During my visit to the Southeast, I was inspired to add a few
volumes to my cookbook collection.
The first one was
”
The Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook,
”
by Paula H. Deen. I was not familiar with Paula Deen from the
Food Network but the block-long line outside her restaurant,
”
The Lady and Sons,
”
in Savannah was hard to ignore.
During my visit to the Southeast, I was inspired to add a few volumes to my cookbook collection.
The first one was “The Lady and Sons Savannah Country Cookbook,” by Paula H. Deen. I was not familiar with Paula Deen from the Food Network but the block-long line outside her restaurant, “The Lady and Sons,” in Savannah was hard to ignore.
Having learned to cook at the side of her grandmother, she came naturally to making sandwiches for local businesses while her sons Jamie and Bobby delivered them. This business was the toehold Paula needed to emerge from personal struggles and become a culinary star.
The dishes she serves are definitely Southern cooking, about which she says, “… it comes from within. We show our love for someone through the kitchen, through
food … Southern cooking is comfort food. It’s flavorful and filling, and it makes you feel good … Kids don’t have to acquire a taste for it. They love it from the start.”
Paula Deen’s recipes rely some on prepared foods such as saltine crackers, mayonnaise, Old Bay crab boil and “Jane’s Krazy Mixed-up Salt.”
A contrast is “Gullah Home Cooking the Daufuskie Way” by Sallie Ann Robinson. Daufuskie Island, Sallie Ann’s home, is one of the islands along the South Carolina
coast, still inhabited by descendants of former slaves originally from West African countries such as Sierra Leone, and known here as the Gullah people.
Partly due to the relative isolation of their islands, the Gullah people maintain a distinct culture and version of English to this day. Sallie Ann herself was a seventh-grader when an idealistic young graduate of The Citadel named Pat Conroy came to teach at the island’s two-room school.
Conroy, who later recounted his experience in the book “The Water is Wide” (which became the movie “Conrack” and will be a Hallmark TV movie later this year) was
deeply affected by his year with the people of Daufuskie, and Sallie Ann’s life was changed as well.
She has since made a professional life for herself away from Daufuskie, but stays involved with the people there and has set up a foundation to help preserve the islanders’ way of life as housing developments and resorts encroach from all sides.
Sallie Ann includes well-told stories of her early life and of how she, too, learned to cook from her mother and grandmother. In her words, “‘Fuskie folks have known their way ’round the stove for generations … most all of us in my family were cooks from the time we could see over the edge of the stove.”
While Sallie Ann’s recipes also include a few prepared ingredients, such as mayonnaise and pickle relish, there are more recipes featuring inexpensive meats such as pigs’ feet (“Sloppin’ Trotters”) or pigs’ tails, pork neck bone or chicken feet, plus game such as deer, rabbit, squirrel, raccoon and even possum.
I acquired a couple of other cookbooks at the gift shop at Middleton Plantation. One is called “What Mrs. Fisher Knows about Old Southern Cooking,” possibly the first African-American cookbook, from 1881.
The other is “Carolina Cooking,” a compilation of recipes and quotes assembled by the Charleston Post Card Company.
To compare these cookbooks, I’m including a recipe for biscuits from each one.
The first is from the 1881 “Mrs. Fisher” cookbook. Typical of recipes of the time, the measurements are vague and the procedures sketchy, so “don’t try this at home.”
Leaven Biscuit
“Save a piece of leaven from the light bread you mix or make up over night (this refers to yeast dough from white yeast bread) the size of a tea-cup; mix leaven up soft in water, add half a pint of flour to it, one teaspoonful of salt, seat to rise over night.
Next morning take one level quart of flour, put a level teaspoonful of soda and sift it; rub into this flour one tablespoonful of lard, half tablespoonful of butter, until thoroughly mixed; then add the whole together, and work it with the hands until light, and make off in biscuits and put to rise in baking pan twenty minutes, then bake brown.”
Mt. Pleasant Angel Biscuits
Next, the recipe from “Carolina Cooking,” which also calls for yeast:
1 package active dry yeast
2 or 3 tblsp. warm (not hot) water
5 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tblsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1 cup shortening
2 cups buttermilk
Step 1: Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Step 2: Dissolve yeast in water.
Step 3: Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
Step 4: Mix in shortening with a fork or two knives until crumbly.
Step 5: Stir in yeast and buttermilk.
Step 6: Roll out on a floured surface to about 1/2 inch thick. Cut with a floured cutter and place on a baking pan.
Step 7: Bake 10 to 20 minutes until golden brown.
Sallie Ann Robinson’s Hand-Tossed Fluffy Biscuits
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
5 tsp vegetable shortening (such as Crisco)
3/4 cup whole milk or buttermilk
2 medium eggs
Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Step 2: Mix the dry ingredients together and fold in the shortening.
Step 3: Slowly mix in the eggs and milk until combined.
Step 4: Sprinkle some flour on your table or counter or large cutting board, knead the dough five or six times, and then roll it out to a thickness of 1/4 inch or more (1/4 inch dough will rise to become a 1-inch high biscuit).
Step 5: Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes, until golden brown, then brush on melted butter or margarine, if you like.
Step 6: Serve immediately, with butter, honey, jelly, syrup or whatever you want.
The Lady and Sons Cheese Biscuits
These biscuits are brought to patrons waiting in line at the restaurant.
2 cups self-rising flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. sugar
1/2 cup Crisco shortening
1/2 cup grated Cheddar cheese
1 cup buttermilk
Step 1: Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Step 2: Mix flour, baking powder, and sugar together using a fork; cut in shortening until it resembles cornmeal.
Step 3: Add cheese
Step 4: Stir in buttermilk all at one time until just blended. Do not overstir.
Step 5. Drop by tablespoonfuls (she uses an ice cream scoop for a nicer shape) onto a well-greased baking sheet.
Step 6. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes.
