Fall Ephemera

A Lengthy Cooldown 
Here in the Mid-South, fall lasts forever.  It's not like Chicago, my last perch, where the shoulder seasons--spring and fall--are technicolor blips on the way from the pure steel gray of winter to the deep somnolent green of summer. A Memphis autumn is a long slow slide from crippling heat through endless rain to crisp days that remind me of New England but never lead to snow. In fact, down here, the transitional seasons dominate.  Winter is a brief pause on the way back to summer.

What this means for us eaters is that fruits and vegetables that make brief appearances up north linger into October here.  Take the tomato.  Some growers I know pull up their plants and hang them in the cellar, where the fruits ripen well into the fall. Others take their chances with the frost, betting that the midday sun will make it worth their while.


Highly Perishable

A couple of weeks ago I bought a small bagful of the season's last tomatoes from the Dodsons. Our growers didn't suffer the curse of blights that Northeasterners did this past summer, but constant rain and uncommonly cool weather left our tomatoes mealy and flavorless.  There were exceptions, of course, and recent warm weather brought out the best in Thomas Dodson's small heirlooms. Olive oil and a few generous pinches of salt concentrated the flavor for a savory lunchtime salad.  The leftovers did not keep well, though. Wish I'd eaten them all right away.


Give Beets a Chance
And now, a digression from strictly local fare. I haven't gone completely off the beam--the green stuff on my plate is arugula from Gracious Gardens' Tim Smith, aka "The Arugula Guy" (though wouldn't it be more fun if we called him Rocket Man?).  I bought it at the winter market next to Tsunami on Saturday (that's where you'll find the Dodsons, too).  But I confess that the rest of my salad's ingredients hail from the produce aisle of our local Whole Foods.  And the star?

Sturdy yet brilliant, reviled yet unbeeten.

Don't worry, only a few more beet puns before I move on.  But take in their day-glo glamour. Why is the beet the butt of every extended yucky-food joke? I blame cafeterias and salad bars that serve beets that taste of can lining. But roast a beet yourself, then marinate it in sherry vinegar and shallots, and you have an earthy, piquant foil for smoked fish and peppery greens.  How frisky does that salad look?

Panicked by a recent editorial about the desperate state of the eastern Atlantic & Mediterranean bluefin tuna fishery, but craving smoked fish, I bought some smoked mackerel instead of trout, which is usually farmed and so less delicious, or salmon, which is hard to keep up with in terms of which fisheries are endangered.  Mackerel, along with their smaller cousins the sardines and anchovies, appear at least now to be numerous and healthful.  More importantly for us, they are absolutely transcendent with beets and arugula. Beets me why more people aren't snarfing down this combo every chance they get.

Sorry. Can't beet 'em, join 'em.

Falling into Grace 
And now my beet moment has passed. Come November, I'm looking for comfort and creaminess and orangey-colored foods.  I'm back at my stove, pan-roasting chickens and braising greens, thanking my oven for its warmth against my knees.

I've started taking delivery of pastured chickens from Downing Hollow Farm every couple of weeks.  The birds are bosomy and firm--none of that spongy stuff you get from industrial fowl. For a recent supper I cut one up and browned the parts. After sauteeing shallots, ginger and garlic, I deglazed the pan with a good splash of sherry vinegar and chicken broth. Buttermilk-mashed sweet potatoes and creamed spinach round out the plate.  Best thing?  I made the buttermilk.

I'd gone mad chasing around town for the real thing.  Recently Whole Foods started carrying products from East Tennessee's Hatcher Family Dairy, and their buttermilk is quite good, free of carageenan and the other thickeners that even respectable organic cooperatives like Organic Valley add to theirs.  But they were out.  I raced over to Easy-Way, which used to stock the buttermilk in glass bottles from Rock Springs Dairy. Nuthin'.

So I got to work. 



As If By Magic

I love microbes. Because one day I had a half-cup of month-old buttermilk in my fridge, and the next I had 2 cups of delicious, useful, fresh-tasting cultured dairy goodness on my counter.  Or coyly peeking from behind a curtain.

How did I do this?  I googled "buttermilk how to make" et voila.  You mix buttermilk and fresh milk in a 1:3 or 4 ratio and leave it out for a day.  Yes!  Leave it out!  It's crazy, but it works! And the taste is fresh and, well, alive. I'll get into the science of it another time, if you like.

This buttermilk gave tang to my sweet potatoes and body to my creamed spinach.  I also tested Marion Cunningham's recipe for Buttermilk Baked Eggs from The Breakfast Book.  Sounded tasty, but not so much. (Otherwise, the book's a winner.)  Basically, it's Egg in the Basket (which my mom called Pig-in-a-Poke) with buttermilk poured over it, baked for a bit.  Better with nutmeg and thyme mixed in and some cheese on top, but not a keeper.  However, the buttermilk is.
  
A blog lives through its readers, so talk to me.
Have you tried making cultured dairy products at home?  Cheese, yogurt, creme fraiche?  What, why, how?

And what's your position on beets?  Do you have any entry-level recommendations for beet newbies?

Like Seafood?

Only barbecue is more of a Dixie cliche than catfish, but grits beats them both.  (Yes, I treat grits as a singular noun.  No one eats a grit.  Wanna fight?)  And so the resumption of my blogging activities compels me to enter with all guns a-blazing, or however the phrase goes.  Herewith, a dinner comprised almost entirely of Southern standards, including my now-legendary pickled okra.

It all begins, as it often does, with a Saturday trip to the Memphis Farmers Market.  Gus chose the butter beans from Ly's Home Grown, I grabbed catfish from Muddy Waters Seafood.  (We finally have a guy who trucks shrimp, crabs, redfish and other wet things up from Louisiana.  Having devoured a couple pounds of wild catfish last month, we're back for more.)  Some Delta Grind stoneground cornmeal and grits at home in the fridge--what else does a family need?

Flowers--I rationalized buying a couple bunches from Sue's, the the Olympic athletes of floral arrangement, to spruce the place up for a couple of showings that weekend.  (Our house is on the market, you see. Don't worry--I saved the fish fry for after the prospective buyers came through.)  So when suppertime rolled around, we had dahlias to go with our vittles.

The genius of most Southern food, as I've experienced it, is that it's really home cooking.  I'm not talking about the great Cajun and Creole dishes of Louisiana here, but instead about the meat-and-three tradition of fresh food, simply prepared.  Perfect for Sunday suppers at our house--not a lot of fuss, but worth a leisurely couple of hours in the kitchen.

First, the butter beans on the stove over gentle heat with a half onion and a bay leaf.  Next, catfish soaking in buttermilk spiked with Louisiana Hot Sauce.  (And now a pause as we consider "The Perfect."  I do like it better than Tabasco--it's brighter and fruitier, less dominated by vinegar.)  For dredging the fish, whisk together lots of cornmeal with some flour, salt, pepper and paprika.  Start the grits on the stove, hovering at first as I stir them into a boiling mix of milk and water; then, once they start to thicken, turning the heat down and stirring from time to time as they glug away, waiting for their dose of butter, cheese and seasonings.

A big blob of Spectrum shortening takes the place of the peanut oil I usually use for pan-frying. (During the school year, I don't even keep peanut oil in the house, since I don't want to inadvertently send Gus to school with a forgotten morsel that could be lethal to one of his allergic schoolmates.)  This is not health food, but there's something that feels healthy about frying up catfish, tasty from its buttermilk bath, in a big old cast-iron skillet.  The crunchy crust locks in succulence and flavor, and though Solly prefers his fish nude, once he gets used to the mouthfeel of cornmeal, he ceases peeling the coating from his bits.  Did I mention how good the butter beans are?  Of all the foods on this plate, they're the most deeply delicious.  My kids--yes, kids, who aren't supposed to tolerate anything that resembles a Lima--pop them like M&Ms.

By the way, I realized as I wrote this post that I'm a fraud until I start cooking from Edna Lewis's cookbooks.  No self-respecting Yankee-turned okra-eater should do without.  In defiance of an increasingly dire fiscal outlook, both for my family and the nation--North and South--I am ordering The Taste of Country Cooking and In Pursuit of Flavor (which purports to contain some Ethiopian recipes as well).  So there.

Peaches and Cream

Yesterday morning I got a polite request for a new post from my excellent friend and most faithful reader, Cheryl. Please! I've been out of town and then swamped with my son's birthday party, farmers' market business, and other stuff you don't want to hear about. I'm not one of those intrepid bloggers who posts from her Blackberry--I'm a blogger who eats blackberries. However, it's nice to know someone is actually looking in on me from time to time. That said, it's time to get back in the saddle. At the Memphis Botanic Garden's farmers market yesterday I loaded up on blackberries, blueberries, beautiful summer squash, tomatoes, chiles, sweet onions, pecans, peaches, and bicolor zucchini so fresh it squeaks. Some of the tomatoes in these photos are actually from our garden, and I can't resist showing you my son Gus's first Patio tomato, grown on his own plant. The flavor is pretty good, considering that our deck doesn't get loads of light. Now, as I reported back in early June, local Derby peaches are available at the markets here in Memphis already. But in general, I've been abstaining until my peaches ripen. I emailed Henry Jones to see if my girls were ready yet, and he replied in sports similes: "They are bigger than golf balls, but smaller than baseballs. They are dark green. They should be ready in about 2 weeks."

So I'm sticking with berries for now, but I had to buy some peaches to make ice cream for a dinner I'm making on Sunday. My son's Montessori has a silent auction every year, and I did one of those dinner-for-8-in-your-own-home donations. I'll be serving chilled cucumber soup (made with buttermilk--finally some buttermilk in this blog!), tacos filled with carnitas or Pollo a la Brasa, and peach ice cream. So the peaches aren't for me. Although I'll have to do a little tasting. Seems like the right thing to do, doncha think? I'll post the ice cream as soon as I make it.

Meanwhile, I've been cleaning out the closets and trying to declutter. Intending to put it away in a box under my bed, I opened up a frayed little binder that's been sitting on a table in my bedroom.
It's my great-grandmother Verde Clark Graff's recipe book, filled with her tiny upright script (her handwriting has posture as good as hers was). In it, a peach recipe as pure and simple as you'd expect of a woman born in 1896, whose tastes arose from a midwestern small-town girlhood but whose domestic habits were forged in the crucible of the Great Depression. My great-grandfather was in the steel business, so my Gigi (short for great-grandmother) wasn't exactly facing deprivation, but her little book bespeaks an orderly thrift uncommon in our age of plentiful food and scarce time. (Of course, the era of plentiful commodities might be winding down now. It's heartening to read that so many more people are raising vegetable gardens this year, but discouraging to think that many of our neighbors who need affordable and accessible produce the most don't really have the time or resources to grow their own. The domestic habits of planning, cooking, and keeping records seem all but lost. Without those habits, feeding a family real home-grown or home-made food is difficult at best.)

By the time I knew her, Gigi was a rather fancy old lady, but I like to picture her sitting at her desk and writing out these recipes. I know I'm romanticizing it, but the activity seems so meditative and trusting. There is time, there will be time, it seems to say.

However, this peach recipe seems to be in a more hasty hand than some of her others. Reality is, the peaches are only in season for a couple of months.


Here is a direct transcription of the recipe from Gigi's notebook. I'll be testing it soon; I think we might need some clarifications for the modern cook, don't you? I'll have to look into what it'll mean for the syrup to snap, and we'll have to see if a bottle of cream is a pint. But peaches, butter, sugar and cream? How can we go wrong?

Peaches--Pauline Kellogg
8 large peaches
2 c. sugar
1/4 c. water
1/4 c. butter (size of a walnut)

Melt all--add fresh peaches. Cook in skillet covered with skillet. When peaches are tender, take out. Let syrup boil until it almost snaps. Pour in bottle of whipping cream (not whipped). Pour over fruit. Let get cold.