I encouraged Dottie to add recipes to her novels. I have never forgiven myself for not insisting she let me proofread any recipe she used. She put in her sister’s pound cake. Recipes have a way of dropping ingredients, and slashes for fractions are the very worst, as I know all too well. The final instructions dropped an ingredient much to Dottie’s chagrin and brought her countless reader letters. She never included a recipe in a book again. My hope then was for Victoria to write a cookbook with her mother. And Victoria may do that yet. I’ve included the corrected pound cake recipe here, with hopes her sister will forgive me for the earlier one and her readers will think of her when they bake it.
Lynn Benton Bagnal’s Pound Cake
Dorothea adapted the pound cake recipe of her sister, Lynn, who lives on Edisto Island in South Carolina, for use in Shem Creek. Alas there was a technical glitch so something was not right. Dottie subsequently listed the correct recipe on her website, but not until she bemoaned the mistake to me. Southerners clarify the flour they are using as biscuits are so prevalent many bakers only keep self-rising flour on hand. Lynn, who makes four pound cakes a week, uses salted butter, but the recipe here uses salt and unsalted butter.
POUND CAKE
3 cups plain flour—not self-rising
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks unsalted butter
3 cups sugar
5 large eggs
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons vanilla
Preheat oven to 325° F. Arrange racks to fit tube pan in center of oven.
Generously grease and lightly flour a tube pan.
Sift flour and salt together three times.
Beat butter with sugar until light and fluffy in the bowl of an electric mixer.
Add eggs, one at a time. Beat only until each disappears.
Blend in 1 cup flour followed by ½ cup heavy cream.
Repeat with another cup flour and the rest of the heavy cream. Add remaining flour to begin and end with flour.
Fold in vanilla.
Add batter to pan, level it and rap lightly on the counter to knock out the air bubbles. Place pan in center of the oven and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until it’s browned on top and begins to pull away from the side of the pan. Remove from oven. Wait 10 minutes and invert on a cake plate. Do not cover until cool to touch.
LEMON GLAZE
2 tablespoons cornstarch
⅛ teaspoon salt
¾ cup sugar
⅔ cup water
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 egg yolk
Lemon rind, finely grated
1 tablespoon butter
Stir cornstarch and salt into sugar.
In heavy pot or double boiler, add water, lemon juice, and egg yolk.
Put over high heat and stir in dry ingredients.
Cook until you see a bubble or it thickens.
Remove from heat, stir in finely grated lemon rind and butter.
Cool and pour over cake.
Dottie hosted sit-down dinners at her homes, particularly the final home they purchased on Sullivan’s Island, with room for a catered sit-down dinner for Victoria’s engagement and other special occasions. If the food was her forte, her seating was devilish. It takes a certain kind of humor to seat the town’s matriarch with the town’s rake.
The last time I saw Dottie was at a weekend book event for her readers, held in Charleston. Those weekends are grueling with events, signings, and late nights. Close to the last minute she asked if I could show up and make biscuits at the event hotel because she was exhausted. Already there when I showed up with my biscuit gear was Carrie Morey, who had cooked enough biscuits for the entire crowd at her restaurant, Hot Little Biscuit. Carrie and I are Pork Chop friends, as Dottie knew.
Pork Chop friends are friends who subscribe to the Pork Chop Theory, created by Shirley Corriher and me. She had been my student at Rich’s Cooking School, but as so often happens, she was more gifted than I. We were members of the same culinary associations and competing for business opportunities. We had a choice. Our lives had been full of jobs where there was just one spot for a woman, and to get it you had to, as one woman cook said, “push everyone else out of the boat.” It didn’t suit us, so we decided we wouldn’t do it that way. Somehow we developed the theory that if there is one pork chop in a pan it will go dry, but if there are two or more pork chops in a pan the fat from one will feed the other. We determined to make room for others in the pan and very shortly after were elected to be on the same board of directors of an international association.
Now there are many other Pork Chops in the culinary world. Carrie Morey is one. We’ve shared the stage, employees, steered each other to book contracts and helped each other whenever a leg up—or some fat in the pan—was needed. We each think our biscuits are better than the other’s but eat each other’s enthusiastically. A biscuit from one of us is a damn good biscuit. Now that I think about it, tired as she was when she arrived, Dottie was being a Pork Chop again that day, making a spotlight for me and Carrie, and telling everyone to buy our books.
Dottie and I were always going to meet in New York and eat escargot and frogs legs together, enough garlic to distance ourselves from everyone around us. Her favorite story of mine was my snail and mountain oyster story, which Pat Conroy partially borrowed for his cookbook. No matter, I tell it better, but it’s not the only time snails played a role in my life.
About Nathalie Dupree
Nathalie Dupree by Rick McGee
NATHALIE DUPREE is the author of fourteen cookbooks. She is best known for her approachability and her understanding of Southern cooking, having started the New Southern Cooking movement now found in many restaurants throughout the United States, and co-authoring Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking.
Nathalie, as she is known to her fans, has won wide recognition for her work, including four James Beard Awards and numerous others. She was also founding chairman of the Charleston Wine and Food Festival and a founding member of many culinary organizations, including the prestigious Southern Foodways and the International Association of Culinary Professionals.
She is married to author Jack Bass and lives in Charleston, South Carolina. She travels extensively.
Also by Nathalie Dupree
Mastering the Art of Southern Vegetables
Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking
Nathalie Dupree’s Southern Biscuits
Nathalie Dupree’s Shrimp and Grits Cookbook
Nathalie Dupree’s Comfortable Entertaining
Nathalie Dupree Cooks Quick Meals for Busy Days
Nathalie Dupree Cooks Everyday Meals from a Well-Stocked Pantry
Nathalie Dupree Cooks Great Meals for Busy Days
Nathalie Dupree’s Southern Memories
Nathalie Dupree Cooks for Family and Friends
Nathalie Dupree’s Matters of Taste
Nathalie Dupree’s Favorite Recipes and Stories
New Southern Cooking
Essays by Dorothea Benton Frank
Back in 2018, Dottie, as I always called her, wrote three essays for her readers because carpal tunnel syndrome prevented her from signing tip-in sheets. (Tipins are what we call the pieces of paper with an author’s actual signature that we bind into a book.)
Dottie actually wanted to buy a few tubes of bright red lipstick and kiss the pages, but I thought some essays would be less likely to smear.
Carrie Feron
Editor
Dorothea Benton Frank’s Letter to Her Readers I
Dear Family,
I wanted to add something to the back of this book to pose a question to y’all. Is the world becoming meaner, crazier, and more unkind, or is it my imagination?
So last week I was watching the news on mute and trying to figure out how to use my new Instant Pot, when I thought I saw a peacock at an airport on the screen. I restored the sound and there was the story. A woman at Newark Airport was trying to board a Uni
ted Airlines flight with a huge live peacock. She claimed it was her emotional support animal. I’m not kidding. Emotional. Support. Animal. It wasn’t like you could put that bird in the overhead or in a little crate under the seat. This bird had a five-foot-long train. What if the little darling opened its feathers into a fan and decided to hop around, perhaps making a deposit here and there? The whole world would need emotional support animals. That’s what.
Let’s talk about social media. What about people posting their vacation pictures while they’re still on vacation? Then they’re surprised and upset to come home and find out their houses have been robbed. Seriously? Never mind naughty selfies going viral. Whose fault is that? Please! And please, before you take another selfie, check the background. Not that social media is all bad, because it isn’t. In addition to hearing from readers I also get to visit with my family and old friends who live far away. I’m just saying, use your heads, people. As to snark? Could we please lighten up? Is it necessary to be so mean? You know, growing up in the South a girl could be as ugly as a mud fence, but if she had nice manners that was all that mattered. So what if the only guy who asked you to prom weighed three hundred pounds? He loves his momma and he has beautiful manners. That’s what my momma would’ve said. My favorite character of all time is Miss Lavinia from Plantation. Her best quote? Remember! Good manners are the moisturizer of life.
Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Mostly I laugh because there’s no point wasting my tears on other people’s lunacy. But it seems to me the state of the world has taken a dubious turn. Or maybe I’m just out of touch. It’s possible.
Anyway, I could cite as many examples of this kind of behavior as I’m sure you could. The increasingly off-the-wall things people do is why I’ll never run out of plot. Like we say up here in Yankee territory, I should only live long enough to use the material I have on my desk just today, y’all. (I hold dual citizenship.)
People ask me how I get the ideas for my books and where the characters come from. Maybe the more interesting point is, How do you know when it’s time to stop trying to change the world and to start writing? Long before I published my first book my husband and I took a vacation. We were in Ravello, Italy, some twenty-five years ago coincidentally overimbibing with Gore Vidal and a bunch of his friends. (I’ve never had the right moment to use this story until now.) There must have been eight or ten of us gathered around the banquettes in the bar in the Hotel Palumbo. I swear, fate took us there. I knew Gore Vidal lived in Ravello and I held out a faint hope that he might appear in the restaurant that night. He did. So I asked the bartender to send him a message that some American fans would be delighted to buy him a drink in the bar after dinner. When he appeared, neck scarf tossed jauntily over his shoulder, I saw the bartender upturn a bottle of Johnnie Black and take a long chug. Back then Mr. Vidal had that kind of unnerving presence and effect on people.
We introduced ourselves, he and his friend were as charming as they could be, and we ordered several rounds of drinks, discussing life above the Amalfi Coast and what a dream it was to live in Italy. His friends continued to appear and join us. I’m sure he thought we were a couple of nincompoops, but I didn’t care. I was working up the nerve to ask him a question.
“Mr. Vidal,” I finally said, “how do you know when it’s time to start writing?”
“Are you writing a book?” he asked.
“I’m thinking about it,” I said.
He paused, leaned back, and looked at me quite seriously. After a few minutes he answered my question.
He said, “You’ll write your book when you can’t not write your book.”
I knew it was true and I was almost to that point. Several months after we returned home I began to write Sullivan’s Island. By the way, my husband, Peter, ever the gentleman, picked up the tab for Gore Vidal and his friends. Five hundred dollars. Peter teased me about it for years.
Anyway, the point of this little segue and the peacock story is that when the world has had enough nonsense the pendulum will start swinging the other way. And when you need to express yourself, you will. I owe Mr. Vidal a great debt and he owes my husband a retaliatory cocktail. No, he wouldn’t owe us anything. I get to tell this story and to be fair, he gave me a lot of encouragement as the evening went on.
Writing is like that—your need to speak starts choking you and you write to be heard. And to make your point or points and to be understood. But you have to mold your story in such a way that people want to hear it. It’s even better if people ask you to tell them a story.
I find that humor is one of the more powerful tools in my approach to fiction. We probably all need to learn to laugh at ourselves a bit. How about, we all need to laugh more. The world is a crazy place, especially lately.
In the pages of this book, By Invitation Only, I’m playing what if again. And I’m asking you to decide who are the Haves and who are the Have Nots. Perception is everything. But sometimes things aren’t really what they seem to be. I hope you’ll enjoy this, my nineteenth novel; I’d love to hear from you.
Wishing you every good thing,
Dorothea Benton Frank
Instant Pot Hoppin’ John
Serves 4 to 6
It’s good to remember a couple of things when the world seems to have gone completely nuts. First, in spite of everything, humans never lose their capacity to invent marvelous things, like the Instant Pot, my new favorite kitchen tool. And second, holding on to a few simple traditions can provide us ballast against the buffeting winds of craziness and remind us that everything is fleeting, and that includes the bad stuff. Eating Hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day to ensure good luck in the year ahead is just that sort of tradition. And cooking the black-eyed peas and rice in an Instant Pot means that the good luck can be on the table in a fraction of the time.
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter
1 red bell pepper, seeded and cored, cut into ½-inch dice
1 green bell pepper, seeded and cored, cut into ½-inch dice
1 jalapeño, seeds and ribs removed if desired, finely chopped (optional)
2 celery stalks, cut into ¼-inch dice
1 yellow onion, cut into ¼-inch dice
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
8 ounces (about 1¼ cups) dried black-eyed peas, picked over and rinsed
8 ounces smoked ham, cut into ½-inch dice (about 1½ cups)
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
1½ cups long-grain white rice
½ teaspoon kosher salt
4 green onions (white and light green parts), thinly sliced
Hot sauce, for serving
Turn an Instant Pot to Sauté and melt the butter. Add the red and green bell peppers, jalapeño (if using), celery, onion, and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are slightly softened, about 4 minutes.
Stir in the black-eyed peas, ham, broth, thyme, black pepper, and bay leaves.
Close and lock the lid. Use the Manual button to set the Instant Pot to high pressure for 10 minutes. When the cooking time is complete, let the cooker go to Keep Warm mode for 10 minutes. Using a towel to protect your hand, twist the steam-release handle on the lid to Venting to release the remaining pressure.
Meanwhile, rinse the rice under cold water until the water runs clear. Drain thoroughly.
Open the lid. Gently stir in the rinsed rice and salt. Close the lid and twist the steam-release handle back to Steaming. Use the Manual button to set the Instant Pot to high pressure for 6 minutes.
When the cooking time is complete, let the cooker go to Keep Warm mode for 10 minutes. If the pressure has not yet released entirely, use a towel to protect your hand and twist the steam-release handle on the lid to Venting to release the remaining pressure.
Open the pot; the mixture should be moist but not soupy. Remove and discard the
bay leaves. Scatter the green onions on top. Use a large fork to gently fluff the Hoppin’ John and incorporate the green onions.
Serve in individual dishes, passing the hot sauce at the table.
Dorothea Benton Frank’s Favorite Cocktails: Limoncello Spritz
With a nod to the town of Ravello, here’s a perfect Italian-inspired sparkler: the classic Italian liqueur Limoncello, brought together with vodka, brightened up with fresh lemon juice, and fizzed up with a big pour of sparkling wine. Tart and lively, it’s an excellent pairing for Hoppin’ John, its bright acidity cutting right through the substantial, hearty dish.
¾ ounce vodka
¾ ounce Limoncello (Luxardo recommended)
½ ounce fresh lemon juice
¼ ounce simple syrup
Sparkling wine
Combine all ingredients except sparkling wine in cocktail shaker with ice. Shake vigorously, then strain into a wineglass with fresh ice. Top with 2 ounces of sparkling wine. Garnish with a thin lemon wheel and a sprig of lemon verbena.
By Carey Jones and John D. McCarthy, authors of Be Your Own Bartender: A Sure-Fire Guide to Finding (and Making) the Perfect Drink for You, published November 2018; johnandcarey.com
Dorothea Benton Frank’s Letter to Her Readers II
Dear Readers,
When you announce to friends and family that you intend to earn your living as a professional writer, they look at you like you’ve got a loose screw. Maybe I do, but so far it’s working out a lot better than either they or I could have predicted. So I thought I’d share with you what my writing life looks like and how it all began.
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