A Lowcountry Christmas
Page 20
When ready to serve, bring to room temperature and drain, reserving the juice. Add the herbs, onion, oil, and hot sauce, and toss lightly. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Taste and add optional seafood seasoning as desired. Serve chilled with the avocado. It looks smashing in a stemmed wide champagne glass with a wedge of avocado.
Caveach, a noun for “pickled mackerel,” is also a verb that refers to the “cooking of raw fish” using lime juice or other acid. Known in early American cookbooks as ceviche—also spelled cebiche and seviche—this acid “cooking” actually brings about a change of appearance and texture associated with cooked fish but, in fact, does not actually cook it. In French, Spanish, and Portuguese, escabeche is a similar term but refers to the pickling of cooked fish.
Spicy Sausage Balls
Makes 100 to 120 balls
This makes a gracious plenty, but the recipe can be cut down proportionally quite easily. Any extra sausage balls can be frozen cooked or uncooked. Chilling the dough makes it easier to work with. The self-rising flour gives it the punch that makes it special.
1 pound hot pork sausage
1 cup self-rising flour
1 pound grated sharp Cheddar cheese
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Mix together sausage, flour, and cheese with hands to form a dough, or move to a plastic ziplock bag to massage the ingredients together to form a well-incorporated dough, and refrigerate for 20 to 30 minutes.
Divide the dough into 4 pieces. Working with one piece at a time and keeping the remainder refrigerated, take 1 tablespoon of cold sausage mixture and using hands or a melon baller, roll it into a 3/4-inch ball. Move to a rimmed baking sheet, leaving a small space between balls. Repeat with remaining dough.
Bake 15 minutes. Balls will puff slightly when cooked. Remove pan carefully from the oven, as there will be hot fat on the pan. Discard the fat and serve the sausage balls immediately. They can be refrigerated overnight and reheated, or wrapped well and frozen.
EVALUATING SAUSAGE SEASONING
Usually sausage has a sufficient amount of seasoning, but it’s always a good idea to sauté or microwave a small amount of sausage to know how it tastes before proceeding to add other ingredients. It might need more salt, pepper, or spices, depending on your taste.
A Mess of Greens and “Pot likker”
Serves 6 to 8, including “pot likker”
A “mess” of greens, as cooked greens are called, is an armful of bundles of turnips or collards that cook down to a quart of greens in addition to the broth. Regarded as a comfort food, greens can be a meal, eaten just by themselves, or with cornbread or biscuits, as well as part of a larger meal.
When meat was a rarity, the seasoning meat in greens was an important dietary supplement, with the fat giving energy for long days and cold nights.
Greens are best when picked after the first frost, customarily around hog butchering time, when there is a snap in the air, or in early spring; but there is hardly a time anymore when they are not available.
1/3 pound sliced, rinsed salt pork or streak o’ lean, smoked neck, or other cured pork
1 to 2 slices onion, optional
1 small hot pepper, optional
5 pounds turnip, collard, poke sallet, or kale greens, washed
Salt
Freshly ground pepper
Hot sauce, optional
Bring 1/2 gallon of water to a boil; add the pork, optional onion, and hot pepper and return to a boil. If time is available, cook half an hour or so to flavor the broth.
Meanwhile, tear and discard from the greens the stalks and any tough veins. Tear or cut the remaining greens into pieces and add to the broth.
Return to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, pushing any bobbing greens down into the liquid, and cover. Cook 50 minutes to 3 hours, as desired. Take a pair of large scissors and cut any pieces of greens larger than bite-size. Taste and season with salt, pepper, and hot sauce as desired. Serve with the broth (pot likker), or strain, reserving the broth for another time. Cooked greens will last covered and refrigerated for several days. They freeze up to 3 months.
OPTIONAL PREPARATION:
When the greens have returned to a boil, add peeled and cut-up turnips or beets, and cook until the vegetables are done, about half an hour, depending on size.
Add small pieces of potatoes to the boiling greens and cook until the potatoes are done, about 30 minutes, depending on size.
Break up pieces of cornbread and add to bowls of pot likker as desired.
Many Southern homes used to keep a bottle of vinegar infused with peppers on the kitchen table (the closer to Louisiana, the hotter the concoction). Greens were sprinkled with vinegar or hot sauce before eating.
Hoppin’ John
Serves 6 to 8
A must-do dish at New Year’s and other holidays, the peas represent good luck and health. Traditionally, since this was a New Year’s dish, the peas were dried, but, of course, canned or frozen are readily substituted and seen nearly all year long.
2 cups dried black-eyed peas, lady peas, or cowpeas
1 piece fatback, hog jowl, or other smoked meat, slashed in several places
1 hot red pepper
1 medium onion, chopped
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup uncooked rice
4 tablespoons drippings, preferably bacon
Pour boiling water over the dried peas to rinse in a large pot and set aside while preparing other ingredients. When ready to proceed, drain the peas and discard the water. Add fresh water to cover the peas. Add the fatback, hot red pepper, onion, salt, and black pepper. Bring to a boil; cover, reduce heat, and simmer until the peas are nearly tender, about 45 minutes to 1 hour, skimming off the foam as needed. Add more water as needed to cover the peas. Continue cooking, covered, until the peas are tender. Remove the peas with a slotted spoon, reserving enough liquid in the pot (about 3 cups) to cook the rice.
Bring reserved liquid to a boil, add the rice, and return to a boil. Cover. Reduce heat and simmer until the rice is cooked, about 30 minutes. Return peas to the pot, stir together, and cook for a few minutes more. Add drippings to flavor the dish, taste, and adjust seasonings. Turn out into a large dish and serve. This may be made into a tasty salad at a later time.
Chocolate Snowballs
Serves 6 to 8
Imagine a deep, dark ball of chocolate, iced with snowy white whipping cream. Now imagine it as big as a bowl, as easy to serve and cut as a cake, and even easier to make using a food processor or mixer. It doubles easily—making one gigantic ball or 2 dinner-party-sized ones.
1 (10-ounce) package semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup water
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup butter, room temperature
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract, optional
TOPPING:
1 cup heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
GARNISH:
Chocolate shards
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 5-cup ovenproof bowl with a double thickness of foil.
Melt the chocolate with the water and sugar over low heat or in the microwave; cool slightly.
Transfer the chocolate mixture to a mixing bowl or to a food processor bowl fitted with the knife blade. Beat in the butter, add the eggs one by one, followed by the vanilla extract, beating after each addition.
Pour the mixture into the foil-lined mold; bake 1 hour or until a thick crust has formed on top. It will still be soft under the crust.
Remove from oven. It will collapse. Cool completely. Cover tightly and refrigerate until solid, 2 to 3 hours or overnight, or freeze. This can be done several days in advance.
When ready to serve, whip the cream, sugar, and vanilla until stiff, and move to a piping bag with a star tip. Remove the snowball from the bowl and peel off the foil.
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br /> Place on a serving dish, flat side down.
Pipe rosettes of whipped cream over the entire surface until no chocolate shows. Chill until served. Garnish with chocolate shavings if desired. Leftovers freeze well, tightly wrapped—good enough for family anyway.
A Lowcountry Christmas
The key to this recipe is a nice acid-sweet balance. Use good cider!
To make an individual drink . . .
2 ounces apple pie moonshine
4 to 6 ounces apple cider
Juice of one half lemon
FOR A BATCH:
1 bottle Firefly apple pie moonshine
2 bottles apple cider
1/2 container of lemon juice (1 cup)
Warm it up in a beverage warmer. Putting on the stove top lends an aroma throughout one’s house that will leave you weeping with delight!
MARY ALICE MONROE is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels, including The Summer Girls, The Summer Wind, The Summer’s End, Last Light Over Carolina, Time Is a River, Sweetgrass, Skyward, The Beach House, Beach House Memories, Swimming Lessons, The Four Seasons, and The Book Club. Her books have received numerous awards, including the 2008 South Carolina Center for the Book Award for Writing, the 2014 South Carolina Award for Literary Excellence, the 2015 SW Florida Author of Distinction Award, the RT Lifetime Achievement Award, and the International Book Award for Green Fiction. An active conservationist, she lives in the lowcountry of South Carolina. Visit her at MaryAliceMonroe.com and at Facebook.com/MaryAliceMonroe.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR: authors.simonandschuster.com/Mary-Alice-Monroe
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Also by Mary Alice Monroe with Gallery
A Lowcountry Wedding
The Summer’s End
The Summer Wind
The Summer Girls
Beach House Memories
Butterfly’s Daughter
Last Light over Carolina
Time Is a River
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Mary Alice Monroe, Ltd.
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First Gallery Books hardcover edition October 2016
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Interior design by Michelle Marchese
Jacket design by Laywan Kwan
Jacket photograph by Gallery Stock
Author photograph by Barbara J. Bergwerf
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-5011-2553-9
ISBN 978-1-5011-2556-0 (ebook)