A piedmont foodway more celebrated than St. Patrick’s Day: Scots-Irish
St. Patrick’s Day is the one day of the year that people celebrate Scots-Irish history here – and they do it rather superficially. We like to dig a little deeper and say that we don’t do an Irish dish, or Scots-Irish dish just one day of the year. We do it more often – you just don’t know it until someone draws your attention to it.
There are three primary foodways that influence the food of the North Carolina piedmont. The African influence is most noticeable and rather celebrated. Less-celebrated is our shared German heritage – such as the Moravians in Winston-Salem with their smoked meats, sausages, liver pudding, cabbage, coleslaw, chicken pies, and cookies.
The third foodway is the Scots-Irish.
Celebrate the region’s Scots-Irish heritage at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen with our “Still Winter” menu. On St. Patrick’s Day, join us for braised, all natural Corn Beef, Mustard-Braised Cabbage, Buttermilk and Chive whipped potatoes (recipes below).
Scots-Irish migration
Scots-Irish is a bit of a confusing term in and of itself.
Our understanding is that these folks represent a group of people who left Scotland and the poor working and living conditions there for Ireland. Within 2 generations or so they found their way to the New World and settled in the Appalachian and Piedmont regions; about 100 years before the famine in Ireland sent a great wave of Irish to America in the 1840s.
In the Piedmont and Appalachian mountains they found a region that was both similar to their own in geography, as well as undesired by the English, who lived closer to the coast.
These folks began to carve out a hardscrabble existence that informs much of what we’ve inherited in the ways of food traditions in the Carolinas, one that today gets taken for granted.
Off the Chef’s Shelf: Learn more about the Scots-Irish influence in southern foods.
The end of winter is the most difficult time to eat locally sourced ingredients because the pickles and the salt cures are running out and spring has barely sprung. As winter gives way to springtime, our thoughts here at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen turn to our shared Scots-Irish heritage and their enduring foodways.
Scroll down for Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen’s Mustard-Braised Cabbage, Buttermilk and Chive whipped potatoes recipes.
Scotch Broth is a local lamb broth with pearled barley and vegetables.
Our take on the Corn Beef Sandwich (available during lunch only): we mixed chowchow with Creole mayonnaise to make it taste like 1,000 island dressing. But instead of sauerkraut, we use caramelized onions and mushrooms and cook it on a flat top grill with provolone cheese. So it’s kind of a cross between a Philly and a Reuben; centered around the corn beef.
Barley Risotto, which is nice and hearty and just happens to be vegan, with pickled leeks, roasted local mushrooms, confit garlic and crispy greens.
Pulled Lamb on Johnny Cakes features hickory-smoked Border Springs lamb on Johnny cakes with housemade ricotta. The Owensboro-style of barbecue traditionally involves mutton and very assertive seasoning. We’ve dialed the seasonings back a bit, as we substitute Border Springs Farm lamb in this dish that was developed in western Kentucky, which has its own Scots-Irish heritage.
Corn Beef and Cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen
The idea of offering Corn Beef and Cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day was proposed to us by a few of our guests, who saw that we were celebrating the foodways of the people around here in the Piedmont, and remarked to the effect that:
“This is the place that should have a Corn Beef and Cabbage special for St. Patrick’s Day. This is the place I want to come to have a meal and a pint of beer. I don’t want to go to a bar, I’ve outgrown that.”
We were already celebrating corn beef in our late winter menu, so it was a natural extension to add the Corn Beef and Cabbage special.
Maybe next year we’ll muster up the courage to prepare a proper Robert Burns Dinner for Burns night; that would truly be a tribute.
Heat oil in skillet to medium high. Sauté onions until golden. Add rough chopped cabbage and sauté until shiny and softened, but not wilted. Add stock and mustard and simmer for five minutes.
Four or five years ago, sliders were everywhere. At the time, we said we’ll never do sliders as long as they’re on the menu at Burger King. When it’s ubiquitous, you’ve gotta have a really good reason to do it.
We were more interested in trying to figure out how to feature lamb on the menu. People can be pretty picky about a lot of things — especially lamb.
Secondly, we couldn’t find anyone locally with enough lamb to supply a restaurant on a regular basis. Then we met Craig Rogers of Border Springs Farm. Craig’s lamb is a Katahdin-Texel cross and its taste is incomparable.
The Lambastic Slider is now a permanent pick on the Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen menu. As a starter, pair it with a medium body red wine, like a Cotes du Rhone, or Shiraz. Then choose a new seasonal entrée off the new winter menu.
We first served it like barbecue, smoked and pulled. We felt like it was a good way to present something that looked familiar, tasted familiar, but wasn’t familiar. If the guise, or the plating procedure is too substantially different than what people expect, then it takes more salesmanship.
So what if it had a different rub, and flavor profile, but it looked like pulled pork on johnny cakes? So we offered Pulled Lamb on Johnny Cakes, and christened it Ownesboro, KY barbecue.
Owensboro BBQ is a hyper-regionalized style known as mutton BBQ. The lengthy smoking process includes a constant mopping of the mutton with a salty mixture. Chris Chamberlain in Food Republic has a great story about it.
The lamb here was a modest success, but not overwhelming. But we believed in Craig, his story, and his food, and kept trying to figure out how to feature it.
Around that time Anna Mae Breads was making a believer of us. Shana’s (roller of Anna Mae Breads) personality was infectious and we knew that we wanted to support her business. We tasted five different kinds of bread that she made: Pullman loaves, sandwich rolls, dinner rolls, and slider buns; that was my Eureka! Moment. I knew we would make sliders. With her bread, and Craig’s mutton, we went on this slider kick where we explored all the different ways to construct sliders.
Lambastic Sliders came out of, “How can we feature Craig on this menu?” We made a lamb sausage topped with pepper jelly and goat cheese. Lamb is often served with mint jelly and the pepper jelly gives it a more southern kick, and the goat cheese is from down the road (Goat Lady Dairy).
Chef tips: Create your own slider
Use a patty meat. Loose meats get a little too sloppy.
We use Florida Bakery now that Anne Mae Breads has gone out of business. But you can use brown and serve dinner rolls.
When you’re picking additional flavors, try to create a perfect balance between sweet, sour, salty, and savory. Balance spicy with sour or tartness. If it has a sour component, we like to balance with a little sweetness.
Think of your favorite sandwich combinations and reference it with other ingredients.
Lusty Sliders feature housemade pork sausage patties with cranberry chutney and Lusty Monk mustard.
FYI: For your inspiration, consider our previous slider combos
Whistle Bite Slider with slow-cooked Bradds Family pork belly, Pig & Whistle sauce and green tomato chowchow.
A popular incarnation was the Throwback Slider featuring pork sausage, spicy mustard, and caramelized onions. The name is a reference to the original accoutrements of the hamburger.
Next was the Winter BLT Slider: pork belly, tomato jam, and the hearts of romaine. Because tomatoes aren’t good in the winter, we used tomato jam (we make a big deal around here about using good tomatoes). With the crunchy, bitter ribs of the romaine, it was awesome. Some folks were confused by the name, however, and it didn’t go over so well here.
For Thanksgiving, we did Madison Sliders with turkey sausage and cranberry chutney.
This winter we’ve featured Umami Sliders: pickled shiitake mushroom relish and Green Hill camembert cheese, in our first veggie slider.
Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen Hot Pepper Jelly recipe
We use locally grown chiles from the Guilford College Farm
1 cup red bell peppers
1 cup green bell peppers
1 cup Jalapeno peppers
3 fl oz white vinegar
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp kosher salt
1 box Sure Jell – 2/3 cup pectin
Wash peppers well and then chop. In a food processor, pulse peppers and 2 tablespoons vinegar three times for 2 seconds each. Do not liquefy. Transfer peppers to a sauce pot. Add remaining vinegar, sugar and salt. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in Sure Jell and simmer 1 minute. Pour into a labeled container and cool before using.
In the South, we believe there are two things that matter more than any other on New Year’s Day—what you eat and who you eat with. Hoppin’ John, Collard Greens, and Cornbread have long been essential components of the New Year’s Day meal because of their promise of health, wealth, and luck in the new year.
Stories vary from hill to dale, from the cornbread signifying gold to the greens representing paper money; but they all revolve around cowpeas or black-eyed peas (often seen as coins).
Most say that General Sherman considered them cow fodder and left them in the field as his ravenous troops marched through. The nutritious legume saved the day and was ever afterwards seen as a symbol of hope and better fortune for the Southerners, who continue to eat them each year. And what would tradition be without a gathering of friends and family.
At Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen, we both honor and break the black-eyed peas tradition. We serve the dish that goes back to this restaurant’s beginning, and further back in the lowcountry region’s history; to what inspired the black-eyed peas tradition.
Serving our New Year’s Special is a long-standing tradition at Lucky 32, and it’s one of our busiest days of the year! This year, we’re offering Country Ham Steak or Pork Loin Chop with cranberry chutney, both served with Hoppin John, collard greens, sweet potatoes and cornbread.
Need some New Year’s Eve ideas? Get the recipes and watch us whip up a few drinks and dishes on myFox8.com: Green Chile Pimento Cheese, Bayou Punch, Apple Margarita, White Bean Salad, Boozy Hot Chocolate, Chatham Artillery Punch, Hot and Buttered, Hot Rum Batter, Bourbon Pecan Bars, Bourbon Icing, and the New Jersey Cocktail.
Hoppin’ John = “Pois au Pigeon”
Hoppin’ John is credited with being created in the lowcountry, around the Charleston, South Carolina area. There’s no definitive story about what Hoppin’ John means. What we believe to be the truth about its name is based on linguistics.
The term Hoppin’ John stems from the Creole French word for “pigeon peas,” a cousin of black-eye peas, that is cultivated and consumed by peoples in the African diaspora.
Descendants of African slaves that have retained their indigenous foodways still cook pigeon peas in the sea islands off of South Carolina and Georgia, such as the Gullah and Geechee. Haitians called the peas “pois au pigeon,” which is pronounced “pwahz o peeJon.” If you don’t speak French, this phrase actually sounds like “Hoppin’ John.”
The Hoppin’ John dish was originally pigeon peas and rice cooked together. In Jamaica, they still serve this dish with coconut milk, kidney beans, rice, and green onion. All year long, Jamaicans will use kidney beans, but once a year, on Christmas, they use pigeon peas.
Hoppin’ John has been a New Year’s Eve tradition at Lucky 32 since the restaurant’s first opened.
A complete protein in the Antebellum South
The reason you cook beans and rice together is to bring together the necessary amino acids for a complete protein. In the Post-bellum South, meat was harder to come by as the region struggled with a devastated economy and countryside and those two agriculture products — beans and rice — cooked together provided ample nutrition and also a symbol of hope (and luck) for the new year
Most people make Hoppin’ John with black-eyed peas and rice. But the last two years on New Years Eve at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen, we’ve gone further back, to make the dish that both honors the Antebellum South and the Sea Island cultures that passed it on.
We make it with Sea Island Red Peas and Carolina Gold Rice from Anson Mills in Columbia, South Carolina, because we believe that to be the “Ur-Hoppin John” (in literature, some scholars believe that Shakespeare’s Hamlet was inspired by a previous story, known as the “Ur-Hamlet”). The original. The mother lode.
Stew on this: Until you can wing it on your own, try this Black Bean Soup Recipe
Dennis Quaintance (L32 founder and all-around guru) likes to say that everybody’s got a different recipe for stew, but they all have one thing in common: time.
Then someone said, “I love thyme, dude! That’s very French.”
And he said, “Not that thyme. Time!”
What’s really going on is that we have a tremendous affinity for one-pot wonders, we love the idea of cooking as alchemy. We’re intrigued by the idea of taking a bunch of things, which may be humble, or mean, whatever synonym you like to use, and putting them in a pot and cooking them all together and something magical happens after a period of time.
At the restaurant, it’s a different story. People expect consistency. But at home, we may not follow a stew or chili recipe (or any recipe at all, unless it involves baking). We may decide to wing it. Cook it long enough — with enough time or thyme — and it’s going to taste right.
The difference between a stew, soup, and chili
Stew
Think of stew as a verb, not a noun. It’s a cooking process where the meat is braised and falling apart.
Generally, it’s a main dish.
Meat plays the starring role.
Broth is usually thickened with flour, but sometimes with disintegrated vegetables (like Brunswick stew).
Longer cook time to tenderize the meat.
Soup
When you make a soup, you can have multiple starring roles for the ingredients.
Generally served as an appetizer.
The focal point is about achieving a balance between the components; multiple starring roles.
Thinner broth.
Shorter cook time.
Chili
Traditional chili is meat that is braised, slow cooked, or stewed in a chile-spiked sauce.
The core ingredients: chiles, meat, and broth, cooked down. Traditional chili doesn’t have beans.
A funny thing happened on the way to the Piedmont
Somehow, by the time Texas chili made its way to the Piedmont, it crossed with the butter beans and lima beans in Brunswick Stew.
In the Piedmont, we don’t have a tradition of spicy things. Texas Pete is more of a modern innovation. So our chili and black bean soups are kind of sisters in that we add beans to our chili to bring it into the southern realm of one-pot-wonders. We use kidney beans, ground beef, filet mignon tips, tomatoes, and chiles.
A tradition of Black Bean Soup
Black beans don’t have much of a tradition in the Piedmont. Pinto beans are the generic beans of the Carolinas. October beans, (AKA Cranberry beans) are the primary staple at higher elevations, where pintos aren’t as prolific.
We at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen have developed a tradition of Black Bean Cakes and Black Bean Soup. We started serving the Black Bean Cakes here when the restaurant opened 23 years ago, and that’s a main reason we make a Black Bean Soup instead of a kidney bean soup, or a vegetarian chili; it’s another way to showcase the black bean.
Once upon a time, we made black bean soup every day. People still call and want to know when we’re going to do black bean soup again. What menu is it on? They buy quarts to take home.
We like to offer it on the winter menu at the same time as chili because to me it touches the same senses. You can make it at home, too. All you need is some time.
Drain excess liquid from beans and rinse. Let drain while cooking onions. Sauté onions in oil in soup pot till transparent but not brown. Add remaining ingredients and beans to pot. Heat to boil then reduce and simmer for 1 hour.
Shaking down persimmon recipes: pie, glaze, and Southern Comfort hard sauce
LOCAVORE’S DELIGHT: The Series #25. Follow us as we explore the bounty of our region’s farms.
There’s a story about persimmons in the new Louvin brothers book. A young Ira couldn’t shake a persimmon off a tree, so he convinced his brother Charlie to get an ax, chop it down, and snag the fruit. Together they ate all the persimmons and tried to prop up the tree again, like nothing happened. Their father’s punishment for chopping that tree down was notoriously severe, but so was the persimmon revenge: the boys got sick.
Around mid October, it’s not uncommon to see tarps and straw beds under persimmon trees, and folks (musicians or not) trying to shake them down. Chef says you don’t pick persimmons, you pick them up off the straw. And local musician Scott Manring says “anything bigger than your thumb with fur on it” will eat a persimmon. He once watched a deer stand on its hind legs to eat persimmons off his tree. Scott himself will climb to the tree tops, shake down a bag’s worth, and bring them to Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen.
The Native American persimmon
The indigenous Native American persimmon is a kind of muted, autumn peach. The fruit is tear-dropped shaped and grows in wonderful, beautiful trees. It’s also so intolerably astringent if it’s under ripe that it will ruin anything you make.
Cooking: The Native American persimmon needs to fully ripen on the tree. The fruit will be soft and mushy and most persimmon recipes require cooking, such as persimmon pudding.
Fuyu persimmon
The fuyu persimmon can be eaten unripe, just like a tomato. Its flavor is sort of a peachy-tomato cross. At the grocery store, look for the persimmon with a flat bottom, that’s a fuyu. The redder it gets, the sweeter it is. There are some wonderful salads with poached shrimp and under ripe fuyu persimmons that are sublime.
Cooking: Slice it thin, or wedge it, and add it to a salad. Or, add to your purée.
Hachiya persimmon
Needs to fully ripen on the tree before being eaten, should be treated just like and indigenous persimmon, yet has a much higher flesh to seed ratio.
In the kitchen: Persimmon BBQ sauce and Persimmon Pudding
The traditional dish for persimmons is persimmon pudding — a very humble mixture of persimmon puree, flour, eggs, and sugar. Most persimmons come our way because people bring them to us. When the fall menu is over, we freeze them and use them for sauces and pudding on New Year’s Eve.
We’ve decided to make teriyaki sauce and fold persimmon purée into it and use it for a quail glaze. It’s a sweet purée and we use it like we would a peach BBQ sauce.
It’s also an integral component of the hard sauce that is served with our bread pudding (with the peach flavor of Southern Comfort to amplify the subtle taste of persimmons).
I don’t know of anyone farming persimmons, but many farms have a persimmon tree, and bring their persimmons to us.
Scott Manring, one of the featured musician’s at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen’s “Songs in a Southern Kitchen” series
We recently visited Scott’s persimmon trees in Pleasant Garden to get a few persimmon “pick-up” tips.
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Persimmon tree wood is among the strongest and used to make the highest quality heads of golf clubs known as the “wood.”
Hard, unripe persimmons will fall to the ground, and taste terrible, “like putting a piece of cotton in your mouth.”
Scott puts tarps on the ground, instead of straw. It’s easier to roll persimmons up in a tarp and bag them.
The tree is getting too thick to shake, so Scott either climbs the tree to shake persimmons down, or uses a rope to pull on it.
After a hard frost the color of the persimmon gets grapey-looking.
A ripe persimmon is ooey-gooey, and usually splits a little when it hits the ground.
Bob Reeves, a local musician and piedmont renaissance man, puts a sweet potato and a little orange zest in his persimmon pie. He uses an old pulp mill to separate the persimmons from dirt and twigs.
Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen Recipes
Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen Persimmon Glaze
1 tbsp canola oil
1 ½ tbspginger puree
2 cups unsweetened pineapple juice
1 pound light brown sugar
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup Tamari
¼ cup chopped green onions
2 ½ cups chopped fresh persimmons, hulls removed
Heat oil in a pot over medium heat and sweat ginger. Add remaining ingredients and simmer until thickened, about 35 minutes. Puree with an immersion blender and strain through a fine strainer.
*Quality Identifiers: sauce should be free of skins and seeds and should coat the back of a spoon.
Makes 5 cups
Lucky 32 Southern Comfort Persimmon Hard Sauce
¾ cup fresh persimmon pulp
2/3 lb butter – room temperature
3 ¾ cup confectioners sugar 10X (add more for thicker sauce)
5 each egg yolks
7 fl ounces Southern Comfort (or your favorite)
Heat persimmons over medium-high heat. Add butter and begin to melt. Add sugar. Cream butter and sugar, and stir until all of the butter is absorbed and a smooth consistency is achieved. Remove from heat. Stir in one egg yolk at a time until all yolks have been incorporated. Gradually pour in Southern Comfort while stirring constantly. Sauce will thicken as it cools.
Makes – 3 ½ cups
Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen Persimmon Pudding
2 cups all purpose flour
½ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground nutmeg
3 fresh eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
2 cups pureed fresh persimmon with hull removed
1 ½ cups Scuppernong wine
¼ cup buttermilk
2 ½ tbsp melted unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
Sift together flour, baking soda, salt and spices. Set aside. In a separate bowl, mix eggs and sugar until well combined. Add pureed persimmon, wine and buttermilk and mix to combine. Stir in butter and vanilla. Grease a baking pan with pan spray. Add liquid mixture to flour mixture and combine well by hand. Transfer mixture to greased pan. Bake at 300 degrees for 30-45 minutes or until center is set and sides begin to pull away from pan. Allow to cool completely before slicing.
Butternut Squash and the Three Sisters approach to succotash
LOCAVORE’S DELIGHT: The Series #24. Follow us as we explore the bounty of our region’s farms.
In Native American lore, three crops were always planted together: squash, corn, and beans. Legumes would wind their way up the corn and use the stalk as a trellis, and the squash would grow between the rows, under the shade of the corn.
Much of what we do here at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen is recover traditions that are in danger of being lost. While different people have different opinions about succotash and its contents, we base our recipe on the Ancient Three Sisters model — and at the heart of our succotash is butternut squash.
This time of year, it’s not uncommon to see a harvested field with the corn stalks cut and butternut squash still curing on the vine. Our fall menu features the nutty-flavored winter cucurbit in the butternut squash soup. You can also find them in the Farmer’s Cart at the restaurant.
Pick up some locally farmed butternut squash off the farmer’s cart at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen.
One tough vegetable
We often joke that only three things are not allowed in this kitchen: Monkfish (we can’t cook it properly), mustard greens, and acorn squash.
Acorn squash doesn’t give you any more flavor than butternut squash, and it’s much harder to clean with its thick ridges. Butternut squash gives you a better meat-to-skin ratio and has a wonderful nutty flavor, and it’s easy to work with.
The cure:Conversations with farmers will teach you things
Tobacco gets cured. Sweet potatoes get cured, and we’ve known both of those things, but we didn’t know that winter squash gets cured, too.
Curing is a heating process, to encourage the starch to sugar conversion. The process prevents spoilage and allows for longer storage.
The way we’ve heard it it told is that butternut squash needs to be planted at the same time as summer squash. Farmers leave it in the field and the sun heats up the squash. After a certain number of days in the field the vegetable is cured and you can put them in the cellar for the winter.
Take it home: Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen’s Butternut Squash Bisque recipe in Savor NC.
Split the squash from north to south, through the stem; scoop out the seeds.
Lay it out cut side down on a greased baking tray.
Roast until it’s tender to a finger poke (at 350 degrees for for 35 minutes-ish).
Remove the squash from the oven.
Flip it over.
If the squash is small enough, put a little butter and cinnamon in the hole and take a scoop and drag it through the hole and eat it.
Braise with a little butter
Clean and peel entire squash with a vegetable peeler.
Cut the bell part out of the base.
Scoop the seeds out.
Cube it.
Sauté it with butter and braise with a little water, to steam.
Do you puree?
Once it’s roasted and flipped, scrape all the flesh out of the skin, and puree with butter, sorghum, and call it a day.
Squash the bread
Substitute butternut squash to change up your favorite sweet potato recipe. Or, substitute equal amount of roasted butternut squash for the main vegetable in any one of your favorite bread or muffin recipes.
Zucchini
Banana
Pumpkin
Pick the perfect squash
Pick up a few butternut squashes and compare the weight. The one that feels heavier for its size is going to have a smaller cavity, fewer seeds and more dense fruit, and generally has a higher sugar content.
Heavy for its size
Unblemished skin
A word to the unripe
If you go to peel your squash and it has some green undertones to its skin, then it hasn’t been cured long enough. At this point, it won’t get more ripe. It won’t be as sweet and will taste more like a vegetable.
Give it a try: Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen Autumn Succotash. Tweet this recipe.
Sauté the butternut squash as recommended above. And you can also replace the peanuts with crowder peas or black eyed peas.
Makes 4 cups
¼ cup butter
1 lb. butternut squash, washed, peeled, and diced
½ lb. boiled peanuts
½ lb. sweet corn ears, kernels cut from cobs
¼ cup water
½ tsp. dried thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
Melt butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add butternut squash, and sauté 3 to 4 minutes. Add boiled peanuts, and cook 3 to 4 minutes. Add corn kernels and remaining ingredients. Cook until corn, peanuts, and squash are tender. Cover and cook 6-8 minutes (or until squash is tender).
Family Gatherings: Dan Valley Community Center Brunswick Stew
LOCAVORE’S DELIGHT: The Series # 23. Follow us as we explore the bounty of our region’s farms.
Most cultures have a tradition of a humble, community-driven one-pot meal. In the South of France it could be Bouillabaisse. In Spain it’s Paella. In South Louisiana it’s Gumbo or Jambalaya. In Kentucky and Appalachia it’s known as Burgoo, and in the lowcountry, down near Charleston, South Carolina, they make Hopping John or Purloo. In the Piedmont of North Carolina, and similar areas in Georgia, Virginia, and South Carolina, that dish takes the form of Brunswick Stew.
This one-pot community-cooked dish was traditionally tended over an open fire through the night by a gathering of menfolk who regaled each other and the next generation with stories of how their ancestors past did the same thing.
The coming of cooler nights and the changing color of the leaves signals the onset of Brunswick Stew season here in the Piedmont. Soon we’ll start to see signs popping up on roadsides advertising fundraisers at firehouses, churches and schools that have a Brunswick Stew event. They’ll make a big pot of the stew and sell quarts and pints to raise money.
Enjoy this Brunswick Stew recipe at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen on the new “Fall for Something New!” menu that runs through November 13, 2012.
Opinions vary
People in Brunswick, Va, and Brunswick, Ga, argue about the stew’s origin. Opinions also vary as to whether Brunswick Stew should be cooked long enough so that it’s constituent parts are indiscernible, or if everything should be cooked until you can still tell the difference between a lima bean and a hunk of pork.
Here at the restaurant, we prepare the recipe from the Dan Valley Community Center. It has a bit of a pedigree and came here by way of Joan King, a noted local cook, and mother to Nancy Quaintance, who has been instrumental in creating a food profile for this restaurant.
Our preference is to cook the stew until everything is tender and turn it off and let it sit. It’s even better as leftovers. If you put it away in the refrigerator, it has time overnight to sit and the ingredients meld their flavors, and then you’ll understand the adage, “greater than the sum of its parts.”
Brunswick stew is the Piedmont version of chili
And the Piedmontese will say that chili is the East Texas version of Brunswick Stew. Use it like you would chili:
use it on nachos
top a hamburger
sprinkle with it with cheese
pour over elbow macaroni
The sum of its parts
Chicken, pork and beef (it’s not uncommon to find squirrel or venison)
corn, tomatoes, potatoes, onions and beans, usually lima beans
generous amount of black pepper
Family Memories
Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen uses the recipe from the Dan Community Center. Below, Nancy King Quaintance’s mother and sister share their memories of the annual community gatherings.
Joan King, Nancy King Quaintance’s mother
“Traditionally we used all canned veggies and I guess you still have to use canned tomatoes, but the corn and limas are much better frozen. The taste is brighter. The men did indeed discuss the meats to go in the stew, but it was as a joke. The only two meats are always beef and chicken.”
Virginia Phelps, Nancy King Quaintance’s sister
“Old Frank Lauten always appeared to put his two-cents into the recipe, to make sure it was going right and then leave as abruptly as he appeared (he didn’t like children and always mumbled the like under his breath). But it was the women who prepared the vegetables and meats for what seemed like days prior to ‘official’ cook day in the Community Center kitchen that really made the stew special.
“There were always large coffee pots steaming, sweet tea, shared canned veggies and pickles and the famous ‘Martha Lauten’ pies that appeared on the many folding tables to give energy to those helping.
“The kitchen was fashioned with many grey folding metal chairs around a large center table where the women would sit well into the night preparing potatoes and crying from cutting onions, and talking about the crops from summer; what had been canned and if there was enough rain that season; the daily report of the textile industry and the like. The faces and voices of rural south, there all the same.'”
Dan Valley Community Center Brunswick Stew
1 tbsp olive oil
1 ¼ pounds chicken breasts – diced
1 ¼ pounds stew beef – diced
¼ pound pork loin – diced
½ pound yellow onions – diced
3 cups frozen yellow corn – thawed
1 ½ cups frozen white corn – thawed
2 cups frozen lima beans – thawed
2 ¼ cups V-8 juice
1 quart water
2 ¼ tsp Tabasco sauce
1 1/8 tsp white pepper
1 ½ tsp salt
1 each chicken bouillon cube
1 each beef bouillon cube
2 cups potatoes – peeled and diced
1 ½ tsp cracked black pepper
4 ¾ cups canned diced tomatoes
In a large stock pot or kettle heat oil. Sauté chicken, beef and pork in hot oil until browned. Add onions and continue to sauté until onions are translucent. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until mixture becomes a thick mush. Stir mixture constantly from the bottom of the pot to prevent scorching. Stew may be frozen.
Relish the last of summer vegetables: Granny’s good manners, chowchow, and pickling recipes
LOCAVORE’S DELIGHT: The Series # 22. Follow us all summer long as we explore the bounty of our region’s farms.
In days gone by, when unexpected company popped in or supper was not quite at hand, assorted preserved foods could be pulled out to nourish, sustain, appetize or entertain. The idea was to sample a few preparations, share with friends, and whet the appetite for the meal that lay ahead.
Here at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen, we’ve embraced the resurgence of this culture of pickling. We make our own pepper vinegar for collard greens; preserve a rare bounty of wild ramps from an earlier spring foraging adventure, and make our own pickled cucumbers that are then fried for an appetizer.
Not only does pickling go well with the food we serve, it delivers the message that we’re rediscovering something our ancestors have already figured out: ways to extend seasonal foods, to balance rich and creamy southern foods with a zesty counterpoint, and to transform the taste of seasonal vegetables.
Sample Granny’s Relish Tray on our Endless Summer Menu (now through Oct 2.) The appetizer features tomato aspic — an heirloom tomato puree, flavored with celery seed, cayenne and green onion, that is set with gelatin and served cold (a Southern tradition you just don’t see anymore); Goat Lady Dairy Crottin; butterbean pate; zucchini pickles; and Nabisco Premium Saltines.
Extend the season
Before kitchen freezers, Interstate transportation and commercial agriculture, the only way you could enjoy okra in the winter was if it were preserved with one of three traditional preservation methods: salting, drying, and pickling.
The advantage pickling brings is that it adds depth of flavor. Pickling discourages bacteria while the natural juices of the vegetable undergo lactic fermentation and become sour.
A zesty counterpoint to rich and creamy foods
Our European ancestors pickled foods to balance the palate. In cooler climates like Northern and Eastern Europe, you find more vegetable pickling. In warmer climates, people cut rich foods with acidic wines or citrus fruit.
In addition to being a beneficial part of a macrobiotic diet, which introduces enzymes to improve digestion, pickled foods cleanse the palate and balance the rich, creamy dishes of the south.
Try it at home: Transform your favorites
The great thing about chowchow is that you throw in everything from the garden at the end of summer: unripened tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, cabbage – chop finely, season well and cook away. Scroll down for the recipe below.
Chowchow is a wonderful addition to anything that needs a little zing. Use it with anything bound with mayonnaise such as egg salad, chicken salad, or tuna salad.
Put chowchow in the food processor for your deviled eggs.
Spicy chow chow or pickles are good chopped finely and folded into pimento cheese. Or bread and butter pickles can be served atop pimento cheese.
Simple salads
One of our favorite suppers at home — if we don’t feel like cooking — is lettuce, tomato, cucumbers, hard boiled eggs, some sort of grated cheese, and whatever we have pickled in the refrigerator: pickled cucumbers, sunchokes, turnips, or chow chow.
Make your own Relish Tray
Don’t contaminate the reagent jar. Don’t use your hands to pull pickles out of the jar, bacteria on your hands will spoil the pickles.
The key to building a relish tray is contrast. Use a variety of pickles, not just sweet pickles: use sweet pickles, sour, and spicy (tell your guests which are which).
Pick a homemade potted meat. Choose devilled ham or pate’.
Pick a creamy side. Deviled eggs, pimento cheese, hummus, or butterbean pate’.
A thick, creamy cheese. A slice of Brie, or Goat Lady Dairy Crottin, a surface-ripened chevre that has begun to mellow.
Barbecue is always a good addition.
Serve with crackers. Nabisco Premium Saltines are my favorite.
For more information, read “Wild Fermentation” by Sandor Ellix Katz. Several of our pickle processes are adapted from his book. The zucchini pickles on the tray are from Judy Rodgers’ book, “The Zuni Cafe Cookbook.”
Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen’s Green Tomato Chowchow
1½ cups green tomatoes, seeded and rough chopped
½ cup green bell pepper, rough chopped
¼ cup red bell pepper, rough chopped
½ cup yellow onion, rough chopped
¾ tsp mustard seed
½ tsp celery seed
½ tsp chopped garlic
½ tsp turmeric
⅓ cup apple cider vinegar
⅓ cup sugar
1 tsp crushed red pepper
In a food processor, pulse tomatoes until finely chopped, but not pureed. Pulse peppers and onion until finely chopped. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and simmer on medium heat for 20-30 minutes. Cool and store in a properly labeled container with lid.
Remove rind from watermelon and reserve the red part to enjoy at your leisure. Using a vegetable peeler, remove green skin from the rind; discard skin. Cut rind into ½ inch x ½ inch pieces; the yield should be about 8 cups.
In a large bowl combine 2 tablespoons salt and 4 cups of water and allow rind to soak in brine for one hour, then drain.
In a large pot, combine lemon juice, 1 cup water, sugar, ginger puree, lemon peel and spices. Add rind, cover and bring to at boil over high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer covered over medium low for 40 minutes or until rind is translucent.
Transfer rind with slotted spoon to a plastic container. Strain liquid and pour over rind.
The locavore’s guide to this season’s apple shortage
LOCAVORE’S DELIGHT: The Series # 21. Follow us all summer long as we explore the bounty of our region’s farms.
On the morning of April 24 of this year, as we were readying for a trip to dig ramps at Foggy Ridge Cider in Dugspur, VA, the temperature in much of the apple-growing part of North Carolina dropped low enough to freeze the nascent apple blooms that were early, as a result of the preceding mild winter.
These irreparably damaged blooms never turned into apples. Because cold air is heavier than warm air, the chill settled in valleys and actually spared orchards at higher elevations. As a result, some in the industry estimate that as much as 80% of the apple harvest in North Carolina was lost that day.
Now that apple harvesting season is upon us, we are feeling the effects of that disastrous day. Each of the varieties that we’ve come to expect at the farmer’s market are present, but in tremendously small quantities. Honeycrisps and Empires seem to be already done, Buckinghams and Galas are going fast.
Because our menu is literally created by local foods and what’s in season, our late summer menu is a little different this year. This menu usually has the apple turnover and bourbon-smothered apples on grilled porkchops. Not this year.
So what did we do instead? More importantly, what do you do instead?
Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen’s Apple Cake
Hold your locavore ground
Mother Nature teaches us moderation. Sometimes we splurge because our tomato bushes were overly prolific, and sometimes we moderate because of a heat wave or a freeze. In boom times, we preserve. In lean times we manage. It’s all part of the challenge of shopping in Mother Nature’s stores. Being a locavore, to me, means celebrating what’s in season. When strawberries are in: celebrate. When apples are in: celebrate.
If you have a bumper crop–like this summer’s tomatoes and squash–pay attention to it. Ask farmers about the season’s boom or bust and make a creative plan of action.
Right now, we’re serving Applesauce, and Apple Cake served with slice pears, because Apple Cake uses fewer apples and we had a good pear crop.
A word about apples
All apples are divided into 2 categories: eating and cooking.
Apples for eating out of your hand
Favorite eating apple: Honeycrisp
sweet
juicy
no aftertaste
Honeycrisp, Gala, York, Fuji, Pink Lady
Cooking Apples
Favorite cooking apple: Arkansas black. Its lower moisture content means it doesn’t make great applesauce, but it makes wonderful apple pies and dumplings. This apple is also featured on the side of the Farm to Fork London Taxicab you see us driving around town.
sour
starchier
firmer, holds its shape in the oven
Fugee, Heirloom. Buckingham, Newton Pippin, Rusty Coat, Limbertwig, Arkansas Black
At the farmer’s market
The best way to tell the difference between a cooking apple and an eating apple is to ask your vendor or farmer. Courtlands, Jonathans, and Buckinghams are all in the market right now. You’re much better off talking to someone who is buying or selling or growing NC apples. When you buy things in season from local growers you get occasional brilliance.
Get the farmer’s side of the story. Ask him or her about this this year’s apple harvest. If they’re not aware of a cold snap or an apple shortage, you might not be talking with someone who is as passionate as you are about your apples. Keep in mind, that farmers higher in the mountain regions didn’t lose much this year.
Ask the farmer’s where the apples came from. We’ll be crossing North Carolina state lines into Virginia to make up for the apple loss. But the closer the apple is to the home and the tree it came from, the better.
At the grocery store
Check the label. If you go to the grocery store, the apple will have a sticker on it indicating its country of origin. It’s not uncommon for people to make a mistake: to accidentally fill the bin with the wrong apple because of a short supply. Double check: if it says, “locally grown,” check the apple’s sticker.
Find out how far it has travelled to get to you. If an apple is picked in, say, New Zealand, it’s picked underripe and treated with a gaseous compound (1-MCP) so it can be shipped halfway around the world and arrive ready for stores. The apple never gets an opportunity to develop all those nutrients on the tree. It’s literally in suspended animation.
Storage tips
Apples reach their peak of maturity when you store them at room temperature.
If you go to a Pick Your Own orchard and bring home several apples to store, refrigerate them.
Featured recipes
Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen Apple Sauce
5 pounds apples
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup apple cider
¼ tsp nutmeg
Wash and core apples, then slice into wedges leaving skin on. Preheat skillet and add apples, sugar and ½ cup apple cider. Cook on low while cover until apples are tender. Remove from heat and process in food processor. Stir in remaining apple cider and nutmeg.
Makes – 6 cups
Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen’s Apple Filling
2 1/2 pound apples – peeled, cored and sliced
¼ cup apple cider
1 1/2 tsp cornstarch
½ stick butter (1/8 pound)
¼ cup light brown sugar
⅛ cup granulated sugar
1 pinch ground cinnamon
Peel, core and slice apples. Dissolve cornstarch in apple cider. Melt butter in skillet. Add apples and sauté until coated in butter. Add sugars and cinnamon and cook until syrup is thick. Add cornstarch-cider mixture and simmer for 5 minutes.
Late August recipes: Braised Smothered Okra and Eggplant
LOCAVORE’S DELIGHT: The Series # 20. Follow us all summer long as we explore the bounty of our region’s farms.
by MOLLY McGINN
Late August brings okra and eggplant, and with your summer tomatoes either juiced and in the can or too soft to slice, rediscover a little smothered eggplant, which features the oblong vegetable at its best: playing a supporting role.
Common eggplant varieties are Japanese and Italian eggplant. The fundamental difference between the two varieties is shape and how they’re used.
Japanese eggplant is smaller than the Italian variety with fewer seeds. Prep can be tasty and quick. Slice an eggplant longways, grill it on both sides, chop it up, and season with salt and pepper and a little bit of vinaigrette.
Italian eggplant takes a different tack. It has a toothsome, meaty quality when it’s cooked right. Undercooked, it’s less pleasant and spongy.
Eggplant recipe
Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen tip
Take a few blank note cards and hold them together with a binder clip for recipes, notes, and grocery lists.
Italian eggplant
Tear-dropped shaped, bulbous
Has more seeds
Sauté or roast in the oven
Japanese eggplant
Long and slim in shape
Fewer seeds
Sauté or grill lightly for a nice fragrance and flavor
Picking tips
The skin should be tight, unblemished.
When you pick it up, the eggplant should feel heavy for its size, dense.
The bigger the eggplant, the more seeds, and you don’t want seeds (a big vegetable yields bigger seeds and the rule of thumb is that the bigger the seed the lower the quality).
Braised Smothered Okra and Eggplant
1 tbsp canola oil
½ cup diced yellow onion
1 lb diced eggplant
2 cups diced okra
¾ cup V8 juice
¾ cup tomato juice
½ tbsp Lea & Perrins Worcestershire
2 tsp Texas Pete
¾ tsp dried thyme
Heat the oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the diced onions and sauté for about three minutes. Add the eggplant and cook until eggplant is softened (about 5 minutes or so). Add the okra and sauté. Pour in the V8 and tomato juice mixture and braise over medium-low heat. Add the remaining spices and simmer until all is tender (about 5-10 minutes. )
Optional entree: Add some shrimp, sausage or both and serve over rice.
