Overview
Edna Lewis?whose?The Taste of Country Cooking?has become an American classic?and Alabama-born chef Scott Peacock pool their unusual cooking talents to give us this unique cookbook. What makes it so special is that it represents different styles of Southern cooking?Miss Lewis?s Virginia country cooking and Scott Peacock?s inventive and sensitive blending of new tastes with the Alabama foods he grew up on, liberally seasoned with Native American, Caribbean, and African influences. Together they have taken neglected traditional recipes unearthed in their years of research together on Southern food and worked out new versions that they have made their own.
Together they share their secrets for such Southern basics as pan-fried chicken, creamy grits, and genuine Southern biscuits. Scott Peacock describes how Miss Lewis makes soup by coaxing the essence of flavor from vegetables, and he applies the same principle to his intensely flavored, scrumptious dish of Garlic Braised Shoulder Lamb Chops with Butter Beans and Tomatoes. You?ll find all these treasures and more before you even get to the superb cakes (potential ?Cakewalk Winners? all), the hand-cranked ice creams, the flaky pies, and homey custards and puddings.?Lewis and Peacock include twenty-two seasonal menus, from A Spring Country Breakfast for a Late Sunday Morning and A Summer Dinner of Big Flavors to An Alabama Thanksgiving and A Hearty Dinner for a Cold Winter Night, to show you how to mix and match dishes for a true Southern table.
Interwoven throughout the book are warm memories of the people and the traditions that shaped these pure-tasting, genuinely American recipes. The result is a joyful coming together of two extraordinary cooks, sharing their gifts. And they invite you to join them.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780307962713 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 06/27/2012 |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | NOOK Book |
| Pages: | 352 |
| Sales rank: | 494,158 |
| File size: | 21 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download |
About the Author
Edna Lewis is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Grande Dame of Les Dames d?Escoffier International (1999). She is the author of?The Taste of Country Cooking?as well as?In Pursuit of Flavor?and?The Edna Lewis Cookbook. She lives in Decatur, Georgia.
Scott Peacock was born and raised in Alabama. He has served as chef to two governors of Georgia and at two restaurants, Atlanta?s Horseradish Grill and, most recently, the highly regarded Watershed in Decatur, where he lives
Read an Excerpt
The Gift of Southern Cooking
By Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock
Random House
Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0375400354
Chapter One
Our Favorite Sour Milk Cornbread
Sour-milk cornbread is one of those quintessential foods of the South for which there are hundreds of recipes (and infinite variations). Although we?d never claim to have the ?definitive version, Miss Lewis and I worked together on this recipe until we got just what we wanted: an all-cornmeal bread that?s light, moist, and rich, full of corn flavor, with the tanginess of sour milk or buttermilk. Like all Southern cornbreads, it has no sugar?that?s a Yankee thing.
Traditionally, milk that had started to culture was used in cornbread and other baked goods, both for its pleasant sharp taste and for a leavening boost (its acids react with baking soda to generate carbon dioxide). Since modern pasteurized milk doesn?t sour nicely?it just goes bad?we use commercial buttermilk here instead.
This is a genuine all-purpose cornbread, delicious as a savory bread or even as a dessert, slathered with butter and honey. My mother and grandmother only made this kind of leavened cornbread (which they called ?egg bread?) for cornbread stuffing, and it does make superb stuffing. It?s also delicious in a time-honored Southern snack: cornbread crumbled into a bowl with cold milk or buttermilk poured over. ManySoutherners?especially of an older generation?would call that a perfect light supper on a hot summer day, after a big midday meal.
1 1/2 cups fine-ground white cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon Homemade Baking Powder (see note)
1 3/4 cups soured milk or buttermilk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Serves 6-8
Preheat the oven to 450?
Mix the cornmeal, salt, and baking powder together in a bowl. Stir the milk into the beaten eggs, and pour over the dry ingredients in batches, stirring vigorously to make a smooth glossy batter.
Cut the butter into pieces and put it in a 10-inch cast-iron skillet or baking pan. Put the skillet in the preheated oven, and heat until the butter is melted and foaming. Remove from the oven, and swirl the butter all around the skillet to coat the bottom and sides thoroughly. Pour the remaining melted butter into the cornbread batter, and stir well until the butter is absorbed into the batter. Turn the batter into the heated skillet, and put in the oven to bake for 30-40 minutes, until cornbread is golden brown and crusty on top and pulls away from the sides of the skillet.
Remove the skillet from the oven, and turn the cornbread out onto a plate. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before cutting into wedges. Serve the cornbread while it is hot.
