racheld

Good Morning, Ilana!! The snow's sifting down outside still, the percolator is sending her lovely aromas all through the downstairs, and all this sunshine and brightness coming in through the screen---what a nice way to start the day. The pavement is enchanting, and the view of the palms must be wonderful to look out upon. Are any of your plants food/fruit-bearing? Still inhaling those delicious spices, looking again and again.

Now, I've got major what-we'd-call-in-the-USA "Penzey's Envy." I just scrumbled through all the spice racks, seasoning packets, and lowered my sights to the Knorr's Vegetable Soup mix when I started the "yellow rice" Chris likes so much. I ended up with a bit of turmeric, some savory, a whiff of thyme, and a handful of black mustard seeds. Sultanas and chopped cashews on top after plating. But all THOSE for RICE!!!

Your perfect fried chicken and those cheese biscuits (the combination that got you your G.R.I.T.S. Girl membership card) are a winning duo with any guests, especially those whose own home cooking generally tends toward pasta dishes. And interactive---just standing around a skillet of chicken frying can form friendships, cement alliances, forge bonds between nations. Just knowing someone who CAN cook that magical dish is getting to be a scarce commodity. And the scent as they enter the house---Dom and foie gras cannot equal that. Some quick-wilted hot greens or a lovely salad, with fruit or an ice cream sundae for dessert---(I still go back and look at your rosy quinces).

This just takes my heart and my imagination---a spire of plain, sturdy bread, right out there on the stainless, where baskets are set down and money exchanged. Customers brush past them, or perhaps lift three to get to just the right one.The breaths of the ages circles round them, as centuries of commerce continue and they sit there waiting their turn to enter the cycle. More impressive than mountains or statues, in their way, and as beautiful. The gum and cigarettes flanking the bread are so pristine in their cellophane and plastic, and the good, honest bread is just there, naked and true. My awe and imagination color all your words, with history and faith intermingled too closely with modern convenience and old ways. This is so fulfilling a journey you're conducting, and there's an atmosphere in these pages that crosses many miles and years. I am so looking forward to seeing your hands preparing food in that kitchen so far from all I know.

YESSSSS! Awaiting every picture and caption. I used to have a cereus (Night bloomin' cereus, as it's known in garden clubs all over the South, with ALL its title said every time, like Sissy Louise and Billy Joe). We have been known to just sit awhile on the patio and watch.

I'm just wondering when LACKING a talent or skill became something to admire or boast of? That's practically on a par with not botherin' our lil' ole heads about business and other man stuff. rachel, going off to marinate those dinosaur ribs

Oh, Miss Maggie!!! A glimpse of your own domain. It's about time---your mind percolates out words past believing, but your kitchen has endless creative possibilities, as well. And what with the naan? I think I'm craving some, inspired/inflicted by a small child's devouring a great wheel of it on some FN show or another recently, and by the not-quite-what-I-wanted jalapeno/corn cornbread for supper tonight. And the wee kitchen is not functioning at the moment---it's under a big clear cakedome on the pass-through, like a sixties diorama awaiting June in her pearls. I like a fun, funky bit of lagniappe for spicing up the plain old kitchen decor.

Wow...how do you get your refrigerator door open? And your cabinets, for that matter? ← It's all Fairy food--whatever you want to come out of the pot, does. Three things in succession, if you choose. My favorite potful is broccoli, ice cream and espresso.

I Win!!

Why do I keep thinking of Mary Maloney?

I meant to ask---were the prawns already cooked when you did the roe-remove? I understand the canned caviar---it MUST have some sort of cooking process, but if you bought the prawns raw, were the eggs the gray-green of uncooked shrimp, turning the lovely rose when they cooked? They are absolutely gorgeous, and the photo is magnificent. I can look on and admire and marvel, though I don't care for the taste. The picture is a feast for the eyes, though.

Everything looks marvelous!!! I've never encountered a preggie prawn, so to speak---where were they and how did you do the extraction? (trying to feature a nursery in there somewhere). Our day was quiet---pink goodie bags for everyone, early morning and some through the day as they came in, then Chris and I tried for l'Homard Rouge, but the parking lot and SRO were daunting, so we came back for a lovely quiet booth at our neighborhood Mandarin grill. A lovely book, the new Jane Austen DVD, and still lots of Godiva goodies hanging around

Thank YOU, Dear Yetty-getttti! It's all in the black skillet. Recipe is over on the Southern Traditions thread on the Southern Food Culture forum. Lots of far-away-from-biscuits folks craving them lately. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=5637&st=180 post 193 I just gave two frozen ones out of the bag in the freezer to next-door neighbor. She lives alone, and was pondering on the phone what to have for dinner. I said "Come over and see what's in my freezer." She came over for coffee, we talked about two hours, then we looked in, got out the Zip-loks, and she bagged up: A wedge of the Christmas Pannettone, a cranberry bagel, two frozen biscuits, an Emeril Chicken/Apple sausage, a little pack of blueberry mini-muffins, several eclairs, about two dozen meatballs, the leftover mac-n-cheese from brunch, and a Glad-box of chicken casserole, ready for the oven. Looking in the freezers and pantry is looking at riches, to me. It's not quite the same as when we canned several hundred jars every Summer and filled three freezers, but for our little garden and reduced family size, it's wealth, indeed. Neighbor went home and came back with a hand-knit bag and dumped the contents on the table---"Choose whichever one you like," she said. So we tried tea cozies on several of the teapots for size, and my big old eggplant Aladdin pot has a beautiful variegated cover, spout and handle out the little armholes, and lid-button shining out the skylight. Sharing's wonderful

I missed mentioning the absolute luxury of having three children growing up in the kitchen, all learning to cook, prep AND clean, so that whatever you stir, cut, blend, cook or whisk with disappears from one side of you and magically appears, washed, sanitized and dried, on the other

I could swear I saw the enchanting Cote de Pablo of NCIS scarfing down the new "crunchy hot wings" in a KFC commercial last night.

Two words: folded arms. Anybody standing around with their arms tucked in, just watching me, drives me bats. I'm a meditative cook, a story-on-the-Bose type, and any dance is a solo. It used to be great fun when the children were growing up, in our big kitchen, everybody with a station at the LOOONNNGG kitchen bar and counters, with the food just pouring out in great quantities to be delivered to parties and gatherings. Then came the getting there, the setting up, with hosts and guests just standing AROUND. And if anyone loves children, it's me, but hosts' children---you can ask them to move just so many times, and then you're ready to retreat home with all your pretty platters and spoons. I arrived once to find the resident five-year-old, aproned up and eager, ready to drag that little step-stool to EVERY SINGLE SPOT I needed to BE at that moment, and her beaming parents, so proud of her talents in the kitchen. I DO love teaching little ones to cook, but in the press of one-hour-til-service is not the time to be instructing, dodging and smiling grimly through set teeth. T'aint fair to the guests, hosts or kids. rachel, who once took in four neighbors during an ice storm, all the while cooking for a party of 200, and decorating a wedding cake around the eight-year-old's busy questions and busier fingers. The Mom didn't get in my way---she was too busy being wrapped in my afghan in my chair by my fireplace with one of my books.

Oh, Sparrow!!! I MISSED this in August!!! (I just wrote "I don't know how I missed this, etc.") But I do---I was in the hospital with that pesky kidney stone during this very week. I LOVE this stove! I bought her Baby Sis last year at a BIG Flea Market on Highway 74, on the way home from Cincinnati. It's not year-round, just a bunch of tables and tents and trucks and people who open up the back of their pickups and vans, plus LOTS of those huge big CONUS containers full of who- knows-what. I went strolling up into one and saw this tiny stove standing there in the gloom, with the loveliest teal/pale turquoise paint highlighting her white doors and top. We still haven't brought her in the house; she sits out in the potting shed, awaiting time to take out the Harvest Gold monstrosity upstairs which came with the house. I think the new one will look wonderful in between the cabinets, and we'll paint the open dish ones above the same color. Yours looks perfect right there, with those heirlooms and their history combined with that of the stove. I can't believe I missed this!!

OHHHH, Y'all---you make our little pee-diddly scattering look like dandruff on tweed. Or, should I say powdered sugar, keeping the food theme?

Our Sunday afternoon Goodwill excursion yielded two burgundy-rimmed "service" plates---it's inscribed on the backs in the same script as the china company name. The centers are hand-painted pannier-skirted ladies of extreme decollete' and hairdos---two different poses, and they're perfect for the two plate display racks in the upstairs what-should-be-a-dining-room, now a sitting room with lovely morning sunlight. I put them away to go into Caro's Valentine box, as she gets a pretty plate or two for every occasion. Also four little saber-bladed silver knives, very small, but not butter knives---I'm thinking fruit or fish; a handful of tarnished silver dessert forks with pretty scrollwork even up on the tines, a beautiful Prussian china bowl, painted with sepia roses, and a set of four burgundy damask chair dresses with sashes, $7.99 each, with a half-price sticker, so 4.00. I'm stocking up on cheap chair skirts, for a lawn party in June.

This is just beautiful, and must be simply stunning in real life. Thanks for sharing this---the golden light just beams, and the proportions and workmanship---lovely. Even more so now that I've looked it up and seen photos---the recreation of the symbols and letters on the doors is really well done. Do you have a back view of the graceful curves?

Yes, indeed---Orville would be proud. I still love the Laura books for a Winter read, and we were just discussing Farmer Boy in a thread not long ago. My memory of her popcorn was the Christmas dinner when their friends the Boasts came for the day, they had a Pa-shot turkey or venison, and then the two ladies made dishpans full of popcorn to sit and munch after dessert. My most memorable of their holiday meals was the Thanksgiving dinner when they finished the meal with a preciously-saved can of peaches, doled out one half to each little dish, with a few saltines, all from the larder of the (railroad?) storage which they were living in and guarding for the Winter. Just the description of that golden peach in its heavy syrup, out there in the bare cold landscape alone, the luscious taste and unaccustomed sweetness from afar, with the common old crackers---that child's delight in such a plain treat remains strong on the page.

One of the favorite repasts of ALL four of my grandparents. A bit of trivia---like the riddles people ask each other in bars, with beers as prize: Take a glass of milk or buttermilk. Take a glass exactly like it and fill it with another food. Put all of the food into the glass of milk, and it won't overflow. What's in the second glass? There are probably various answers; I just know the one I heard and have tried.

A perfectly delicious Father Brown short story, The Invisible Man. I was captivated by the first paragraph: In the cool blue twilight of two steep streets in Camden Town, the shop at the corner, a confectioner’s, glowed like the butt of a cigar. One should rather say, perhaps, like the butt of a firework, for the light was of many colours and some complexity, broken up by many mirrors and dancing on many gilt and gaily-coloured cakes and sweetmeats. Against this one fiery glass were glued the noses of many guttersnipes, for the chocolates were all wrapped in those red and gold and green metallic colours which are almost better than chocolate itself, and the huge white wedding cake in the window was somehow at once remote and satisfying, just as if the whole North Pole were good to eat. Such rainbow provocations could naturally collect the youth of the neighbourhood up to the ages of ten or twelve. G. K. Chesterton, of course. And the next story in the book is Lamb to the Slaughter with the famous leg of lamb, and, I believe, some potatoes and a can of peas which she runs out to the grocery for, to establish her alibi. Mary Maloney was waiting for her husband to come home from work. Sinister sentence, that. Especially from a "children's" writer.

Coming back in with this list from a while ago---keeping with the biscuit memories revived as in a gentle, slowly reminiscent conversation among friends---from the first time I stepped up onto that big silvery lard can which held the flour, the biscuit pan, the sifter, I was at home in the kitchen as nowhere else. My Mother was left-handed and my Mammaw would not let her cook or cut "backward like that." And Maw was my first Mother-in-Law, a sweet country woman who lived for her family. In a little book of memories I finally got together for all the children and relatives for Christmas this past year: Because of her own banishment from the kitchen, Mother was quite willing and ready for me to learn at her apronside. She’d repeat from time to time, “I ALWAYS said I was going to let MY girls cook,” from the time I had to climb ONTO the lard can to sift and measure and stir. I’m sure my first “making” of biscuits consisted of several stirs around the flourpan with the wooden spoon, with the attendant flurries of flour onto the counters and floor which my young eagerness caused. The flour in the pan was WAY too much, with the Crisco cut in carefully in the indentation, the right amount of buttermilk stirred in, gently pulling down the side flour from the crater and stirring it in until the right texture was reached. THEN you could reach in, closing your fingers like spiderlegs around a handful of the soft, squishy dough, to roll into little round pillows, leaving more dry flour in the pan than you had used in the biscuits. This was re-sifted BACK into the big can, the pan and sifter replaced, and the lid tightly sealed for safekeeping. Soon I was aproning up and hitting the kitchen for real, standing on the can, a chair, tiptoes, whatever it took to be allowed at that food and all the excitement of seeing something I made come out of that oven, that stewpot, that Jello mold. Aunt Lucy’s cook had cautioned Mother about the sin of using “self-raisin’” flour---that was the resort of a trashy cook, and anyone who didn’t keep a fresh can of Clabber Girl in the cabinet---well, nobody would eat HER sorry biscuits, anyway. And so we measured out the salt and the baking powder, me with a spoon for a long time---a teaspoon was measured with the same spoons we used to stir coffee, and a tablespoon was the round-bowled soupspoon that came in the silverware chest. Mother would dump the required portion into her palm, toss it in, and be done with it. I saw a little set of copper measuring spoons at a friend’s house when I was about twelve, and thought they were just the cutest things---the silver ring that kept them attached in their little cuddle, and the neat way they hung on the hook right over the counter. I asked for, and got, my own set for Christmas that year, and measurements became an easier matter. And then, when I had my own home, Maw, who lived right next door on the farm homeplace, had the exact silver can under her own kitchen counter, right down to the big circled “HF” imprinted in the lid. She had a bowl and sifter in hers, as well, and contrary to Mother’s fastidious spooning and stirring, made biscuits BY hand and WITH her hand. She, too, put twice-too-much flour into the bowl, made the crater by banking it against the sides with her fingers, and then three-fingered a clop of Crisco out of the three-pound can. Her busy little soft hands were quick as lightning, working that flour into the handful, fingertips busily rubbing, til the “peas” stage. I don’t think she measured the buttermilk, either, but just poured from the BIG crockery pitcher, lifting it with a big sigh, and then I’d clean the white clotty handprint off the handle with a wet dishrag before replacing it in the refrigerator. She also made the buttermilk in a big crock, which somehow took up most of the left side of the refrigerator, possibly two gallons worth. Dried milk, water, a cup of last week’s making, overnight on the kitchen counter with a neat tea-towel cover, and voila!! Good as a fresh-churned batch. I loved to watch her hand squish that biscuit dough; at first the buttermilk shot through her quick fingers like soapsuds, then as the flour absorbed some of it, the dough became a heavy, pliable mass, with the flour worked in from the sides til it was to her liking---a quite wet dough which would seek to escape from her two hands when she lifted it from the bed of flour like a limp cat. Onto a flourcloth it went, the cloth homemade from newbought Curity diapers, each sewn double for strength, and covered in a thick layer of flour. Several lifts of the four cloth edges in turn, to even up the dough and give it a thorough coating, then pinches quickly rolled through floury palms, placed gently into a Crisco-rubbed skillet, with a final two-knuckled salute to the top, making twin dimples to hold the pools of brushed-on melted butter. The cloth also went back into the bin after use, its dusty weight settling into the dark to await its next needing. All our biscuits were different, all good, all crusty and golden and steamy-soft within. Maw’s had a crispy bottom crust, beloved by Paw, who would separate several biscuits with a quick twist, butter them BEFORE we said the blessing, then distribute the dripping top halves to the little ones, while he applied a liberal dousing of sorghum or pear preserves to the cookie-crisp, butter-saturated bottoms. For Paw, life was simple: gravy went on the soft, spongy top halves, syrup on the bottoms. Would that all our paths be so easily chosen.

Marke---the only out-of-the-way ingredient in your stores there might be the SR flour---Martha White is the one of choice at our house, of course, but White Lily or even Pillsbury would do. Martha White just seems to make better (read Southern-style) biscuits. Biscuits are customarily made in a BIG bowl of flour, dragging small avalanches down into the buttermilk/shortening puddle in the bottom until the right consistency, either for hand-rolling or roll-out-and-cut, whichever you prefer. And the shortening is seldom measured, either, just a three-finger clop out of the can and into the bowl. This is as precise as I can get the measures. 2 1/4 cups self-rising flour 1/2 t. salt 2 T. sugar (optional) 1/4 c. shortening (Crisco, of course, if you have it) Sift dry. Cut in cool shortening to small peas stage. Pour in 1 1/2 c. buttermilk and stir all around the bowl until it makes a big wet ragged pillow. Pour out onto well-floured counter or flourcloth, roll or pat out and cut into 12 biscuits. If you use a flourcloth, lift each side in turn and sort of make a semi-fold of the wet dough til it's coated all over the outsides with flour. Dip the cutter down into flour between each cut. You can also pinch off pieces and roll between floured palms. Oven 425. Grease or spray black skillet or cake pan. Set biscuits just touching in pan, so they'll rise UP and not OUT. Give each one a tiny "poomph" with the first two finger-knuckles, to make a nice pool for the butter later. Bake 25 minutes, check for browning, and give another couple of minutes til you like the color. Brush tops with melted butter. Five minutes to make---25 to bake.