A Love Affair With Southern Cooking_ Recipes and Recollections - Jean Anderson [56]
Back then, however, I yearned for the pork chops, fried chicken, barbecue, and sausages my friends’ mothers served. They were more to my liking and in many ways still are, thus I’ve spent a lifetime learning to cook them as Southerners seem almost genetically programmed to do.
I have no idea why I’ve always been so in love with southern food. If I were Shirley MacLaine, I’d swear that I’d been southern in an earlier life.
So what you’ll find in this chapter are hefty helpings of the old-fashioned southern meat, fish, and fowl dishes I adored as a child along with imaginative improvisations by some of the New South’s best young chefs. Dig in.
Brunswick stew is what happens when small mammals carrying ears of corn fall into barbecue pits.
—ROY BLOUNT, JR.
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TIME LINE: the people and events that shaped Southern Cuisine
1800
With the price and quality of bread fluctuating wildly, Louisiana creates two grades—premium and common—and fixes the price of each.
Virginians, still determined to make good wine, begin hybridizing American and European grapes: the New World varieties for hardiness, the European for finesse. (See Southern Wines, Chapter 3.)
Wave after wave of Virginians abandon their worn-out farms and seek fertile ground in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. But they take Virginia culture and cuisine with them.
1802
President Thomas Jefferson serves home-cranked ice cream at the White House.
1803
With the Louisiana Purchase, French-Spanish Louisiana falls into American hands and its spicy flavors begin to enrich the culinary melting pot.
The population of New Orleans is now predominantly French Creole (50 percent) and Spanish (25 percent). Both influence Louisiana cooking.
1805
Members of the Shaker religious sect arrive in central Kentucky and begin converting local citizens to their celibate way of life. They will influence Kentucky cooking.
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APPLE AND BOURBON–BASTED PORK LOIN
MAKES 6 SERVINGS
To keep pork roasts moist, Southerners baste them with everything from orange juice to Coca-Cola. Bourbon is an old favorite; so is apple juice or cider and I’ve combined the two here. With pork leaner than ever, keeping it moist is doubly difficult. It helps, I find, to use more artisanal pork such as that produced by Niman Ranch and to roast it at a high temperature for a short period of time so the heat sears the outside of the meat and seals in the juices. Finally, roasting pork to a lower internal temperature (145° to 150° F.) makes it more succulent. Although tinged with pink, this pork is perfectly safe to eat; the microbes that cause trichinosis are killed at 140° F. Indeed trichinosis, prevalent when hogs were slopped with kitchen scraps, is a thing of the past. Still, if like many Southerners you prefer well-done pork, give the roast another 15 to 20 minutes in the oven. Note: It’s important that the pork loin be wrapped in a thin layer of fat—this, too, increases the roast’s succulence.
One 2¾-to 3-pound boned and rolled pork loin (see Note above)
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 cup apple juice (I use an organic Gravenstein juice that has deep apple flavor)
¼ cup bourbon
2 tablespoons spicy brown mustard
1¾ cups chicken broth
½ cup half-and-half
5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt, or to taste
1. Preheat the oven to 425° F. Rub the pork well with the pepper and place in a medium-size shallow roasting pan.
2. Whisk the apple juice, bourbon, and mustard until smooth, then brush generously all over the pork roast. Let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes.
3. Brush the pork again with the bourbon mixture and roast uncovered on the middle oven rack for about 45 minutes or until an instant-read meat thermometer, thrust into the center, registers 145° to 150° F. As the pork roasts, baste generously every 10 minutes with the bourbon mixture (this keeps the