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By Root 1025 0

throughout the South. There are many different recipes for it, but Maria Harrison’s is hands down the best I’ve eaten. What goes with batter bread? Just about everything: Think of it, if you like, as a potato substitute, although to tell the truth, many Southerners serve potatoes and batter bread at the same meal. Note: If your batter bread is to be light, you must use stone-ground cornmeal (preferably white; see Sources, backmatter) and cook it until very thick. The granular yellow cornmeal sold at supermarkets simply will not work.

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 cups cold water

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup stone-ground white cornmeal (see Note above)

2 cups milk

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

1. Position the shelf in the middle of the oven and preheat to 425° F. Spoon the oil into a 2-quart soufflé dish and set on the middle oven shelf while you proceed with the recipe.

2. Bring the water and salt to a boil in a large, heavy saucepan set over moderate heat. Slowly whisk in the cornmeal and cook, stirring constantly, for about 2 minutes or until thick and pastelike.

3. Remove from the heat, add 1 cup of the milk, and beat until smooth and creamy. Next beat the eggs in, half at a time, then blend in the remaining 1 cup milk.

4. Remove the hot soufflé dish from the oven, pour in the batter, and return to the middle oven shelf. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until the batter bread is puffy and brown and quivers slightly when you nudge the dish.

5. Rush the batter bread to the table and serve with plenty of butter, salt, and freshly ground black pepper.

HUSH PUPPIES

MAKES 3 TO 3½ DOZEN

It was bound to happen: hush puppy mixes and hush puppy “shooters.” I prefer to make mine from scratch and to drop them into the hot fat the old-fashioned way—from a rounded teaspoon—instead of from a spring-loaded “gun” that shoots the batter out in squiggles.

I’m not exactly sure where I ate my first hush puppy, probably on Chesapeake Bay. We sometimes roared across “the little bay” from our summer cottage to eat at some little fish house in Whitestone or Irvington, Virginia. Or maybe it was on one of our jaunts to the Carolina coast. Wherever, whenever, I couldn’t have been more than eight or ten. From then on, I’ve ordered hush puppies every chance I get—with fried fish, of course, but also with fried chicken and pulled pork (barbecue). For me the perfect hush puppy is fine-textured and light, not too sweet and with just a whiff of onion. And it must come straight from the deep-fat fryer. Any languishing on a steam table turns it leaden in seconds.

As with so many southern recipes, there’s a story to explain this one’s amusing name. Said to date back to the days of Reconstruction after the Civil War, these little corn bread fritters were stirred up by fish camp cooks, fried in deep fat, then tossed to quiet the hounds while their masters ate. In Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History (1987), John Egerton, an author for whom I have profound respect, writes that hush puppies originated in Florida, probably “in the general vicinity of St. Marks…an old fishing village on the Gulf Coast south of Tallahassee.” Note: You must use a floury, stone-ground cornmeal when making hush puppies. Those made with granular meal will fly apart in the hot fat.

Vegetable oil (for deep-fat frying)

2½ cups sifted stone-ground cornmeal (preferably white)

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

1¼ cups buttermilk

¼ cup finely grated yellow onion

1 large egg

1. Pour 2 inches of oil into a deep skillet, insert a deep-fat thermometer, and set over moderate heat.

2. Meanwhile, combine the cornmeal, sugar, salt, baking soda, and baking powder in a large bowl, pressing out all lumps and making a well in the middle of the dry ingredients.

3. Whisk the buttermilk, onion, and egg together in a small bowl, then pour into the well in the dry ingredients and stir briskly to mix.

4. When the oil in the skillet has reached 375° F., scoop the hush puppy batter up by rounded teaspoonfuls and ease