A journalist, short-story writer and novelist, Rawlings’ best-known work is the 1939 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Yearling, which she wrote whilst living in rural Florida. The following article is a description of her instinctive approach to cookery, and includes her directions for making blackbird pie, complete from the shooting of the birds in the marsh-grass to the table.
It has been a matter of pure joy to me, a very serious woman, to find that the properly planned and prepared food brings acolytes into my life who are unimpressed by my abilities either as a novelist or as a femme fátale. Writing is my profession, my exaltation, and my torture. I write as an introvert, attempting to turn an intangible loveliness into a tangible conception. But I cook as an extrovert, singing at the top of my lungs, in ecstasy and the certainty of fulfilment. My black Adrina says, ‘I sho’ loves to see you cut loose in the kitchen.’
Suppose we leave out of the picture, for the moment, the pale neurotics who genuflect before dreary diets or the this-that-and-t’other caloried or documented eating. Let us consider only the pleasing of normal, lusty folk who, after two or three cocktails, sit down with well-bred greediness to my careless and carefree table on my Florida veranda. For these, I dote on planning a meal that shall first titillate, then satisfy, then ease. I play to the gourmet, never to the gourmand.
To my notion, the most pleasant way of playing is to make the most of local materials. I can do wonders with asparagus, but asparagus in Florida comes from California, from Colorado, or New York, and is a withered memory of its own early days. So, instead of asparagus with Hollandaise, I stimulate a menu with fresh okra, direct from the field. I use only the young crisp pods, boil them whole, briskly, for ten minutes by the stop-watch – one minute too long destroys their integrity. Then I arrange the pods on individual, small, hot plates like the spokes of a wheel, their firm green tips pointed in thirstily toward the individual tiny bowls of Hollandaise. We dip the still firm okra into the sauce, holding it by the uncut stem end, as unhulled strawberries are dipped in powdered sugar.
Perhaps the loveliest of my local dishes is my Crab Newburgh. I can not possibly give proportions, for I never have, twice, the same amount of fresh crabmeat. Robert Frost says in one of his orchard poems, ‘Something has to be left to God.’ And in cooking, something has to be left to the instinct, or experience, of the cook, who goes at such dishes not by measure, but by the look and the holy feel of the mixture. In describing my Newburgh at its best, I must stand humbly and acknowledge two miracles that go into its composition. One is Dora, my Jersey cow, who has the rottenest disposition and gives the richest cream in the world. The other miracle is the nature of the crabmeat.
In the middle of a desolate nowhere in Florida, whose location I refuse to reveal lest tourists make a path to its shore, we have the phenomenon of a spring bubbling suddenly from subterranean depths to form a stream that runs into a river, and thence to the sea. In that spring and that stream are found the largest, the sweetest blue crabs I have ever encountered. The cooked meat from them is as white as the breast of a virgin, and as tender. The large flakes fall as exquisitely from the shell as the white garments fall from the bride.
I take whatever measure I may have, then, of these unviolated morsels, and toss them into an iron skillet, half-inch deep in Dora’s butter. I turn them gently. They must not brown, they must not change the colour of their innocence, but they must absorb the butter as a flower absorbs the sun. Then I add lemon-juice, approximately one tablespoonful to a heaping cupful of crabmeat. I toy again. I add salt, a dash of clove, a fainter dash of nutmeg, and a wisp of a dash of red pepper. I pour on, slowly, devilish-Dora’s cream, thick and golden. I let simmer. I call for a ritual cocktail. The rest of the meal is ready. The guests are warned to powder their noses, to take their last drink, and to assemble.
I beat eggs. How can I say how many? Probably three eggs to a pint of cream. I fold in the eggs. I uncork the sherry, which should be as dry as possible. I pour slowly, stirring meanwhile as feverishly as though the Prince of Wales were waiting. How much sherry? How should I know? Just enough to thin the thickened blend to something a shade beyond the original thickness of the cream.
Adrina cries out, ‘Supper comin’ up!’
The guests seat themselves. I add two or three tablespoonfuls of cognac brandy, I turn the Newburgh into a red-hot, deep serving-dish, I rush it to the table. Toast points are ready, and parsley for garnishing. I serve. I pray. The Newburgh is tasted – a sip of Chablis behind it. Strong men who have admitted that they have not read my writings, who have indicated all too plainly that there are sirens in their lives past my power to dethrone, grope for my hand to kiss its blistered finger-tips. Women who would knife me in the back, if I turned it, murmur, ‘Darling – .’This, then, is a Newburgh.
My blackbird pie, however, came close to costing me a friend. I carried my use of local ingredients, to say nothing of a childish innocence, almost too far. I sat Sam Byrd, the actor, of Tobacco Road and Of Mice and Men fame, down to a pie of blackbirds. I think it really held twenty-four, for there were four of us at table, and I always allow six of the tiny things per person.
Sam said, ‘You don’t mean – blackbirds?’
‘Why, yes. It does seem evil to shoot them, doesn’t it? Their chirping is so gay in the rushes.’
‘Not blackbirds?’
‘The little red-winged blackbirds. The females are drab and are sometimes mistaken for rice-birds. I suppose I should really explain why I began shooting them for pie. I am a rotten shot, and one cold, foggy morning in a duck-blind on Orange Lake back of my place, I had simply missed too many ducks. I was in a fury of frustration. And all around me in the marsh-grass the red-winged blackbirds were cheeping and chirring by the hundreds. I slipped No. 10 shot in my double-barreled twenty-gauge, and two shots dropped a dozen birds. Pie for two.’
‘And what possessed you – pardon me – how did it occur to you that they might be edible?’
I stared at him.
‘Why, people have always eaten blackbird pie, haven’t they? Don’t you remember, “Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie?” ’
‘But that was a nursery rhyme – .’
And it came to me then for the first time that I might indeed be serving something beyond the pale.
‘But it’s delicious. I make it often. Whenever the blackbirds are around in quantities.’
He shuddered. Like a novice in the snake department at the zoo, he poked at his portion. He cut a piece of the small, succulent brown breast. He buried it between two wisps of flaky crust, brushed it with gravy – holy water, I presume, against the devil – closed his eyes, and swallowed it. He opened his eyes. He blinked them. He laid his hand on mine.
He said in a low voice, ‘My dear friend. To think I didn’t trust you –.’
He wrote one day asking for the recipe for the Sam Byrd cook-book. Here it is:
Like the recipe for rabbit, you must, of course, first shoot your blackbirds. Pluck them dry if you have the patience or the services of a little Negro boy. Split them down the back and dress them, but leave them whole. Roll them in flour. In plenty of butter in a deep kettle, brown the floured birds; and with them a tablespoonful or so of minced onion and minced green pepper. When brown, cover with hot water. Add salt, pepper, a bay-leaf, and a dash of allspice. Simmer gently about two hours, or until the birds are tender. Add tiny whole onions, potatoes cut in balls or small squares, and carrots cut in the shape and size of shoe-string potatoes. When the onions are nearly tender, remove the bay-leaf, add a tablespoonful of minced parsley, thicken slightly, turn into a deep casserole, add a few tablespoonfuls of sherry, cover with thick, rich pastry crust, and bake in a hot oven. Serve with a dry red wine, an endive and kumquat salad, and follow with tangerine sherbet.
This is the way I cook my small squab-sized chickens when I’m tired of waiting for them to reach broiler size:
Dress whole. Stuff with browned buttered crumbs and pecans. Roll in flour, well seasoned with salt and pepper. Brown on all sides in butter. Arrange in baking-dish. Almost cover with hot water that has been poured into skillet containing the butter in which chickens were browned. Add sherry, one-eighth cupful to each chicken. Cover tightly and bake until very tender, when chickens will have absorbed most of the liquid. I sometimes prepare in this fashion the smaller game birds, quail, doves, snipe; squirrel; small individual pot roasts of venison; or chicken too large for frying, cut into portions.
I am sorry I cannot here discuss frogs’ legs; or the time my pet raccoon grew instantly to manhood by imbibing one whole Alexander cocktail; and how, after sleeping it off on the pillows of my bed, he came swaggering to the dinner-table and fell growling on a pair of frogs’ legs tossed him by an alarmed guest whose leg he tried to climb; how he ate – after all his previous life on warm milk from the nursing bottle – six pairs; how the guest said:
‘But, after all, frogs’ legs are his natural diet, aren’t they?’
‘Yes’, I answered, ‘but not French fried – .’