Cranberry Relish Pie

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Aren't you looking forward to Thanksgiving? I don't mean to wish time away, but these days between the time change and the holidays are my least favorite of the entire year. It's oppressive, the way the night settles in too soon and overstays its welcome, encouraging me to hibernate lazily under my down comforter. With Thanksgiving comes the promise that the darkness will be trumped by twinkling Christmas lights, giving me the courage and fortitude to brave the cold and seek out company.

To keep my spirits up (and to stay awake past 7PM) until November 28th actually arrives, I've been practicing holiday recipes. The best and most unusual thing I've made so far is undoubtedly this cranberry relish pie. It is heady with the fragrance of orange peel, boldly tart, subtly sweet, and encased by cheddar flecked crust. Even if you're not interested in going to the trouble of baking a pie, the relish itself is delicious spooned over store-bought angel food cake or mixed into oatmeal. It's also an easy and colorful gift for a hostess or a guest and will keep in a mason jar for several weeks.

Cranberry Relish

12 ounce bag fresh cranberries
1 unwaxed orange
1 apple, core removed*
1 cup baking walnuts
1 1/2 cups raw cane sugar

1. Pulse cranberries, orange (pith and all) and apple individually and mix with sugar and walnuts. Let sit in the fridge at least over night, but ideally for five days before using.

*Normally I use a Fuji apple, but in this pie I recommend a Pink Lady for a sweeter pie or a Granny Smith for a more tart flavor.

Cranberry Pie
-serves eight

Cheddar Vodka Crust (<-- click link for recipe) *
1 batch cranberry relish
1/4 cup AP flour or 3 Tablespoons corn starch
1 egg yolk
splash of heavy cream
2 Tablesooons butter
turbinado sugar for dusting (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 400.

2. Mix flour with cranberry relish. Roll out half of dough and place in a greased 9" pie pan. Fill with relish mix, dot with butter and working quickly, decorate as desired with the other half (here is how to lattice).

3. Beat egg yolk with heavy cream. Brush on top part of crust and dust with sugar.

4. Bake for 45-55 minutes, turning every 15 minutes, or until crust is golden brown. You may need to use a crust shield half way through (here is how you make one).

* For this particular pie, I like a really strong, aged sharp white cheddar.

Pimento Cheese

 

No respectable Southern woman would hand out her recipe for pimento cheese willy-nilly. Each of us thinks of her own pimento cheese- which is ever-so-slightly different from our neighbor's- as the crème de la crème. We relish in the delight of being begged for the details of its assembly. Luckily for y'all I gave up on being respectable long ago. Plus, I just plain like talking about pimento cheese. It's the stuff of my childhood, of long trips to Florida sitting in the back back seat of my family's woody wagon. Of Wednesday night potluck dinners at church. Of tea parties on my birthday. It is food that I at a time when I didn't know the phrase "hold the mayonnaise," when I didn't question whether white Wonder bread was covertly and slowly killing me.

 

In recent years pimento cheese has been quite the fad food and has served as an addition to far too many dishes, cupcakes unfortunately not excluded. Certain celebrity chefs recommend that you make it in the food processor, use cream cheese in lieu of mayonnaise, or add pickle relish, raw onion, BBQ dry rub, etc. Let me be clear: none of the aforementioned things are acceptable. Not North of the Mason Dixon line, not West of the Mississippi, not in Outer Siberia- not anywhere, not at all, not at any time.

Pimento cheese dates back to 1870, but started gaining a lot of popularity in the mid 20th century. Back before union laws guaranteed lunch breaks, ladies would roll a cart right through the textile factories selling pimento cheese sandwiches, and get this- they were so delicious and so popular that the carts were referred to as "dope wagons." At the very same time, upper class ladies were serving identical sandwhiches, cut into tiny triangles, at the stuffiest of high society luncheons. And that's what's fascinating about this old Southern staple: in its simplest form- cheese, mayonnaise and peppers on white bread- it is not fettered by age, race or class. Something that good deserves to be left alone.

Proper pimento cheese should be a blend of yellow and white cheeses, bound but not overcome by mayonnaise, with a staccato of sweet, red peppers. The texture should be smooth, but not mushy and all elements, save except the pimentos themselves, should be savory. Often called the "caviar of the South," it deserves to be treated as such; putting it on top of a burger, a BLT, a hamburger- whatever insane thing the internet has thought of this week- will only dilute and mask the already perfect flavor combination of pimento cheese. It is to be eaten on top of crackers or between two slices of white bread (grilled occasionally) without care or inhibition regarding nutrition.

In my childhood, I rarely heard the words "pimento cheese" without a woman's name possessing them. But that's how really good, old recipes go in the South- they're passed from woman to woman on note cards bearing the original inventor's name. My Mother's recipe box is brimming with handwritten note cards, the secrets of women she has convinced to spill the beans- Katie's gingersnaps, Carol's peach pie, Shirley's cheesecake- each written in the formal cursive that all women of generations before mine seem to know and practice. The cards are stained a greasy because this isn't Pinterest; these recipes are recorded in only a handful of places and that's the way we Southern women intend it to stay. 

With that being said, I'm only going to tell you most of the secrets of my recipe: the types of cheese I use, the ratio of cheese to peppers to mayo, and that I always add walnuts. A good recipe may also call for: a couple dashes Worcestershire or hot sauce, a small spoonful of Dijon mustard, the liquid from hot and sweet pepper relish, or pecans. But that part is up to you. Whatever you choose to add is your secret; it is completely within your power, and yours alone, to whisper it to a dear friend on the back porch after the party has died down, to write a single copy on a note card bearing your name, or perhaps, never to tell it at all.

Pimento Cheese
-serves 10-15 as an appetizer

2 pounds cheese: equal parts mild cheddar, extra sharp aged cheddar, and colby jack
1 cup mayonnaise
5 ounces (about one large whole) roasted red pepper, chopped
large handful baking walnuts
salt and pepper to taste
Acceptable and optional additions: a couple dashes Worcestershire or hot sauce, a small spoonful of Dijon mustard, the liquid from hot and sweet pepper relish, pecans.
Unacceptable additions: anything crunchy like pickle relish, stinky or harsh like raw onion or garlic, or overwhelming like BBQ dry rub.

Grate cheese by hand on the large holes of a box grater. Mix with all other ingredients. Add salt and pepper to taste. Store in the fridge for up to ten days.

Notes
1. Pre-grated cheese is dry and processed with cellulose from wood pulp.
2. Blending the cheese and mayo in a food processor will result in a heap of greasy mush.
3. It is completely inappropriate to use a mayo that contains sugar. Trader Joe's organic mayo is good, but the traditional choice is Duke's.

Kinfolk (part 2)

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There is a reason that, despite their eternal and ever-growing popularity, s'mores are not on the menu at hardly any restaurants. S'mores feed a particular type of hunger, one that is greater than the hankering for something sweet at the end of a meal and is satisfied only by the act of their making.

For all of my blithering over my feelings and my salad, I failed to mention that our Kinfolk dinner was actually a workshop about "the art of campfire cooking." Whereas the first part of the evening was spent either sweating by the grill or acting like a pinball, bouncing between flippers Beth and Rebekka, the second half began with a sigh of relief. Our guests with full bellies, the dishes in the sink, the last shutter of our cameras clicked, we all sat down, (that glorious feeling, sitting) around the campfire and made s'mores.

The art of campfire cooking is in its layout; rather than the unilateral nature of the grill, the campfire is a panorama, ripe for camaraderie. Camaraderie and anticipation- those are the secret ingredients, the two things that make or break a s'more. Settled down around the crackling fire, we took pause to relish in that delicious type of yearning before indulging in the final course of our meal. We laughed. We told stories. We were fixed in one place at one time, with the worries of bills and emails and deadlines restrained at a safe distance beyond Rebekka's fence. We started as a group of strangers and acquaintances, but ended the evening- sticky and smudged with chocolate- as good friends, or "new old friends," as one rather insightful guest named it.

photo by Beth Kirby

photo by Beth Kirby

Southern Graham Crackers

yields about 20 crackers

adapted from Alton Brown

2 ounces all purpose flour
6 1/2 ounces whole wheat flour
1 1/4 ounces wheat bran
1/2 ounce wheat germ
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/8 teaspoon cardamom
3 ounces unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 ounces sorghum
1 1/4 ounces buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. In a blender or food processor, pulse all dry ingredients together. Add sorghum, buttermilk, butter and vanilla and pulse until a ball forms.

3. Chill dough if desired. I found it easier to work with straight out of the blender. Roll out under parchment paper (that's very important!) until it's 1/8" thick.

4. Cut dough into rectangles that fit the chocolate you are using (I recommend Olive and Sinclair 67% dark). Transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and make perforations with a fork. A pastry scraper comes in handy here.

5. Bake on the center rack for 20-25 minutes or until the edges just barely start to brown. Serve with earl gray marshmallows.

*Note: these are very old-fashioned graham crackers. If you find that they are too earthy or not sweet enough for you, brush them with melted butter and dust with cinnamon sugar. If you don't have a kitchen scale, here is a conversion chart that should help with the math.

Lovage & Gin Fizz

I met Courtney Webb a couple weeks ago and right off the bat, she was saying all the right words to me: chai peanut butter, white truffle mayonnaise, lovage soda syrup. Let me elaborate. Courtney is a Nashville native who moved to New Orleans to study architecture, then moved to New York for a good long while, where she became a part of the artisan community through markets and exhibits. In the end, New York was the right place, the wrong time. But it was bad timing that lead her back here to us in Nashville and she brought with her all the unique goods that she discovered in the city. 

Her shop, Hey Rooster General Store, opened in April. It's a small, sea foam green building with a yellow door on Gallatin Avenue, meticulously filled with things that are anything but general: beer and pretzel caramels, Chai peanut butter, handmade cutting boards, pickle brine, and nine different flavors of mayonnaise (does that make your heart flutter a bit too?). 

And that's where we come to lovage syrup. Lovage is an herb that grows in moderate climates all over the world and was once popular as a cordial that was said to ease the symptoms of jaundice, rheumatism and sea sickness. These days it's hard to come by. It looks and smells like the inner leaves of celery heart, but has a deep and spicy note like watercress or arugula, a flavor that is perfectly suited to balance out richer concoctions. I've been hoping to cook with lovage all summer, but have been deterred by the fact that it refuses to grow in my little driveway garden. The only place I've been able to get my hands on it in any form is at Hey Rooster. 

This cocktail is based on the Ramos gin fizz, which originated in New Orleans in 1888 at the Imperial Cabinet Saloon, the "palace de palate, coarsely called a bar" owned by Henry C. Ramos. The classic version is flavored by orange-flower water, egg white and cream. But don't you be deterred by that and don't you omit it either. The cream and egg work together to make the drink sumptuous, the way a root beer float is a pleasing combination of creamy, fizzy and foamy. My version is flavored with lovage instead of orange-flower water, making it a little more savory. 

One final suggestion regarding the gin fizz, from Henry Ramos' obituary in the New Orleans Item-Tribune, September 1928: "Pause a moment...before you...[sip]...one of these snowy white, velvety fizzes so that you might add the great pleasure of anticipation to the greater one of consumption. Pause and consider in awe the fortune about the befall you..."

Lovage & Gin Fizz

yields one cocktail
adapted from The Boys Club

1 cold large egg white
2 ounces gin
1/2 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce lovage syrup
1/2 ounce half and half
4 ice cubes*
cold soda water

1. In a mason jar with a lid or a cocktail shaker, shake (here is how) egg white for 30 seconds or until you see bubbles form.

2. Add gin, lemon juice, lovage syrup, half and half and ice cubes and shake for another minute, two if you're feeling ambitious- the original recipe says 12.

3. Strain into a glass (a highball if you have one) and top with soda water; start with 1/4 cup and adjust to taste.

*I used the kind of ice you buy in a bag at the gas station. If you think your ice is larger, err on the side of fewer cubes.

Hey Rooster General Store is located at 1106 Gallatin Avenue in East Nashville and is open every day except for Tuesday. 

Kinfolk (Part One)

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Our Kinfolk dinner. Good Lord, I could write a novel about it. I'm not typically one for sentimentality- I've been called a number of unpleasant terms by really just a slew people after admitting that I didn't cry during The Notebook- but Nashville, you've turned me soft. Soft like Beth's marshmallows. Soft like Dancing Fern cheese. Soft like roasty, toasty grilled bone marrow. All of which was part of our communal feast that night. 

I'm convinced my heart has been about two degrees away from melting into puddles on the floor while thinking about the countless people who helped me over the last few weeks, months, even years- about my new and old friends- about this city, which has welcomed me with open arms unlike any other place. Every last person who had a hand in this dinner, from the farmers to the guests, was nothing short of gracious. It's funny to hear myself say that now, because without knowing it, I think graciousness was really the point from the start. 

Beth, Rebekka and I set out to throw a dinner party that was as Southern as Southern could be, chalked full of ingredients like sorghum and okra and buttermilk, and furnished with goods from local artisans. But, to use my absolute favorite colloquialism, a cat can have kittens in the oven, but you wouldn't call them biscuits. Which is to say: you can use as many Southern ingredients as you like, but without the element of graciousness, you might as well be feeding people kittens. Just kidding. What I really mean is that it's not so much the the ingredients or the place that matters, but the act of sharing whatever you have- be it food or stories or a big, red-lipsticked smile- with others. 

So let me tell you about the menu and the event itself. I'll start with the produce because I'm a real sucker for beginnings. We got tomatoes from Nashville and Chattanooga farmers markets and had I not been tasked with cooking for more than twenty people, I would have stood in Rebekka's dining room and photographed them all day long, just to see how each different hour of light played tricks with the intricacies of their shapes and colors. I was in the kitchen by myself when the time came to play executioner (read: sous chef) and I apologized silently to the tomatoes as I sliced. Beth topped them with salt and herbs, because really, is there a better "side" in the summertime? (Ahem, no.)

We were also blessed with the biggest bunches of turnip greens I've ever seen, heirloom burgundy okra, hand picked corn, herbs fresh from Rebekka's garden and purple muscadines. 

Beth. Beth is out of control in a very Southern lady type of way. And so am I. If you don't know any Southern ladies, well, we want to do every. single. last. thing. humanly possible to make a dinner party perfect. I emailed her the week before the event, saying that I wished I had made pickled fennel. And what did she show up with? Pickled fennel, cucumber and green beans. Not to be outdone, I bought about three times as much bread as necessary from Bella Nashville (a favorite haunt of Sandor Katz!). And that's how the night started: with pickles, mountains of grilled bread, bone marrow, peaches and figs, plus local honey and regional cheese.

The cheese and bone marrow came from a place very near and dear to my heart: Porter Road Butcher/The Bloomy Rind. I'm pretty much in love with every man who works at PRB, partially because of their beards and extensive knowledge of bacon, but also because they're such gents! On a particularly rainy day a couple of weeks ago, a particularly beard-y butcher came to my car with an umbrella so that I wouldn't get wet walking to the door. And speaking of people who have helped me along the way- Kathleen, the owner and cheese monger at The Bloomy Rind, was the first person to sponsor a giveaway on my blog, back when like, fifteen people per day read it.

Beth made this muscadine sauce for this pulled pork. And a quick aside about the word "muscadine": it's one of these words that sounds just right rolling off of a Southern tongue, reverberating with fluidity and drawl. To my ears, it's sound is only bested by the name of a specific type of muscadine: "scuppernong." Or maybe "rhododendron." Or maybe when my Mom says "Carter's little liver pills," but that's a colloquialism for another post. 

Oh, and by the way, we were at Rebekka's house. We're always at Rebekka's house because she is, as my Ema likes to say, the hostess with the mostess. I wish I could scratch-and-sniff a photo so you could get an idea of what her home smelled like- lavender, mint, sage, rosemary...and bourbon punch. Dear Anthropologie, can you please make that candle? 

In her yard, our make-shift dining room, the grass was perfectly trimmed, the tables lined up symmetrically in rows and lights hung meticulously. The place settings, sent to us by West Elm, were pristine. For every drop of order present, an equal amount of lawlessness loomed in the nooks and crannies. Venerable trees peeking over the fence. Weeds creeping up it. Centerpieces made of wild flowers and herbs (assembled by Ruthie). With dusk rolling in and a roaring bonfire lit, the effect was bewitching. 

And the rest of our guests, oh my goodness. At the risk of sounding like a big ol' can of cheese whiz, shooting out hot air and artificial-ness, I have to tell you in all honesty that our guests were beautiful people in every sense of the word. They came early and helped; they stayed late and told stories around the campfire; they sent us thank you gifts. 

Here are a few of them: Maker's Workshop, Sarah Jule, Pennyweight, Blue Bird Vintage, Ruthie Lindsey Design, Abraham and Susan Rowe, Home and Hill Magazine, Sleeveless, Holler Design, Porter Flea. 

Sometimes I get a little dramatic. Beth and I dreamed up this salad early on in our menu-making process and I made a lot of time and space for it inside my brain. I almost felt foolish that I hadn't thought to combine these ingredients before now: rubbed turnip greens, grilled corn, roasted okra, cornbread crumbs and buttermilk dressing. When I brought it outside to serve I announced, victoriously, that this was the salad I was destined to make. And with that in mind, I really hope you make it in these last days of summer- while the weather is hot and the okra is in season. I hope you make it with companions as dear as Beth and Rebekka and share it with guests as obliging as ours.

You can read Beth's story about the night here and watch Rebekka's video here and as an added bonus, here is my friend Meghan's write up for Nooga.com.

Turnip Green Salad 
-serves 4

1 bunch raw turnip greens
1 ear corn
1 pound okra
1/3 loaf your favorite cornbread
BBQ dry rub
olive oil or grape seed oil
kosher salt
herbed buttermilk dressing

1. Preheat oven to 400. Slice cornbread into small pieces, drizzle with oil and dust with dry rub. Bake until crispy and slightly golden, five to ten minutes.

2. Turn oven up to 425. Cut okra into 1 inch pieces, toss in oil and sprinkle with salt. Bake for ten minutes, toss, then bake for another five. Brush corn with oil and salt. If you have a grill going, throw it on until charred on all sides and cut the kernels off. If not, char the corn in your oven on broil and keep a watchful eye on it.

3. Meanwhile, de-stem and chop turnip greens (don't you throw out those stems- more on that later). Place in a gallon-sized plastic bag with two teaspoons oil and 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt. Press all the air out of the bag and give the greens a good, intimate massage. *This step can be done up to two days in advance.

4. Toss the turnip greens with dressing and top with vegetables and cornbread croutons.