A Love Affair With Southern Cooking_ Recipes and Recollections - Jean Anderson [44]
2. Add the tomato sauce and cook uncovered, stirring occasionally, for 2 hours or until the okra mixture is very dry and comes together in a ball. If it threatens to burn at any point, slide a diffuser underneath the pot. Also reduce the heat to its lowest point.
3. While the okra cooks, prepare the roux: Melt the lard in a second large, heavy, nonreactive kettle over moderately high heat. Blend in the flour, reduce the heat to low, and work and stir the roux for about 30 minutes or until it is a rich rust-brown.
4. For the gumbo: Mix the onions, bell pepper, celery, and garlic into the roux; turn the heat off; and as soon as the sizzling stops, cover and let stand for 15 minutes. Add 4 cups of the cold water to the roux, set over moderate heat, and stir for 3 to 5 minutes or until thickened. Add the remaining cold water, adjust the heat so the liquid bubbles gently, then simmer uncovered for 30 to 40 minutes or until reduced by about half. Mix in the okra thickener, salt, cayenne, and black pepper and simmer uncovered over low heat, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour.
5. Meanwhile, boil the shrimp in their shells for 1 minute exactly in the boiling salted water. Drain, rinse, shell, and devein. Halve any shrimp that are large.
6. When the gumbo has cooked for 1 hour, add the shrimp and cook uncovered for 10 minutes. Stir in the scallion tops and parsley. Taste for salt and adjust as needed.
7. To serve, mound about a cup of the rice in the middle of six to eight heated jumbo-size soup plates and ladle the gumbo on top.
All the land we traveled over this day, and the day before, that is to say from the river Irvin to Sable Creek…thirty thousand acres at least, lying altogether, as fertile as the lands were said to be about Babylon, which yielded, if Herodotus tells us right, an increase of no less than two or three hundred for one.
—WILLIAM BYRD II, 1728; NOTED WHILE SURVEYING THE VIRGINIA–NORTH CAROLINA LINE
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TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine
1773
Young Virginia lawyer Thomas Jefferson plants a variety of European vegetables in his garden at Monticello near Charlottesville: French green beans, Italian broccoli, and German kale, among others. Believing that fine wines can be produced in Virginia, Jefferson also gives 2,000 acres of land to Philip Mazzei, who agrees that native American grapes can be made into fine wine. The American Revolution intervenes and Mazzei’s wine project ends.
1774
Desperate flour shortages in New Orleans lead to dangerous adulteration.
On October 24, ten months after the Boston Tea Party, 51 ladies stage one of their own in the North Carolina town of Edenton: “We, the Ladys of Edenton, do hereby solemnly engage not to conform to the Pernicious Custom of Drinking Tea.” They further resolve not to “promote ye wear of any manufacturer from England until such time that all acts which tend to enslave our Native country shall be repealed.” A Colonial teapot mounted on a Revolutionary War cannon now marks the spot of the Edenton Tea Party.
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COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SERVICE
Only weeks out of college, I became an assistant home demonstration agent in Iredell County, North Carolina. Right away there were three strikes against me:
1. I’d grown up in Raleigh (as exotic to some of the farm people back then as Paris was to me) and I was clueless about the 4-H Clubs with which I’d soon work.
2. I’d gone to a Yankee school (Cornell), not W.C. (Woman’s College in Greensboro) like most of the other home agents. And, finally…
3. I knew nothing about the Cooperative Extension Service, which had just hired me, other than that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the state of North Carolina, and Iredell County all contributed to my paycheck.
My immediate