"Only Two Things Money Can't Buy...

...that's true love and home-grown tomatoes."

Or maybe fried green tomatoes, since I'm not sure they're worth eating if the tomatoes aren't home-grown. But oh, when they are!

Fried green tomatoes are actually pretty simple. You start with unripe tomatoes (no, green tomatoes aren't some special breed, they're just plain old unripe tomatoes), and you really do want them bright green. Once fried, the sourness that makes an unripe tomato all but inedible becomes tamed into tart deliciousness.

Last weekend I noticed that our tomato plants, even though clearly dying off, were still pretty full of green tomatoes. A home-grown tomato is a thing of such rare beauty that it's positively criminal to waste even one - even one green one - so I started picking. I just couldn't bear to see them go to waste, so even though the only fried green tomatoes I'd ever had were in restaurants (and nothing to write home about, at that), I decided to pull out the trusty cast iron skillet and fry away. About a half an hour (and a few blisters I dubbed "the revenge of the fried green tomatoes") later, I discovered what I'd been missing all those years (and the perfect thing to do with those last, end-of-season tomatoes).

Fried Green Tomatoes and a Dressing-That's-Not-That-Bad-For-You

green tomatoes
salt
pepper
granulated onion or onion powder
buttermilk
corn meal (whole-grain and preferably fine-sifted)
bacon grease or lard

Cut the stem out of your tomatoes and slice them about ¼ inch thick.

Lay the slices out on paper towels and sprinkle fairly liberally with salt, black pepper, and granulated onion. Let them sit for at least 15 minutes.

In one shallow bowl or rimmed plate, pour some buttermilk, and in another put a half cup of cornmeal.

Heat your skillet with about ¼ inch of grease to 350°.

Dip your tomato slices in the buttermilk and then coat them in the cornmeal. (I just lay the slices in the buttermilk so one side gets coated, and then I don't wash the seasoning off the top. But both sides get coated with the cornmeal.) Sit them aside on wax paper until your ready to cook them.

Place the tomatoes in the hot grease (carefully! preferably with tongs, as this is where I got blisters from a big pop of the grease). Cook them about 2 minutes on each side and them remove then to a paper towel lined plate.

They are wonderful alone, but also delicious with the following dressing I concocted:

The Dressing-That's-Not-That-Bad-For-You


¼ cup fat-free Greek yogurt
¼ cup low-fat mayonnaise (I wouldn't touch anything but Hellman's or Duke's)
¼ cup buttermilk
2 tsp Texas Pete hot sauce
4 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
2 tbsp minced fresh parsley
2 green onions, minced (or 1 tsp + granulated onion)
fresh-ground black pepper to taste 

Combine and for best results refrigerate overnight.  

Biscuit Heaven

Is there anything more Southern than buttermilk biscuits? Okay, well maybe grits, but that’s a hard call.

I grew up with biscuits, but Mama makes drop biscuits (think Red Lobster’s Cheddar Bay biscuits without the cheese and garlic). They’re good, quick, and easy. But along the way I decided I wanted to learn how to make a more traditional Southern biscuit.

The family story is that Great-Grandma made her legendary biscuits with her hands in a well in the flour bowl without ever measuring a thing. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that, but I’ve been working on my biscuits for several years now, and I’ve learned that it’s as much about technique and feel as the right ingredients.

Uncle Clarence started me out. He used to make biscuits for one of the busiest Hardee’s locations in the country, in Panama City, Florida. From there I’ve accumulated hints and tricks through the years, including a new one over the weekend, and altogether they managed to produce the best biscuits I’ve ever made.

I’ve been promising my biscuit recipe to friends for months now, and I’m finally ready to deliver.

Southern Biscuits

2 cups southern/soft wheat all-purpose flour, plus about 1/3 cup

*I use White Lilly (Sunset Foods sells it in Chicago-land, as does Fresh Market), but Southern Biscuit is also good. Pastry flour should work, and cake flour would be a better option than non-southern all-purpose flours.

*Spoon the flour into the dry measuring cup and level by lightly tapping the back edge of a butter knife along the top once before scraping the excess flour off.

½ tsp salt

2 tsp aluminum-free baking powder

*Rumford is the most common brand. The aluminum in most baking powder adds an off taste.

½ tsp baking soda

*The soda is important as these are buttermilk biscuits.

1 scant tsp sugar

*“Scant” means just less – I level with the curved side of a butter knife for this.

½ cup (1 stick) cold, unsalted butter (you can go as low as ¼ cup if you must), plus about 1 tbsp

            *Flavor matters, so use good butter for this. Land ‘O Lakes is the best national brand.

¾ to 1 cup buttermilk

Wisk together the dry ingredients, reserving the extra flour.

Add the butter (except the reserve), cutting it in 1/8 inch slices. 

Mix it into the flour with your fingers. The idea is to end up with flattened bits of nickel-sized butter, so you will be tossing the flour and butter together and squishing the butter flat between your fingers.

Put your bowl of flour and butter in the freezer for 15 minutes.

Stir the buttermilk in until there’s no dry flour and the dough is pulling away from the sides of the bowl (though messily).

Let the dough sit in a cool place for 30 minutes.

Preheat a large cast-iron skillet (my 10” skillet holds one batch of biscuits) in the oven at 450°. A cast-iron griddle pan would work as well. If you’re using a cookie sheet, preheating can be good, but don’t put it in until just before you start working with the dough.

Prepare your work space. A nice, flat countertop will work, but my countertops are tile, so I like to use my pastry mat. Spray the surface with nonstick spray and wipe it to a thin layer with a paper towel. A thin coating on your hands is helpful. Then sprinkle about 1/3 cup of flour on your surface and spread it out. The idea is to work with the dough without adding any more flour than necessary – drier dough makes a drier biscuit. By the time you cut the biscuits, the dough should just hold its shape. Keep the flour on hand to add just enough to keep the dough from completely sticking, if necessary.

(That said, if you have nothing else, the inside of a paper grocery bag cut in half down the sides and across the bottom and flattened out works well. But as you can’t spray it, your biscuits will usually end up drier.)

Melt the reserved butter in a small dish.

Turn the dough out onto the prepared surface. The dough should be sticky and somewhat wet. Sprinkle some of the flour on top and begin patting the dough and folding it. It’s important not to overwork the dough. Pat it into a rough rectangle a little larger than 8½ by 11. Fold one side over the center, and then the other – like a letter. Turn the dough over (your may need to redistribute the flour on the surface underneath, and repeat the pat out and fold at least two more times and no more than four.

Finally, turn the dough over and pat it to about 1½ inches thick. Cut the biscuits with a sharp biscuit cutter (I like one about 2½ inches in diameter – the larger the biscuit, the less high it will rise), dipping it in flour before each cut and being careful to never twist the cutter (which “seals” the sides of the biscuits, keeping them from rising well). Sit each biscuit to the side as you cut them. Fold your scraps together well and pat to 1½ inches thick and cut as many more biscuits as you can (I usually just get two more at this stage). Fold the final scraps together well and hand shape the final, “ugly” biscuit.

Carefully take your hot pan out of the oven and place your biscuits in/on the pan. In a skillet, the sides will touch, and you will hear a wonderful sizzle as each biscuit settles in the pan. It’s the sizzle of a wonderfully crisp crust beginning to form.

Brush the top of each biscuit with melted butter.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the tops are nicely golden brown.

Carefully lift each biscuit out with a fork and serve hot.

These biscuits don’t actually need butter (but did more butter ever hurt anyone), and they are marvelous straight up. The layers are soft and tender with a wonderful chew, and the crust is a marvel of crispness.

If you want to serve them southern style, you can bury them in sausage gravy, or tuck a nice piece of salty country ham inside (my favorite – especially with a touch of yellow mustard in with the ham) or a piece of good sausage (Jimmy Dean), or even drizzle them with a little honey or real maple syrup. Preserves and jams can be good, but you want those with more real fruit flavor than sugar, and good apple butter is a wonder on them. I enjoyed these with a bit of the Ginger Pear Butter that I call “Spring in a Jar.”

And if you want a distinctly non-Southern after-dinner treat, try a warm biscuit with a touch of Nutella spread inside or a bit of dulce de leche. Biscuits are actually the "shortcake" in strawberry shortcake, as well. I like the regular biscuit - the bit of savory adds depth. But if you like a sweeter shortcake, increase the sugar to 2 or 3 tablespoons, switch to regular (sweet) whole milk or half-and-half (the real thing), leave out the baking soda, and sprinkle sugar on top with the melted butter. (The last time I made strawberry shortcake for a party, I shaped the dough in a 10-inch circle and baked it in my skillet, flipping it when it was well set - about 8 minutes in. It won't rise as high, but I topped it with the slightly smooshed and sugared strawberries and whipped cream and served it on a cake stand, cut into wedges. It worked beautifully.)

It just doesn’t get much better than scratch Southern biscuits.

My Cornbread Waffled on Waffleizer.com!

I love it when people write about food in quirky and creative ways. What could be more Southern, when you think about it? After all, we're the people who crumble cornbread into buttermilk and fry chicken gizzards.

So I was delighted a few months ago when I stumbled on Dan Shumski's blog waffleizer.com, where he tackles the question, "Will it waffle?" My favorite yes-answer was waffled falafal, not only because it looks delicious but because it's super-fun to say!

After reading a few posts, my imagination was stimulated to golden cornbread waffles piled with pulled pork. Yummmm. I wrote Dan and shared my vision (noting that this was not a cornbread-dream that involved sugar), and he replied that while waffling cornbread seemed like a natural and he wanted to try it, he was intimidated by it.

Well, I think it's a shame for anybody to be intimidated by something so simple and good as cornbread. It's easy to get right, but like most things good, I know it's also easy to get wrong, so I sent Dan my recipe (which is based on my mama's recipe, which was based on her mama's recipe, and...you get the picture). Last week (while I was sitting in Florida basking in the glory of the pristine Gulf and enjoying my uncle's homemade barbecue) Dan concluded that cornbread does waffle very well indeed and posted the results, complete with pulled pork! (He included my recipe and a link - thanks, Dan!) It looks spectacular!

Now I just need to find a well-seasoned cast iron waffle iron.

Top Ten Tools for Keeping Southern - 4. Texas Pete

Thus continues a somewhat regular series in ten parts highlighting some of the basic accoutrements of keeping Southern.

There’s hot sauce, and then there’s Texas Pete.

Hot sauce should be about more than heat. It should be about flavor, and Chicago-land is finally learning that when it comes to flavor, Texas Pete is king. Like Texas itself, the goodness comes from further east* – Texas Pete has been made by the Garner family in Winston-Salem, North Carolina for generations. I am delighted that I no longer need my folks to bring a quart of it when they visit. You can now find it at Ultra Foods, Wal-mart Superstores, and the previously lauded Fresh Market. I even got a cute little sample bottle from a Texas Pete booth at the Taste of Chicago on the Fourth!

Like so much that's good about the South, Texas Pete is about keeping it simple, taking your time, and getting it just right. The ingredients are simple: peppers, vinegar, and salt. But the pepper mash is aged for up to three years, and the result is a delicious balance of flavor and heat that enhances rather than overpowering food. The Garner family still makes Texas Pete on the old homestead on Indiana Avenue (originally named for Garner kin in Indiana). We lived on Marvin Boulevard, just off Indiana Avenue when I was born, and we passed the factory most every day.

It's no surprise I discovered Texas Pete as a baby - there's a bottle on every restaurant table in North Carolina. As Mama tells it, I saw a bottle on the table at a restaurant and wouldn’t stop begging for it. So she finally put a couple of drops on a spoon and gave it to me. (Trust me, that wasn’t cruel – I was just that stubborn.) I promptly grabbed daddy’s glass of iced tea (which I hated until well into adulthood) and downed half of it. I came back up for air panting “More! More!” and have been enjoying Texas Pete ever since.

*Update - Mama corrected my version this weekend and informed me that it was actually Daddy who got tired of my begging and gave me a spoon with "more than a few drops" on it. Bless him! :)

Texas Pete is just plain good. Good in eggs, good in cheese grits, good on about anything. It makes the ultimate buffalo wings (they have a buffalo wing sauce, but for really great wings, go with the original Texas Pete). And I’ve recently learned that the best fried-chicken should be dipped in Texas Pete before being dredged in flour and fried. 

I’ve long thought that there’s not much of anything you can’t manage to eat if you put enough Texas Pete on it. Which means you might just want to take a bottle with you when you go...well, pretty much anywhere. Texas Pete is keeping Southern all over.

* Texas was founded by Tennessee. Sam Houston, Davy Crockett…they call Tennessee “the Volunteer State” because we volunteered to go found Texas, among other things.

"Paminna Cheese"

If you grew up in the South, you might have taken a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to school, but it was just as likely to have been a pimento ("paminna") cheese. Pimento cheese sandwiches are to the Masters at Augusta what mint juleps are to the Kentucky Derby and strawberries are to Wimbledon. I love pimento cheese and always have. It got me through braces, when my lunches most often consisted of a thermos of cream soup and a pimento cheese sandwich sans crust and cut into bite-sized pieces that I could squish up in my mouth instead of chewing. (Thanks, Mom!)

I occasionally cook lunch for around thirty co-workers, so when the temperature hit the mid-seventies this week and I was on for lunch, I figured the best way to celebrate Spring was to introduce them (mostly mid-westerners and Yankees, with a couple of Brits) to pimento cheese. I served the sandwiches cut into triangles on a big lunch tray.

It was a hit.

Of course.

Pimento Cheese
(enough for about 10 sandwiches)

8 ounces Colby or Colby Jack cheese, fresh grated (2 cups)
8 ounces sharp Cheddar cheese, fresh grated (2 cups)
(Fresh grating is important. Pre-grated cheese has a little bit of a coating that keeps the consistency from coming together. Plus block cheese is cheaper.)
1 cup mayonnaise (Duke's; but outside the South, Hellman's is best)
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 teaspoon granulated onion
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 (4-ounce) jar chopped pimientos, undrained
Freshly ground pepper to taste (don't overwhelm it)
Couple of dashes of hot pepper sauce (Texas Pete - we're talking flavor more than heat, here)

Combine mayonnaise, pimentos, lemon juice, mustard, onion, cayenne, Worcestershire sauce, pepper and hot sauce.

Stir sauce into well-mixed grated cheeses, and serve (though I like it better the next day).

Make sandwiches (I like them with pickles, sweet or dill). Top hamburgers. Fill celery. Spread on crackers. Make grilled-pimento-cheese sandwiches (yum!). Bake it in a small casserole until it's bubbly and browning and serve it with corn chips ("Southern Queso"). Get creative. Whatever you do, enjoy!

Chicken Fried Chicken

The name really does make sense. Really! It does!

It’s Chicken Fried Steak made with chicken breast instead of steak, and while the steak is sometimes called Country Fried Steak, Country Fried Chicken is a common name for regular fried chicken. Thus we get to revel in the delightful redundancy of Chicken Fried Chicken.

I am new to deep frying. But back South, I had all the access to deep fried deliciousness I could want without doing the work myself. It’s different up here. I mean, they fry things, but not necessarily the same things and not necessarily the same way. I grew up watching Grandma fry chicken on a regular basis. (A favorite family story involves the first time Grandpa brought home a turkey. Grandma had never cooked one and decided to treat it pretty much like a big old rooster. She boiled it, floured the pieces, and fried it. For the rest of her life, she never cared much for turkey unless it was fried.) Fried Chicken was a not uncommon treat, but I always loved chicken even more when I didn’t have to mess with the bones (boneless wings are brilliant!).

So when my friend, Chris, decided to move to Orlando, and some of us were considering what might be a good meal to send him off with, I thought there couldn’t be a better time to try making the Chicken Fried Chicken which happens to be his favorite. I did some research and concluded that three thing (maybe four) are critical: double dipping the coating, buttermilk, lard or peanut oil, and lots of salt and pepper. So here’s the recipe:

Chicken Fried Chicken for 8

• 8 (6-ounce) skinned boned chicken breasts, flattened to ¼ inch thickness
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, plus
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus
• 2 sleeves of saltine crackers, crushed
• 2 cups all-purpose flour, divided
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne (half if you want to lower the kick)
• 2  large eggs
• 2  teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2  cups buttermilk
• Lard (or Peanut oil, if you must)

-Sprinkle the chicken pieces liberally with salt and pepper.

-Combine the cracker crumbs, flour, measured salt and pepper, and cayenne.

-Beat the eggs, adding the baking powder and baking soda before blending in the buttermilk. (It will be foamy.)

-Put the flour mixture in one shallow dish, and the buttermilk mixture in a wide bowl.

-Heat the lard or oil in a cast iron dutch oven or deep skillet to 375 degrees. (This is important! When the grease is hot enough, the moisture in the cooking chicken expands and keeps it from soaking up the grease. And lard just tastes better. Shortening is awful stuff, and the lard is not going to hurt you once in a while if you generally eat healthy.)

-Dredge the chicken in the flour mixture, then the buttermilk, then the flour again, and fry it, 7-10 minutes on one side. Turn it and fry it for 4-5 minutes more. I fried 2 to 3 pieces at a time, depending on their size. It should be golden brown. It's helpful to have a cooling wrack on a cookie sheet in a 200 degree oven to keep it warm.

Then you make the gravy, which I never use a recipe for. Say, 3 to 4 tbsp of the frying grease or butter, 5-6 tablespoons of flour. Brown well, then stir in 4 cups of whole milk a cup or two at a time until it all thickens up. 1 ½ tsp of salt or so and a bunch of black pepper (to taste – Chris said enough pepper so that when you eat the first bite of gravy it makes you cough, I think it was).

And you can’t have Chicken Fried Chicken without the gravy. And mashed potatoes. Corn and green beens are pretty important, too.  

It turned out marvelously well, if I do say so. And it was a fitting send off for a friend who likes his meat fried and boneless!