The Best Cook in the World
Page 50
“What will you cook,” I asked her, “when it comes in?”
“Why, all of it,” she said.
Fresh Field Peas with Pork
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
1 cube salt pork (about ¼ pound fatback, or streak o’ lean, or hog jowl)
1 quart shelled field peas, or any fresh peas
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
1 small onion, diced very fine (optional)
HOW TO COOK IT
In cold water, rinse the salt pork thoroughly.
Cover the peas with water, and add the fatback, salt, and sugar.
“That seems like it ain’t much salt, but it’s plenty,” my mother said, especially with the salt pork.
Bring to a good boil, and then cook over medium-low heat for about 45 minutes.
You should be able to mash the peas easily with a fork. Do not cook them to death, or the hulls will separate and you will have mush.
Some people like to add garlic, or black pepper.
“You don’t add black pepper to fresh peas,” she said.
I knew better than to ask why.
The peas will have a fresh, nutty taste, better, cleaner, sweeter, and less starchy than dried peas. They taste new.
Stewed Squash and Sweet Onions
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
8 small, tender summer squash
1 large sweet onion
1 slice bacon
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper (optional)
½ teaspoon sugar
½ stick butter
HOW TO COOK IT
Slice the squash into wheels about ¼ inch thick.
Dice the onion.
Cut the bacon into small pieces.
Cook the bacon in the pot until it renders a little, but do not cook it crisp. Add the squash, onion, salt, pepper, and sugar, and add just enough water to cover.
Cook over medium heat for about 30 minutes, till the water has cooked down, the squash is tender, and the onion has gone clear and soft. Add the butter, and cook another 10 minutes or so, adding just a little water if needed. Do not add too much or you will ruin it.
“Some people put too much sugar in the squash…”
I waited for it.
“…but I don’t.”
Fried Okra
This is not a wet-battered fried okra. Nothing my mother cooks from the garden is battered that way. It defeats the purpose of fresh food, she believes.
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
1 pound okra, small, young, and tender
½ to ¾ cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons bacon grease
HOW TO COOK IT
If you are picking okra, or selecting it at a curb market, small is better. Pods even as big as your index finger may already be getting tough, and if you have ever bitten into a piece of okra that seems like a piece of thin bark off a chinaberry tree, you know what we mean.
Cut the okra into pieces of about ¼ to ½ inch. It is fine to keep the tips, but discard the stem.
Add just a little water to the bowl of cut-up okra, toss the okra in it, then pour off the rest of the water.
Add the meal, salt, and black pepper to the bowl, and, with your hands, mix it in good.
Heat your grease in a cast-iron skillet, and add your okra. It does not matter one whit if the okra pieces are not completely covered with cornmeal.
Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes, and then over medium-low for another 20 or 30.
“Okra takes a while,” my mother said.
It should be so deep green it is almost black, and the meal should be crispy.
This is not the deep-fried, battered, still-raw okra you get in restaurants, she said.
“That ain’t okra,” she said.
Sweet Corn
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
3 to 3½ cups fresh sweet corn
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon sugar
¾ stick butter (at least)
HOW TO COOK IT
Shuck and remove the silk from your corn. How many ears you need will depend on the size; just try to end up with at least 3 cups. You will want leftovers of this; it is even good cold.
In a cast-iron skillet, combine your corn, salt, and sugar with about ½ cup water, and cook over medium-low heat for about 10 to 15 minutes, then add the butter and cook over low heat till the water has cooked out and the corn is stewing in the butter and its own sugars.
Time is relative. We like it a little crisp, and some people only cook it for about 20 minutes in all, for an even crisper taste. To be honest, “it’s hard to mess up sweet corn.”
She did not say, “Even you could do it,” but I think she meant to.
Fried Green Tomatoes
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
1 cup lard or bacon grease
2 green tomatoes, as large as possible, just starting to turn
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
HOW TO COOK IT
Heat your fat in a cast-iron skillet till it’s good and hot, then lower the heat to medium.
Slice your tomatoes about ¼ inch thick. Mix your flour, salt, and pepper, and dust the tomatoes lightly with the dry flour, and cook until golden brown, then turn, and repeat.
A little of this goes a long way. For most people, two or three slices is enough.
Most people are used to battered, deep-fried green tomatoes cooked in cornmeal. This is obviously not that. Such a method, she believes, is fine for corn dogs at the fair.
If she is cooking for a large group, she will sometimes reduce the amount of fat, pile wheels of tomato in, and cook them slowly, stirring with a big spoon. This breaks up the tomatoes, and you end up with a kind of scramble of green tomatoes and crisped flour, which is pretty good, too.
The secret to any green tomato for frying is to pick one that has just, just started to turn and is showing the slightest bit of ripeness. These will be sweeter.
“It makes all the difference in the world,” she said.
* * *
• • •
This is what she will cook.
I know there are few certainties in this world, but I know the old woman pretty well, even if I did spend much of my life away. The weeds, I believe, do not have a chance.
• EPILOGUE •
THE RECIPE THAT NEVER WAS
Quick Fried Apple Pies
The best cook in the world
WHAT YOU WILL NEED
2 cups apples
2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 stick butter
1 pound biscuit dough (this page or store-bought)
1 teaspoon bacon grease
HOW TO COOK IT
Combine the apples, sugar, and cinnamon, and chill in the refrigerator, covered, for about 1 hour. In a large skillet, melt ½ stick of the butter and cook the apple mixture on medium heat for about 10 minutes. Let it cool.
Roll out the dough to a thickness of about 1⁄8 to ¼ inch, and—you can use a saucer for this—cut 4 circles of 6 or 8 inches in diameter. You may have enough filling for more. Brush the edges of the dough with a little butter. Spoon 2 tablespoons of the apple mixture into the middle of each circle, turn it over, and pinch the edges closed.
In a clean skillet, melt the bacon grease and remaining butter on medium heat, and—about 2 at a time—fry until golden brown on each side, adding more fat and butter as needed.
Serve warm, with a good cup of coffee.
“But I never made that,” she said.
“I know damn good and well you did,” I said.
My big brother Sam nodded.
“Well,” she said, “I forgot.”
“Well,” I said, “I guess it’s a good thing we did a book.”
But how, I wondered, did she know how to make it, if she believed she never had?
It had to be.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have many people to thank for helping me bring this book to its completion, so many I don’t even know how to start. I guess I will just begin as I always have, by thanking my people, living and dead, who furnished me with the stories and memories that made it possible—not just this book, but my very life as a writer. Kin, and friends, and sometimes just chance encounters gave this book the flavor I hope it contains. There are, literally, hundreds of them; their lifetimes frame these stories, and color them.
I especially want to thank my aunt Juanita, aunt Jo, uncle John, sister-in-law Teresa, niece Meredith, hardheaded brother Sam, and other kin, for helping me gather the stories and photographs in this book, and for putting up with me as I fretted over it. I thank Kaylin Bowen, for her help and tolerance.
It is past time, too, to thank the readers who have been with me now for going on three decades, people who found something of worth in the stories of workingwomen and -men. It has been my great pleasure to write them down and share them. I am honored to do it.
I thank Amanda Urban for her guidance. I thank Jordan Pavlin for again taking the stories of my people and handling them with such great care. And I want to thank Maria Massey and all the others at Knopf for editing, designing, and creating books that I am honored to place on my shelves. I am always a little surprised, to look up and see them there.
But there is no book unless there is an idea. I want to thank Dianne, who saw the value in a book such as this long ago, saw that a recipe is more than just a blueprint, but a kind of history.
And, of course, I have to thank the cook.
What joy you have brought to this life, one skillet at a time.
I’d cook you a meal if I only knew how.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Bragg is the author of eight books, including the best-selling Ava’s Man and All Over but the Shoutin’. He lives in Alabama.
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!
* * *
Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.
Sign up now.