Vegetarian Southern Food Again

Mark returned for a short visit, this time with his awesome new wife, and I made a vegetarian Southern meal the last night they were here. It was semi-successful.

The grits were fine, nothing fancy -- you can see them soaking on the right side of the picture. Just soaked, simmered for a few hours, and finished with half and half.

I made black eyed peas -- I browned onions and garlic and flour carefully but quite a bit, then added some sherry and a lot of vegetable stock and some fresh thyme and cooked it all down for an hour and a half. It was a nutty brown, very rich and good.

I quickly sauteed garden collards with some red pepper flakes, finishing them with vinegar.

Florida okra and tomatoes have started appearing in stores, so I made stewed tomatoes and okra. Very simple: just sweated half a Vidalia onion in some butter, then added the okra (stems cut off) and a few chopped tomatoes (seeds and some skin removed) and cooked it all down for 15 minutes, covered.

And I made strawberry rhubarb cobbler.

Grilled Radicchio Salad

I'm glad you got out of town for a few days, Mom.

I invented a salad. I guess this means my cooking slump is over. I don't know if Lawson loves it as much as I do; he is not as into bitter leafy things as I. Too bad for him.

I've grilled radicchio before, but I was never successful at tempering its bitterness very well. This works, though. It accompanies easy grilled meals well, too, because you do most of the speedy prep ahead of time, then grill the radicchio along with your burgers or sausage or whatever right before serving.

Toss together and set aside at room temperature for at least an hour:

• cherry tomatoes, halved (or chopped good summer tomatoes, when available)
• sugar snap peas, de-stringed, halved if desired
  
• balsamic vinegar
• olive oil
• merest hint of salt
• pepper
  

Then quarter one head of radicchio and lightly spray all sides with olive oil cooking spray. Grill quarters over direct but not too high gas or coals, turning as needed, until radicchio is browned but not charred.

Cut grilled radicchio pieces roughly with scissors, toss with tomato mixture, and serve.

The picture is blurry because my camera sucks. I am in the market for a new one.

Day 4: Carolina Food Only

I'm settled in now after a few days of tumult. Tonight we ate:

• Biscuits made from Adluh Self-Rising Flour, Caw Caw Creek bacon drippings, and Happy Cow Creamery milk
• Pink eyed peas, already hulled, from Rosewood Market. I cooked them with a little bacon fat, a garden okra pod, and water, with a piece of bacon crumbled on top at the end.
• A caprese salad of garden tomatoes, garden basil, and Happy Cow Creamery mozzarella

Lawson thought the biscuits tasted too bacony, but I thought they were fine -- I've not eaten a lot of biscuits in my life, so I don't really have a standard. I'll eat one tomorrow with fig preserves and decide whether the bacon interferes with that treatment.

Last night we drank a bottle of Biltmore Estate red table wine, which was actually really decent. At $11, however, it was way out of my wine price range. You know those lists of The Best Wines Under $25? Yeah. I have a personal cap of $8, with occasional forays up to $10 if I balance those out with enough $4 bottles. Do I appreciate fancier wines? Yes. Are some of those $7 wines really good? Yes. $25 my foot. But anyway, yes, North Carolina wine was pretty tasty.

White Acre Peas

Lately I've been learning more about Southern peas, which are beans, and include things like black-eyes peas, crowder peas, field peas, and these white acre peas. I think. I'm having a hard time sorting out the taxonomies and the regional variations and figuring out what's going on from my halfhearted internet research. This might need to become a real, carefully researched article.

Anyway, all these pea-beans have been amazing so far. This batch I cooked with just a little bacon, a few garden okra, and some water. I rendered the bacon, added the water and peas and okra, and gave it about 25 minutes at a half-covered simmer. We had it with grits and tomatoes.

First Okra of the Year

And so it begins again.

I picked up some local crowder peas at the Rosewood Market and cooked them very simply with bacon, salt, and the first two okra pods of the season. And I understood this time what's so special about crowder peas. Lawson describes it as a metallic flavor, and yes, there's a brassy freshness even after 25 minutes of cooking. They taste sort of like fresh peas and sort of like dried beans. Very exciting. We ate them with cold smoked chicken and a simple green salad.

I am impatient for more garden okra. I almost became unprofessional yesterday while interviewing a lady who represents a certain organization that promotes local food when she told me she doesn't like okra. What? She's only lived here a year, though. I guess it took me a few more years than that to come around. She was very neat otherwise. But okra. OKRA.