#47 THE SFA SErvES you A Food From THE SouTHErn QuArterly FoodwAyS AlliAncE Publication of Gravy is underwritten by Mountain Valley Spring Water Editor’S Note WE have A HEAlTHy SWEET TOOTH HErE at THE SFA. Our oral history archives are studded with tales of banana pudding, caramel Document • StuDy • celebrate cake, and sweet potato pie. We even have a whole project dedicated to the New Orleans sno-ball. As a lover of all things built on a base of ABOUT TABLE OF sugar, butter, or cream, I decided it was time for a sweets-themed issue GRAVY CONTENTS of Gravy. In these pages, our contributors bring you stories, images, and recipes from the old-school (lemon chess pie) to the nueva sur A publication of the Southern page 2 (Mexican-style paletas). Foodways Alliance, a member- Channeling Aunt Ruth you’ll notice that this issue of Gravy is a bit fatter than usual (no, supported institute of the Center Karen Barker it wasn’t the sugar) and a lot more colorful. We hope you enjoy the new for the Study of Southern Culture format. When you’re finished reading, please visit the SFA’s blog for a page 5 at the University of Mississippi. link to a very sweet Spotify playlist inspired by this issue. From Bra to Birmingham Visit www.southernfoodways.org. Marie Stitt —Sara Camp Arnold Editor: page 8 Sara Camp Arnold Baking with Nothing in the House [email protected] Emily Hilliard Designer: page 11 Devin Cox Te Quiero, La Michoacana [email protected] Mark Camarigg page 13 An Oral History Cakewalk ISSUE # from the SFA archives 47 page 17 Made from Scratch Jed Portman PHOTO, PAGE 1 by Denny Culbert. Publication of Gravy is underwritten by Mountain Valley Spring Water. When Ben, my North Carolina–born husband, brought me south after culinary school, I was a stranger in a strange land. Eventually, I transitioned from bagels to biscuits, from cheesecake to chess pie, and discovered that what I always thought was cornbread was actually corn cake. I married into a family of legendary bakers. To me, the young professional baker, the Barker family prowess set the bar stratospherically high, and the expectations associated with my training only amplified my intimidation. My husband’s people were originally tobacco-growing subsistence farmers from the Union ridge community of northern Alamance County, in the North Carolina Piedmont. The women of the household produced three meals every day, passing on cooking skills and knowledge to their daughters. Ben’s grandmother louise and her sister ruth became known throughout the area for their fine hand with breads and sweets. Working a cast-iron, wood-fired oven with no thermostat or controls, in a kitchen without electricity or plumbing, they honed an extensive repertoire. My father-in-law recalls that “they baked every day; they made biscuits every day; and that can lead to darn good biscuits—every day.” ruth was a talented farm cook who gloriously made do with channelinG ingredients that were on hand. My husband swears that his chubby conformation as a child was due in large part to his summers on the farm, with unlimited molasses-and-butter-slathered biscuits and a aunt ruth never-ending parade of pies. How I became a Southern baker When louise moved off the farm and into town, her style became a bit more modernized and refined. Cake baking was a highly by Karen Barker competitive sport among homemakers, with each woman having a particular specialty. louise was considered an all-around champion, I GrEW UP in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, where there but her pound cakes garnered the greatest admiration. She was was a very strong corner-bakery culture but little actual home baking. detailed and exacting and made sure that her daughter-in-law—Ben’s People tended to purchase their breads and desserts rather then mom, Jeanette—was able to recreate family recipes to her standards. produce them out of cramped urban kitchens. I was lucky that my Feeling the pressure, I quickly tried to perfect my crust skills maternal grandmother, an exception to this rule, lived upstairs. She when I moved to North Carolina. I learned that a smile and a well- was a russian immigrant who barely spoke English, had no written crafted pastry go a long way in conquering any social situation. After recipes, and never used standardized measures. Bubby Fanny turned bringing a couple of blueberry-blackberry pies to my first Barker out an amazing array of Eastern European specialties and taught family reunion, I was deemed “all right.” When persnickety Gran me that homemade sweets were a tribute to one’s family and always louise told me I had “the gift” for baking, I felt as though it was I who included the ingredients of time and love. page 2 | Issue Number 47 Issue Number 47 | page 3 had received the greatest gift—to pass muster with her was no small feat. (little did she know that my only domestic talent was in the culinary arena.) Jeanette, louise, and ruth were my role models for rich pound cakes, delicate cheese straws, and billowy lemon meringues. I’m a From Bra tinkerer, but I never messed with my baking angels’ recipes: They were simple, exceptional, and lovingly passed down. Their time- tested methods, explanations, and memories associated with each recipe were as valuable as the recipes themselves. I learned that fresh, hand-grated coconut was the secret to Gran’s famous holiday coconut cake; and how Aunt ruth’s impeccably fried pies depended on apples that were home grown, picked, and dried, encased by a flaky lard dough. It was impressed upon me that the family’s definitive cornbread recipe relies not only on full-throttle buttermilk, farm eggs, and fresh stoneground meal, but a well-seasoned skillet and a generous amount of bacon grease. The next generation is in training. My niece lee has spent the last two Christmas Day mornings at Jeanette’s elbow, learning how to replicate her biscuits. My son Gabriel has shown a strong interest in scratch baking, and my granddaughter Kayla has recently asked me to show her how to make bread pudding. I have come to believe that in fact you are what you eat, in that a family’s history resides in those passed-down recipes. My Bubby had little in common with Ben’s kinfolk other than the nurturing secret of home baking and how important it is to create a set of food memories for your family. It is not lost on me that the phrase “give me a little sugar” means “show me some love” in the Southern lexicon. remarkably, I can hear my grandmother saying the same thing in yiddish: gib mir a bissel tsuker. Perhaps, at their hearts, Flatbush and Union ridge aren’t so different after all. Karen Barker was happily co-proprietor and pastry chef of the Magnolia Grill in Durham, NC (1986–2012). Now, happily, not. IMAGE, PAGE 2: Gladys Always Put a rabbit’s Foot in Her Apron Pocket to Birmingham When She Made a Meringue, acrylic on wood (2010), by Amy C. Evans. On honeysuckle and going home by Marie Stitt page 4 | Issue Number 47 Issue Number 47 | page 5 years later, I returned to Alabama and reunited with my childhood friend Charlie. Charlie has IT’S that TrANSITIONAl TIME, here in northern Italy, when spring the most smiling eyes turns summer and flowers open in silent explosions.l ately, on you’ve ever seen. And— evening runs, I’ve been thrown off pace by the pollen-thick air. I run fear of stereotypes be through farmland, alongside chestnut trees and poplars, past a small damned—he’s a farmer hazelnut grove, a few slopes of vines, an acre of green wheat, a field of who wears plaid, has a violet, and a patch of golden wildflowers. beard, makes banjos, and The wisteria hits me first. A month ago, it was purple and sits on his front porch it smelled like a cold glass of Grapico. Now there’s a white variety and plays them. One sprawling throughout the trees. When your heart rate is up and you afternoon he invited breathe deeply, everything smells more intense. But last weekend, I a few friends over for ran through a wisteria-heavy air pocket and smelled something else— biscuits and honeysuckle the rich, skull-filling scent of honeysuckle. sorbet. He’d gathered I scanned the brush until I found a small patch of flowers. I armfuls of blossoms and stepped over some low bushes to reach the blossoms and pulled a few let them steep in a big from the branches. I pinched the bottom of a flower and sucked the pot of sugar and water. nectar from the stamen. Honeysuckles aren’t really a food, they’re He made a honeysuckle more like Christmas lights of fragrance strung up in the green boughs syrup, and from that —little olfactory firecrackers. made the sorbet. We sat The smell of those flowers took me back to when I was six years on the porch, as the biscuits went black in the oven, eating icy flowers. old, living in Alabama. We lived close to the public golf course, and Charlie brought out moonshine in a mason jar. We sat there together, the fence was always draped with honeysuckles in the summer. What the summer smell of Alabama all around us, green and humid, box makes these flowers intriguing isn’t just their taste-smell—direct, fan blowing, eating sorbet out of mugs and passing around the sweet, floral—it also has to do with quantity.