The Best Cook in the World

by Rick Bragg

  The next day, Ava could only puzzle at how her two boys could stay out all night and return with watermelon juice dried in their eyebrows and hair, and a seed stuck here and there on their faces and necks.

  * * *

  • • •

  A few nights later, they were back. They lay on their bellies in the weeds, looking out on Newt’s barnyard, again trying to decide. The allure of sweet potatoes had begun to recede in Ava’s kitchen.

  “Chicken’d be good,” James said.

  “Bacon’d be good. Be quieter,” Willliam said. He had been involved in a little larceny of his own before this caper, and had not once heard a ham hock squawk for help from the dark.

  James was silent, thinking hard. As the big brother, and the larger fistfighter, he made the final decisions.

  “Chicken,” he said.

  “Make a lot of noise,” William said.

  “Naw, it won’t,” James said, grimly. He loved to play folly, even then, but when he was serious, he was scary.

  Even as a boy, he had hands the size of baseball mitts. He walked up easy, like a ghost, took the first slumbering chicken off the roost like he was pulling a fig, and snapped its neck. They ran a mile, more, before they slowed down. It was not fear that drove them, or conscience, but excitement. They were too excited to sleep, so they made a terrible mess of cleaning and plucking the chicken in the dark, and hanging it on a wire on the front porch, so the dogs could not get at it before morning. They forgot and left the head on—or maybe they did it to give her a scare—so the sad, denuded thing was looking down at their momma when she opened the door just after dawn.

  “Where’d the chicken come from?” she asked, though she was pretty sure.

  “Got runt over,” James said.

  William nodded, solemnly.

  “Fount it in the ditch,” he said.

  Ava was a good person, an almost glowing person, deep inside all that personality. But the hardship had taken a lot out of her, too, and made her old too soon. She wanted to punish them, but she just told them that, the next time they found a dead chicken in the ditch, they should bring it home and give it to her, so she could clean it properly. She did not ask how the roads could be littered with run-over poultry in a time and place where whole days went by without sighting a Model A, or even a slow-moving mule and wagon.

  * * *

  • • •

  Newt’s farm was not the only one they went shopping at, but since they were mad at Newt, they probably visited his place more. A few days after the initial chicken theft, they were back. This time, there was no debate. That morning, early, Newt had killed a hog, and had not asked the boys to help, probably because he wanted to avoid any awkwardness that might arise from not offering them a scrap.

  Well, they would spare him that.

  “We get caught, Newt’ll send us off,” William said.

  “Newt can’t send us off. He’s kin,” James said.

  “Kin can send you off,” William said.

  “No, they can’t,” James said. “Daddy done tol’ me. It’s in the statue.”

  What his daddy had told him was that a lawfully wedded wife could not be compelled to testify against her husband in court, which was just one of those fine points of the law a poor man needed to know in the 1930s in the Deep South; somehow, in James’s interpretation, that shifted a little bit to include everyone, even uncles and second cousins you were stealing from. But there in the dark, when they were plotting the theft of a whole ham or at least some side meat, it was the most reasonable thing that had been uttered in quite a while.

  The problem was one of proximity. The smokehouse was just a few feet from the farmhouse, and if Newt came out the door with a shotgun, they would be goners, or at least William would be. To James, it was the same concept as being chased by a bear: only the slower of the two really had anything to worry about, and he could outrun William toting a piano.

  They slid like lizards across the dirt of the yard and crept into the smokehouse. The door creaked so loud they almost died right there in the cold, still air, but no lamp was lit inside the house. They worked by feel, and by the light from a single match. The smokehouse had no windows and was well made—Newt took pride in things such as that.

  They would have liked just to sling a pair of hams over their shoulders and run for home, but even the two hellions were sure such a large theft would lead to an investigation, and prosecution. They settled, instead, on some pig’s feet. Newt had not known if he planned to pickle them or smoke them; it had been a big hog, and the feet were big and fleshy. Surely, the state would not send a boy off for taking feet.

  James took just two.

  “Get ’em all. I like pig’s feet,” William said.

  “Hush,” James said. “We take too much, he’ll miss it.”

  It never occurred to them, as they ran, to consider that such things, feet of any kind, usually came in sets. They crept out with their swag, and as soon as they were out of sight they started to giggle.

  Again, Ava asked them where the pig’s feet came from.

  “Got runt over,” William said.

  “Fount it in the ditch,” James said.

  Instead, the next day, she prepared to dispose of the evidence. The stolen pig’s feet were not enough to feed her family, but a start. She went to the bare smokehouse and took the last of the scant meat her husband had brought home from his failed trip into the Georgia mountains. There was nothing left but the pig’s feet the men had given him. With the two from Newt’s smokehouse, and a pan of cornbread, there would be enough for all of them.

  For those who think a pig’s foot looks like you just lopped it straight off the running hog, it might ease your mind to know that the hoof, what my mother calls “the nail part,” had been blessedly removed, and what you had, really, was the last joint, which is why some people called them pig knuckles. It was mostly fat, skin, and luscious cartilage, and utterly delicious when pan-roasted. In better times, my people would dress them with a spicy barbecue sauce.

  She rubbed these with a little bacon grease, salt, and black pepper, and then tried something new. She had come into some powdered red pepper—cayenne, she believed—from her kin. She dusted each one of the pigs’ feet; the fat she had rubbed on them made it stick nicely. Now, though, she was faced with a quandary. The four cured ones and two fresh ones from Newt’s smokehouse would cook differently, so she would have to watch them carefully as they roasted.

  She had a few white potatoes left. Odd how there had been a time when she never counted her potatoes. Lately, she knew exactly how many she had, and how many onions, the way a desperate man knows exactly how much change he has in his pocket.

  She had eggs, the last of some sweet pickles, and some mayonnaise. She had everything she needed for a good, simple potato salad. They would have a feast, and shove their thumbs in the eye of their bad luck, for at least a little while longer. If it got worse, in the daylight, if the law came and took her boys away, she would beg and pray and, if she had to, go a little crazy. People felt a bit sorry, she had discovered, for a woman who was only a little crazy.

  She roasted the fresh pig’s feet slowly, for two hours, till they were charred just a bit, and so tender they were almost liquid, and the smoked ones a little less. She was just lifting them from the oven when there was a thumping on her door.

  The children peeked out the window.

  “Oh, hell,” William said.

  “Oh, hell,” James said.

  Ava rushed to see.

  “Oh, hell,” she said.

  Edna jerked open the door, delighted.

  They almost never had company, and never at night.

  “Hello, Uncle Newt,” she said.

  Ava could have slid the pan back into the oven, but must have given up a little right then, and just told the children to let him in.

  “Ava,” he said. “Children.”

  He sniffed the delectable air.

  “I ketch y�
�all at supper?”

  “Not yet,” Ava said. “Set.”

  “I can’t stay,” he said, “but it smells real, real good.”

  Ava twisted her hands in her apron.

  “What y’all havin’?” he asked.

  Ava hung her head, and motioned toward the pan.

  It was as if the last of her respectability was drifting up the chimney on that iron stove.

  “My,” Newt said, and breathed in.

  He lingered over the pan of slow-roasted pig’s feet an agonizing second or so.

  “Well,” he said, “I got to be gettin’ on. If you’ll round up them sorry boys to he’p me, I’ve got some pork out here in the wagon for y’all.”

  But the boys were nowhere around.

  They had evaporated.

  Newt carried in a ham, and some salt meat, and more.

  “It must have been a fine hog,” Ava said.

  “It was a good hog,” he said.

  He tipped his hat.

  “Thing is,” he said, “my hogs just come with four feet.”

  Ava was silent.

  “I see yourn is half agin good as mine.”

  He rode off, laughing.

  Ava walked outside, trembling, calling for her sons.

  Newt would return with more help, more food, now and then. The Morrisons were all like that, always hard to figure. The midnight raids on Newt’s farm ceased after that, and it would be nice to believe they stopped altogether, but times were hard. There was, however, a conscience in it, though maybe not a good one. They never took a scrap from a poor man, or a widow woman, or someone whose daddy was in the county prison; they both swore to it, though, well, we know what that’s worth.

  • • •

  Pan-Roasted Pig’s Feet (with Homemade Barbecue Sauce)

  There is probably no gentle way to say this, but some people, even those who love pork, will never be comfortable with a pig’s foot, or even be comfortable being in the same room with one.

  We understand this.

  “People’s diff’rent,” she said. “I mean, you don’t have to like nothin’.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Some people don’t know what’s good.”

  WHAT YOU WILL NEED

  for the pig’s feet

  4 to 6 pig’s feet, split or whole, or about 1 to 2 per person, depending on size (the pig, not the person)

  1 tablespoon bacon grease or cooking oil

  1 tablespoon salt

  1 tablespoon black pepper

  Cayenne pepper (to taste)

  for the sauce

  1 cup ketchup

  1 cup apple cider

  ¼ cup yellow mustard

  ¼ cup finely diced white or yellow onion

  1 tablespoon brown sugar

  1 tablespoon chili powder

  1 teaspoon minced garlic

  1 tablespoon Tabasco sauce

  HOW TO COOK IT

  Pig’s feet do not require much seasoning. As much as anything on the hog, they are delicious with next to nothing, and pan-roasted pig’s feet are damn near immaculate. But they also lend themselves to a tomato-based sauce, as almost any pork will. My mother likes them plain, or pickled. I like them with sauce, pan-barbecued, or slow-cooked on a grill. The flesh is so succulent, so different from what most people are used to, it does not need the flavor of the smoke, and it’s one of those rare meats that might actually be improved by slow-cooking in an oven. I know this is blasphemy.

  Rub the pig’s feet with bacon grease or cooking oil, as Jim did, and lightly coat them with salt, black pepper, and ground cayenne.

  “This one is pretty easy,” she said. “You want a baking pan big enough so you can line your pig’s feet up so they don’t touch, so the heat can get to ’em, and then pour in just a little bit of water around ’em. Cover your pan with some foil, and put it in the oven—get your oven hot first—on about 350 degrees, and cook it for about thirty minutes. That water will steam up into them pig’s feet, and get ’em to cooking good.”

  As they cook, mix all the ingredients of the barbecue sauce. Some people like a bowl for this. We like to put it all in a quart Mason jar, screw the lid on tight, and shake the hell out of it.

  Also, if you have some left, it’s already in the jar.

  After 30 minutes, peel back the foil and coat the pig’s feet with sauce, letting any leftover sauce pool in the bottom of the pan. The fat from the pig’s feet will mix with the sauce that has dripped down, and create ambrosia. Cover, cook at 350 degrees for another 30 minutes, and ladle or paste the sauce that has mixed with the fat on the feet. Then remove the foil, and cook another 20 minutes or so, till there is just the slightest, slightest crisping of the skin. You want to be able to suck the meat right off the bone.

  “Sometimes I like to boil mine for about thirty minutes, then put ’em in the oven to roast, without no sauce nor nothin’. Now, that’s good, too.”

  Chunky Potato Salad

  WHAT YOU WILL NEED (SMALL BATCH)

  6 medium or 4 large potatoes

  2 eggs

  ½ cup mayonnaise (at least)

  1 teaspoon yellow mustard (no more)

  ½ teaspoon garlic salt

  1 teaspoon black pepper

  2 tablespoons sweet pickle relish

  1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

  HOW TO COOK IT

  Peel the potatoes and cut them into chunks. If they’re small, quartering them may be enough.

  Boil the potatoes till done, but not mushy. Taste to be sure they’re done. Pour the water off, and let them cool. Do not pour cold water over them, but you can cover them and put them in the refrigerator.

  Hard-boil the eggs, then cool, peel, and coarsely chop them. We like circles. You decide.

  In a large bowl, mix the mayonnaise, mustard, garlic salt, black pepper, pickle relish, and ½ teaspoon of the cayenne. When this is mixed thoroughly, add the potatoes and eggs, and mix them in gently till the potato chunks are lightly coated.

  This recipe calls for only a little mustard, because mustard will be all you taste if you get carried away. Again, 1 teaspoon, not a tablespoon.

  Dust the top with a little more cayenne. Some people like smoked paprika, but we’re a little addicted to the cayenne, which gives it a nice, slight kick. Do not overuse, however, or that, too, is all you’ll taste.

  This is not soupy potato salad, or an exotic one. She has a half-dozen other potato salads, but this is the one that goes best with pig’s feet, which is a phrase that I never believed would take shape in my writing life, but that often, when I am dreaming of food myself, takes shape in my head.

  Serve it all with cornbread muffins, slightly, slightly sweetened.

  * * *

  • • •

  Charlie came home, after a mean six months more. He tried to make it up to her somehow. He worked the garden, and chased jobs across two states and nine counties, and brought home fresh fish from his trotlines and wild game from the mountains, always moving, earning, scrounging. He never really quit making liquor, and she never forgave him for getting caught that first time. He worked himself to rags, inside that disapproval. Ava continued to hire out, picking and chopping cotton every season, sewing clothes and quilts to sell at night. And, together, they beat the hard times from their door. The Depression lingered, through ’34, ’35, and beyond, but, oddly, after Charlie came home from jail, some local farmers noted that larceny of their smokehouses, fields, and henhouses had shown a marked decline. In late 1936, in the dark heart of it all, Ava told her husband she was to have another child.

  · 10 ·

  CAKES OF GOLD

  Meat Loaf, Scalloped Potatoes, Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

  My mother, my aunt Edna (holding my aunt Sue), and my aunts Jo and Juanita

  1937

  THE BIG WOMAN came all the way from Rome. She stomped through the door without knocking, her strong arms full of groceries, of onions, potatoes, store-bought bell peppers, freshly ground beef
wrapped in clean white butcher paper, more.

  “Whar’s the babe?” she said, but the children were too stunned to speak.

  The children pointed, in concert, to the small bedroom off the kitchen.

  Ava slept, exhausted, the doctor at her side. It had not been an easy birth.

  “Has she et?” the big woman asked Edna, who cradled the sleeping baby in her arms.

  “Just some broth,” she said.

  The big woman cursed so loud it woke everyone—not just in the house but in the holler, and perhaps in the mountains beyond. It was that kind of voice, a voice almost biblical, except that every third phrase seemed to be “son of a bitch.” Her name was Maudie Morrison, but everyone called her Sis. She was Charlie’s cousin, on his mother’s side.

  The doctor, a respected old man named Gray, was so taken aback he pronounced Ava out of danger and fled the house, pausing only to collect his fee.

  “What fool tol’ her she couldn’t have nothin’ but broth?” Sis bellowed, but the doctor was already beyond the porch, bag in his hand, and, impressive for a man his age, had vaulted into his car.

  The big woman stomped into the kitchen. Stomping was apparently the only form of locomotion of which she was capable or aware. Her legs were as solid as the posts on a pole barn.

  But it was a strange thing: the second those wide feet thumped down in the small kitchen, she moved as light as a dancer, sliding from cupboard to stove, her big hands ripping open the burlap and cloth sacks of the groceries as if they were tissue paper. She did not rattle the pots and pans; they were like something from a dollhouse in her hands. Her knife was almost a blur as she peeled potatoes and diced onions, cranked open cans of sweet peas, and mixed together a big pan of cornbread with her hands. With what seemed a third hand, she fed and stoked the fire until it glowed.