Years after the nation's last Kenny Rogers' Roasters served its final bird, country music stars are again making a play for their fans' food dollars.
Perhaps because so many of them hail from the South, where good cooking is considered sacred, country celebs have long been inordinately fond of the eponymous restaurant ventures. Once as critical to an Opry member's cred as a Nudie suit, signature restaurants have lately been on the wane, with once-proud institutions such as Twitty Burger and Minnie Pearl Fried Chicken going the way of the cassette tape. But a series of openings set for this fall suggests country musicians may still harbor culinary ambitions.
White-hatted crooner Alan Jackson doesn't have an endeavor of his own, but showed up this week at a Nashville area Cracker Barrel to introduce a new line of spices, clothing and home goods, including an Alan Jackson rocking chair. According to Jackson's spokeswoman Nicole Dona, the singer likes to take his daughters to the homestyle chain.
"The family will still stop now and then when they are on their way back from the lake," she writes in a e-mail to Slashfood. "He loves the breakfast and also the meatloaf sandwich."
Few of us want to make a complicated lasagna for solo dining -- by day six, you'll never want to see lasagna again! In this series, AOL Food staffer Sarah LeTrent taste-tests simple recipes suitable for a "table for one."
Oh, beloved pimento cheese; the Southeast's answer to cheese dip and queso.
The bright-orange spread is nothing more than extra-sharp cheddar, mayonnaise, diced pimiento peppers and cracked black pepper. Homemade pimento cheese is a snap to make and leftovers are a cracker's best friend. You could spruce up the spread with serrano peppers, garlic, cayenne, different types of cheese or even bacon. But to most, nothing is better than the classic four-ingredient mix between two pieces of bread.
The pimiento is a small cherry pepper which loses the "i" in cheese-spread form to become plain ol' "pimento." Known for its sweetness, you'll probably recognize it in the jarred and diced forms. As a relative of the red bell pepper, many cooks -- including Matt and Ted Lee -- even admit to substituting the latter for pimientos.
In "The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook", they write, "Conventional pimento cheese recipes call for canned pimentos, but we broil a fresh red bell pepper, skin it and cut it into small dice before mixing it with cheese. Sure it makes some eyes roll in Charleston, but we think this is a simple route to a more vibrant and sophisticated (less chemical-tasting) pepper flavor."
Proponents of what could be the next big thing in Southern fruit say equating mainstays of the American lunchbox with their product is like comparing apples to pawpaws.
Unlike apple trees, pawpaw trees can be easily grown without chemical spraying and produce an enormously flavorful fruit. "It's a fantastic fruit," raves Ron Powell, executive director of the Ohio Pawpaw Growers Association, who says the pawpaw beats the apple in every nutritional category but fiber.
The pawpaw -- whose distinctively custardy insides have earned it the nicknames "West Virginia banana," "Kentucky banana" and "Missouri banana" – is an indigenous plant, most likely spread throughout the continent by Native Americans. Its tropical flavor makes the fruit a good fit for jams, breads, pies and wine.
"The beverage industry is interested," says Powell, who successfully lobbied the state of Ohio to honor the pawpaw as its official native fruit. He adds, "It has great potential for ice cream."
But unlike apples, pawpaws remain relatively unknown.
New Orleans' Southern Food and Beverage Museum is aiming to elevate the status of Arkansan eats with an upcoming exhibit devoted to the state's culinary traditions. As collections manager Chris Smith has discovered, however, Arkansas residents' edible habits aren't easily summarized.
"Arkansas is one of those states where the Northwest is different than the Southeast, and the Northeast is different than the Southwest," Smith says. "I don't think it has as much fried food as Louisiana, and I don't think it's as Mexican as Texas."
Smith is working to define Arkansas cuisine by relying largely on a massive collection of books submitted by sympathetic cooks after Hurricane Katrina destroyed a chunk of the museum's holdings.
So you think you're out playing hooky from work on the promise of a lovely Southern lunch stewed up by your favorite cookbook authors and then all of a sudden, in strides Bobby Flay.
Matt Lee and Ted Lee and the rest of the assembled had been lured to a barge on the Hudson River -- Matt's preferred canoeing channel -- on the premise that the brothers would be filming a segment for a Food Network special called "Lowcountry Lowdown." They'd filmed the first half in Charleston, S.C., and reportedly, the duel would have gone down on their home turf, had Chef Flay not fallen prey to the vagaries of air travel.
Read more about throwing down with the Country Captain after the jump.
'Lee Bailey's Southern Food & Plantation Houses' Recipes by Lee Bailey and the Pilgrimage Garden Club Photographs by Tom Eckerle Clarkson Potter -- 1989 Buy it at Amazon
Lee Bailey is a Louisiana native, home-furnishings store owner and the author of several books on food and entertaining. So he comes to this, his seventh book, quite naturally: both a compendium of Southern recipes and tour of the plantations in and around Natchez, Miss., it's part "Antiques Roadshow," part Southern Foodways Alliance, part National Lawn & Garden Show.
It's elegant, faintly -- and winningly -- eccentric, and imbued with unaggressive charm. Reading it is like taking a courtly stroll through a vast garden, bottomless mint julep in hand. You can almost smell the clematis -- and the gumbo.
Takeaway Tips: This is as much a celebration of Natchez as its food: the book begins with a self-explanatory section entitled "Natchez Bouquets" (remember, the tome was co-written by the town's Garden Pilgrimage Club) and recipes are organized into menus that are paired with particular plantations. "Informal Dinner at Stanton Hall," for example, provides readers with a brief history of the towering antebellum estate.
See what we tested and whether it's worth buying after the jump.
'Craig Claiborne's Southern Cooking' Craig Claiborne with foreword by John T. Edge and Georgeanna Milam University of Georgia Press -- 2007 (originally published in 1987 by Clamshell Productions, Ltd.) Buy it on Amazon
"It is not a question of chauvinism, but I have always averred that Southern cooking is by far the vastest and most varied of all traditional regional cooking in this country," wrote Craig Claiborne in the foreword to this pan-Southern paean to the cuisine of his childhood.
While Claiborne fled the physical South -- and his legendarily smothering mother, Miss Kathleen -- in favor of a stint in the Navy, hotel school in Switzerland and a multi-decade tenure as food editor of the New York Times, his palate remained staunchly attuned to the servant-cooked colloquial fare he'd enjoyed at his mother's boardinghouse.
What we tested and whether the book's worth buying after the jump.
As eaters who've had the opportunity to stuff themselves silly at a dinner on the ground know, Southern churches can be fine places to dine. Church potlucks, socials and family night suppers are sometimes the most reliable bets for knee-weakeningly good deviled eggs, pimento cheese, tomato salad, ham casserole and caramel cake.
But a recent trend means folks no longer have to monitor bulletins for edible events: Baptist churches throughout the region have lately formalized their role in upholding Southern food traditions by opening full-service cafés on their now sizable campuses. While chefs across Dixie are succumbing to the allure of molecular gastronomy and global cooking techniques, some churches have become important outposts of culinary preservation.
"Our clientele here would rather have a piece of fried chicken than a piece of beef tenderloin any time," says Chris Harwell, a professionally trained chef who helms the kitchen at Immanuel Baptist Church's Solid Roc Café in Lexington, Ky. "It's not the most sophisticated of palates."
The best thing about embarking on a mission to perfect one's biscuit making? You end up with an awful lot of delicious biscuits to eat. The worst thing? Holy heck, that's a lot of biscuits. I'm lucky enough to be married to an enthusiastic biscuit eater, but I don't want to try his patience too badly this early on, 'cause there are dozens more batches to be rolled out before the year is up.
Solution -- adapt one of his most dearly beloved dishes, his grandmother and mother's Memama and Mimiwag's Chicken & Dumplings a bit to accommodate extra biscuits as ersatz dumplings. The original recipe employs long, rolled strips of dough (which some have argued render it as a much more regionally specific Chicken & Pastry formation, but that's a whole 'nother post), but in lieu of that, I halved the biscuits (from the best batch thus far -- #6 White Lily All Purpose with 50/50 Lard/Butter) and stewed them into the sumptuous broth of a whole, cooked-down chicken until they were softened, but not soggy. That night, with a side of sauteed, vinegar-dashed Swiss chard, it was heaven. Two days later, plated with tangy collards -- otherworldy.
Have a favored use for extra biscuits? I beg of you, share it in the comments below.
On any given day, I've said ten nice things about the Southern Foodways Alliance before it's even lunchtime. Today, there are pom-pon shakes, fist pumps and spirit fingers of glee at the news of their latest endeavor.
"Announcing SFA's Skillet Brigade
Roll up your sleeves and join SFA's Skillet Brigade. It's a new initiative, one designed to put our vision statement into action: To set a table where black and white, rich and poor, all who gather, may consider our history and our future in a spirit of reconciliation.
Show SFA spirit in your community. Don't think large scale; you don't need to rebuild a storm-damaged fried chicken restaurant. Think smaller scale, and work with an existing effort. Serve lunch at a soup kitchen. Staff the hospitality tent at your local farmers' market. Lend time and talents to the community food pantry." (Read more here.)
For folks unfamiliar with the SFA, they're a member-supported organization of 800+ academics, chefs, writers, and plain ol' food fans who've banded together to celebrate and preserve the food cultures of the American South via conferences, publications, documentary films, and general full-throated evangelism. Won't you please lend a spatula? It's for an awfully delicious cause.
The less said about this batch, the better. I rolled 'em too thin, left them in the oven a minute or two too long, used too little liquid, achieved little to no loft, and skimped on flavor by switching from lard to vegetable shortening. Perhaps in the hands of a master biscuit maker, these factors wouldn't matter, but perhaps at this point, I need some training wheels in the form of commercial baking powder or self-rising flour.
My other muck-up -- I fell prey to fear of touching the dough too much and barely allowed the ingredients to mingle either during the bowl mixing or the kneading. While I've heard from all and sundry that overworking the dough is the kiss of death, there's got to be a happy medium. And hopefully a few sky-high biscuits.
Tips and more after the jump, and as always, I'd love any advice you feel like sharing.
I do not come from a biscuit making people. That's not to say that I led an entirely biscuitless youth -- just that the addition of water to a measure of Bisquick, and the joyless lumping thereof on a cookie sheet does not, what I consider a biscuit, make. Though this is a matter of great conjecture for folks from all walks, my particular biscuit paradigm is a balance of moist, fluffily layered, lard-laced innards and a crisped-up, nearly brittle top and bottom. A crunch through should grudgingly yield to a just off-sweet, pillowy, melting mass of deliciousness. With shards of salty country ham, a rich swipe of sweet butter, or just steaming hot from the oven, it's handheld heaven.
I can't make biscuits like that to save my life. In '09, that all changes.
With the aid of every cookbook, internet tip, and friends' advice at my disposal, I'm on a mission to perfect my biscuit making. I shall seek the counsel of Southern grandmothers and hound professional chefs until they begin to assail me with dough blenders. I shall become tiresome on the subject. I'm sure my husband would assert that I already have. 'Sokay -- he'll get fresh biscuits out of the deal, as will my colleagues, dogs, dog walker, friends, neighbors, cashiers, subway train drivers. Heck, I probably don't even know you, and you'll likely end up with a leftover biscuit from me.
I dig 'em with the tang of buttermilk and lard's sweet, creamy kiss, but for the sake of scientific exploration, I'll entertain alternate liquids and fats. I've been a good li'l stockpiling squirrel and plundered the shelves of several Harris Teeters and Food Lions during a recent sojurn to North Carolina so that the ingredients may possess the ideal terroir as borne by Southern flours like White Lily, Red Band and Southern Biscuit. I have chilled my lard, readied my sifting hand, and offered a small homage to the spirit of the dearly departed Edna Lewis. I am ready to begin.
This may not be my heritage, but it is my destiny.
The good folks at Chattanooga Bakery have seen fit to re-release their previously discontinued peanut butter permutation of the traditional choco-coated cookie, and not a darned second too soon. I'm here to tell ya, this li'l fella is some seriously good -- if nigh on violently sugary -- eating. With a crunchy, fudgy cookie as the foundation, a hearty slathering of extra-sweet peanut butter in lieu of the standard marshmallow and a silky chocolate coating, the confection bears an astonishing texture and flavor resemblance to the perennial Girl Scout vended fave, Tagalongs®, a.k.a. Peanut Butter Patties®. Served frozen, per a suggestion on the box, it's simply a revelation.
The upside is that unlike the GSA confection, Moon Pies can be acquired year-round. The downer for those trapped north of the Mason-Dixon is that they're not especially easy to come across in stores. $17.99, plus $8.95 (give or take) shipping will net you 48 pies, but I'd daresay it's worth the investment at least once. Tell ya what -- if you don't like 'em, next time I see you, I'll spring for your R.C.
Happy New Year, all! Hope everyone had a warm, festive Eve and is relatively headache-free and rested post-revelry. Now, there are as many ways to prepare the cowpea and rice concoction of Hoppin' John as there are squares on a calendar, but in many parts of the American South, the definitive date to simmer up a big ol' pot of it is New Year's Day. While the name's origin is still the subject of some debate -- some scholars asserting that it's a corruption of "pois a pigeon," a Carribean dish enjoyed by Southern slaves while still in their native land, and others claiming it's derived from a 13th century Iraqi dish called "bhat kachang" -- the dish's fans maintain that eating it ensures good luck for the coming year. This may well be superstition, but I'm inclined toward any angle that's gonna get a bowlful of it in front of me on a chilly January 1st.
My grand revelation of the day (though likely hardly news to many of you) is that cowpeas are the genus for the group that contains blackeye peas (most commonly used in Hoppin' John), catjang, and yardlong beans. They're also called crowder peas.
Some recipes for Hoppin' John contain tomatoes or okra, and the swap in of okra for the beans makes it a Limpin' Susie.
Got a favorite variation? Share it below, and peruse my favorite recipe after the jump.
If you're a friend of mine, I'm sorry, but I'm about to spoil your Christmas present. You're getting my homemade corncob wine. Now get that look off your face -- it's actually pretty darned tasty, and if you don't believe me, at least trust the palates of James Beard Award winning cookbook authors and Lowcountry culinary ambassadors Matt and Ted Lee. I nabbed this method from The Lee Bros. Southern Cooking, and thought the first batch turned out so well, it was worthy of a second gallon's brewing a few weeks later.
On any given day, I've said ten nice things about the 
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