Simple Fresh Southern

I have to admit, I've never really cooked southern food much in my cooking career. Does BBQ count? But now, I'm well seasoned in the ways of the Southern Gentleman.
Last night we cooked out of the Lee Bro's Simple Fresh Southern cookbook. If you want to get into southern cooking, and let me tell ya, it's pretty cool and fun to cook, this is a great book to get started with. There has been a small surge in "southern" cookbooks recently with John Besh and Donald Links' books about New Orleans and Cajun cooking respectively.

Currently at the Montreal en Lumiere Festival, New Orleans is the feature city.
This is not something I planned. It is purely coinsidence that tonight we did southern cooking. Besides, the Lee bro's are from South Carolina. A totally different kind of southern.
Here is what we cooked.

Collard Green and Winter Root Soup
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Sweet Potato and Okra Fritters with Buttermilk Dip
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Easy Shrimp Creole
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Banana Pudding Parfaits

If one is to cook southern food, there are a few specific ingredients one should incorporate into the menu. Collards is one of them. We started off the evening with a soup that used collards, winter root veg, and lots of bacon.
For those who have never had collard greens before, it's very similar to kale, with a cabbage sort of vibe. It is available in good vegetable markets like Atwater or Jean Talon. It's treated the same way kale or cabbage is treated. In southern cooking, it's cooked for a really long time. And this recipe does just that. When greens are cooked a long tine, they turn a really funky green colour that really is not appealing to me. So this is the one thing I changed from this recipe. Other than that, I followed it pretty well.
We started with some slab bacon that was diced. Slowly cooked until the fat has rendered off, but not nesacerally crisp. The vegetable were added, in this case, Onion, garlic, turnip and carrot, and cooked together with the bacon. The collards were added with chicken stock, and simmered until the vegetables were soft, about 15-20 minutes. The recipe says to simmer for like 40 minutes. I'm not a big fan of cooking soups that long. Everything becomes over cooked. So I do it my way. It came out pretty good. The soup was hearty with the root veg and the collard greens, and very smokey from the bacon. A good start to this meal.

Next was one of my favorite. Probably because it was deep-fried.
Another must use ingredient in southern cooking is Okra. A lot of people have bad impressions of okra. When cooked, it lets off a gummy, starchy texture not loved by many. But when cooked properly, has a beautiful sweet flavour and crisp texture. But only when it's done right.

We started by simply grating some sweet potato and salting it. It was allowed to sit for 10 minutes then we squeezed out the excess moisture. Sweet potatoes when cooked, because of their high sugar content, tend to brown quickly without crisping up. Salting them helped draw out some of the sugar that allows them to crisp up nicely when fried. The grated potatoes were then added to the sliced okra and then a batter of eggs, cream and some flour. The mixture was stirred and then let to sit for a few minutes. Then the recipe says to stir the mixture for a full minute. This sounded kind of strange to me. The mixture before stirring was fairly thin and not at all like a runny batter or thick enough to really stick together. But once mixed for the one minute, the starch from the okra started to come out and made everything stick together. Genius!
We spooned batches of the mixture into hot oil, fried until golden, and served with a simple m=dip of buttermilk, sour cream and garlic. The dip really brought the whole dish together. The tang balanced well with the sweet potato. I'll make this again for sure.

The main was a very simple Shrimp Creole. his is a great dish for a quick weeknight meal. It's packed with flavour and can done is 20 minutes. The base of a traditional Shrimp Creole consists of onions, celery, tomatoes, peppers and spice. I also made a quick shrimp stock with the shells from the shrimp. This was added to the vegetable mixture and cooked down to the desired thickness. The shrimp were added in the last few minutes.
Traditionally served on top of rice, I decided to do out of the book and cook some grits. for those who don't know what grits is, think of polenta, but using white corn. Cheesy grits was on the menu tonight. I dove into the Lee Brothers first book, Southern Cooking. The grits were cooked with some stock for 30 minutes, then I added in some Monterey Jack cheese at the end. Served with the Shrimp Creole on top, you can't get more southern than that.
This dish was a lot easier than I had though it would be. The flavours were intense with peppers, tomatoes and shrimp.

For dessert, we put together Banana Parfaits. when I say parfait, I can't help but saying it in a southern drawl. Paaarfait!
It's sort of like making pudding. The bananas were first pureed in the food processor with sugar and lemon juice. They were placed in the fridge to chill.
The second part was the custard. Like pudding, the custard consisted of milk, sugar, eggs, cornstarch, and vanilla. It was cooked in a pot until thick and then allowed to chill in the fridge.
To assemble, there is a layer of custard, banana, some crumbled gingersnap cookies, more custard, and whipped cream whipped up with sugar and some rum.
Puree Banana is not really my thing. But I get the idea. I was sweet, tasted like I should be in Louisianna, and with a shot of Jack Daniels, hard to pass up.

Simple Fresh Southern is for the beginners. If you want to get into some light, easy southern dishes, this is for you. Not the most traditional, dirty southern cooking I had in mind, but a great stepping stone. I really enjoyed the ease of use and full colour pictures so I knew what I was supposed to be making. This book gave me a taste of the south, now I want more.

Next class: Pasta Sfoglia