A Fruity Foodie Old Friendly Fathers Day Weekend

A friend of ours from the SFA, Sheri Castle, from beautiful Carboro, NC. has just had her first cookbook published. She’s travelling around the South for 4 months promoting it, and we’ve been trying to meet up with her since April. Unfortunately when we’ve been headed to NC, she’s been elsewhere, and when she’s been in SC or Georgia, we couldn’t make it happen. About 6 weeks ago we found out that Heidi and Joe Trull of Grits and Groceries were featuring recipes from Sheri’s book for their June Dinner Club. Grits and Groceries is kind of in Belton, SC., just down the road a piece from Mom & Dads house in Williamston. Since this was Father’s Day Weekend, we called Mama Glenda and Big Phil to see if we could take them down for a celebratory meal. Now we’ve been fans of Grits & Groceries Breakfast for years, (Glenda and Phil rave about the Stuffed French Toast) but none of us had never been to Dinner Club.

Sheri’s book is all about using the South’s wonderful fresh produce. It’s arranged by crops, which is really pretty cool. So that got me thinking about farmers markets and such, which led my brain to Callaham’s Orchard, owned by some wonderful folks I went to high school with a hundred years ago.

As it turns out their Blackberry U-pick operation was in full swing. So Saturday morning we all went picking! The berries were absolutely gorgeous, and almost, but not quiet, at peak. In about 2 hours of not hard work, 5 of us picked 11 gallons of berries! We froze 3 gallons whole, kept one to eat on, and juiced the rest. We wound up with over 3 gallons!

You’re probably thinking I’m going to make wine with the juice. Well, I’m not. All that juice is reserved for Breakfast Smoothies in the dead of winter. (Although I will admit to using a small amount of whole berries for rumtopf.) I can’t say that juicing all those berries was a lot of fun, but it sure beat picking and canning couple of hundreds quarts of James Island tomatoes in a tiny un-air-conditioned kitchen on Folly Beach, which is what we used to get into this time of year! Big Phil wound up looking like he had the measles.

The event at Grits and Groceries was wonderful, ‘ceptin’ for a little bit of rain, which really wasn’t that bad, especially since Mama Glenda quickly grabbed the last available table inside! And Lo, there right inside the door was Bobby and Suzanne Callaham! So it was so good to see old friends, especially with such fantastic food all around. Bacon Wrapped Pork Loin with Fig Sauce, Squash Casserole with Swiss Cheese, Black-eyed Pea Salsa, and Peach Upside Down Cake were just some of the deliciousness they set forth for us to enjoy. Heidi and Joe did an impressive job with Sheri’s recipes. We came back with her book and have already started using it!

We’ll definitely be back to G & G for a Dinner Club, although it’ll have to be a while. Heidi and Joe have the good sense not to do outdoor events in July and August!

Painting and Eating at the Beach

I'm going to backtrack to May a bit here.Three weeks ago we had a dozen teenagers down at Surfside to paint our house. I'm talking about 19-year old kids.  We first approached them about doing this while they were on Spring Break, so we'd been thinking about this for a while. We've been feeding most of these chaps for years, and pretty much knew what they'd like. We developed a menu based on what we had in the freezers and pantry,  and what (we thought) would be pretty easy to fix, yet not be fast-food, or what they'd been eating at the college cafeterias.  Alice had all the recipes laid out and shopping lists made.  The kids took most of the meats down with them on Wednesday afternoon, but Alice still had to go shopping almost every day, especially for fruits, vegetables, juices and milk. I was supervising the painting, and didn't really get to see much of the cooking. That's pretty much all that Alice did every day: Go to Piggly Wiggly, the Seafood Market, and Walmart, and then come back and cook!

Top Sirloin Rare Roast

Athena Cantalope

Baked Sweet Potatoes

Smithfield City Ham

Apple Cranberry Casserole

Herb Roasted Turkey Breast

Marinated Carrot Salad

Roasted Green Beans

Spinach Salad

Oranges

Apples

Grapes

Bananas

Frogmore Stew

Roasted Greek Potatoes

Steak Tacos w/ Marinated Cilantro Slaw

Whole Grain Pancakes

Benton’s Bacon

Country Sausage

Scrambled Eggs

Stone Ground Grits

Buttermilk Biscuits

Country Ham

Cheddar & Scallion Biscuits.

Bratwurst & Semmel Rolls

Brioche Rolls

Butter Beans

Lasagna

Roasted Pork Loin & Brown Rice

French Toast

Home Made Cheese Bread

Lemon Bars

Home Made Ice Cream

They also consumed uncountable gallons of OJ, Mountain Dew, Dr. Pepper, Pineapple Juice, Milk, Café Du Monde Coffee,  V-8 Fusion, Turkish Coffee, and Fru-fru Drink!  They used 8 ladders, 30 Gallons of paint, 20+ paint brushes and rollers, 3 bottles of SPF 50 Sunscreen! There were no injuries, no sunburns, and the house looks great!

Atlanta Food and Wine Festival

Whooo Boy! Did we have fun at the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival! It really was great. We were there for less than 48 hours,  but Alice and I went to about a dozen classes and demonstrations, catching the tail ends of 4 or 5 more. All the presenters were award winning experts in their fields, and (the best part) were incredibly welcoming to all! Folks asked lots questions, and everyone got a great answer. The events were filled with wonderful information and most had more than just a smidgeon of humor! Or a dollop, as John Besh says. Besh ordered tequila shots. . . . about 4 times. . . . .for the whole audience (50-60 folks). . .about a case and half.

The Tasting tents had just about everything good and Southern: Bourbon, Tequila, Crooks Corner, Shrimp, Peanuts, Jim ‘N’ Nicks, Cheeses, Bourbon, Pork Belly(lots and lots of pork belly!)*, Deconstructed Low Country Boil, Moonshine, Soft Shell Crabs, Co-Cola, Bourbon, Lamb, Beets, Sweet Potato Ice Cream, Deviled Eggs, Beer, Wine, and Bourbon. Did I mention Bourbon? They had some Bourbon, too, I think.

Here are some random names and thoughts:

Tim Love, Meat on the Grill and I volunteered for canola oil/Crown Royal shot roulette,  I lost, (or won, as the case may be!)

Vishwesh Bhatt, Indian riff on shrimp & grits 

Hillary White, beautiful pickles!

Three James Beard Winners breaking down a whole pig: Sean Brock, preaching the Southern Gospel of Cornbread, Country Ham and Bourbon.  Tyler Brown, created “SOCK” sausage! And, from Linton Hopkins: Pork belly is the gateway drug to offal!

Kevin Ouzts had some amazing pepperonis, salamis, etc!

Will Harris, burgers on the Viking Grill

Karen & Ben Barker, could it be any better than collards, peas & cornbread?

Chris Hastings, (pickled)shrimp & grits with Benton’s Ham

Greg Best, a wonderfully light Coke-tail called . . . .wait for it . . . The Pause that Refreshes!

Michelle Bernstein Ceviche with Lime. “If it’s got citrus in it, it’s cooked!”

David Guas Hot Pepper Jelly, Vidalia Onion Marmalade and Lemon Curd

Bill Smith carving famous North Carolina corned hams, topped with Green Tomato Relish

and probably my favorite of the weekend: Best Chef Southeast Andrea Reusing, Headcheese 3 ways: Vietnamese, Southern, and French! With Wine! Incredible! Awe inspiring, She made me want to buy a pig’s head on the way home! (But Alice was with me, and Stewart had all our big coolers)

In terms of culinary education and access to wonderfully friendly experts, this experience was phenomenal. There’s just soooooooooo much of it! Next time we might do all 3 days! Really, y'all should think about going next year.  They have all kinds of different packages.  We can't tell you how nice everyone was. . . . It makes you proud,  it .. . . almost makes you want to cry, it . . . makes you want to avoid your cardiologist for a while!

*and by lots, I mean a whole bunch, . . .really! Cubits? Oh wait, you wouldn't measure pork in cubits, would you?

Makin' Bacon!

Short Version: We made bacon.

Long Version: Two years ago while in New Orleans for the ELCA National Youth Gathering, we went to Chef Donald Link’s Cochon restaurant, which was incredible. Next door to the restaurant was Cochon Butcher, where they make a great deal of really awesome products, most of the porcine variety. It too was incredible, so much so that  I brought back a whole cooler full of tasso,  andouille, boudin, and pâté.

    Last year Chef Link came out with an award winning cookbook,  Real Cajun.  The award was the James Beard Award, which is like the Pulitzer Prize of Food. I got the book for Christmas, and one day in March Alice discovered that it had a recipe for bacon.  She suggested we should make our own. After about a week doing some research, we decided to give it a try, although our version would be the “wet” version endorsed by Alton Brown rather than Chef Link’s “dry” cure.  We also decided that we would use “cold” (70-80 degrees) smoke rather than “hot” (140 degrees).

7 lbs of pork belly from Caughman's Meats

Marinating in the brine for 4 days

Drying out so the pellicles can form.  Pellicles are kind of thin skin or membrane.  Think of the skin on Jello or pudding if you don't cover it in the fridge.  The smoke sticks to the pellicles. Without adequate pellicles, you get sooty meat.

The Hardware (Yes that's duct tape, but HIGH TEMPERATURE duct tape!)

The Hot Box

The Cold Box

The Smoke Pipe

Smokin'!

After 5 hours.

    It took less than a hour to put all this together. The boxes I got from work, and they were perfect, but it was a very windy day, so we really couldn't see how much smoke was being produced.  Next time I'll shoot for a calm day and hopefully be able to judge the smokiness better.  We thought the computer fan would work well, but it ate 9 volt batteries very quickly, so we wound up with a 4 inch personal fan plugged in. 

    How'd it turn out?  It was very good! It was not near as salty as regular bacon (maybe only 25%?) which is good, and it doesn't have nitrites in it, which is also good.  (Side note, when Alice was pregnant with the chaps, she had to give up nitrites, so she had to make do with sausage only, no bacon or ham!) We made excellent BLTs with it that night, and had it for breakfast the next day. We've since used it to make praline bacon with, which turned out very well. The only real drawback to me, was that it is impossible to slice bacon well and truly and hemingwayesque unless it is mostly frozen.  If it is totally frozen, you can still do it, but it takes a while!

    We will definitely do this again, but probably not right now, at least not this way. You really should not let the meat get over 80 degrees during the smoking, unless you're going all the way up to 140-150.  By the time I get around to trying it again, I think it will be too warm for that.