Foxfire Says Mountaineers Ate Real Food

A while back I wrote about a restaurant chain that claims a menu inspired by Appalachian cooking. What’s that make you think of? A big black kettle bubbling with something called applejack beef stew or, maybe, good ol’ burgoo.

A Farm in the Great Smokies

   Well, think again. A lot of what was offered by this restaurant chain, so it seemed to me, was cutesy food that would be more at home in a high-priced New York City eatery. I mean, really, I can’t see grandma gussying up her flank steak with a blueberry chipotle glaze. Say what?

   So let me introduce the real thing, real mountaineer chow, as found in The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery. The book is part of that grand collection of mountain lore, the Foxfire magazine and book series.

   As good examples of real Appalachian cooking, allow me to pass along for your consideration just two of the possible supper menus mentioned. They’re not elaborate like Sunday dinner or holidays, just regular everyday good eating:

Tips from a Scientist in the Kitchen

I’m not sure what the term “close-minded” means but it sounds like what happens to me when someone mentions “science.” Raise the drawbridge, draw the curtains, turn out the lights, we done. 

   And, anyway, what business does science have in the kitchen? Well, according to Robert L. Wolke, “Cooking is chemistry.”

Mining Sea Salt

 

Hammer, Pliers, Screwdriver ... Let's Cook!

Workshop tools adapt for kitchen use?

There may come a time, maybe you are vacationing at a camp or for some other reason have gone remote, or maybe it is too late to go shopping, when you need to improvise kitchen tools. Being a clever person, you just might turn to a standard toolbox in search of what you need. Very good, because in some cases the workshop tool will out-perform the kitchen tool.

   

Backyard and Woodsy Dining: Let's Eat Weeds!

“What is a weed for Monsanto is a medical plant or food for rural people.”

-Food activist Vandana Shiva

Knowing which wild plants are edible seems to me a survival skill, knowledge that might be useful in the event of catastrophe. But for some, foraging is an aspect of fine dining.

Old Homestead Meadow - US Forest Service

 

What Becomes of Pumpkins After Halloween?

Back in the good old days in Pennsylvania Dutch country, a shortage of meat meant frying up pumpkin as a substitute. That's according to the Pennsylvania Dutch Cookbook by Gerald S. Lestz.
   Those were days of "waste not, want not."
   Pumpkins have quite a history, according to those who dig into such things, going back 9,000 years as domesticated in Mexico. In the US, Native Americans taught the colonists to stew pumpkins -- a type of squash -- with beans, corn and peas.
 

At the Bottom of Many a Stew: Roux

It could be called the soul of Cajun cooking. Time and again, a recipe will tell the cook to start with a roux. The popular roux of today is a dark concoction promoted by Paul Prudhomme, the chef who revitalized the culinary art of New Orleans. 

   Roux is often described as a thickener but, in modern manifestations, it is very much a flavoring as well. In classical French cooking it is generally just a simple white sauce made by whisking flour and butter. 

 

Investigating the Mystery of Brunswick Stew

Brunswick Stew belongs to the “mystery branch” of American cooking, according to award-winning Atlanta journalist Jim Auchmutey. 

   The mystery is centered on the unknown origin of certain dishes – where did they get their start? Theories abound. Perhaps they arrived with settlers, or were copied from Native Americans, or simply evolved out of what was at hand locally.

  There is a Brunswick county in North Carolina that stays on the sidelines of arguments about point of origin for the stew. But it does make a claim of sorts. Here is a chicken-based recipesaid to trace to that location.

   Further south, in Brunswick GA, ingredients likely include beef and pork. The Georgians long staked a claim to being first with the recipe, but lately there has been acknowledgement that the truth may be otherwise. 

  

Home on the Range with Cowboy Stew

Two Bar Chuck Wagon by J.H. Sizer,
National Archives

Every cowboy movie, it seemed, had a few rowdy saloon scenes, indicating there were a lot of stewed cowboys. But no doubt this recipe stems for their working days, not time spent drinking up their wages in the saloon.

   The ingredients would crowd up a saddle bag, so I assume the recipe traces to the days of long cattle drives and chuck wagons. Or quite possibly it is a modern fantasy version of cowboy fare. 

   For reasons that elude me, Cowboy Stew recipes usually call for ground beef, while Chuck Wagon Stew recipes mostly want cubed beef.

   There are myriad concoctions called Cowboy Stew, it is a popular recipe title. Ingredients of course vary. This recipe features ground beef and kidney beans, among other ingredients, and would probably delight any hungry cowpoke.

   It comes from Hearth Warming Recipes published in 1985 by the Kentland Volunteer Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary of Prince Georges County, MD. Contributed by Mary Calhoun.

   I wrote seeking more information about the book and the Auxiliary but haven’t heard back. With two fire houses in operation, Kentland is reputed to be the busiest volunteer fire company in the US. So it may be awhile before someone gets around to answering cookbook questions.

   The auxiliary does not appear to maintain an on-line presence.

Cowboy Stew ingredients: 

6 slices of bacon

1 cup sliced onion

½ cup chopped green pepper

1 clove crushed garlic

1 ½ lb. ground beef

2 cans tomatoes (1 lb. 13 oz. ea.)

2 cups cubed potatoes

1t salt

¼ t pepper

1T chili powder

1 can whole kernel corn drained (12 oz)

1 can kidney beans drained

Preparation: Cook bacon until crisp, drain on paper towel, crumble and set aside. Saute onion, green pepper and garlic in bacon drippings. Add ground beef, cook until well browned, add tomatoes, salt, pepper and chili powder, cover, simmer 30 minutes, add vegies, simmer 15 minutes, sprinkle with bacon, serves nine.

   

Here is another recipe that seemed worthy of rescue, from the same book:

Pot Roast Over Noodles, from Hearth Warming Recipes, contributed by Billie Baker. Ingredients:

2 -2 ½ lbs beef chuck roast

1T cooking oil

2 med. carrots chopped

2 stalks celery sliced

2 cloves garlic minced

1T quick cooking tapioca

1 (14 ½ oz) can Italian stewed tomatoes

1 6 oz can Italian tomato paste

1T brown sugar

½ t salt

½ t pepper

1 bay leaf

1 (8 oz) package cooked wide noodles

Prep: In a large skillet, brown roast in hot oil, transfer to pot. In a small bowl combine next 11 ingredients, pour over meat. Cover and cook 5-6 hours (this recipe calls for a crock pot, it seems Dutch oven timing is about equal but you need to check liquid and turn roast once) cut up the meat, serve over noodles.

Hometown Favorites: Booyah, Conch, Picadillo

Okay, so gather up 30 pounds of chicken, 30 or so pounds of potatoes and an ox tail, you are on the track of a crowd-pleasing kettle of Booyah.

   That’s one of the stewy dishes mentioned in the Food Editors’ Hometown Favorites Cookbook, a gathering of special recipes provided by dozens of food editors from around the country.

   My copy of the book was issued as a promotion by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) in the 1980s. It is still available at online sites such as eBay. I found it informative and entertaining, a keeper.

   I cannot find a current listing for the Newspaper Food Editors and Writers Association to ask permission so I won’t copy out their recipes, instead will link to similar others available on line.

   So let’s start with Conch Chowder. Conch is a popular Florida treat despite restrictions on harvesting. In 1985, the harvesting of the conch in US waters was banned, but it may be imported because it is not classified endangered. So the meat is imported from various Caribbean islands.

   The meat of conchs is used in salads, fritters, chowders, gumbos, and burgers. To me the chowder is in the neighborhood of a stew, usually involving onions, peppers, potatoes and tomatoes. Here is a site offering history and a recipe.

   And here is one more recipe, from the Florida Keys, said to be “the best” -- including carrots, green onions, bacon and more,

   Now, about Picadillo. It is termed a hash because contents are chopped up. It features ground beef with olives, raisins, capers, tomato sauce, sazon seasoning (found in Latin food sections), cumin, sugar, and salt stirred in. Here is the classic Cuban recipe. It is served with or over rice, or can be a filling as in tacos.

   Recipes for Picadillo come from Spain, all of Latin America and the Philippines. Ingredients of course vary by region. Here is a slightly less complicated recipe, also from Cuba. 

   So let’s get back to Booyah, a thick stew concocted at community gatherings (of sometimes hundreds, possibly thousands) in the upper Mid-West. Some say the recipe came from Belgium and Booyah is an interpretation of bouillion as used in cooking chicken. 

   In the European preparation, the chicken and broth were served separately with a bowl of rice that could be added to the broth.

   As with so many soups or stews, suggested ingredients vary depending on the chef. Here is a recipe from All Recipes, toned down to suit your kitchen.

   Those are three of my finds from this great little cookbook, although I did also copy out “toasted ravioli” in my personal food notebook, a very interesting treat. It is apparently little known outside of St. Louis. Well, that is sort of teasing, isn’t it? Okay, so here is a recipe with great pictures…

Hometown Favorites II: Alligator, Chicken, Frogmore

Alligator. It is said they are easy to catch. Seems the sport has become more popular due to reality TV shows. You need 40 or 50 feet of line that tests at 700 to 900 pounds.

   Though it is rare that alligators kill or even attack humans (they prefer small prey), maybe you prefer your alligator already caught. You may find alligator in an upscale supermarket. And I see it is available for about $20 per pound on Amazon.

   I got into this alligator thing when I wondered if there had been any follow up publications to the Food Editors’ Hometown Favorites Cookbook, a book I very much enjoyed. 

   I found one: Soups, Stews and Casseroles with recipes attributed to several dozen newspaper food editors. The book was issued in 1990 and like the earlier “Favorites” is a special edition benefitting Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD).

   The first of the recipes in that book to catch my eye was for Chicken Sausage Rice. Here is recipe similar to the one in the book, found on the Recipe for Living site. Among differences are that this includes mushrooms, while the book has a package of peas.

   Creative Bite cooking site offers another variation that includes cheddar and broccoli.

   And here is a nice simple Cajun style recipe from the Delish site.

   Moving right along we come to Frogmore Stew, named for a community on St. Helena Island, a home of the African American Gullah culture connected by highway to Beaufort SC. Creation of the dish seems to trace to the 1950s or so, with the name conferred at some point by Richard Gay, a fish company owner on St. Helena.

   There are many versions of this dish around, contents vary but usually will involve shrimp, sometimes crab, sausage, corn on the cob. Here’s a simple one from My Recipes.

   Then there is a more complex with Andouille and watercress.

   In the area of origin, called the Low Country, the cooked stew is drained and spread out on a table to be eaten by hand.

   

  Now about that alligator. Betty W. Bernard of the Lake Charles American Press offers a recipe in the book as a “a thick stew flavored with tomatoes and usually served over rice.”

    From what I have read, it is the tail meat that is sought, that of an alligator no more than six feet in length. Bernard’s recipe includes the usual chopped onions, green pepper, celery and tomato sauce and paste. Emiril Lagasse of course has a similar recipe. 

   And I suppose a recipe from the Louisiana Seafood Board would be trustworthy. It doesn't mention sausage but I like the idea I saw elsewhere of adding some chopped Andouille.

Got Duck? Crab? Possum? Make Some Gumbo

According to “The Southern and Southwestern Cookbook,” a booklet issued by the Culinary Arts Institute, Gumbo “is a Choctaw Indian word for okra …” There is some dispute. Many sources say it is an African word of the same meaning, okra. You can find support for either and for both.

   Some say you cannot have gumbo without okra, and that's too bad because some of us are not so wild about that particular vegie. Here is a chicken, Andouille and oyster gumbo from Epicurous, notable for no mention of okra.

   Here's a good, basic gumbo recipe. It's made with chicken and sausage. I like andouillesausage; it may be a bit hot for some tastes and I've used kielbasa and other milder sausages. There are those who feel the sausage overpowers the other ingredients and so substitute ham, or leave it out.
   There are of course so many variants for gumbo. Try it with duck or crab or possum. Thing is, gumbo is good stuff and worth experimenting with to find the recipe that's right for you. Once you get it right, hang on to that recipe! It'll become an heirloom.
   I find Chef John Folse’s recipes invariably trustworthy, though this one may be for a larger quantity than desired, .
  As for those who leave out the okra, you need to thicken your gumbo one way or another. That's where file' -- ground sassafras -- comes in. It's both a thickener and a flavoring. There are some health concerns about sassafras but they apparently don't apply to the leaves -- you'll find a lot of tough, healthy old Cajuns in bayou country who will testify to that. File' is added at the last of cooking.
   Interestingly this site offers a gallon of chicken and Andouille gumbo, mail order. It is a source for many hard to find Cajun products, I could not find a price list but you can call.

A Visit to Old Salem & the Days of Pigtail Stew

Grandparents on both sides endured hard times and lived by a motto: “Waste not, want not.” But I wonder if they ever filled their bellies with pigtail stew? If so, they never mentioned it. Pigtail stew was unknown to me until I encountered it in North Carolina and Old Salem Cookery, a collection of commentary and recipes that I very much enjoyed reading. 

At the Hearth in Old Salem

   Old Salem is a historic district of Winston-Salem, NC, where museums and restorations preserve links to the founding Moravians, a Protestant sect established long ago in the Czech Republic. Moravian missionaries apparently liked what they found in North Carolina and sent a “Y’all come!” message back home, encouraging settlers.

   But back to pigtail stew. “We grew up on foods now called soul foods because they were the foods available to keep body and soul together,” according to the author, Elizabeth Hedgecock Sparks. (She was well known by her pen name, Beth Tartan, as food editor of the Winston-Salem Journal. She was winner of many honors and awards). 

   Her interpretation of the term “soul food” might provoke an argument in some circles these days. But I know what she means: The book brims with down-home recipes that originated in country kitchens of long ago – Sparks’ version of “soul food.” 

   Pigtail stew of course traces to those good old days when all parts of the pig were put to use.

   If you were to research the matter on the Internet you would find pigtail stew identified as a Jamaican dish, but in this book it is given as a regional recipe “from an old Negro cook,” delivered in vernacular – which might be judged a cultural slight these days. It is necessary to keep in mind that the book was written back in the 1950s, a different world. 

   The book has been updated several times, quite possibly the most recent edition frames the recipe in modern terms. (It does appear that an updated paperback version was issued in the 1990s; I haven’t seen it. My copy dates to 1972).

   I’ve hunted high and low for a pigtail stew recipe in plain English that would qualify as regional to North Carolina and not a Caribbean dish, but no luck. Somehow, I don’t think it is a great loss. I can’t imagine that many readers are truly hankering for a big plate of pigtails.

   Recipes in the book aren’t limited to Old Salem by any means, though most recipes appear to originate in the Piedmont area of the state. However, the author points out the wide range of cooking styles from the Eastern coast to its Western mountains. For instance, along the coast, which is more Southern oriented, the primary bread would likely have been cornbread. Out to the West, in the mountainous Appalachian area, the bread was more likely biscuits or muffins. Of course both breads were common to both sections, but she is pointing out the more dominant dish for each area. 

   The book is chocked full of stews and chowders, plus lots of Old Salem and North Carolina culinary history. There are excellent depictions of old time kitchens. 

   Livestock, game and seafood are given good coverage, as is wild and tame vegetable produce. References are not just passing remarks but, quite often, extensive and thorough commentary on the subject at hand.

   Some Native American dishes are mentioned, such as fried grasshoppers. A claim is made that Europeans first discovered potatoes being cultivated by Indians of North Carolina, though Peru seems to have a stronger claim.

   Overall the book passes on a portrait of a time when people believed in gathering from near and far to share a meal because “those who break bread together are united in fellowship” – a ritual that still exists as church and community suppers but is increasingly rare.

   A sampling of the book is available on line, here.

Would Grandpa Be Comfortable With This Menu?

Please pass the couscous?

I'm not a big fan of couscous. To me, couscous is what is left of an old log after termites are done chewing it up. 

   But surely the authors of the Tupelo Honey Café cookbook would argue this point -- because they believe a dolled-up couscous concoction is among “new southern flavors from the Blue Ridge mountains.”

   We are talking about the same Blue Ridge Mountains near where I was born in Appalachia? There are flavors there, all right, traditional flavors that inspired songs about cornmeal baked into hoe cakes, possums cooked golden brown, and illegal whiskey made in copper kettles hidden  back up among the mountain laurels.  

   But this Café isn’t particularly into that sort of thing. Yes, we get an introduction going on and on about plain, wholesome mountain foodstuffs passed down through generations, but what follows are recipes such as “Sunny Orange and Cilantro Couscous.”

   Now, my grandmother was raised on a farm and in later years she supervised a kitchen that fed a herd of high school students in my northern Appalachian mountain hometown. My guess is, she might recognize 25 percent of the recipes in this book, and I’m including ordinary gravies and common fruit pies in that assessment.

   Unrecognizables would include Vegetarian Appalachian Cassoulet. Although, I admit, she would be familiar with the ingredients – navy beans, mushrooms, carrots, onions, celery and a few other common supermarket items.

   Now, I’m not dissing these Tupelo dishes, exactly. Some are probably pretty darn good. But do they really pass muster as new southern flavors from the Blue Ridge Mountains? Grandma would say they’re from a foreign country: Guinea Hen with Blueberry Zinfandel, Jalepeno-Bacon Moonshine, Gruyere and Sage Corn Casserole, Deep-Fried Macaroni and Cheese with Tomato Jam and Red Onion Marmalade, Chicken with Blueberry Vinaigrette, Savory Herbed Pancakes with Smoked Trout and Tomato Concasse,  or how about Pistachio Crusted Sea Bass with Tomato Curry Broth?

   I did recognize a name, Frogmore Stew, which is covered elsewhere in these pages. The recipe given in the book is fairly much akin to the one I wrote about from My Recipes. The Tupelo chefs add scallops, V8 juice and some extra seasonings. So, I’m saying there are someregular more or less down-home recipes. Some.

   From a promo piece for the book: “Heralding in its own unique style of cuisine representative of the New South, the Tupelo Honey Cafe salutes the love of Southern traditions at the table, but like the people of Asheville, marches to its own drum.” Now, what does that say, exactly? Seems to me it says they’ve borrowed some down-home words but the food is what the chef dreams up.

   Tupelo Honey Café is a very popular chain founded in Asheville NC. It subsequently spread throughout the south and is now nationwide. From what I’ve read, wait times of hours are typical, at least in Asheville – a site that is now expanding to meet demand. 

   One of the cookbook authors, Brian Sonoskus, founding chef, has left Tupelo and is now holding forth in an Asheville diner. He says he wanted to control the menu, so perhaps he had some differences with the Tupelo honchos. In an interview I saw, he seems to favor typical steaks and chops, but has interests in a vegan/vegetarian direction as well. Meanwhile Tupelo seems headed in some sort of new wave direction – as an indication there’s an addition to the menu since publication of the book -- the Grateful Dead Black Bean Burger. And then there is Herbed Panko Fish Risotto, another new one. 

   The chef who has taken over for Sonoskus is introducing new items like Venison with Foie Gras Dirty Rice. I had to double-check foi gras – it is made from the livers of young force-fed ducks or geese. Chef says it is a good example of the type of “playful, elevated Southern food” he's interested in introducing. 

   Well, I’m a long way from being cured of my ideas about Appalachian cuisine, learned at grandma’s table. And I don’t think I’d go to Tupelo Honey Café looking for that old-time country-style goodness. You know what I mean? I’m talking about a whole smokehouse ham, creamy mashed potatoes and gravy in a boat, serving dishes piled with garden vegetables, sweet cornbread and real butter ... homemade apple pie.