Cooking to Honor Edna Lewis

[Lan4Dawg]

You daughter sounds like a very smart young lady. I bet her report turns out great.

Do try the pimento cheese melted.

Years ago at small coffee shop where I worked, one of our most popular lunch items was a croissant, cut in half and spread with our pimento cheese, sprinked with garlic powder and run under the broiler until the cheese was melted and just browning. it was a twist on an old southern classic.

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That sounds really good!! I will try it with the leftovers.

-Mike

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or take the pimento cheese sandwich and just run it through the sandwich press like you would a grilled cheese.

[ludja]

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Beni Wafers:  These were great and after this meal they were put many different uses.  I think next time we will roll them out a little bit thiner, we got them to around a 1/4 inch thick on our first batch.  Peice of cake to make, we will be keeping a batch on hand for a while.

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Shrimp Paste:  WOW!  This might be my favorite recipe out of the book so far!  The first taste while it was still warm lit me up.  My wife and I kept looking at each other while we were preparing it like we were crazy.  I mean, 1 month prior we would have never thought of grinding up good eating shrimp that way.  But, in the name of research we followed through.  I've eaten it a half dozen ways since then, I can't get enough of it!  For our meal I spread it on the Beni Wafers and stirred a bit of it into my grits. 

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I really like both benne wafers and shrimp paste and they're a great combination as well. I've made the Peacock and Lewis benne wafer recipe several times; I think it's a nice recipe with the lard flavor and the crackers keep for a long time if they aren't eaten! Bill Neal has a variant in Biscuits, Spoonbread and Sweet Potato Pie that uses half butter and half lard and I may try that next time for comparison. The recipe adds sesame seeds to his basic pie crust recipe.

I haven't made the Peacock/Lewis shrimp paste recipe yet. It was interesting to compare it with the recipe I have made from Damon Lee Fowler's Classical Southern Cooking. Fowler's version has a much higher ratio of shrimp to butter and simpler seasonings.

Fowler recipe: 1 1/2 lbs cooked shrimp to 1/4 lb (1 stick) butter

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Peacock/Lewis recipe: 1 lb cooked shrimp to 1 cup (2 sticks) butter

The flavorings are a bit different as well.

Fowler recipe: grated shallots (2 Tbs), s&p and cayenne pepper

vs

Peacock/Lewis: s&p, cayenne pepper, sherry (1/4 cup) and lemon juice (2 Tbs)

I loved the result with the Fowler recipe; it was amazing how such a simple list of ingredients were transformed in the final dish. Besides serving it with benne wafers, I've served it another traditional manner suggested by Fowler: spread on white bread toast points (with the crust removed). He mentions another traditional use as well. If you form the shrimp paste in a mold and cool it, you can slice it and served it lightly fried at breakfast. Another breakfast/brunch/light supper option besides stirring it into grits is to stir shriimp paste into scrambled eggs.

A funny story is that when I made this the first time and told my Mom, who has no connection with Southern cooking, about my great new discovery, she said, "Oh, that's shrimp butter." Whether nor not it derived from the Southern canon, shrimp butter was apparently a part of the general cocktail/hors d'oeuvres repertoire in the 60's/70's Northeast, anyway.

edited to add: In no way do I want to turn you away from your detailed exploration of the Lewis/Peacock book but I'd also heavily recommend books by Bill Neal (Bill Neal's Southern Cooking and Biscuit's, Spoonbread and Sweet Potato Pie and Damon Lee Fowler, if you don't have them yet. Classical Sothern Cooking by Fowler is a bit difficult to find as it is out of print (I wish they would reissue it!) but he has a number of other good books as well. Both authors are scholars in the field and provide lots of interesting background on the ingredents, roots and context of the different recipes.

Edited January 18, 2007 by ludja (log)

[ludja]

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Each month the children have to do a book report for school.  February's report is on a famous, important or historical African American in support of Black History Month.  So over this meal we discussed with my daughter who she might choose.  She would love to do Dr. King but as she said "everyone will do that one".  How about Will Smith (we use Will Smith a great deal as a model since teen culture is so focused on bling bling, foul mouthed rappers and negative sterotypes, we love that he refuses to bend to that), no she says "movies aren't important enough".  Medgar Evers, no. Fredrick Douglas, no.  She has decided to do Edna Lewis and when asked why she is important enough her reply was "even after she is gone Miss Lewis' work is important in preserving the culture of the south, and that is proven by all we have learned by cooking from her books. 

-Mike

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This is so great, spotlighting an important person and topic! I hope the report is shared with the rest of the class.

[NYC Mike]

Ludja, thanks for all the comments. The Fowler shrimp paste recipe looks like it would taste very different and worth a taste test!

He mentions another traditional use as well. If you form the shrimp paste in a mold and cool it, you can slice it and served it lightly fried at breakfast.

This sounds like a great idea. We have done similar with grits and made cakes out of them.

edited to add: In no way do I want to turn you away from your detailed exploration of the Lewis/Peacock book but I'd also heavily recommend books by Bill Neal (Bill Neal's Southern Cooking and Biscuit's, Spoonbread and Sweet Potato Pie and Damon Lee Fowler, if you don't have them yet. Classical Sothern Cooking by Fowler is a bit difficult to find as it is out of print (I wish they would reissue it!) but he has a number of other good books as well. Both authors are scholars in the field and provide lots of interesting background on the ingredents, roots and context of the different recipes.

These recommendations are most welcome and we will pick them up! Thank you! We are in the process of branching out more and have recently picked up In Pursuit of Flavor by Miss. Lewis, The Lady and Sons Cookbook by Paula Dean (Food TV affiliation aside , I love her hard knocks story and her personality is dynomite)and have been cooking a little out of the Folse Encyclopedia on Cajun and Creole cooking (its very big and a bit intimidating).

-Mike