A Love Affair With Southern Cooking_ Recipes and Recollections - Jean Anderson [83]
3. Mix in the rice, then return the chicken to the kettle and push down into the rice mixture. Add 2½ cups of the chicken stock and bring to a boil over moderately high heat. Adjust the heat so the stock bubbles gently, cover, and cook for 25 to 35 minutes, stirring frequently, or until the chicken is tender and the rice has absorbed all the liquid. Note: If the jambalaya seems dry before the chicken is done, add a little additional chicken stock. Taste for salt and pepper and adjust as needed.
4. Dish up and serve with a tartly dressed salad of crisp greens.
A Southerner talks music.
—MARK TWAIN, LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI
FAMILY REUNION BRUNSWICK STEW
MAKES 20 TO 25 SERVINGS
Some years ago when I was interviewing the granddaughter-in-law of one of our Virginia presidents, she served a clear chicken broth strewn with strips of white meat, dots of tomato, and crescents of celery. Hearing me praise her “lovely chicken soup,” she snorted. “Chicken soup! Chicken soup! This is Brunswick stew!” It was unlike any Brunswick stew I’d ever eaten, and I said so. “Well,” she replied. “You’re from North Carolina. You make it with potatoes.” Plus onions, plus baby butter beans, plus sweet corn, plus…plus…To be honest, the stew-masters of Brunswick County, where this “Virginia ambrosia” originated back in 1828, would never have recognized my hostess’s anemic version. The original was a porridge-y muddle of squirrels, onions, and stale bread concocted by “Uncle” Jimmy Matthews, a camp cook in service to Dr. Creed Haskins of the Virginia Legislature. A hundred and sixty years later, the State General Assembly immortalized the event by proclaiming Brunswick County, Virginia, “the original home of Brunswick Stew.” But they get an argument from Georgians who point to the twenty-gallon iron pot just outside their town of Brunswick; its plaque declares that America’s first Brunswick stew was cooked in that pot in 1898. There are other dissenters as well—mainly food anthropologists who believe that southern Indian tribes were stewing squirrels, corn, and beans long before the White Man stepped ashore. Today, many a southern cook’s most cherished recipe is the dog-eared one for Brunswick stew served at family reunions. This one comes from my Virginia stepmother’s aunt, Annie Pool. Its secret, Aunt Annie once confided, is that it contains beef as well as chicken, also that “the corn is picked, shucked, and added at the very end.”
One 6-to 7-pound stewing hen or capon, with neck and giblets
One 6-pound beef chuck or rump roast
12 cups (3 quarts) cold water
6 large yellow onions, coarsely chopped
18 medium all-purpose potatoes, peeled and cubed
6 cups (3 pints) freshly shelled or frozen baby lima beans (do not thaw)
6 cups (3 pints) canned tomatoes, preferably home-canned
Kernels from 12 large ears sweet corn or 6 cups (3 pints) frozen whole-kernel corn (do not thaw)
¼ cup sugar
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) butter
1 tablespoon salt, or to taste
½ teaspoon black pepper, or to taste
1. Simmer the hen, neck, giblets, and beef in the water in a covered large soup kettle over moderately low heat for about 1½ hours or until the hen and beef are both tender.
2. Lift the beef, hen, neck, and giblets from the kettle and cool until easy to handle. Using your fingers, strip the meat from the hen in bite-size pieces and reserve. Cut the beef into 1½-inch chunks and reserve; mince the giblets and reserve. Discard the neck.
3. Skim the fat from the broth and discard. Add the onions, potatoes, and limas to the kettle, cover, and simmer over moderate heat for 30 minutes or until not quite tender.
4. Return all meat to the kettle, add the tomatoes, and simmer uncovered for 20 minutes. Add the corn, sugar, and butter, and simmer uncovered, stirring now and then, for 20 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then simmer uncovered 10 minutes more or just long enough for the flavors to mellow.
5. Ladle into heated soup bowls and accompany with Iron Skillet