I figure we’ll have pie.”

  “Just pie?

  “Just pie.”

  And the rejoicing began.

  She decided to make not one but two, since she had sweet potatoes till the end of the world. She baked her sweet potatoes, about three pounds or so, not in the baking box but in the fireplace itself, right alongside the coals, and you could actually see the sugar in them blister out, from the heat. This, she believed, was how you could tell you had good sweet potatoes. Ava let them cool, then set the children to peeling them as she saw to her ingredients.

  There was no canned milk in the house—sweetened, condensed, evaporated milk was essential for pies—so she tried a little experiment. She melted her butter, a hunk as big as her fist for the two pies, into fresh milk, with a little molasses, smidgens of nutmeg and cinnamon, and a big dollop of vanilla flavoring. She mashed the sweet potatoes, whipped in the sweetened, flavored milk, and put them on to bake inside a biscuit dough shell. She did not bake the pies till they were done so much as she baked them as long as she could, before the children, who were hopping and whining in anticipation, burst into flame.

  The boys eschewed forks and even plates, and each ate a quarter-pie in about three bites.

  “Lord, you didn’t even taste it,” she said.

  “I’ll taste that other’n,” William said.

  If it had come down to one single last piece, there would have been blood.

  But supper comes every day, and the next night came the inevitable question. This time she just ignored them, and went out to the porch to sit in a
straight-back chair as if she simply had not heard.

  “Momma?” Edna said.

  “Yes, child?” she said.

  “What we gonna eat?”

  “Well,” she said, “how about some cobbler?”

  “Just cobbler?”

  “Just cobbler.”

  And the rejoicing commenced again.

  She had been meaning to try something new. If blackberries, cherries, and apples could make a fine cobbler, why not sweet potatoes? She baked, again, about three pounds of them, but this time took them away from the fire after only a half-hour or so. She peeled them and cut them into big chunks, the sweet potatoes firmer this time, then poured the chunks into a deep pan, and added about a half-pound of cold butter, also in chunks. Then she sprinkled on a little cinnamon.

  Finally, she made a batter of flour, the last of her sugar, a little molasses to stretch it out, and vanilla flavoring, and poured it onto the top of the semi-cooked sweet potatoes instead of crafting a dough for a crust. She baked it until the crust was golden and the potatoes had steamed in their own natural sugar and soaked in the generous portion of butter.

  She served it while it was still hot, in big mounds. At least, this time, the children had to use plates. They pronounced it delicious, and pronounced that their momma, if perhaps a little moody, was the greatest momma who ever was. What other momma would feed her children dessert for supper two days in a row, with leftover pie and cobbler for breakfast, and sometimes dinner? This, surely, was the greatest momma, the greatest cook, in the world.

  Sweet Potato Pie

  WHAT YOU WILL NEED

  1 to 1¼ pounds fresh sweet potatoes (not canned)

  1 can (12 ounces) sweetened condensed milk

  ¾ cup granulated sugar

  ¼ cup brown sugar

  ½ stick butter

  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  ¼ teaspoon molasses, in Ava’s memory (no more)

  2 eggs

  ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

  1 good dash grated nutmeg

  One 9-inch pie crust, homemade or store-bought

  HOW TO COOK IT

  Preheat your oven to about 300 or 350 degrees and bake your sweet potatoes—skin on, of course—for about 45 or 50 minutes, until soft. Let cool in cold water, and peel.

  Mash them with a potato masher or a large spoon, as my mother does. She does not own a blender and will not have one in her house, and if you gave her one, along with a microwave, she would put the blender in the microwave and turn it on.

  “When I get too feeble to mash somethin’, I’ll quit,” she said.

  She likes her sweet-potato mixture still to have a little texture to it, “so you’ll know you’re eatin’ sweet potatoes.” Add the milk, sugar, eggs, butter, spices, and flavorings, and stir them in thoroughly.

  Pour it into a pie crust, and bake for an hour. Let it sit at least a half-hour before serving, if you can beat the children away. Again, if there are a few chunks left, this is a good thing.

  Some people down here believe that, in pumpkin pie, canned pumpkin can be even better than fresh. This is not true of sweet potatoes.

  “The thing about sweet potato pie is, it’s good for you,” my mother believes.

  “What about the sugar?” I asked.

  “The good stuff makes up for it,” she said.

  Sweet Potato Cobbler

  WHAT YOU WILL NEED

  3 pounds sweet potatoes

  1 stick butter

  1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

  2 cups flour

  2 cups sugar

  2 cups whole milk

  HOW TO COOK IT

  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

  Bake your sweet potatoes, skin on, for about ½ hour. Cool, peel, and cut into big chunks. If they’re medium-sized potatoes, you can split them lengthwise, and then cut across about three or four times. You do not want bite-sized pieces, but something bigger.

  The size of your baking dish will determine your texture. If you want a crispier crust, use a bigger, shallower pan. If you want a fluffier, softer crust, use a smaller, deeper one.

  My mother uses a pan that she would use for a large pound cake.

  “You don’t need no liquid in this. The sweet taters will make a little.”

  Pour in the sweet potatoes. Cut one stick butter into about six sections, and spread it out among the sweet potatoes. Sprinkle a little cinnamon, no more than a teaspoon, over the potatoes.

  “The sweet is in the batter,” she said.

  Combine the flour and sugar, and stir in the milk, until you get a batter about the consistency of pancake batter or a little thicker. Pour about half of it over the sweet potatoes. Set the bowl down, pick up the baking dish, give it a gentle shake or two, then bang down, smartly but not hard enough to send batter flying or crack your baking dish, on the counter.

  “Gets it shook down in there real good,” she said.

  Then pour the rest of the batter in, and sprinkle with your remaining cinnamon.

  Bake for about 30 minutes or so, until the crust is golden brown.

  This cobbler can be served as dessert, of course, but it can also be served as a side dish, particularly delicious with roast pork, even if you have to imagine the pork.

  * * *

  • • •

  “There we was, in terrible shape, and the kids was dancin’ around, pie on their face,” my grandma said. It was one of the lovely things about children, that they were so easy to fool. But they would be fine till the sweet potatoes ran out.

  They needed to hope for something, so they sat in the house with the past-due rent and the almost empty larder and talked late into the night about the possibilities of food, like how good that cobbler would have tasted with some thick pork chops, or a roast, or maybe some fat spareribs, or even a platter of her fried chicken. They dreamed it all, meal by meal, and their daddy was always at the table in their imagination. It was not torture to imagine a pork roast when the only meat in the larder was the pig’s feet the mountain men had allowed her husband in lieu of murdering him, now cured in the smokehouse. It seemed like so long ago, the night he came home with them.

  It was not just make-believe, to imagine a table laid with good food.

  Better times would come.

  It became a mantra.

  When times get better…

  “I’ll cook y’all this.”

  “I’ll cook y’all that.”

  “I’ll cook…”

  · 9 ·

  “A HAM HOCK DON’T CALL FOR HELP”

  Pan-Roasted Pig’s Feet (with Homemade Barbecue Sauce), Chunky Potato Salad

  Cousin James Jenkins, left, and my uncle William Bundrum

  1934

  ONE NIGHT, when there was no moon to speak of, the hellions crawled from their beds, stealthily slipped on their overalls and their brogans, and eased out the door. Or they would have if they had not let the screen door bang like a pistol shot, waking up every soul in the house. But, then, they were still small, the boys, and had much to learn about a jailbreak.

  In her bed, Ava, wide awake, did not do a thing.

  She had hoped the larceny in her family had ended with the descent of the cow from the Tredegar trestle, and the occasional arrival of an unfamiliar chicken. But, then, she had hoped for a lot of things.

  “Some people just don’t have no luck,” she always said.

  If you can’t have luck, you might as well have gall.

  You might as well have a moonless night.

  She knew, being a good Pentecostal, there was no night deep enough to hide within. But she knew, being Jim’s protégée, it might be good for a head start.

  * * *

  • • •

  The hellions cut through the pines and pastures, and came to the darkened house. Newt was not a man to be fooled with; he might shoot if he heard a marauder, so the boys got down on their bellies and crawled like what they believed wild Indians would do. He had a fair belly on hi
m and was bow-legged himself, and they knew they could outrun him in a straight-up race, but he was not above putting dogs on them, or saddling his horse and trying to ride them down.

  But they had chicken thievery—and swine theft—in their genes.

  They had plotted this through.

  The dogs had been the first problem. Newt did not have biscuit catchers, but good dogs, hunting dogs, chained, and hounds raised hell when there was something to bark at and when there was not; they barked at imagined possums and real raccoons alike, or at a rumor on the wind.

  For months, however, the boys had been petting and loving on the dogs, and hoped the dogs would no more bark at them than they would at Newt or anyone in his house.

  Besides, they knew Newt, who routinely questioned the intelligence of his dogs. A barking dog, Newt had said, was no reason to light a lantern and freeze your fundament off in the yard.

  If Newt were, by some chance, to investigate, to get his horse or mule saddled by lantern light and give chase, they would take to the brush and the thick trees, and slip away. No sane man rode through the thick trees in the dark, even if his dogs had the scent.

  “What if he chases us back to the house?” William said.

  “We won’t go home,” James said.

  “Ever?” William said.

  They discussed this for some time, but could not come up with an acceptable amount of time to hide out. James said he reckoned a year. William said he believed that just till Sunday would be all right, depending on what they stole.

  The worst of it was choosing. They had to make a decision between the chickens on the roost or the succulent pork hanging in the smokehouse. They lost their nerve in the end, and settled on a late-season watermelon that Newt had intended to feed to his hogs.

  They broke it on a rock, and ate it in the dark with their hands.