Green Tomato Glut

One of the great joys of autumn in the Southeastern United States, besides the stunning pyrotechnics of the changing foliage, is the glut of green tomatoes that result from the final crop not quite having enough oomph to make it to red.  It almost makes the end of tomato season bearable.

Given that this delicacy has not quite made it to the 'fill the supermarket shelves' popularity, the season is all the more precious.  Once the plants are done - that's it until next year.

If you've been reading this blog or know me personally you will know that the buttermilk soak + cornmeal batter + bacon fry in a cast iron pan is my go-to cooking technique for a lot of things - chicken, fish, even okra sometimes.   With their firm texture and lemony tart flavour, green tomatoes are perfect for this treatment.    

 I've had them twice this week.  For dinner on Sunday with a simple pork chop.  Then after the gym on Tuesday in one of my all time favorite sandwiches: BLT Delux: Thick cut bacon, rocket (arugula) from the farmer's market, and fried green tomatoes on sourdough toast, dressed with a lemony, garlicy yoghurt mayonnaise.

That same lemon garlic mayonnaise dressing is perfect as a simple dip for fried green tomatoes on their own, as a meal in themselves.  If you must have a meat, keep it light: Cold roast chicken, or poached trout will do nicely.  To drink? I'm  partial to a nice, crisp Gavi.

I just did a quick search on the internet and am surprised at how few good recipes there are online.  Avoid anything that calls for breadcrumbs, and you really don't need to mess around with eggs.

As usual, I take my cue from Louis Osteen.  The below is my quick take on his ever so slightly more complex  recipe in his "Charleston Cuisine".  I'm sure in a blind tasting his would trump mine hands down - but most the time I'm too hungry or rushed to mess around with a lot of waiting. 

Fried Green Tomatoes

• Green tomatoes, cut into about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick
• Enough buttermilk to cover (or substitute a mixture of yoghurt and lowfat milk, runny enough to pour but gloopy enough to cling to the tomatoes)
• Several good shakes of hot sauce
• a mixture of equal measures of fine ground cornmeal and plain flour
• salt to taste
• cayenne pepper or smoky paprika to taste 

Mix together the buttermilk and hot sauce.  Pour over the tomatoes and slosh them around to make sure every surface is covered.  Let them soak in the fridge for a good 15 or 20 minutes.

Mix together the flour cornmeal mixture, salt, and the cayenne or paprika on a plate.

When ready, remove the tomatoes from the buttermilk, and dredge in the cornmeal mixture.  If you have time, it does help the crust to form a better if you give them a good 15 to 20 minutes in the fridge.  If you don't have time, do try to give them at least 5. 

Louis recommends a mixture of peanut oil and butter for frying.  I prefer bacon grease.  You could also use vegetable oil.  In any case, pick your poison and get it good and hot in a skillet (though I do hope you have been paying attention and have by now acquired  a well-seasoned cast iron pan).  Fry the tomatoes in a single, uncrowded layer.  They cook fast so be prepared to flip in under a minute.

As they finish, place them on paper towels.  I would recommend you try not to cook so many you have to keep them warm in the oven, as you will endanger the crispy crust, and that's half the joy.  But if you are serving a party, needs must.

Enjoy as suggested above or do please write to let me know how you eat yours.  Dig in!

Want more serving suggestions for green tomatoes?  Here are some good ones:

Southern Living: 6 Ways with Green Tomatoes
Gourmet: Green Tomato and Honeydew Melon Salad
Roots & Wings Organic has a recipe for Green Tomato Chutney on their facebook page, October 9th

Related Posts:
Fish Fry

Sweet Potato Pancake Day

I was not raised in a family that made much of a fuss about holidays.  Yes, when we were small there was plenty of hoopla around any holiday that involved presents or candy, and we did indeed make breakfast in bed and home made cards for Mom on Mother's day.   As we got older it diminished, and now the poor woman is lucky to get a call.  Christmas dinner?  One year my mother served borscht.

So I suppose that explains why after more than a decade and a half in the UK I still can't get my head around pancake day.  Good old Wikipedia provides the charming history of Shrove Tuesday, but I'm baffled as to why some adult friends who have no children insist on having pancakes on the day.  It's amazing how deep childhood nostalgia can run.

This year, however I care.  Why?  Because on my last visit to see my parents, we had brunch at Market at Main in striving-to-regenerate downtown Lynchburg, Virginia.  I'm usually a bacon-and-eggs kind of girl, but the server waxed lyrical about the sweet potato pancakes, so I gave them a try.  Hand on heart - they were the best pancakes I've ever had.  So with this much-loved British holiday approaching, I've got an excuse to work on the recipe.

Market at Main's kitchen manager, Julian Davis, kindly gave me his personal recipe.  The measurements and ingredients are American, and the volumes are for a restaurant, so please bear with me while I work on a translation.  In the meantime, here are a few recipes from credible sources - one British. 

Sweet Potato Pancakes with Spiced Pecans and Peach Butter
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's batter recipes, for pancake day and every day
Highland Bakery Sweet Potato Pancakes

Note: For those who prefer instant gratification, Market at Main's owner, Rodney Taylor, tells me that Bruce's Sweet Potato Pancake Mix (widely available in the US) is the business.

Oyster Stew

In the UK, celebrity chefs and food writers have fetishised raw oysters to the point that to suggest serving them cooked elicits a frosty dismissal.  Of course, when you are paying upwards of £1.50 ($2.25) per oyster, cooking them can seem as sacriligeous as canning bluefin tuna.   

While Southerners, too, revel in the briney freshness of oysters on the half-shell, the lower prices that come with wide distribution means we don't need to limit ourselves to a single format.  We have them roasted (my personal favourite), fried, and baked.  We suck them down as shooters and wrap them in bacon for angels on horseback.  America is the land of excess and yes, we excel at eating oysters.

Another thing we have is convenience.  You can purchase pre-shucked oysters (packed specifically for cooking) by the pint or the quart in pretty much every supermarket in the South. True, they loose a bit of that defining salty brightness in the process, but that's not what I'm looking for when I'm eating cooked oysters.  I'm looking for creamy richness, warmth and comfort -  pleasures few dishes deliver better than oyster stew.

My mother's ancient Joy of Cooking supplies a classic recipe.  It combines oysters and their liquor with milk, butter, salt, pepper and flour in a simple but warming stew - rich without being filling.   Now that I'm all grown up, I tend to go for more complicated, chefy recipes.  Louis Osteen, as usual, comes up trumps with his Brown Oyster Stew with Benne Seeds.  It takes a bit more work, but the luxurious result is certainly worth the effort. 

I expect that until one of the big oyster farms in the UK does a tie-up with Delia, Nigella, or Jamie, it is unlikely that we'll be able to get pre-shucked oysters from the local Tesco any time soon.  Until then,  you might try smiling sweetly at your local fishmonger and ask if they will shuck them for you (bring your own container and make sure they save the precious liquor). Or take a look at one of the many videos online that show how to shuck oysters and give it a go - it's really not that difficult.

Valentine's day is just around the corner.  If the aphrodisiac qualities of the oysters themselves don't help you get lucky, the lavishness of the menu surely will.

Louis Osteens' Brown Oyster Stew with Benne Seeds
Oyster Bisque from Joy of Cooking
Shuck, then cook, Tim Hayward, FT.com
Rick Stein's fishy Food Heroes

Mincemeat Mania

The holiday season is in full swing and as a result, the mince pie wars are on.   Every food column and foodie magazine in the land has it's 'best mince pie' comparison column, and every home cook with a penchant for pastry has dusted off the rolling pins to make their favourite recipe.

In the US, mince pies barely register on the Richter scale of holiday treats.  Christmas cookies abound, and on the day you'll find pecan and sweet potato pies gracing the sideboard in most good Southern homes.  But mince pies, or mincemeat pies, as they are called over there?  If there is one, it is usually a full-sized pie, not individual-sized pies like they have in the UK.  Inevitably, it is the last to be eaten.

The size is where Americans go wrong.  Mincemeat itself is made rich and dense with dried vine fruits, candied citrus peel, brown sugar and spices - in some ways quite similar to chutney.  Like chutney, it should be eaten in small doses, as a compliment to something else.  In Britain, pastry is the star of the show.  Pies are individual sized so you can hold them in your hand and consume them in 2 or 3 bites, so you get proportionately more pastry to filling - just enough to enjoy the tart fruit and spices without being overwhelmed.  As you would expect, they go supremely well with a nice cup of tea, though mulled wine is the tipple of choice at parties.

This year I'm bringing a bit of Britain to Virginia.  In my suitcase are several jars of posh mincemeat, collected from various gourmet shops around London.  Yes, I could make it from scratch, but given the mayhem of the extended family crammed into my parents' house, better to minimise the need for kitchen and fridge space.  Tempting as it is to make my own short crust, ready made pie crust will have to do.  All I need now are tartlet pans.  However, despite my best intentions, I expect I'll be heading down to the Plowcroft Tea Room to get my fill.

No one writes more eloquently about British food than the Observer's food columnist, Nigel Slater.  Hooray for the internet, which allows us to dig into the archives as the click of a mouse.  His marvellous December 2002 column on mince pies is as evocative as ever.  If you want to make mincemeat from scratch (as I may do in the New Year, for the experience), this Apple Mincemeat recipe from a 1982 article in the New York Times looks tempting.  Want to buy some pre-made mincemeat?  If you happen to be in London's Clerkenwell during the holiday season, the mincemeat sold at The Modern Pantry is some of the nicest I've ever had.

Happy Christmas!

Further reading:
The Telegraph: Home-made mince pie recipe

Pigs might fly: Good barbecue at Whole Foods Market?

I was going to write about oyster stew this week, but barbecue has again grabbed my attention.  Wandering through the aisles of Whole Food Market last night, trying to work out what to have for dinner, I asked Joe Waple at the meat counter if they did roast chicken.  Yes, he said, or you might want to try our barbecue.  It's the best in Richmond.  That's thowing down the gauntlet in these parts.  I was honour bound to try it.

Proudly pointing to the trophy he and his colleague, Sam Kovanes, won in the McShin Foundation's 2009 BBQ Fest Cook Off, Joe showed me his brisket.  It did, indeed, have a handsome smoke ring.   "You smoke that here?" I asked. "For 13 hours" he replied.   "Do you man it all night?" "We don't have to, we've got the temperature just right". 

Into my box went brisket, ribs and pulled pork.  I raced home to make a salad to go with it, but the previous hour in a spinning class and the smell of the barbecue in the car meant my stomach was hollering for attention.  Needless to say the meat didn't make it through the salad prep.

Result?  As I've written before, barbecue is as much about the atmosphere as the actual product.  It's hard to compare the necessarily sterile environment of a supermarket to the romantic rough-and-ready vibe of a smokehouse, but yes, the flavour was outstanding.  This morning, as I walked through Whole Foods parking lot to get my morning caffeine injection, the smell of the pit wrapped me in it's embrace, tugging me back to the meat counter with its siren song.  Dwight, the Assistant Team Leader,  informed me the table would be ready at 11:00, and then kindly came to find me in the cafe to deliver a five minute warning.  This time it was ribs fresh from the smoker: moist and flavourful.   If I closed my eyes I might have been in Kansas. 

When you consider that even Whole Foods Market's lowest quality meat is still of high welfare standards, it feels as good to eat as it tastes.  I've got a new post-work out addiction.

Doing it old school: Cousin Minnie's Home Cured Country Ham

 'Minnie still cures her own hams' said my Dad when I told him about my visit to Edwards & Son's in Surry.  Minnie Alvis is my Dad's second cousin on his mother's side.  Born in 1933 on a farm in Goochland, Virginia, not only does she still cure her own hams, she reputedly makes the best coconut pie in the county.   I was dying to meet her.

Minnie's father worked the coal mines of West Virginia until he saved enough to buy 250 acres back home in Goochland, and the equipment he needed to farm it.  Everything they needed they raised themselves - animal and vegetable.  While her brothers couldn't get off the farm fast enough and became mechanics and factory workers, Minnie stayed home and worked the farm with her father.  To bring in the much needed extra cash, she worked first at the local grocery store for 25 years, after which she joined the post office, where she put in another 25 years before she retired at 65 (Don't get her started on her civil servants pension).    They didn't get electricty or plumbing until 1950.  The bathroom didn't get put in until her parent's 50th wedding anniversary in 1966.  It was not an easy life. 

She sold the farm when she retired (with the proviso that she could live in the house until she died).  I asked Minnie if she missed it.  "Like a headache" she replied.  It made me think of the earnest young man from whom I purchased organic turnips and green beans at the South of the James Market in Richmond, VA that morning.  I wonder if his children are going to escape as quickly as they can like Minnie's brothers, or if, after years of toil, he'll gladly see the back of his farm when it comes time to retire.

As to Minnie, she is the epitome of local spirit:   Her volunteer work not only includes the community hospice and the church, but she dedicates a good amount of time picking up trash along a two mile stretch of road near her house.   One might think that the local government would pay for this, but I suppose the cost is too much.  Minnie's neighbors, much as they appreciate her efforts, don't seem to feel strongly enough about it to help her out.  So Minnie collects about three industrial sized garbage bags of rubbish a week - alone.  Needless to say, despite being nearly eighty, she is in fantastic condition.   

But back to the hams: Minnie cures about 35 a year to give away at Christmas ('I don't cook them myself any more' ), along with about 250 of her famous coconut pies. I couldn't believe my luck when she walked out with two pies - one for my parents and one for me.  I'm afraid my stomach overruled my head and I dove into it before I could take a picture - but please believe me it when I tell you it looked as good as it tasted.  So it will be a seven mile run instead of my customary five today.

All I need to do now is work out how I can get onto her Christmas list.

Minnie's Smokehouse

Virginia Country Ham

Left: 18-month aged Surryano ham.  Right: 4-month aged, cooked and sliced Virginia Country Ham

It's bad enough that sixteen years of living in England has affected my accent to the point that when I'm in the US people can't even tell I'm American, much less from the South.   But what I'm about to admit will mark me out even more so as an outsider, despite the fact that I was born in Virginia, spent the most of my childhood there, and the majority of my relatives happily reside within it's borders.  The admission?  I did not grow up eating country ham, nor did I taste it before I was well into adulthood.

Although I could blame my Philadelphia-born grandmother for this lapse, in actual fact the finger should be pointed at the American food industry, which became obsessed with mass prodution thoughout the second half of the last century.   Country ham producers did what every other food business was doing at the time - commodifying their products to compete on price.   Country ham, however, requires time, patience, space and more than a little instinct to produce - something machines struggle to duplicate.  As a result, true country ham became as rare as Bengal white tigers or, closer to home, stone ground grits. 

So what is an American country ham?  Forget the brined and un-aged gammons you find in supermarkets. Instead, think of the salt-cured firmness of back bacon, but made from the hind quarters rather than the belly or loin, smoked with hickory rather than oak, and aged for several months, sometimes as long as two years.  The result is a deeply coloured, salty, intensely flavoured ham that, as you can imagine, works a treat with a cooked breakfast.

Although country ham is most often served in a similar fashion to British gammon, in some cases the end result is so close to Continental aged hams that they can be eaten uncooked, like proscuitto.  In the early nineties European-trained chefs such as Jimmy Sneed started to promote the idea that the some of the better country hams produced by a dwindling band of Southern artisans were worthy of the Continental treatment.  It didn't take long before this idea caught on, and with wind in their sails generated by the locavore and slow food movements, American long-cured hams are now de rigueur on the menus of the top restaurants in the country.  

However, it can get confusing for the average consumer, who may buy a country ham recommended by a celebrity chef, only to get cold feet about eating it uncooked when confronted with cooking instructions as per USDA regulations.  Despite endless reading on the subject, I was confused myself and decided to visit a country ham producer to gain understanding as to which hams to cook, and which to enjoy like prosciutto.

Sam Edwards, the third-generation curemaster and proprietor of S Wallace Edwards & Sons of Surry, Virginia, explained that it all gets down to water activity.  The longer a ham is aged, the lower the water activity, and therefore the ability for bacteria to multiply.  In general, water activity in hams  aged over fourteen months is low enough to be eaten uncooked.  However, given the lack of standarisation among country ham producers, the safest thing to do is to buy a country ham that has been produced by an experienced craftsman, who then labels the product as a European-style cured ham, rather than as a country ham. 

To make things easier for his customers, Edwards has created three tiers of country hams.  Virginia Country Hams, which are aged from four to six months, need to be cooked.  Wigwam Hams, aged eight to twelve months and are the closest to the traditional country hams of his grandfather's generation, also requiring cooking.  Eighteen-month aged hams, which have achieved the transluscence and tenderness associated with European-cured hams, have been christened Surryano.

Made with humanely reared Berkshire pork which are fed Virginia peanuts, Surryano tastes remarkably similar to its namesake, serrano ham.  I recently served Surryano ham to my parents aside bruschetta and a chilled Albariño.  It was absolutely delightful, easily rivalling the various Jamón  I enjoyed when in Barcelona in July.

Southerners eat cooked and shaved Virginia Country Ham on their famous biscuits, but I prefer to serve it wrapped around cantaloupe, which serves to counter-balance the saltiness.  A collection of British ex-pats at a recent party in Washington, DC, mistook it for Parma ham, and were surprised to discover is was the Southern delicacy that they had been avoiding on their excusions south of the Mason Dixon line. 

For Christmas I look forward to tackling a whole, bone-in Wigwam Ham, which will likely require a good 24 to 48 hours soaking to remove the salt before a long slow simmer and a quick finishing off in the oven.  Until then, I'll work my way though my stock of ham steaks gleened from Edwards shop in Surry, par-boiled and then pan-fried, perhaps lightly glazed with brown sugar, and served with fresh eggs, biscuits and grits for a rescuitating brunch, or collard greens for supper.


Further links:
Photos of our visit with S Wallace Edwards & Sons
New York Times: Bringing Flavour Back to the Ham
Edwards Virginia Hams
Olli Salumeria
Johnson County Hams Proscuitto