Beans, no rice, please!

As I mentioned before, my Mamaw made delicious beans.  A humble food, beans are often overlooked as being a satisfying and sustaining main dish.  As a society, I think we've turned away from our more traditional beans to patronize the more "interesting" and exotic beans from other cultures.  I am personally guilty of this, but have recently come back home to good ole beans like my Mamaw used to make.

Mamaw always cooked pinto beans.  They were her favorite and I can't blame her.  When cooked using her method, the beans are soft and creamy and the pot liquor is rich, silky, and flavorful.  With or without a few fixin's, this is really a treat in a bowl.

The key to this recipe is time.  Don't get all discouraged.  I don't mean attention hogging obsessive stirry and labor intensive time.  I mean letting time do the work for you.  In our culture of instant gratification and heat and eat foods, we are losing the concept of letting time do the work for you.  This type of cooking was a godsend before the advent of near instant microwave cooking and the prepared food boom.  My grandmother and people before her used this type of cooking to free them up to do their other chores or take that seldom but hard earned break.  So, you will need to remind yourself to get this recipe started on the day BEFORE you want to eat it.  You'll also need to leave a few hours to cook the beans on the day you want to eat them.  Don't be daunted.  Good things come to those who wait.  I promise.

The Ingredients List Is:

• Dried Pinto Beans (a small bag or at LEAST 1 cup of beans)
• Water
• Salt
• Pepper
• Cayenne Pepper
• Ham hock or jowls

Your kitchen tools are:

• Heavy pot with a lid for cooking the beans in.  I like my enameled iron pot.  You probably have a favorite.  Just be sure it's heavy.  Long cooking is a heavy subject.
• A colander in which to wash and drain your beans
• Electric kettle or a pan of boiling water (use this during the cooking phase)

Ingredients, simple

Yep, that's it.  Mamaw was never a fancy cook.  She prepared simple, homely food that nourished and satisfied.  That's what food is really for.  Although I am a food fan and love examining and experiencing other cultures through cuisine, the fact of the matter is that food, at it's most basic level is there to give your body fuel to burn and make you feel satisfied.  Anything beyond that is gravy.  (har har har).  All the culinary contortions of haute cuisine are there to make people feel other things such as superiority or excitement in the exotic.  They elevate food beyond the most basic level and that's nice.  However, when you look at a humble food, like Mamaw's pot of beans, you see the roots of cooking and of your home life, if you were lucky enough to have a mother or father, sibling, or grandparent who could cook.  The simple flavors of this homely style of cooking allow you to taste the ingredients.  They rely on good quality ingredients to make the meal something enjoyable.  This "taste the ingredients" approach is something that the culinary world is coming back to.  Some say it's an Asian influence, but I say it's a return to home and real home style cooking.

Getting off the soapbox now.  Back to the regularly scheduled program, the Prep Phase.  De-clutter an area on your counter.  It needs to be big enough to spill your beans onto.  (ha!)  Clean it up and then spill your beans.  Pat them out so that they are a one bean thick layer.  Look for any beans that look bug eaten, off color, or just yucky.  You have plenty, so pick out the ones you don't like.  Don't get obsessive, though.  You don't want to be here all day.  Also look for any stray pebbles or clumps of dirt that may have slipped in disguised as a bean.  It still happens, despite our modern processes.  Now, put your beans into a colander and put them under cold running water.  Swish them around a good bit to wash them thoroughly.  The last thing you want in your beans is gritty dirt.  3 minutes of washing is more than sufficient, if you are semi-vigorous.  You can put the beans in pot you're going to cook them in.

In their bath, ready to soak overnight

Cover the beans in the pot with cold water.  I generally use a whole lot of water with 2-3" over the top of the beans.  The beans are going to suck up a lot of this water.  You want them to have more than they can drink.  Now, sit the pot in a quiet spot on the counter or your stove top; walk away, and stay away.  Here we come to the first instance of letting time do the work for you.  These beans need to take a good long drink of water.  They need at least 8 hours of drinking, in my humble opinion.  That's why I like to get the beans ready and in their bath the night before I cook them.  I put them in and wish them a good night.  When I get up in the morning, I can make my tea and get them wound up for the Cooking Phase.

So, after your beans have enjoyed their bath, they're ready to experience the jacuzzi.  Drain off 2/3 of the bath water that your beans were in.  There should be clear water on the top and a brown color on the bottom.  I leave that brownish bit in as I feel there is flavor in there.  Some people don't ascribe to that and drain off all the water.  There is even a school of thought that this helps decrease gas production in the gut.  I'm not sure about that, speaking from personal experience.  Add back enough cold water to cover your beans by 1".  Add in your ham hock or jowl.  Now, put the beans on the burner and crank it up.  You want the beans to boil and there is no need to be shy here.  Once the beans are boiling, reduce the heat to low and put on the lid.  Go ahead and get ready with a pot or pan of hot water.  Keep it hot and ready. You only want to add hot water to your beans as they cook.  I do think that adding cold water to the pot is detrimental to the cooking process.  Let your beans simmer slowly (blurp, burp, blurp) for a while.  Check your beans every once in a while to see if they need some water added.  When you add water, remember to only add the HOT water.  You are going to cook those beans low and slow for about 3 hours, maybe 4.  The longer the better.  You're going to make those beans start unwinding themselves into that pot.  Their proteins are going to come out and the starches cook apart.  Your broth is going to get thick and, well, bean colored.  After about 2 to 3 hours, add salt and your cayenne pepper.  Salt to taste, so add a little, taste and then add a little more.  You will put in more than you expect, but like potatoes and other starchy foods, beans can take a lot of salt before some think they're tasty.  As for the cayenne, add at least 1/8 teaspoon to a full bag of beans.  I use more, but we like things spicy.

These beans cooked low and slow for 8 hours today with home made bacon

The Eating Phase: The beans are ready when they very easily smoosh between your fingers.  Yes, that is a technical term.  I serve them plain in a bowl with some chopped white onion on top.  Eat them hot with some cornbread for a heart warming treat.  Plus corn and beans give you all the amino acids you need, so it's a complete meal.  Another great thing about  beans is that they're better the next day.  When you get them out of the fridge, you know you've gotten it right when the beans are thick and almost gelled. Flap those bad boys in a bowl, nuke and eat some more.  NOM!

Notice the thick, rich "broth", so silky

Cooking - A Calling and/or A Skill Plus My Cooking History In A Nutshell

I have been thinking about why some people just can't cook.  Honestly, growing up with a grandmother that was a whiz bang cook, it never even occurred to me that someone who attempted to cook could not do so.  It was such an innate thing for her.  She seldom used recipes.  When she did use them, she generally only did so for baking, which she did infrequently.  This worked to give baking a mystical status for me.

When I was growing up, I wasn't very interested in cooking because it wasn't science and because I considered it a gender stereotypical activity.  I was a raging feminist as a child and as a young woman.  After I got married and moved away, I stood there in my own kitchen and suddenly realized that "I have to cook". I had many of the tools I needed, but when it came down to the act of doing it, I realized that I had no skills to speak of.  I had seen my grandmother do things, but never really done them myself.  At first I was daunted, but after buying a ton of boxed food and working at preparing it (hello, Hamburger Helper) I really was not cooking, but I could put something on the table.  I had fallen into the uneducated cook realm.

Oven roasted goodness

After my first marriage ended, I found myself in another kitchen with time on my hands and no one's food preferences to consider but my own.  Being a single gal, I was also on the go a lot.  I ate out most of the time.  But eating out at places that interested me gave me new insights and a desire to maybe make tasty things on my own.  Then one day, I decided to make a croquembouche.  Don't ask me why a kitchen semi-literate decided to take that on.  It was probably because I was kitchen semi-literate.  But, I got my recipe out and started to work.  Something magical happened with that project.  I had fun.  I had a lot of fun, even though the sugar "glue" that was supposed to stick the cream puffs to the form didn't work and I could not really get the sugar to the hard crack stage.  I blame that shoddy little electric stove in that apartment.  I remember pulling the just baked puffs out of the oven and popping one in my mouth.  IT WAS DIVINE!  I liked trying this new activities and I liked the results, even if they ended up being a tray of cream puffs instead of an elegant tower of tasty goodness.  I had just been bitten by the cooking bug.

The pureed peppers about to become Sriracha

Things kind of progressed slowly from there.  I was still a single girl and eating out was still a major means of putting food in my gut.  I was still building a flavor palette, though.  When I met my current spouse, that did it.  We started cooking together and have not stopped since.  That's not to say that we don't cook separately.  We do.  But we still like to cook together and to enlist the other's advice if we're working something up from out of our heads or tweaking a recipe.  Hub is an invaluable help to me as he helps me consider options and alternatives for my dish or cooking method.  I would like to think I do the same for him, plus delivering the services of a finer grained tasting ability than he seems to have.  You should see us standing in the kitchen tweaking and tasting a pickling brine or sauce.

Beautiful home made ramen with quail egg

So there is the story of my cooking life.  What does this have to do with it being a calling or a skill?  Well, I think it answers the question, in a roundabout way.  I think I have been called to cook, but the call came later in life, upon my joining in the adventure of marriage with my Hub and finding the joint passion we have for cooking.  I also think that along with him, I have acquired the skill to cook rather well.  So the answer is cooking is a calling and a skill.  Isn't this the way with all callings?  We are not born with an innate ability to be a cook no more than we are to be a doctor.

I do think that there are people who will always perform the activity of cooking more proficiently than others.  That will be because of the passion or calling, but it will also be because of their innate abilities.  I often talk to people about cooking and making up my own recipe and they say "How do you know that will work?".  When I say, "Well, I thought about the different flavors of the ingredients and decided they all went together." they're taken aback by that statement.  I have been concomitantly amazed that others don't have that ability.  When I think of foods, I generally think not of just the way they look, but the way they taste and smell and even sound.  Think of a platter of sizzling, smoking, fragrant fajitas being sat before you.  Get it?  Can you taste them?  Some people say that they can't.  How sad that is to me. Being able to imagine single constituent flavors and then bring them together is a skill or natural ability that allows me to just wing it to make things come together in a pot and on a plate.  I don't think this ability is required to be a cook, but I do think it helps defines what I think of as a "natural" cook and someone who is a practiced cook.

Our first attempt at making our own pasta

I am also very fortuitous to have been raised in a family of good cooks.  I didn't mention my mother above, since she and I didn't cook together much, but I'll get to that too, one day.  Growing up with people who are capable in the kitchen can give a person the sense of "I can do it."  I think if I had not been given the impression that cooking was a skill anyone could learn, I would have been less confident in trying, when my time came.

I'm very glad that I attempted that croquembouche. I'm even more delighted that I met my darling Hub and that he helped to bring out the natural cook inside me.  Cooking is a passion of mine, as much as eating is.  I can't imagine my life without the adventure of the kitchen or of eating new and exciting foods or better yet, learning to make them myself.

Making our own Limoncello

Chili-Mac - The Dish That Made Me Run Away From Home

My grandmother was an extremely good cook.  I honestly do not remember her ever having a screw up.  We never had to suddenly run out to get some burgers or some dogs from Burger Chef from Der Weinerschnitzel.  She generally made a wide variety of dishes that kept us all happy and we were never bored to death of anything.  Never, that was, until the advent of chili-mac.

Maybe it was the ease of cooking or the fact that it was a meal in and of itself.  Maybe it was because my grandfather loved it.  I don't know why, but she seemed to fixate on one summer.  We had it several times every week.  Maybe beef was cheap.  I dunno.  Anyway, I liked it fine, to start with. Over time, though, I grew to dread and despise the stuff.  Maybe that should have been the signal to me that I was a food snob.  I did not take the hint.

One day, before running out to play with my friend, Darlene, I asked Mamaw what was for dinner.  "Chilimac" she said, as she scrubbed, or swept, or dusted something.  I cringed inwardly.  I did not live in a family where it was accepted to speak out about my feelings on the food on the table.  My grandfather earned the money to put food on the table and my grandmother worked hard to cook it.  It was my job to eat it all up, tell Mamaw how good it was, and kiss my grandfather good night when he went to bed early so he could get up and go to work again.  Even though I had had enough of chili-mac, I could say nothing.

As I soberly walked down to "the field" where we all congregated to play murderous kick ball or where Darlene and I ran through the thickets playing "Indians", I was appalled to think that I would have to choke down another bite of chili-mac.  Again, it was not bad food.  It was good food.  I was just sick and darned tired of the stuff.  It was at this point, I decided to run away from home rather than eat that stuff again.

I didn't tell anyone else about my plan.  I figured someone would give me up.  You could always count on some weaker kid to narc on you when the grown-ups put the thumbscrews to 'em.  I didn't have anything with me and quite frankly I didn't have a plan.  As time came to go home, Darlene said goodbye and I put my "plan" into action.  Ok, the plan consisted of hiding under this trailer's skirting.  It was the only trailer in our park with skirting.  Not much of a plan, but they had a water hose, so I could get a drink.  I sat under that trailer and time to come in for dinner came and went.  Mamaw came out to call me.  I could hear her calling as she walked up the crunch oyster shell road we lived on.  At first, she sounded put out, then she sounded aggravated as heck, then she started to sound worried.  Listening to her, at first I felt vindicated for having to eat the same thing all the time.  Then I felt smug and sniggly.  As she became more worried, I started to feel badly.  She called and called as she walked further into "the field".  I felt worse and worse.  I also realized I was hungry.  As she started coming back, she sounded frantic.  I thought about how worried she must be and I thought of how much trouble I was already in.  I knew I couldn't cross the street or go outside my neighborhood without permission, so I was trapped anyway.  Yes, I COULD have been a stand-in for Beaver Clever.  So, I hatched another plot.  I would just tell her I was playing a joke.  She'd laugh and say "You got me there", wouldn't she?

I poked my head out of the gap in the skirting as she walked by and said "Boo!"  It did make her jump.  She was so happy to see me and so mad at me, she couldn't say anything for a little while.  Then she started fussing at me and assuring me I was going to get the switch.  She did not laugh.  She did not think it was a funny joke.  I got home and I got fed.  I got a little bit of the riot act, but I don't remember getting switched, nor do I remember getting spanked.  Those really didn't happen often, so I remember the times they did.  I don't think she ever told my mother about my antics, so I guess I sort of got by with it.  I did feel horribly about scaring her.  It seemed to have pushed her panic button.  I had not figured out that, as an only child, I was particularly precious to them.

These days, being a food snob, I kind of sneer at the homely simplicity of chili-mac.  It is a simple food.  It is also filling and cost effective.  A pound of ground beef, a can of diced tomatoes, some tomato sauce, an onion, a bell pepper, a bit of pasta, and some Italian seasoning is really all it takes to make a meal that will fill some bellies.  It is a food that makes sense when you have mouths to feed and you want to save some dimes doing it.  Here is my adaptation of her recipe.  I will tell you her standard items if I've put in my own tweak.

Ingredients list:
1 pound of ground beef
1 regular size can of diced tomatoes
1 jar of your favorite ready made spaghetti sauce (or two regular cans of tomato sauce)
1 tbsp. of tomato paste (optional, but she used it)
1 onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced (she used green, I like red or yellow)
2-3 cloves of garlic (use more or less, as you see fit)
Italian seasoning
Bay leaf
Salt
Pepper
Elbow macaroni (this is traditional, but I also like shells or rigatoni or penne) Use as much as you like.  More pasta = more stretched sauce.
Shredded cheese (to put on top, use what you like)

Hardware:
Heavy skillet
Pasta pot
A large collander

In a heavy skillet, brown your ground beef.  Brown it really good, so that you get the dark brown tasty bits on the meat and in the pan.  Once the beef is brown, turn off the fire and drain the meat in the colander.  Catch the grease so it doesn't clog up your drain.  Yes, I have had this issue.

Right about now, put your pasta on to boil.  Add in the water and put salt in it.  Put a lot of salt in it.  Your pasta water really should taste like the ocean.  Bring that pot to a rolling boil and add in your pasta.  You can multi-task here as you also should be working on getting your sauce cooked.  Set a time on your pasta for 8-9 minutes.  When it goes off, check that the pasta is exactly the way you like it.  When it is, drain it and put it back into the pasta pot, with the lid on and let it wait.

In the meantime, put the skillet back on the stove and turn on the heat again.  Add in the onion, pepper, and garlic.  Add a pinch of salt to get some of the veggies juices flowing.  Cook these over medium high heat for a while. You want them to brown a little.  That carmelization is flavor, so don't be afraid.  Stir it around and get the brown bits off the bottom of the pan too.  When they're soft and the onions are translucent, add in the tomato paste, if you decide to use it, and stir it around for a few minutes.  You're kind of blooming the paste.  If you don't do this, you get a raw tomato paste flavor and it's not good.  Keep stirring, because the paste will burn.  Now, add to tomato sauce or the spaghetti sauce and the diced tomatoes.  Stir the concoction up to incorporate the paste, if you added it. 

Now, add you Italian seasoning, bay leaf, salt, and pepper.  How much?  About 2 tsps. of the Italian seasoning.  Salt and pepper is to taste.  You can start with a little and add as you go.  You can't take salt out, or pepper.  I don't care what kind of "tricks' you've heard of, you can't do it.

Cook your sauce on medium now for about 15-20 minutes to marry things up.  Stir it occasionally to make sure nothing sticks or burns. There is a lot of natural sugar in tomatoes and the stupid food corporations put it in the sauces too.  If you're not compulsive about checking to make sure your sauces don't have it, you'll be putting hidden sugar in your pot.  Anyway, let her plorp, plop, plip for a while.  Taste the sauce while it cooks.  Is there enough Italian seasoning?  Is there enough salt and pepper?  Adjust things along the way.  This is your fine tuning time.

When the sauce has married and is as blended as two lovers in their embrace, it's time to turn off the heat and put the sauce into your pasta pot with the cooked pasta.  Now, stir things up and let them sit for about 5 minutes, while you get the plates, some bread, and build your iced tea.

Serve your chili-mac with some nice bread and a sprinkle of your favorite shredded cheese.  I personally like pecorino Romano.  You could serve a salad too, if you like. 

I hope you enjoy Mamaw's simple little dish.  Once you've made it a time or two, you can start riffin' on it like it's your own.  Just don't make it several times a week.  If you do, you may end up with a kid hiding under the trailer down the street. 

This recipe is also a salute to my childhood friend, Darlene Tucker, who recently passed from this Earth way too darned soon.  I hope she's running through Heaven's woods like the happy wild child I remember as my best friend.

Simple, tasty, toasty - Hot-Water Cornbread

When I was a kid, one of the best things my grandmother made was beans.  She would make plain old pinto beans.  They were usually accompanied by cornbread.  Mamaw was a champion cornbread baker.  She didn't have a recipe, she just winged it.  She had been baking cornbread for so long, it was part of her DNA.  She had this cool old hinged stovetop cornbread pan that she used the most.  It was ingenious.  She'd pour the batter in one side, close it up, put it on a burner and let 'er cook at low temp.  Wonderful.  I've never seen another pan like it, and I've looked.

I'll write about the beans and cornbread recipe another day, though.  Today I will write about the more rare treat.  Mamaw was never much about fried food.  She saw frequent frying as the mark of a lazy cook.  She also thought it was bad for you, even before the press and the doctors started making a big fuss over it in the '70s.  However, she did fry a few things.  Okra and this little gem, hot-water cornbread, were my favorites. 

Hot water cornbread doesn't sound very fried, does it?  Think of it as fried cornmeal mush.  No, that's not very appetizing.  Well, think of it as fried corn bread.  There.  Anyway, it's hideously easy to make and is a great bread alternate in a pinch.  I also find it's awesome with a fried egg on top with salsa and some crema.  Let your imagination run wild with this little taste treat. 

The Ingredients List:

• White Cornmeal
• HOT water
• Salt
• Oil for frying

So, to make it, get out your White Cornmeal.  Don't use yellow.  The corn granules are too large in yellow cornmeal and the texture will be all wrong.  Now, boil some water in an electric kettle.  You have one, don't you? Oh, if you don't, you should.  They boil water super fast and make it easy to pour and reheat.  Get the kind that sits on a bottom pad that has the cord on it.  Take a look here to see some. I like the metal ones with a window to see the contents. http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=289753

I digress.  Get your cornmeal in a big bowl.  Use about 2 cups for a regular batch.  You can wrap up the dough and keep it for a day or so, if you don't want to cook it all.  The dough keeps better than the cooked product, by the way. 

Take your boiled HOT water and pour in about 1/2 a cup.  Stir it in really well.  It's probably a little clumpy with lots of dry stuff too.  Add a little more of the hot water and stir it up.  Keep adding a little water and stirring until you notice that everything is evenly moist, but not runny or too sticky.  You can test things as you go by getting a little of the dough and squeezing it in your hand.  Does it fall apart when you open your hand?  If so, you'll need a little more water.  Add it by the dribs and drabs now.  You don't want to get too much water in there.  If it is getting too sticky or runny, you can add a little more cornmeal, but you don't want to get into a vicious cycle. You can throw in about 1/2 tsp of salt now too.  Yeah, it's a lot of salt, but the meal takes up a lot.  Use less if you want. 



The dough is ready when it holds together well when you squeeze it in your hand and/or when you can pat out a little patty about 1/2" thick and about 3-4" round.  Don't be a perfectionist on the shape.  This is rustic food.





Once you have the dough right, leave it sitting with a moist tea towel over it while you get a cast iron pan out and put about 1/2" of oil in it.  Turn on the heat and get that wound up for some frying.  You'll know it's ready when it starts to shimmer and when you drop a tiny bit of the dough in and it immediately floats to the top and sizzles like summer in Texas.  :-)

Pat out your 1/2" by 3" or 4" patties of dough and carefully lower them into the oil.  You want the tops of the patties to sit a little proud of the oil instead of having it cover them, if you can.  Put a few in your hot oil and let them sizzle away.  Don't crowd the pan or the temperature will drop too fast and your cornbread will get really greasy. 

After about 3-4 minutes, check them.  If they are looking golden brown and toasty on the side in the oil, turn em over with your spatula.  Be careful of the hot oil!  Cook them on this side until they are lovely golden and toasty.  When you're ready, take them out and put them on a rack or a plate with paper towels to blot up the oil.  Fry up as many as you like.

Serve them with beans or mustard greens or anything with a lot of pot-liquor to sop up.  Like I mentioned before, they're good with a fried egg (over easy) on top with salsa and a little Mexican crema.  I'm also thinking some carnitas on top with fixin's will hit the spot.  The possibilities are really endless with this nice carrier.  Have fun and remember Estelle made them for me as a special treat.  I loved them and I loved her too.

My Heaven Will Smell Like A Peach

This post is not going to be a recipe.  It's going to be an ode to the most beautiful and tasty fruit in the world, the peach.  For me, there is nothing in the food universe more sensuous, so lovely, so pleasing as a fresh, fully ripe peach.  NOTHING.

We live in a world where fruit is flown around the world to land on our tables.  Although it's nice to see apples and peaches and berries year round, they pale facsimiles of what a fresh fruit, picked at peak ripeness  is.  The fruit we get out of season in the grocery is generally picked in a less-than-ripe state and then packed and shipped in an environment to discourage ripening until it gets to the destination.  Sometimes this means that it has been shipped in a nitrogen environment.  Sometimes it's deeply chilled.  Overall, it's in stasis until it's unpacked and put on the table for you to buy.  Many fruits stop ripening when they are picked.  They will rot, but the chemical development that is ripeness will never happen and this means that the fruit will not taste ripe ever.

I remember when my grandparents planted their peach trees.  I thought I liked peaches OK.  Being a child of the 70s and 80s, we didn't see many peaches in the grocery.  The technologies to ship them well didn't exist.  The main way I saw them was in a can.  They were OK, but I think I mostly queued in on the sugar in that heavy syrup.  Where I grew up, peaches didn't grow well, as the soil was too heavy and wet.  When we moved to far north east Texas, the soil and climate was very amenable to growing peaches, so in went the peach trees on my grandparents' 5 acre plot.  They didn't plant many, just 4-5.  They had one come up in the compost heap.  They didn't have the heart to cut it down, so that one grew up too.  After a couple of years, the fruit began to come in.  That summer, standing in their garden/orchard, I had the experience that changed my life.

I went out with my Pawpaw to pick the peaches.  He reached up and plucked the first ripe peach.  He looked at me and smiled in a way that now seems like the grin of a happy boy.  He took out his pocket knife and sliced into its soft, lovely flesh.  I remember the juice running between his fingers and dripping to the ground.  The smell reached me almost immediately and I slavered like Pavlov's dog.  He then did the most generous thing and handed me the first slice.  I popped it into my mouth and had one of those transcendent experiences that each of us has at those lucky times when your senses are overloaded and the happiness in sharing an experience with a loved one comes together to make your soul sing.  That peach was warm from the sun.  That peach was sweet and tart and fragrant. That peach was love between grandfather and granddaughter.  That peach, right then, was the world.

We shared that peach right then and there and talked about how peaches were the best thing in the world.  We would have other discussions about how X fruit or Y veggie were the best in the world as we noshed on it, standing in the garden, but I honestly think the discussion on the peach was the most heart-felt, at least for me.

Over the years, we picked a lot of peaches at the peak of their perfection.  Each peach was perfect, despite the bug bites and odd shapes because each one was delicious and a little reminder of that moment in the garden when my grandfather and I shared the world.  We would take those peaches in the house to Mamaw and she would start the process of preserving them.  She canned a few, but mostly she liked to freeze them.  The process was easy, in the grand scheme of things, and let us enjoy a wonderful peachy moment all year long.

I miss my grandparents very much.  I miss working in the garden with them and the slow, easy conversation and sharing of experience that happened there.  Every time I taste a really good peach, I am transported to those times when we were together and shared the world in a blushing fuzzy orb.  That's why, when I go to the halls of my forebearers, it will be warm, with soft breezes and smell of peaches.

Here is a link to another site that promotes preserving your own food.  They have links to help you find pick-your-own-produce type farms.  They have some good information for preserving fresh peaches for your family: http://www.pickyourown.org/peachesfreezing.htm

And here are instruction on how to do individual quick frozen peach slices, another great method: http://www.edibleperspective.com/home/2011/9/18/how-to-freeze-peaches.html

Mamaw's Creamed Corn - Carrying Forward Her Cooking for Posterity - No Cream Involved

So, I thought I'd create a blog for this longer post.  I was in the kitchen working on cutting some corn off the cobb in order to make my grandmother's delicious creamed corn when it hit me.  I am her last descendent who watched her make that dish.  As I have not procreated, I really AM the last.  That made me really sad because her cooking, and her creamed corn specifically, was so incredibly delicious and the thought of her recipes being lost is too much.  Soooo, I decided to take on the task of recording her cooking in order to try to get one person, just one, to make one of her dishes and keep her cooking memory alive.

So, today we will make creamed corn.  Now, there is NO cream involved here.  This is a really simple recipe.

The ingredients list is:

• fresh, young sweet corn on the cob
• water
• salt
• pepper
• butter

Yep.  This is simple.  The ideal here is to taste the CORN.  It utilizes the starches in the corn to make a beautiful silky texture and the sugars in the corn make it sweet, but not like that horrible horrible stuff you get out of a can.  That's not food, it's paste.  Ok, I shan't rant about processed food here.  That's a whole other novel. 

The key to this recipe is fresh, young sweet corn.  As most of us live in a city, we get our corn on the cob from grocery stores and maybe the odd farmer's market.  So, we don't get a lot of choice of variety and can't really control when the corn was picked.  Fresh, young corn is ideal for this because the starches have not started to solidify.  The corn is still really juicy and tender.  The kernels themselves pop readily when you press your thumb into them.  Fresh corn kernels are translucent and have a sheen to them.  Older, more mature corn loses that sheen and becomes drier.  When you poke them with your thumb, they don't pop so much as just mush.  This is not the ideal.  When you buy your corn, look for drier silks on the outside, but fresh greenish silks on the inside of the husk.  The husk itself should be green and succulent.  It should smell fresh, like grass.  If your silks and your husks are all dried out, they are not worth buying.  Move on to broccoli or whatever else looks good.  But, let's assume you found a wonderful bushel basket of fresh young corn.  Maybe a farmer who grows Silver Queen (my favorite variety).  What do you do with it now?

Go home and shuck!  Get a glass of tea or a beer or whatever else you enjoy and go out into your back yard with it, your corn and a big basket or bowl and shuck.  I won't give shucking lessons here.  I think most people have figured that out by now.  Just remember to save those husks for your compost heap.  I have fond memories of shucking bushels of corn under the sweetgum tree at my grandparents house while I listened to my grandfather tell stories about when he was young and working the oil fields.  You can have a great time too, since shucking is a great time for talking and sharing your ideas and stories.  It's a nice time to slow down and enjoy the summer and your family and friends.

Now, you have shucked corn.  I promise there is a recipe in here, but this is a blog so I'm blogging too.  Anyway.  Take your corn inside to your kitchen.  Clear off a large area that is easy to clean.  What I mean by that is make sure that where you are working is a rather flat surface that is easy to clean off.  If you have a lot of doodads around, they're going to get covered with corn juice and you don't want to spend all afternoon cleaning that off, now do you? 

Your hardware will now consist of 1 very sharp knife with about a 6-8 inch blade and one large spoon with a large bowl having a sharper edge on it.  I find cheap spoons work best here. You're using this for scraping, that's why you want the sharper edge.  Get a bowl that is wide and deep. 

Take your corn cobs and get your knife.  You want to cut just the tippy tops off the corn kernels.  Think of giving the corn a shave.  You're getting a little of the kernel's covering but more than anything, you're opening up the kernels to get at the good stuff.  Cut the tops off of all the corn cobs all the way around.  Once they're all scalped, get your spoon and start scraping.  You want to scrape all the goodness out of the kernels.  I usually scrape a cob at least twice.  Juice is going to go everywhere.  It will be on your face, on your clothes, on the dog standing next to you by the counter, your husband working at the stove.  Really.  But you can minimize the spray by holding the spoon with the bottom of the bowl facing you and scraping downward into your bowl.  Yes it's messy, but worth it.

This corn was a little old, but I used it anyway.  See how the kernels have dimples in them? I let it sit in the fridge too long.  Fresh corn is plump and not dimpled.

This is how your corn will look with the tops of the kernels cut off.  See all that corn goodness inside?

Here I am scraping the corn.  See how I'm holding the spoon?  Don't use a lot of force, just go over the whole cob and do it a couple of times. You'll see when you've gotten all the goodness out.

When you're done, the corn cobb will look a little frazzled.

But you will have lots of corn goodness to cook

Once you have your creamy corny goodness, it's time to cook or you can put your corn into freezer containers and save it for winter time.  Let's assume you're going to cook it.  Get out a nice, big skillet.  If you have a non-stick skillet, more the better.  You want it big enough to put your corn in it to cover the bottom in about 1/2 inch of liquid goodness, no more than an inch, ok.  An electric skillet also works well.  Mamaw used hers to death making creamed corn.  Anyway, heat your skillet at medium to medium high heat and add a pat of butter or margarine.  What ever you like.  I go for natural butter.  Once that's melted, pour in your corn and add about 1/4 cup of water.  Just a little water.  The corn will melt while it cooks and give you more liquid.  Add a little salt and pepper, whatever you like.  You know how much you like to use and you can always salt it a little more on your plate.  Now, bring your corn up to a slow simmer.  Adjust your heat so that it barely makes the little blurping bubbles as it cooks.  Stir frequently.  This is starchy stuff, so it can want to burn and stick.  Keep your heat lower and cook it slowly.  Now, this is not a 4 hour recipe, so don't worry. Cook it for about 20 minutes, stirring frequently.  Think of risotto.  You're doing something similar here because you're encouraging the starches to unwind and make a silky sauce.  Taste your corn after 20 minutes.  If the sauce is silky and the corn is sweet and tasty, you're ready to eat.  Turn off your fire and if you like, finish it with another little dollop of butter or margarine or not. 

To eat your creamed corn, I recommend enjoying it with fresh sliced tomatoes.  The flavor combination is transcendent. I am not joking.  If you have to have a meat, beef tends to go well with it, but I just eat corn and tomatoes when I get the chance. 

I hope to goodness one of you will make this recipe.  I have a condensed version below for you to use when you don't want to read all my prattling.  If you make this, thank Estelle Howard Byerly for it and the long line of Howard women who came before her and passed on their cooking traditions. 

Mamaw's Creamed Corn
4-6 ears of fresh, young corn on the cob
a couple pats of butter
a little fresh water
salt
pepper

1. Cut the tops off of the corn kernels into a bowl
2. Scrape all the juice and goodness out of the kernels into the bowl
3. Heat a large skillet (nonstick is best, or electric skillet) and melt a pat of butter (half a tablespoon)
4. Put the corn goodness into the skillet
5. Add a little water, go with 1/4 cup or less to start; you can always add more if it looks to need it
6. Add salt and pepper to taste
7. Bring the corn to a slow simmer.  Low and slow does it
8. Cook the corn stirring frequently for about 20 minutes; taste at 20 and if it seems good, you're done
9. Turn off the fire and add another dollop of butter or margarine, if you like
10. EAT!