CORONA-CATION DAY 37: Corona-cookin'

CORNA-CATION DAY 37: Corona-cookin’

My Granny made awesome chicken and dumplins.  I got about 23 before I realized that,  if I was going to have my Granny’s cookin or anyone’s for that matter, all my life, then I had better get on tryin’ to figure out how they made important things like…well chicken and dumplins, squirrel gravy and biscuits, but also cinnamon rolls.  OMG!  My Granny made insane cinnamon rolls!  I know at least that they were yeast bread cinnamon rolls, huge – 3 or 4 inch diameter sugar-glazed, full of butter and cinnamon sugar.  Wow, well lucky for me I could get that recipe or I would be 400 pounds.  My Aunt Emmelene, my Granny’s daughter had no idea how she made them.  All she would tell me is “She probably had a recipe off a Martha White Self-Risin Flour bag.” My Aunt Helen and my mom were just as clueless as to how she cooked most of what she did. They had their own secrets, an unspoken pack to keep them close to the chest I think.  

I asked my Granny one time “Granny what is your recipe for chicken and dumplin’s?”.  I was armed and ready with paper and pad.  She was sitting by the fireplace in her rocker, and she leaned over and said, “Well you get an old hen,….”, at this point I was writing frantically, and I said “an old hen?  Does it have to be old or can it be young and how do you tell the difference?!?”, and she said “Well, I guess old hens have more fat so I reckon it does matter.”  This was my first realization that this old timey cookin’ was a science, born of generations of living on the land and living on what you grew on the land.  Recipes were passed down and if you wanted to do them right, you better pay attention to the details.  ‘Ok old fat hen, not young lean hen.’

My granny made squirrel gravy and cat head biscuits every weekend.  This was a backwood’s Arkansas delicacy that my wife, when she was still my southern California-born girlfriend, was leery of even considering, but when my sweet Granny put a plate in front of her, she could not imagine disappointing.  After some tentative tasting, Sue dug into that plate like it was the finest thing she could think about passing her morning lips.   I asked my Granny for the recipe and she said “You get a squirrel, usually it is a slow one.” And then she smiled as I wrote this down. “You skin it, clean it, split it in to quarters, and par boil it.  Then you roll it in some salt and pepper flour and fry it up.  Set it on a plate with a paper towel, then get some flour and you see you use the fry grease and scrapin’s to make a paste like.  Then you use the water u par boiled the squirrel in and make a gravy.”  I had a hand cramp. This was so simple and yet so elegant.  I made this dish for my students a couple of years ago.  One told me that the wing was his favorite part.  Another said she liked it because it was organic and sustainable.  Not your typical crowd-around-the-trough compliments but I took ‘em.

Today, during day 37 of Corna-cation,  I made Red Cabbage.  I had a recipe that I had draaaaawn out of Sue’s Aunt Millie, or Tante Moni, as she was known before she passed.  It was tough to get.  I had to wait until happy hour, when Tante had taken in just the right amount of Manhattens.  She actually wrote it in her own hand, well it WAS happy hour hand writing so it is a bit hard to read, but I feel lucky to have it.  The very first line says “Cabbage 1# or whatever…”?!?!?  I mean, what is that supposed to mean, or whatever?!  My mom was more specific with her recipes.  

She doesn’t just say “add oil” , she calls it out “Add Wesson Oil”.  She was doing recipe inheritance for dummies.

Whatever you cook tonight, make it like you mean it.

Mountain Pig…out.