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Tuesday, April 21, 2009
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Monday, April 13, 2009
Black Cast Iron Skillet
The essential tool of every southern cook is the black Iron skillet. It is not just any iron skillet you buy. It must be a seasoned iron skillet – one that has been oiled properly and baked until it is black, not the new gray of one that has just been bought. It is the thing that holds the kitchen together.
Somewhere along the way I lost mine. Don’t ask me how it happened. Somewhere along the way it just disappeared. If my ghost, Mr. George, could cook, I’d accuse him. Anyway, last spring on the yard sale that goes from Meridian, Mississippi on Hwy 14 to a far flung part of Kentucky, I found a well seasoned skillet in Cuba, Alabama. I always try to go on the part of the trail that comes through our region of rural Southwest Alabama. I can usually manage only one afternoon on Mother’s Day weekend. So I do the part of the trail that is in our own backyard.
I never fail to find useful things. Some art pieces of art or photography. I have found just the piece of pressed glass that I am looking for. Of all the things I have found, the seasoned iron skillet has to be the prize. Just in the past week some of the ways I have used it include: Making my cornbread for the Easter dressing, making a pineapple upside down cake, browning bacon, toasting a grilled cheese sandwich and sauteing vegetables to go in the same Easter dressing. How’s that for versatility?
Most people don’t have dressing for Easter, They reserve it for cold weather holidays. My family doesn’t feel that way. We don’t have to have a turkey or chicken being served to want dressing as a side dish. Ours is so full of vegetables that it counts as a vegetable dish. Don’t’ tell because nobody has realized it yet. My friend Patsy Sumrall taught me to finely mince the vegetables and sauté them in butter. Another friend taught me to put bell peeper in with the celery and onions for more depth of flavor. I put the vegetables in the food processor, so that they aren’t great big hunks. By the time they are tender before they are put in the dressing, then are baked in the dressing, they disappear, just leaving flavor.
I know there is a question in your mind about the broth. I have found the Swanson canned variety to be delicious. I know about all the people who simmer their own for hours, and they are welcome to do it. I buy the neat little cans and dump it right in. Some things like an iron skillet that can cook the vegetables over low heat in butter while I read on the porch, are essential to the process. Simmering chicken stock is not when there are good canned varieties.
It might be Easter without the dressing, but it wouldn’t be a Southern kitchen without my iron skillet.
Somewhere along the way I lost mine. Don’t ask me how it happened. Somewhere along the way it just disappeared. If my ghost, Mr. George, could cook, I’d accuse him. Anyway, last spring on the yard sale that goes from Meridian, Mississippi on Hwy 14 to a far flung part of Kentucky, I found a well seasoned skillet in Cuba, Alabama. I always try to go on the part of the trail that comes through our region of rural Southwest Alabama. I can usually manage only one afternoon on Mother’s Day weekend. So I do the part of the trail that is in our own backyard.
I never fail to find useful things. Some art pieces of art or photography. I have found just the piece of pressed glass that I am looking for. Of all the things I have found, the seasoned iron skillet has to be the prize. Just in the past week some of the ways I have used it include: Making my cornbread for the Easter dressing, making a pineapple upside down cake, browning bacon, toasting a grilled cheese sandwich and sauteing vegetables to go in the same Easter dressing. How’s that for versatility?
Most people don’t have dressing for Easter, They reserve it for cold weather holidays. My family doesn’t feel that way. We don’t have to have a turkey or chicken being served to want dressing as a side dish. Ours is so full of vegetables that it counts as a vegetable dish. Don’t’ tell because nobody has realized it yet. My friend Patsy Sumrall taught me to finely mince the vegetables and sauté them in butter. Another friend taught me to put bell peeper in with the celery and onions for more depth of flavor. I put the vegetables in the food processor, so that they aren’t great big hunks. By the time they are tender before they are put in the dressing, then are baked in the dressing, they disappear, just leaving flavor.
I know there is a question in your mind about the broth. I have found the Swanson canned variety to be delicious. I know about all the people who simmer their own for hours, and they are welcome to do it. I buy the neat little cans and dump it right in. Some things like an iron skillet that can cook the vegetables over low heat in butter while I read on the porch, are essential to the process. Simmering chicken stock is not when there are good canned varieties.
It might be Easter without the dressing, but it wouldn’t be a Southern kitchen without my iron skillet.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
The Last Fire of the Season
It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon in rural Southwest Alabama. I am sitting by the fire (yes, you heard me right, but the fire) with harp music on the CD player. We’ve been hot for weeks now, but I knew it wasn’t really spring because the pecan trees had not leafed out yet. They are the last to put on leaves in the sdpr8ing and the first to loose them in the fall. We’ve had torrential rains lately. They are most welcome to us gardeners. I went to Selma last week to a meeting and my friend took me to the Cahaba Mental Health Center to buy some plants. I got some perennials to put into my flower beds. The rains started that night. I put the plants out in the afternoon. I also dressed my antique roses and other plants with some rabbit fertilizer that I had gotten last fall from John Hall, a local rabbit producer. He has this contraption that turns the rabbit pellets and somehow takes the fertilizer smell away. I usually don’t get the plants out the same day as I buy them because I’m on the road so much seeing all the wonderful things in our area and helping to plan more. I did get them in the ground this time. I walked around the yard today as proud as punch of my budding babies.
When spring comes I have a morning walk through the garden every morning. I can’t help but pull a weed or two, so I have to go scrub my hands before I leave home. I just can’t resist getting my hands in the dirt when spring come.
Today, thought, we are having what our housekeeper, Susie always called the “Easter snap” of cool weather before spring really comes to stay. It’s not terribly cold, but since I live in an old house with high ceilings, it is a bit chilly. I’m having company for supper, so I built a fire. I went out and got some twigs that fell during this week’s storms for starter to go on top of the piece of fat pine that I keep for kindling. I know this fire is a good one because I hear it singing. When it sings, it has really taken hold.
My cousin is visitng from Belgium where he where he lives. I’m having a few family members to come to dinner and sit by the last fire of the season. I’m doing a down home meal. He travels all over the world, so there’s no need to try to impress him with gourmet cuisine. I’m cooking butter beans. I cheated on the pie, too, I heard some of the clerks at Wal-Mart bragging on a caramel apple pie they had in their bakery, and so I snatched one of those right up. I will heat it here and put ice cream on it. I’ll throw it in the oven with my great cheat biscuits. You make them with melted butter, self rising flour and sour cream. They can be dropped into muffin cups with not a bit of rolling and cutting. He will enjoy every bite. He’ll like it because it’s served with love and family by the fireside.
When spring comes I have a morning walk through the garden every morning. I can’t help but pull a weed or two, so I have to go scrub my hands before I leave home. I just can’t resist getting my hands in the dirt when spring come.
Today, thought, we are having what our housekeeper, Susie always called the “Easter snap” of cool weather before spring really comes to stay. It’s not terribly cold, but since I live in an old house with high ceilings, it is a bit chilly. I’m having company for supper, so I built a fire. I went out and got some twigs that fell during this week’s storms for starter to go on top of the piece of fat pine that I keep for kindling. I know this fire is a good one because I hear it singing. When it sings, it has really taken hold.
My cousin is visitng from Belgium where he where he lives. I’m having a few family members to come to dinner and sit by the last fire of the season. I’m doing a down home meal. He travels all over the world, so there’s no need to try to impress him with gourmet cuisine. I’m cooking butter beans. I cheated on the pie, too, I heard some of the clerks at Wal-Mart bragging on a caramel apple pie they had in their bakery, and so I snatched one of those right up. I will heat it here and put ice cream on it. I’ll throw it in the oven with my great cheat biscuits. You make them with melted butter, self rising flour and sour cream. They can be dropped into muffin cups with not a bit of rolling and cutting. He will enjoy every bite. He’ll like it because it’s served with love and family by the fireside.
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