Filé powder. Dark chocolate-brown roux. Cayenne pepper. These are the some of the ingredients that help give gumbo its signature and soul-satisfying flavor. When I discovered that Crescent Dragonwagon devoted an entire chapter in her cookbook Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread to this distinctively, and to Northerners, exotic, American soup, I knew I would want to try my hand at making a pot of gumbo before the club moved on to the next book. Having followed Crescent’s very detailed and clear instructions, I’m convinced that anyone can make a good gumbo. The making of an authentic gumbo is not to be taken lightly; it is very involved, but I assure you it is worth the work.
In the gumbo chapter, called “Gumbo Zeb,” after the version she finally settled on after trying twenty-one different gumbo recipes, Crescent gives a fascinating history of
When cookbook author Crescent Dragonwagon ran an inn and restaurant in Arkansas, her skillet-sizzled cornbread was a favorite menu item of hers and her customers. Clearly cornbread is important to her. After writing Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: A Country Inn Cookbook, she went on to write The Cornbread Gospels; she also likes to feed cornbread to her parrots. So I was prepared to take her cornbread making advice seriously, including her rationale for adding some sugar, at least a little, to the batter. Though I grew up mostly in the North, the cornbread I ate was prepared by my Tennessean grandmother, who had migrated north when she was a young woman. Her skillet cornbread was made with 100-percent cornmeal, making it a bit dry and crumbly, and was sugar-free. Grandma emphatically denounced cornbread made with sugar, and, until now, I too had made it without sugar.
Last week I made the buttermilk biscuits from the current DCCC pick, Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: A Country Inn Cookbook by Crescent Dragonwagon. This recipe was an opportunity to use some King Arthur cake flour I’d been meaning to try (Crescent Dragonwagon recommends using cake or pastry flour, such as While Lily, for ultra tender biscuits), some of my homemade lard, and something else lingering in my fridge: baking powder that had long outlived its expiration date.
Before just chucking it out, I decided to test it using one of the many baking powder tests found online. The tests are all the same: you pour hot water over some baking powder, and if it fizzes and bubbles, it’s good to use. A typical ratio is 1 teaspoon baking powder to ⅓ cup hot water.
Nearly three years ago, Mike and I became first-time home owners, and first-time asparagus cultivators. The first spring at our new house, we had big and exciting plans for gardening and planting, and at the top of list was establishing an asparagus bed: It seems like something you do when you own a property—a given, a natural, and exciting benefit of owning some terra firma. It is not something most do as renters.
That is why I’m impressed with Barbara Kingsolver’s magnanimous, renegade, and altruistic philosophy of establishing asparagus beds, described in her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Throughout her asparagus-loving “Johnny-Asparagus-seed life,” she has created beds in all sorts of places—in the property of every house she’s owned and some that she’s rented, and even in “tiny urban lots and students ghettos”—leaving behind her a wake of good eating for others to benefit from for up to twenty or thirty years, if only some basic care and maintenance is given to the beds.
Psychologically, the more transient state of mind associated with the renting life doesn’t suit itself to growing asparagus. After doing the labor-intensive work of establishing the beds you need to wait until at least the second season, and if you follow Barbara Kingsolver’s advice, the third season, before enjoying the benefits of your labor.
The work involves digging trenches and filling them with good compost. (Asparagus like a rich soil.) In our case, before even getting to the trench digging stage, we had to first remove sod, shake as much top soil as we could off the sod, dig out numerous rocks (Dowdy Corners is in Vermont, where, as the saying goes, “it good for growing rocks”) and numerous deep dandelion roots, and mix in compost and some lime to raise the PH. It wasn’t easy.
It’s strawberry season, and flyers for strawberry dinners, held at local churches, can be seen around town. The only thing strawberry at these dinners, however, is the dessert—usually homemade strawberry shortcake. This recipe, from Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread by Crescent Dragonwagon, is meant to be served at the start of the meal, the perfect bookend to all of those sweet strawberry desserts. Crescent Dragonwagon, a great writer (who also teaches food writing, by the way) describes the soup as “. . . a little sweet, a little on the tea-roomish, prissy side—but no less delicious for that.” It’s hard to top that. I would add that how sweet or tart to make it is up to you, and that serving it with the same rosé you used to make it an excellent idea. They go wonderfully well together. For the best tasting soup, and drinking enjoyment, try to find a good quality rosé with a balance of dry and sweeter fruit flavors.
This spring was my first real asparagus harvest. Last season, the bed, then just one year old, was an exercise in restraint; there was just a handful of asparagus large enough to be picked. With asparagus, immediate gratification is a bad thing: If you over indulge when the asparagus bed is too young, and the asparagus are too thin, the roots will not have an opportunity to establish themselves, which is necessary for a good strong bed with years of productivity ahead.* Even this year, there were many asparagus that I deemed too thin to pick. Even so, I had enough to grill, blanch and sauté, and try two asparagus recipes from Crescent Dragonwagon’s cookbook, Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread: Asparagus and White Wine Soup and Composed Salad of Asparagus and Snow Peas, shown below.
The soup, made with few ingredients—basically cream, milk, white wine, and cheddar cheese—and thickened with a roux, is nicely suited to this spring vegetable.
Heading down and out of the narrow, winding streets of the medieval hill-top town of Sancerre, we realized we forgot to pick up some of the ham of Sancerre, a local specialty which is smoked over vine roots (sarments de vigne). We continued our descent, assuming we’d be able to find it in the surrounding area. Stopping not more than 10 miles away at a neighboring village, we asked a baker if she knew where else we might purchase it. It is available in Sancerre, she said, only Sancerre.
Monsieur Fortin’s Charcuterie Artisanale and Traiteur is strategically located on the Place Henri IV, in the heart of Henrichment, a town noted for its symmetrically planned central square. We stopped at the shop to buy some Pâté de Campagne, but soon spied saucisson sec, a dry-cured sausage with a signature dusting of edible white mold, hanging from the ceiling. When we requested one, Monsieur Fortin proudly explained that they are his spécialité de la maison (house made specialty).
THE ART OF MEXICAN COOKING: Traditional Mexican Cooking for Aficionados By Diana Kennedy Clarkson Potter 496 pp. $30.00
Except for me, Dowdy Corners Cookbook Club members have put Mexican cooking behind them and have moved on to cooking soups, salads, and breads from our current cookbook. Everyone in the club loved The Art of Mexican Cooking, as you’ll read below in my review, but sentimental attachment is not the reason I haven’t yet let go. It’s the review—the task for each cookbook that I always save for last for reasons of objective synthesis (I need to wait until I hear what each member thought of the book), but also because review writing stirs a youthful condition I thought I’d long beaten into submission: procrastination. Perhaps that’s because when in school book reviews were one of many writing assignments that were generally dreaded, and because the activities of cooking, eating, and drinking Margaritas with club members are free of school days association. (If anyone has any book review writing tips to help me oust those “school assignment” feelings, please bring them on.)
In the meantime, while I work on casting out procrastination once and for all, here is my review of the third Dowdy Corners’ cookbook, starting with the food, the reason why we cook:
The Food
One of our members was initially lukewarm about the club’s choice of a Mexican cookbook; prior to cooking from The Art of Mexican Cooking, her only reference for Mexican cooking was Americanized food served in average Mexican restaurants, and she was not impressed. Now she is completely hooked.
It’s easy for a potluck menu to come together seamlessly when everyone attending is cooking from the same cookbook, and particularly the same cuisine—in this case, Mexican.
Last week DCCC club members gathered at Dowdy Corners for a Mexican feast that consisted of twice- or thrice-tried favorites and dishes that were first-time try outs—all from The Art of Mexican Cooking by Diana Kennedy, or almost all.
Our Menu
Margaritas, prepared by me. Though not authentically Mexican, and definitely not in The Art of Mexican Cooking, they taste good and are a good conviviality enhancer.
Some cocktails are like mayonnaise. They’ve been around so long, and their origins are so speculative (or lost completely), that they are considered part of the community of recipes to which no one can lay claim.
Nearly three years ago, Mike and I became first-time home owners, and first-time asparagus cultivators. The first spring at our new house, we had big and exciting plans for gardening and planting, and at the top of list was establishing an asparagus bed: It seems like something you do when you own a property—a given, a natural, and exciting benefit of owning some terra firma. It is not something most do as renters.
Heading down and out of the narrow, winding streets of the medieval hill-top town of Sancerre, we realized we forgot to pick up some of the ham of Sancerre, a local specialty which is smoked over vine roots (sarments de vigne). We continued our descent, assuming we’d be able to find it in the surrounding area. Stopping not more than 10 miles away at a neighboring village, we asked a baker if she knew where else we might purchase it. It is available in Sancerre, she said, only Sancerre.
THE ART OF MEXICAN COOKING:
It’s easy for a potluck menu to come together seamlessly when everyone attending is cooking from the same cookbook, and particularly the same cuisine—in this case, Mexican.
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