It's New Year's Eve, and my thoughts turn invariably to Craig Claiborne.
In my twenties and thirties, I spent many years as a restaurant cook and chef. I've cooked fine dining Italian, fine dining French, Greek, fancy American, casual American, and high volume Fusion. When people find out that I've live a previous life as a chef, they always ask me what my favorite dish is to cook. Difficult question -- as I most often like to cook what I most like to eat...which is a lot.
But every year, come the end of December, I do find myself getting psyched up to cook one of my most favorite meals: New Year's Day Hoppin' John with Collard Greens, and Braised Country-Style Pork Ribs. But I could never have come to love this meal as much as I do without the recipes of Craig Claiborne from his bible, Southern Cooking. Most especially, as a southerner and as an lover of written words, I love the prose he uses to describe the dishes of this quintessentially Southern meal. So, I'd like to share with you his words-- his recollections "of the sights and smells of home cooking."
HOPPIN' JOHN
Black-eye or black-eyed peas seem to figure ubiquitously on Southern tables, and Yankee visitors seem to look at them askance. They are not necessarily country fare, as many people claim them to be. They appear on the table of rich and poor, the educated and the uneducated alike, and are eaten with equal enthusiasm. They are the basis of a dish known as Hoppin' John, the origin of which name no one seems to be able to explain. The dish is made with either black-eyed peas or cow peas and rice, and it is certainly one of the most traditional of Southern dishes. It is served in many Southern homes on New Year’s Day to bring all those assembled good luck throughout the year.
Claiborne grew up in Sunflower, Mississippi, where during the Depression -- his families finances ruined -- his mother opened up their large home as a boarding house. Many of the dishes he lovingly describes in this cookbook were first learned at the side of a big stove, where he "was allowed to break off crisp bits of the outer coating of the chicken as it came hot from the skillet."
MIXED SOUTHERN GREENS
The standard item of soul food that appearedd almost daily at my mother's table were one form of greens or another, always cooked with pieces of pork, sometimes salted, sometimes smoked. The greens were of a common garden variety, such as mustard greens, collard greens, and turnip greens. These would be put on to boil with a great quantity of water and salt and allowed to cook for hours. Once cooked, the liquid is much treasured by Southern palates. It is called "pot likker," and you sip it like soup with corn bread. If yo want to get fancy, you can always make cornmeal dumplings to float on top of the cooking liquid.
And he does, thank heavens, address that age old question Cornbread: what is the one, true way to make it?
There are more recipes for corn bread than there are magnolia trees in the South.
Happy New Year's!! For more on Craig Claiborne's Southern Cooking:
http://books.google.com/books?id=cwDT7hzUjBgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:%22Craig+Claiborne%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bsLDUovkJsWpkAeMqIC4Dg&ved=0CEkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
