A Love Affair With Southern Cooking_ Recipes and Recollections - Jean Anderson [159]
4. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface, sprinkle a little flour over the top, and with well-floured hands, pat the dough out until ¾ inch thick (it is too soft and sticky to roll).
5. Using a well-floured 2¾-inch biscuit cutter, cut the dough into rounds and arrange on ungreased baking sheets, spacing them about 1½ inches apart. Gather the scraps of dough, pat out, and cut as before.
6. Bake the biscuits in the lower third of the oven for 25 to 30 minutes or until nicely browned.
7. Serve hot with plenty of butter.
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MY FAVORITE SOUTHERN COMMUNITY COOKBOOKS
Wherever I travel, I pick up community cookbooks, and I now have a library of at least a thousand. But I am choosy about those I buy because not every church or club fund-raiser is worth its price. For me, a local cookbook must have regional flavor. A sense of time and place. And all the better if historical notes and bits of folklore accompany the recipes. Here, then, are the southern community cookbooks that measure up in my eyes, the ones I refer to again and again. Note: The majority are still in print and can be ordered online; even the out-of-print can be searched on the Internet. I omit prices because these change from printing to printing.
Bethabara Moravian Cook Book. 7th ed. Compiled by the Women’s Fellowship, Bethabara Moravian Church, Winston-Salem, NC, 1981.
Cabbage Patch Famous Kentucky Recipes. Compiled by the Cabbage Patch Circle, Louisville, 1952.
Cane River Cuisine. The Service League of Natchitoches, Louisiana, Inc., 1974.
Charleston Receipts. The Junior League of Charleston, Inc., 1950. With its strong sense of time and place, this is the gold standard by which I judge all local cookbooks.
Come On In! Recipes from The Junior League of Jackson, Mississippi. The Junior League of Jackson, Inc., 1991.
The Cooking Book. The Junior League of Louisville, Inc., 1978.
The Farmington Cookbook. A fund-raiser published to benefit Farmington, an 1810 Federal-style Kentucky home designed by Thomas Jefferson. Louisville, KY: Courier-Journal Lithographing, 1968.
Favorite Recipes of the Lower Cape Fear. Published by the Ministering Circle, Wilmington, NC. Revised edition, 1980. Better yet, the 1955 edition.
From North Carolina Kitchens: Favorite Recipes Old and New. Compiled by the North Carolina Federation of Home Demonstration Clubs, 1953. Long out of print but worth tracking down because of its mother lode of heirloom recipes and nuggets of folk wisdom.
Full Moon, High Tide: Tastes and Traditions of the Lowcountry. Compiled by the Beaufort (SC) Academy, 2001.
Gasparilla Cookbook: Favorite Florida West Coast Recipes. Compiled by The Junior League of Tampa, Inc., 1961.
Gracious Goodness! The Junior League of Macon, Georgia, Inc., 1981.
Key West Cookbook. The Woman’s Club of Key West, 1949.
Maryland’s Way: The Hammond-Harwood House Cook Book. Published by The Hammond-Harwood House Association, Annapolis, 1963.
Natchez: Authentic Antebellum Recipes of the Old South, 1790-1865. Compiled by Southland Graphics, Kingsport, TN, 1987.
Plantation Country. The Women’s Service League, West Feliciana Parish, St. Francisville, LA, 1981.
Putting on the Grits. The Junior League of Columbia, SC, Inc., 1985.
River Road Recipes. The Junior League of Baton Rouge, Inc., 1959.
Savannah Style. The Junior League of Savannah, Inc., no date.
Toast to Tidewater: Celebrating Virginia’s Finest Food & Beverages. The Junior League of Norfolk-Virginia Beach, Inc., 2004. The seafood chapter alone is worth the price of the book.
Vintage Vicksburg. The Junior Auxiliary of Vicksburg, MS, 1985.
Virginia Cookery Past and Present (including “A Manuscript Cook Book of The Lee and Washington Families” published for the first time). The Woman’s Auxiliary of Olivet Episcopal Church, Franconia, VA, 1957.
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Heirloom Recipe
BEATEN BISCUIT
Rub half a pound of butter and a little salt into 4 quarts of flour. Wet the whole with a little more than a pt. of new milk. Knead it, mold it, pound it,