Fran Rizer - Callie Parrish 06 - A Corpse Under the Christmas Tree (35 page)

*If you don’t have buttermilk, make a substitute by putting 1½ teaspoons white vinegar or lemon juice in a measuring cup. Add regular milk to bring to ½ cup. Let sit for 5 minutes, then use just like buttermilk.

PA’S FAVORITE BANANA NUT BREAD

MS. GLORIA WISE’S PINEAPPLE BANANA NUT BREAD

Pa got this recipe from Miss Ellen who had copied it from her cousin Gloria Wise’s cookbook.

Ingredients

1 cup self-rising flour

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

1 egg

⅓ cup vegetable oil

⅔ cup granulated sugar

⅔ cup mashed banana (about l medium)

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

8 ounces crushed pineapple, drained

¼ to ½ cup chopped pecans or walnuts

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Combine flour and cinnamon in a medium size mixing bowl. Stir egg, oil, sugar, banana, and vanilla in a separate bowl. When mixed well, add to the dry ingredients and stir until moistened. Fold in the pineapple and nuts with a spatula. Pour bread batter into two greased and floured 5¾x3x2-inch loaf pans to make mini loaves or into a regular loaf pan for one loaf. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes. Stick a toothpick in the center of one of the loaves. If it comes out clean, it’s done. Remove from the oven and cool in the pans for 5 minutes and then on wire racks.

RIZZIE’S GULLAH RECIPES

Callie met Rizzie Profit and her brother Tyrone when she and Jane went to a bluegrass festival on the recently developed part of Surcie Island in
Hey, Diddle, Diddle, THE CORPSE AND THE FIDDLE.
Since then, Jane and the Parrish family have become close friends with the Profit family, and Rizzie has opened the Gastric Gullah Grill where folks on the coast of South Carolina eat some of the finest Gullah food around.

The word “Gullah” refers to a Carolina Low Country African-American culture—a language, a cuisine, a people, and their customs. Some authorities believe that the culture survived from days of slavery because of their long-time isolation on the coastal islands. Much of their knowledge and talents—everything from food gathering and preparation, use of herbal medicines, songs and stories in Gullah dialect, worship customs, and the intricate art of basket-weaving—is still seen on the coast.

Gullah food is based on cooking what was available to them way back when they came from Africa. Since they lived on the coast and its islands, their dishes include a lot of seafood. Recipes are characterized by one-pot dishes with seafood or game meats as well as staples of African cuisine—rice, sweet potatoes, okra, and peanuts.

To sum up Rizzie, she’s Gullah and gorgeous as well as being a fantastic cook. After she learned I was writing out some of Pa’s recipes, she offered to share some of hers if I would include
her
recipe for what’s known around St. Mary by three different names—Beaufort Stew or Frogmore Stew or Low Country Stew—and made by dozens of different recipes though the basic ingredients are the same. I jumped at the chance. Rizzie says
bittle
is the Gullah word for food, so here are recipes for some of my favorite
bittle
I eat at Gastric Gullah Grill.

LOW COUNTRY OR BEAUFORT OR FROGMORE STEW

All three of these stews are basically shrimp, smoked sausage, potatoes, corn on the cob, and onion cooked in water seasoned with commercial crab and shrimp boil seasoning. The trick is to add the ingredients in a timed sequence that makes everything prepared exactly right with nothing overcooked.

Are there frogs in Frogmore Stew? None that I know of. The name Frogmore, like Beaufort, refers to a town on the coast of South Carolina. Rizzie cooks this in a humongous pot at the restaurant, but you can reduce the quantity by dividing the amounts in halves or quarters.

RIZZIE’S LOW COUNTRY BEAUFORT FROGMORE STEW

Ingredients

Water to fill large pot half full

3 cans of your favorite beer

1 bag of Old Bay Seafood Seasoning or ¼ cup other commercial seafood boil seasoning

4 or 5 pounds small red potatoes or quartered larger potatoes, not peeled, but scrubbed clean

2 pounds smoked sausage, cut into 2-inch pieces (use Andouille if you have it)

6 ears corn, cut into halves

4 pounds medium or large shrimp with heads removed, but not peeled

Optional: 4 pounds whole crabs, cleaned and broken into quarters. (Soft shell crabs are fantastic when in season.)

Directions

Bring the water to low boil, add beer and seafood seasoning. Add potatoes and cook 10 minutes. Add sausage and cook 5 more minutes. Add corn and crab and cook another 5 minutes. Remove one potato, one piece of sausage, one ear of corn, and one piece of crab. Check each for doneness. Return them to the pot. When everything else is almost done, drop in the shrimp and cook for 3 more minutes. Drain the water and discard it. Pour the food onto a picnic table covered with paper or into large restaurant pans. Serve on paper plates with seafood cocktail sauce. Most folks want sweet ice tea or cold beer with this stew.

Rizzie’s stew is different from lots of others because she uses beer in the water and she likes to add crab. Some people use shrimp with the heads on while others prefer cleaned and deveined shrimp. Rizzie removes the heads because sometimes tourists don’t like seeing them in their stew, but she prefers for her guests to shell the shrimp so they won’t become tough while cooking. This is the way she makes the stew for Gastric Gullah Grill, but at her house, she sometimes adds whole crawfish. She also jokes that the next time someone asks her about Frogmore Stew, she’s going to add some frog legs to the pot.

RIZZIE’S GULLAH SEASONING

The distinctive taste of many Gullah foods comes from a combination of salt, pepper, garlic, onion, and sometimes coriander or fresh cilantro. When frying, broiling, or grilling, Rizzie sprinkles her own homemade seasoning on meat. It’s made of equal parts of salt, pepper, minced or powdered garlic, and minced or powdered onion. To that, she sometimes adds 1 tablespoon of paprika per cup and ½ tablespoon of coriander.

RIZZIE’S GULLAH OKRA RICE

Ingredients

2 cups frozen cut okra or fresh okra sliced about ½ inch thick with stalk ends discarded

2 tablespoons Rizzie’s Gullah seasoning

1 pound skinless chicken pieces or ½ skinned chicken

½ cup vegetable oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 small to medium tomatoes, diced

1 bell pepper, diced

¼ pound Andouille or other smoked sausage, diced

Another two tablespoons of vegetable oil

4 cups chicken broth

2 cups uncooked white rice (preferably long-grain)

Directions

Thaw the okra if it’s frozen. Slice it if it’s fresh. Set it aside. Sprinkle the chicken with Rizzie’s Gullah seasoning and cook it in a heavy or stick-free skillet, covered, on medium heat in ½ cup vegetable oil until cooked through and browned. Bring the chicken broth to a boil in a medium-size sauce pan. Add rice, cover, and cook on medium low for 10 minutes without looking or stirring. (Cooks who just have to look can use a tight-fitting glass lid on the sauce pan.) Remove the chicken from the skillet and set it aside to cool. After 10 minutes, turn off the heat beneath the rice pan. Do not move the pot, uncover, or stir for 10 more minutes. While rice cooks, if there is oil remaining in the frying pan, continue. If not, add 2 tablespoons of oil to the skillet, and then stir in the sausage pieces, onion, and okra. Stir fry over medium heat about 5 minutes until onion is barely translucent and okra is no longer stiff, but not soggy. Add tomatoes, and bell pepper to the skillet and remove it from the heat. Remove the bones and chop the chicken into bite size pieces. Stir the chicken and vegetable-sausage mixture into the rice. Fluff with a fork.

Rizzie likes to use okra in one-pot meals, but she says her favorite way to prepare and eat okra is the way her Maum made it when Rizzie was a little girl. She told me,
Maum would go out to our garden in the morning and cut a basket full of okra. She wore gloves because okra kind of stings your fingers. She brought it into the house and washed the okra and laid it out on a clean towel, but now you could use paper towels.

After the okra had dried from its bath, she cut the stalk ends off and sliced each pod into pieces about ½-inch long. She poured just a little bacon grease or oil in a cast iron skillet and turned the heat to medium high. Then she stirred the okra around until the edges turned brown. If she had a lot of okra, she’d fry it in more than one batch. You don’t want to overcrowd the skillet.

You can eat deep-fried, breaded okra, but it won’t touch Maum’s okra. She’d sprinkle a little salt on the cooked okra just before she served it.

RIZZIE’S FRESH TOMATO GULLAH PIE

Ingredients

1 unbaked pie shell (homemade, frozen, or refrigerated roll-out)

2 tablespoons evaporated milk

4 cups firm ripe tomatoes, sliced (peeling is optional)

1½ teaspoons salt

⅛ teaspoon pepper

¼ to ½ teaspoon dried tarragon

⅓ cup mayonnaise*

⅓ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

Preheat the oven to 450° F. Line the pie plate with the shell unless the shell is already in a tin-foil pie dish. Crimp the edges and brush the pastry with evaporated milk. Bake the shell for 5 minutes at 450° and remove from oven. Reduce oven temperature to 350°. Lay the sliced tomatoes in the pie shell, sprinkling each layer with salt, pepper, and tarragon. Stir the cheese and mayonnaise together and spoon the mixture over the tomatoes, spreading it out as much as possible. Bake 35 to 45 minutes at 350° or until the tomatoes are cooked and the top is light brown.

*After several phone calls and e-mails, I am giving in and stating officially that the mayonnaise should be Duke’s even though I’m not being paid for the promotion. Many Southerners don’t consider anything but Duke’s as “real” mayonnaise, while northerners praise Hellman’s, and those of us on budgets buy whatever is on sale that weekend.

At a McCormick, SC, Friends of the Library book-signing, they served refreshments made from recipes on the website. They made tiny tomato pies in miniature tart pans creating a tasty as well as beautiful appetizer.

OLA BELLE’S SWEET POTATO PONE

Pone is a cross between bread and pudding. It’s a Gullah dish, but Rizzie got this version from a lady named Ola Belle who had nine children who loved Potato Pone.

Ingredients

3 cups peeled, grated raw sweet potatoes

2 cups granulated sugar

½ cup soft margarine or butter

2 eggs

¼ cup cream or evaporated milk

3 tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350° F. Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs, vanilla, and cream or milk. Beat lightly. Add the sweet potatoes and flour. Do not beat, just blend. Spray a 9x13-inch baking dish with cooking oil. Spoon the mixture into the baking dish and bake at 350° until lightly browned on top and not squiggly in the middle (about an hour). It’s done when a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.) Cool before cutting into squares.

The McCormick Friends of the Library served Sweet Potato Pone as finger food by cutting it into 1-inch squares.

RIZZIE’S GULLAH SQUASH

Ingredients

3 slices bacon

1 medium onion, sliced

1 bell pepper, julienned

4 medium yellow squash or 2 medium yellow squash and 2 medium zucchini, sliced

1 teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

¼ teaspoon dried rosemary

Directions

Fry bacon in a non-stick skillet or cast-iron skillet. Remove the bacon and set aside to drain on paper towel. Sauté the onion and bell pepper in the bacon drippings. Put squash in medium saucepan. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and rosemary. Pour onion, bell pepper, and bacon drippings over squash. Stir. Cover and cook on medium low heat for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. At Christmas, Rizzie uses half a green bell pepper and half a red bell pepper in this dish. Crumble the reserved cooked bacon on top of the squash in the serving bowl.