Cooking alone in the kitchen has the delicious feeling of a stolen moment, and there are evenings when a quiet, cozy table for one is an unsurpassed luxury. But the charm of solitary meals is mostly considered un-American. Cooking and eating in the United States have long been social activities. Beginning in our early history, building and tending the fire as well as gathering and preparing the food with the rough tools that were available required a group effort. Maybe the sense of hard-won accomplishment made food taste better, or perhaps the numbers of people gathered at the table created warmth, well-being, and excitement and turned meals into feasts. At church suppers and firehouse dinners, the regional community feeds and festivals, we regularly sense being part of something greater than ourselves, or at least something greater than a TV dinner.
In-ground cooking made a giant leap forward after the Europeans introduced iron pots to the new world. Emblematic in-ground meals—the New England clam bake, lobster bake, beanhole beans and hasty pudding; pit-barbecued pig in the Southeast; lamb in the Midwest, beef in the Far West; and luaus in Hawaii—seemed to spring from the soil of different regions.
Orchard Beach, Maine, Clambake c. 1861–80.
Allen’s Neck Clam Bake
Washington State Oyster toast.
The Wampanoag Indians—“people of the first light”—who greeted the Massachusetts Pilgrims, had a long tradition of giving an appanaug, or clambake, to honor tribal events and seasonal changes. But the colonists reviled clams, eating them only as starvation rations and using them to fatten pigs. By the late nineteenth century, mass transportation had turned clambakes into a tourist opportunity.
The annual Allen’s Neck Clam Bake, perhaps the most fabled and authentic community clambake, began in 1887 as a gathering of the Quakers living in the Westport, Massachusetts, area. The Friends now host over 500 paying guests lucky enough to get a ticket. They line their two-foot-deep Allen’s Neck pit with a ton and a half of cannonball-sized rocks, and count on a truckload of seaweed and a cord of four-foot, split wood to cook over 20 bushels of clams, 200 pounds of sausage, 75 pounds of fish, 150 pounds of tripe, and 75 dozen ears of corn—a celebration of community, cooperation, and historically good eating.
HOW TO PREPARE THE IDEAL NEW ENGLAND CLAMBAKE, NO MATTER WHERE YOU LIVE
Arrange for fair weather.
Find yourself a legal beach, yard, or maybe a vacant lot where you won’t set the trees on fire.
Shovel out a pit; line it with big, round rocks.
Build a rousing wood fire that will burn for a couple of hours while you tie up steamers, quahogs, and mussels into cheesecloth bundles.
When the rocks glow hot, let the fire burn out.
Rake the searing coals between the rocks.
Strew the pit with sopping wet seaweed and listen to it pop and crackle.
Quickly place the shellfish packets onto the seaweed.
Pile on glorious lobsters, don’t skimp, get plenty.
Between blankets of dripping seaweed, layer sweet corn, new potatoes, and onions.
If you like, add salted, peppered chicken parts, and firm linguica or chorizo sausage.
A final layer of soggy seaweed and you’re set.
Cover the great pile with a canvas tarp or lots of gunnysacks.
Wet them down nicely so they won’t burn up.
Seal the cover edge with stones for in-ground steaming.
Assemble your good and hungry group.
Open a beer, pop a bottle of champagne, or pour some iced tea.
Prepare to chat or play ball with the kids for a couple of hours.
At long last, swoop off the canvas cover and remove the clambake.
Arrange on great platters, or dole a little of everything onto plates.
Serve with melted butter and lemon slices.
Maynard Stanley’s Beanhole Beans
OWL’S HEAD, MAINE
Maynard Stanley is a third-generation “critter catcher,” the founder of a special effects production company, and the king of beanhole “suppahs,” the traditional staple of church suppers, firehouse dinners, and family reunions throughout the state of Maine.
On the family business: “People go crazy when raccoons or skunks or bats or little black bears or even moose—I’ve handled a couple moose in my time—move into their homes. They need a critter catcher to make sure that they don’t do anything unnecessary, such as blow the critter’s head off. They don’t understand that critters can get lost or confused and they just need a little help relocating. I resolve conflicts between people and animals in a safe and humane way. I feel blessed.”
On Beanhole Beans: “The smoke and the Maine dirt are what make a bean worth eating. The Native Americans had that all figured out and they passed their knowledge along to the settlers. Now here in Maine we’ve honored that gift. It didn’t hurt that beans grow well here. The logging camps did their bit keeping the tradition alive, too. There’s nothing like in-ground cooking to feed a slew of hungry men with minimal effort and cost.
“The only change we made from the original is using a big iron pot instead of something made from clay. Why someplace else got to be called Beantown is beyond me, and I could tell you stories about what they do to their beans, but I don’t like to speak ill of others. It’s better to set an example, and that’s what my wife, Norma, and I have been doing for near forty years.
“Beanhole beans are not a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing. You have to soak your beans the day before and you have to dig your pit. Then I line it with flat stones. Then I find my wood—I like oak and maple—and by evening I’m ready to build my fire. The bonfire of all bonfires. You have to watch it all night till it dies down. It can be real pretty with the sparks and smoke, but it can put you to sleep, so Norma and I don’t sit around. I put together my beans and get my pork all set. Norma does the slaw and biscuits, we make the pies. When the fire has died down to about a foot of coals, we pull out any remaining logs and lower in our beans and everything else. I cover the whole show with a big heavy piece of metal; a few friends have to help me lift and lower it. Then I shovel the coals and heap them up on top of the metal and then I bury the whole thing.
“It’s basically an in-ground oven. The beans boil like the dickens for the first four hours and then they’ll simmer for six more hours. All that time they are drawing in the flavor from the ground and the wood and the smoke and getting tasty.
“When people taste our beanhole beans, there’s no going back. The only place they are going is home to try to make their own beanholes.” Mr. Stanley does not give recipes: “Because I don’t use them. You cook something enough, it becomes part of you, your hands know what to do. That’s the way it is with me and beans.” Nevertheless, the following recipe is a good place to start.
Beanhole Beans for 100 People
10 pounds Maine yellow eye beans (Jacob’s Cattle beans and soldier beans can also be used)
5 pounds salt pork
5 medium-size yellow onions, chopped
1 cup molasses
1 cup maple syrup
4 tablespoons mustard powder
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground clove
½ cup Maine sea salt
2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
1. Twenty-four hours before serving, place the beans in a large pot and cover with cold water for 8 hours. Drain. Cover with enough water to reach two inches above the beans, place on low heat, cover, and bring to a boil. Boil five minutes, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 40 minutes. Remove from heat. Drain, reserve half the water, cool the beans under cold running water, and set the beans and the reserved cooking water aside.
2. Eighteen hours before serving, dig a pit that is 3 x 4 feet and about 2 ½ feet deep. Line the pit with flat rocks. Build a bonfire in the pit, light it, and allow it to burn until one foot of hot ash and coal has been formed on the bottom of the pit. Remove any remaining pieces of logs.
3. Ten hours before serving, place the beans in the bottom of a big iron pot with a tight-fitting lid. Lay the fat back on top of the beans, add the onions, molasses, maple syrup, mustard, cinnamon, clove, sea salt, and black pepper. Add the reserved cooking water. Cover the beans with cold water that reaches 2 inches above the top of the beans. Cover the pot, lower into the pit. Use a shovel to completely cover the pot with hot coals. Bury with dirt and allow to cook, undisturbed, for 10 hours.
4. Remove the dirt. A few strong people wearing fire gloves should use metal hooks to lift the pot from the pit. Carefully remove the lid, add the sea salt, and use a wooden canoe paddle to stir the beans in order to distribute the salt. Recover, allow to sit for fifteen minutes, and then serve.
MAKES 100–120 CUPS
Before barbecue acquired little wheels and began strutting its stuff around the patio, the barbecue pit was a hole in the ground, and barbecue involved an entire animal. Going to a barbecue was a daylong event for dozens, if not hundreds, of people.
When a Navajo girl reaches puberty, her family may conduct a kinaaldá for her; this is a traditional five-day, four-night ceremony to prepare her for womanhood. The girls run three times a day, and in between, they are groomed, bejeweled, and enrobed in special outfits whose colors reflect the four sacred directions. Her hair is bound, then washed in yucca root. She is molded in the image of Changing Woman, one of the most important deities in Navajo culture. She participates in an all-night sing (or blessing ritual) conducted by a medicine man—and through it all prepares a 100-pound corn cake that will be baked directly in the earth and distributed to all guests at the end of the ceremony.
On the first day, the men in the family dig the hole in which the cake will be baked. Too shallow, and the batter will overflow it; too deep, and the cake won’t cook through; too crooked, and the cake won’t bake evenly. Once the hole is perfectly shaped—about the width of a standard garden shovel and about 8 inches deep—the men cut dry piñon and juniper and haul it to the pit. There has to be enough to keep the fire burning for three days and nights.
Over the next three days, they spread 100 pounds of dry white corn on a tarp and check each kernel by hand. The corn is then roasted and ground, some by hand with a traditional grinding stone. After the women sift the cornmeal three times, through progressively finer screens, the strenuous work of mixing 100 pounds of meal with boiling water begins. Mixing the batter is both celebration and endurance test. When an elder declares the batter ready, the action moves back outdoors.
The family removes wood and ashes from the pit and lays wet paper bags on the bottom, topped with a specially constructed corn husk cross. They pour in the batter, bless it, top with another corn husk cross and more wet paper bags, then rebury it with sand, hot ashes, and more wood. They relight the fire and watch all night as the cake steams in the hot earth. On the fifth morning, after the kinaaldá’s last predawn run, the family uncovers the cake as ceremoniously as they put it in the ground. The young woman cuts small pieces and offers them to the elder supervising the baking and the medicine man. If they agree it’s perfect—moist, sweet, the adobe color of the earth in which it was baked—legend says the young woman will have a good life—and more important, always have enough food to share with her family and the tribe.
LA MADERA, NEW MEXICO
Filipe Ortega, potter, medicine man and impassioned connoisseur of slow-cooked pinto beans, was born fifty-eight years ago in La Madera, a small bump in the isolated, dusty high plains about an hour north west of Santa Fe. His father’s people are Apache. They have lived in the area for longer than written history, are observant Catholics, and greet each day by tossing cornmeal in the four directions. His mother’s family arrived in New Mexico from Spain in the late 1700s and brought with them a peculiar habit of lighting a candle at dusk on Friday night, giving their children four-sided tops to play with at Christmastime, and baking unleavened bread at Easter. They too are observant Catholics.
Mr. Ortega was far too consumed with his own passions to notice the multiple spiritual skeins in the family. He has always been deeply in love with mud--“anything mud was for me. My grandmother taught me to build hornos, the outdoor mud ovens, and to make bricks and build adobe walls and mud floors.” In addition, he was always in love with beans. He seemed to possess an innate understanding of the Platonic ideal of pinto beans and was bitterly disappointed in beans that fell short.
“My mother made them in a metal pressure cooker with so much salt. I knew that this was not the way of beans. My grandmother had two clay pots, like the Spanish cozuela, or the Arabic tian, and somehow I knew the beans needed to be cooked in them. But the pots had been in the family for several hundred years and she would not allow me to cook in them. If I wanted to make perfect beans, I had to make my own pots. That is what I did and that is how I understood the Apache saying for delicious. They say ‘da-likaogo-lni,’ meaning it comes out sweet. Everything cooked in micaceous clay pots comes out sweet. Our clay is alkaline and we don’t use glazes, so it reacts and neutralizes the acid. “I do not need to use salt. Everybody else in my family has high blood pressure, but not me.”
Mr. Ortega’s early success with pots and beans may have stoked his particular brand of can-do-ism. Scornful of a weak sermon one Sunday when he was seventeen, he told the priest that he himself could preach better. “The priest told me I’d have to go to seminary first. That is what I did. I went to seminary in Detroit. Soon after I got there, I heard two students talking the way that my mother and grandmother talked to each other. That’s when I knew that my grandmother and mother were Crypto Jews, the Spanish Jews who publically converted during the Inquisition and secretly continued their traditions. That’s when it all made sense, the shredded apple relish and cracker pudding they made at Easter made sense, the meat and vegetables that they began cooking on Friday morning to eat throughout the weekend. ‘Oy vey, Maria,’ I thought, ‘green chili cholent!’”
“I learned Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. I got a master’s in Biblical studies and a master’s in Divinity. But I knew that I wasn’t priest material. I am Catholic, oh yes. Just not Roman Catholic. I went home. My family wasn’t surprised. Apparently, my father’s side had known when I was born that I am a two-spirit, both male and female. Gay, bi people who don’t fit into the heterosexual definition are often two-spirits. Two-spirits are supposed to heal. My grandmother told me that I had no choice, if I didn’t heal, I’d die. I made pots. I’ve been accused of using a wheel, my pots are so uniform. But I coil and scrape, that is the traditional way. My pots are uniform because I’ve been making them for forty years. I’ve been tooting the horn for micaceous clay pots since 1979. I never put out a shingle that said ‘shaman for hire,’ but people find me. I work with them, I make my pots, I teach at a junior college. I’ve made my family’s adobe house into a bed and breakfast, though there is no place around here to eat, so really it is a bed and breakfast, lunch and dinner. I cook beans every day. I suppose I don’t need to tell you what I cook for Friday dinner.”
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, chicken fat, or beef fat
1 (5-pound) flat-cut (or “first cut”) beef brisket, trimmed
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 medium onions, coarsely chopped
6 garlic cloves, peeled
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 teaspoons dried oregano, preferably Mexican
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 (14.5-ounce) cans fire-roasted diced tomatoes with green chilies, with juice
1 (12-ounce) can dark Mexican beer, such as Dos Equis or Negro Modelo
1 (7-ounce) can diced green chilies, with juice
6 large ancho chiles
1 tablespoon honey, preferably “chili honey,” plus more to taste
½ cup chopped fresh cilantro stems
1 (3-pound) butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 2-inch chunks
1 cup dried hominy, soaked for 1 hour and drained
1 cup dried cranberry beans, soaked for 1 hour and drained
2 carrots, peeled cut into 2-inch chunks
1 pound beef marrow bones, cut in 1- to 3-inch lengths
Water, as needed
Fresh lime juice, to taste
Fresh cilantro leaves, for garnish
Warm corn tortilla, optional
1. The day before serving, place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 225°F.
2. Pat the brisket dry and season with salt and pepper. In a large Dutch oven, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil over high heat. Add the brisket and cook for 12 to 14 minutes, until well browned on both sides. Transfer the brisket to a platter.
3. Add the onions, garlic, and ½ teaspoon salt to the fat in the pot and cook over medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes, until the onions are beginning to brown. Stir in the chili powder, oregano, and coriander and cook for about 1 minute, until aromatic. Add the tomatoes and their juice, beer, green chiles, ancho chiles, and honey and bring to a simmer.
4. Remove the pot from the heat and place the cilantro stems in the center of the pot. Place the brisket on top of the cilantro stems, then scatter the squash, hominy, cranberry beans, and carrots around it. Lay the beef bones on top of the meat and add enough cold water to cover the roast by four inches.
5. Cover the pot and place in the oven for 8 hours, until the brisket is tender, adding water as needed to keep the meat covered by at least 1 inch of liquid.
6. Remove the pot from the oven, discard the beef bones, and season with salt, pepper, honey, and lime juice to taste. Cool the brisket to room temperature, then cover the pot and refrigerate until ready to serve.
7. When ready to serve, place an oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 350°F.
8. Cut the brisket across the grain into ¼-inch-thick slices. Transfer the sliced brisket to a large baking dish and pour the sauce over the top. Cover with foil and put in the oven for about 20 minutes, until heated through.
9. Garnish with the cilantro leaves and serve with the tortillas on the side (if using).
SERVES 8
Ruth Kendrick’s Winning Dutch Oven Salmon in Black and White
OGDEN, UTAH
No self-respecting pioneer headed West without an iron pot, skillet, and Dutch oven. These utensils were of central importance to the 70,000 Mormons who moved west to escape persecution between 1847 and 1869. After they circled their wagons at night, the pots were set over the fires to feed hundreds of travelers. Ruth Kendrick, whose paternal great-grandfather, Robert Sweeten, was the last surviving member of the pioneers of 1847 when he died in the 1930s, stays close to this history by collecting iron pots and cooking in them. Large ones can be filled and buried in a fire pit; these will feed an army. Smaller versions can be buried in the coals of a backyard grill and will feed a family. In either event, the work is done far ahead of the meal. Kendrick’s search for family tradition lead her to Dutch ovens, but she found that cooking historic recipes in the ovens took the quest for tradition a little bit too far. One year she won the World Championship Dutch Oven Cook-off, and she notes that wagon train food will not earn accolades from friends and family or win contests. “That is the irony of cooking in iron,” said Mrs. Kendrick. “You can’t use the old-time recipes if you want to win. Those people had no sugar, no salt, no spices. If you want to win, you have to go gourmet.” The fish fillets are dramatic looking and deliciously succulent, with a hint of smoke. The recipe can be expanded to feed a crowd.
FOR THE DIP
½ cup white sesame seeds
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
⅓ cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon onion salt
2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons white vinegar
⅓ cup lemon juice
2 teaspoons crushed red pepper
¼ teaspoon liquid smoke
3 tablespoons milk
FOR THE COATING
2 ½ cups white sesame seeds
2 ½ cups black sesame seeds
4 to 6 fresh salmon fillets, skin removed, trimmed into serving pieces
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil for cooking
2 to 4 tablespoons lemon juice to taste
1. To make the dip, mix seeds and oil together in a blender until well combined. Add mayonnaise, onion salt, salt, white vinegar, lemon juice, crushed red pepper, liquid smoke, and milk and blend until smooth. Refrigerate overnight to thicken and blend flavors.
2. To make the sesame seed coating, place a line of white sesame seeds about 2 inches wide and 10 inches long on waxed paper. Next to the white seeds, place a line of black sesame seeds about 2 inches wide and 10 inches long.
3. Lightly salt each salmon fillet. Dip fillet into chilled dip mixture and set aside. One by one, press fillets onto the sesame seeds. Turn over carefully, covering entire fillet with seeds. Be careful not to mix the colors as you press the seeds onto the salmon. Set coated fillets aside.
4. Heat a 14-inch Dutch oven over 15 briquets. Pour in enough oil to lightly coat bottom, approximately 2 tablespoons. Heat oil. Carefully place fillets in Dutch oven. Place lid on oven and ring lid with 20 briquettes. While cooking, occasionally sprinkle fillets with lemon juice. Cook approximately 20 minutes, depending on thickness of fillet. Remove carefully to serving dish.
SERVES 4 TO 6
Iron pots set above the fire gave birth to regional specialties that, like in-ground meals, showcase local ingredients, are an ode to the cultural history of a place. Chowder still means New England, Kentucky is burgoo, and the low country is Frogmore stew. If the church supper is jambalaya or a crawfish or shrimp boil, you know you are in Louisiana. Cioppino still smacks of San Francisco, and chili—well, you need to taste it before you can use that dish as a GPS.
Wayne Calk’s Gold Star Chuckwagon Chili
EL PASO, TEXAS
Wayne Calk can fix a mean batch of chili as easily as he can fix up an old chuckwagon. A retired industrial arts teacher and school administrator in El Paso, Texas, he got interested in chuckwagon cooking about fifteen years ago. Since then, he has restored two old wagons, and he and cooking partner Skip Clark use their John Deere/Moline Wagon Works wagon for cooking competitions and to do catering for wedding receptions, graduation parties, and church socials. “I just want people to come out and enjoy what we do with the chuckwagons,” he says. “It’s about keeping the cowboy heritage alive.” In 2005, when the Texas state legislature voted to make the chuckwagon the Texas state vehicle, the Calk-Clark wagon was parked on the capitol grounds in Austin, along with Don and Shirley Creacy’s Wild Cow Ranch wagon. “We were cooking two-inch rib-eye steaks in the Senate chambers,” Calk recalled. “I believe that’s the only time that’s ever happened.”
Calk and his partner have cooked for groups from 25 to 1,200 people, and he enjoys the competitions and the prizes they’ve won. But his favorite experience is taking his chuckwagon each fall to a ranch in South Texas to cook for hunting parties.
Calk created his spicy Gold Star Chili recipe for a school fund-raiser a number of years ago. In addition to beef, it contains buffalo meat because one of his neighbors donated it to the cause. Designed for a Dutch oven and an open fire, this chili is easily prepared on a kitchen stove—as long as you’ve got a very large pot.
5 tablespoons bacon grease
One 2 ½-pound sirloin steak, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes
One 8-ounce buffalo steak, trimmed and cut into 1-inch cubes
2 ½ pounds lean ground beef
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 jalapeño chiles, stemmed, seeded, and finely chopped
4 Anaheim chiles, stemmed, seeded, and coarsely chopped
¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro
¼ cup gold tequila (preferably José Cuervo)
One 12-ounce bottle beer (preferably Lone Star)
Two 14.5-ounce cans stewed tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1½ cups tomato sauce
½ cup chili powder
½ cup tomato paste
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1 tablespoon hot sauce
Kosher salt
1. Heat the bacon fat in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Brown the meats in batches, transferring each to a large bowl when done.
2. Return all the meats and their juices to the pot and stir in the remaining ingredients. Bring to a simmer and cook, uncovered, stirring frequently, about 2 hours, until the meat is tender.
3. Season with salt to taste and serve.
SERVES 10 TO 12
Leah Chase’s Famous Gumbo des Herbes
MADISONVILLE, LOUISIANA
Born to Creole parents in Madisonville, Louisiana, Leah Chase moved to New Orleans when she was fourteen years old to live with relatives and attend St. Mary’s Academy. New Orleans was still a segregated town when she graduated and when she went to work in restaurants, first as a waitress and then as a cook—opportunities afforded few African Americans at that time—she began learning about fine dining. “There were a few small black places, but they didn’t even have menus,” she said. Dooky Chase Restaurant was one such place, and a few years after marrying its scion, Edgar “Dooky” Chase II, Leah Chase began working there, spreading white tablecloths over the tables, replacing the ketchup bottles with fresh-cut flowers, and bolstering the fried chicken with her family’s fine Creole recipes—shrimp Clemenceau, chicken breast stuffed with oyster dressing, and gumbo des herbes.
“I was teaching my people to enjoy the finer things like the white people did on the other side of town,” she said. Soon after politicians, writers, and musicians like Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington began to show up for dinner, the other side of town arrived. Later, Dooky Chase became the “neutral ground” of the civil rights movement and Mrs. Chase was alternately referred to as the Queen of Creole Cooking and a Louisiana culinary legend. If she had to choose a single title, it would most likely be the former. “Being a legend just means you’re old,” she said.
It’s not surprising that Ms. Chase, whose “daddy was more Catholic than the Pope,” has become best known for the annual pilgrimage to Dooky Chase for Holy Thursday gumbo des herbes. The event is as sacrosanct as receiving ashes the first day of Lent; and everyone leaves the cathedral of Creole cuisine feeling blessed to have been among that year’s chosen. Loaded with ham, sausage and brisket, this green gumbo was always simmered with an odd number of greens, since among the Creoles, odd numbers are thought to be lucky. Mrs. Chase scoffs at this theory. “We Creoles aren’t superstitious,” she said, “we’re just careful.”
1 bunch collard greens
1 bunch turnip greens
1 bunch watercress
1 bunch beet tops
1 bunch carrot tops
1 bunch spinach
1 head lettuce
1 head cabbage
2 medium onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped and mashed
Water
1 pound smoked sausage
1 pound smoked ham
1 pound brisket stew meat
1 pound boneless brisket
1 pound hot chaurice sausage
5 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon thyme leaves
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon filé powder
1. Clean all vegetables, removing bad leaves and rinsing away all the grit.
2. In a large pot place all greens, onions, and garlic. Cover with water and boil for 30 minutes.
3. While the greens are boiling, cut all the meats and sausages into bite-size pieces and set aside.
4. Strain the vegetables after boiling, reserving the liquid.
5. In a 12-quart stockpot place smoked sausage, ham, and brisket meats, adding 2 cups of the reserved liquid. Steam for 15 minutes.
6. While steaming the meats, place the chaurice in a skillet and steam until the fat is rendered. Set the chaurice aside, reserving the grease.
7. Puree all vegetables in a food processor or in a meat grinder.
8. Heat the skillet of chaurice grease; then add the flour, stirring constantly, for about 5 minutes, or until a light-colored roux is achieved. (The roux does not have to be brown.) Pour the roux over the steamed meats, stirring well. Add the vegetables and two quarts of the reserved liquid.
9. Simmer for 20 minutes. Add the chaurice, thyme, salt, and cayenne pepper. Stir well.
10. Simmer for 40 minutes. Add filé powder, stir well, and remove from heat. Serve over steamed rice.
SERVES 8
Helen Griffin Williams’ Macaroni and Cheese
MILLWOOD, NEW YORK
Helen Griffin Williams, mother of three including a former Miss America and grandmother of four, is a retired music teacher as well as a fine and adventurous cook. Her culinary innovations, however, do not extend to macaroni and cheese:
“It does not matter where you go or how much you achieve, if you are African American, macaroni and cheese is part of your life. You never have a gathering without macaroni and cheese. The tradition may have started because it’s cheap—you can feed hundreds at a church social or a family reunion out of a few trays of macaroni and cheese—but I think people appreciate it because it’s good and because it’s something that a working mother can make ahead of time. My mother figured that out early on. She was born in Buffalo in 1921, got her degree to teach Head Start, taught in that program her entire working life, and raised four children. My father was a porter on the railroad. We knew we would get educated, we knew we would make them proud, we knew that there would always be macaroni and cheese at family gatherings.
“Macaroni was a side dish, not a main meal. White people ate macaroni as an entrée, but we ate it with meat or what have you. You always made a lot of it, always froze some. At Thanksgiving my mother made enough so that we could take trays home and freeze them. I have some macaroni in the freezer now, in case one of my children or grandchildren stops by. I was a music teacher, and after I retired, I spent more time cooking. I’ve seen three macaroni and cheese cookoffs on the Food Network. One lady baked her macaroni and cheese like individual soufflés in muffin tins, and another one added artichokes. I don’t know anyone who would do a thing like that. Everybody I know likes their macaroni and cheese pure, just plain and unadulterated.
“That doesn’t mean you don’t make changes to get your recipe just how you like it. As soon as I had a home of my own, I started using both mild and sharp cheddar in my macaroni and eggs instead of flour to thicken the sauce. My mother used flour to thicken her sauce and she added the cheese right in. I like to cut my cheese in cubes and layer them. I also like to use bread crumbs to give a little crust on the top. My daughter Vanessa uses lots of different fancy cheeses and has gone back to the cream sauce. The pendulum swings, but never past good sense. You want people to know what they are looking at when they see a pan of your macaroni and cheese on the buffet.”
4 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1 teaspoon white pepper
2 ½ cups milk
8 ounces elbow macaroni
½ pound of mild cheddar cheese, cut into half-inch cubes
½ pound of sharp cheddar cheese, cut into half-inch cubes
¼ cup bread crumbs
¼ teaspoon paprika
1. Preheat the oven to 375°F, use a small dab of the butter to grease an 8-inch square baking dish, and place a pot of lightly salted water to boil. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, salt, mustard, white pepper, and milk and set aside. When the water is boiling, add the macaroni, stir to keep from sticking, and cook until barely tender. Drain into a colander and cool under running water.
2. Combine the cubes of mild and sharp cheddar. Place a layer of the macaroni on the bottom of the dish, scatter a layer of cheese cubes over it. Continue making layers until all the macaroni and cheese have been used. Pour the egg and milk mixture over the layers and jiggle pan to distribute evenly. Combine the bread crumbs and the paprika and sprinkle evenly over the top, then dot with thin slices of the remaining butter. Bake until brown and bubbly, about 20 minutes.
SERVES 4 TO 6
INVENTING TRADITION: GREEN BEAN CASSEROLE
THE CAMPBELL’S SOUP COMPANY ESTIMATES THAT 30 million green bean casseroles are made in the United States each year. Twenty million of these are prepared on Thanksgiving. The dish, which contains green beans, Campbell’s condensed cream of mushroom soup, and French’s French Fried Onions, has no connection to colonial history; the recipe was created in 1955 at the Campbell’s test kitchen. It was then under the management of home economist, Dorcas Reilly, who remains mystified by the recipe’s iconic stature.
“I have no memory of that recipe,” she said shortly after her eightieth birthday in 2006. “It was one of three to five hundred recipes we did that year. We’d take a few ingredients, go into the kitchen, and come up with recipes that would fit on a label. We taste tested them. It usually took four or five trials before you got one that rated 5 out of 5 on our taste scale. I don’t remember anything special about the green bean casserole. It didn’t start out to be a winner. That happened later, and I still don’t know why. It’s versatile, it’s easy, it’s attractive, and I guess after fifty years, people feel they can count on it.”
Indeed, attempts to upgrade Green Bean Casserole with fresh cream sauce, wild mushrooms, tiny haricots vertes, by making fried onions from scratch, tend to be greeted with outrage. The recipe worked beautifully in the glass and lightweight metal cookware that was introduced in the 1950s, and it was perfectly pitched for the casual buffet-and-brunch entertaining style that took root in midcentury.
In 2002, Mrs. Reilly traveled to Ohio to present the original copy of the Green Bean Casserole recipe to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The well-worn recipe card was placed between Enrico Fermi’s invention of the first controlled nuclear reactor and Thomas Alva Edison’s two greatest hits: the lightbulb and the phonograph.
