A Love Affair With Southern Cooking_ Recipes and Recollections - Jean Anderson [116]
1 tablespoon butter, bacon drippings, or vegetable oil
3 ounces uncooked country ham, finely diced
6 medium scallions, trimmed and coarsely chopped (include some green tops)
1 pound tender young green beans, tipped and snapped in two if large
1½ cups chicken broth
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour blended with 2 tablespoons cold water (thickener)
2 teaspoons prepared yellow mustard
¼ teaspoon black pepper, or to taste
1. Melt the butter in a large, heavy saucepan over moderate heat, add the ham and scallions, and cook, stirring now and then, for 5 to 8 minutes or until lightly browned.
2. Add the beans and broth and bring to a boil. Adjust the heat so the broth bubbles gently, cover, and cook for 12 to 15 minutes or until the beans are crisp-tender.
3. Meanwhile, combine the thickener and the mustard and set aside. As soon as the beans are done, whisk a little of the hot broth into the mustard mixture, stir back into the pan, add the pepper, and cook, stirring constantly, for 3 minutes or until the broth thickens. Continue cooking uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 3 to 5 minutes or until the sauce has the consistency of a glaze.
4. Taste the beans for salt and pepper, adjust as needed, and serve straightaway.
While an eon, as someone has observed, may be two people and a ham, a fruitcake is forever.
—RUSSELL BAKER
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TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine
1915
The world’s first Negro Exposition is held in Richmond, Virginia. In addition to showcasing the fine art, folk art, and homely skills of American Negroes, its purpose is to prove that cordial relations exist between southern African Americans and Whites.
Coca-Cola’s unique green glass hobble-skirt bottle, hand-blown at the Root Glass Company in Terre Haute, Indiana, is patented. It debuts a year later and becomes a soft-drink icon.
Florida’s commercial shrimping industry is launched at Fernandina Beach.
1916
The state of Virginia declares prohibition, the few wineries that survived the Civil War close, and moonshining flourishes. By 1950, only 15 acres of Virginia soil are devoted to grapes—table grapes.
Clarence Saunders opens a Piggly Wiggly in Memphis, Tennessee. It is America’s first self-service supermarket and stocks more than 600 different items. Today there are 600 Piggly Wigglies, most of them in the South.
Mr. Peanut, based on a teenager’s drawing, debuts in Suffolk, Virginia, and with top hat, monocle, cane, and white spats, soon becomes the Planters icon.
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THOMAS JEFFERSON (1743–1826)
He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and he was the third president of the United States, elected for two terms.
But Thomas Jefferson was much, much more: architect, attorney, philosopher, scholar, gardener, gourmet. The last two may be the least known but they are the most relevant here.
“The greatest service which can be rendered by any country is to add a useful plant to its culture,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote.
He turned Monticello, his beloved Virginia plantation, into a kind of horticultural experiment station and for nearly twenty years painstakingly recorded his observations, successes, and failures in his Garden Kalendar [sic].
Jefferson grew 250 different vegetable varieties in his garden: the beans and salsify Lewis and Clark had brought back from the West, broccoli and squashes imported from Italy, peppers obtained from Mexico, as well as such exotics or “new” vegetables as cauliflower, tomatoes, eggplant, sea kale, red celery, and red globe artichokes. Always partial to salads, Jefferson planted an assortment of unusual greens,