Al Dente

Virginia Willis' Alphabet Soup: IACP, PDX, PRS, and SPA!

I had a GREAT week in Portland for IACP, but am in serious need of a bike ride, yoga, and some real exercise, not to mention a hardcore deep tissue massage to remove the gnarly gremlin that has moved into my shoulder blade from toting too much heavy luggage. It's mean. Mean and mad. AWESOME food. Pok Pok was a real fave. The hot wings are frankly something you just kind of want to roll around in they are so good. Ping was good, too. Big new experiment from both of those experiences will be the flavored drinking vinegars. Stay tuned. The Heathman Hotel was OUTSTANDING. Their tag is "where service is an art" and they are not kidding. James Beard award-winning Best Chef Northwest Philippe Boulot, originally from Normandy, is brilliant. He trained in Paris with Joël Robuchon. Think Rock Star. Very charming, handsome Rock Star. Everything I put in my mouth at the Heathman (and one day, practically everything including breakfast, lunch, and dinner originated there) was absolutely superb. Seriously perfect execution. The Dungeness Crab Salad with Mango and Avocado? Sure, I knooow, that's been done and done again, frankly. But this one? A perfect combination of sour, salty, bitter, sweet. French influence runs deep in the heart of Northwest cooking. Exquisite.

One night we enjoyed razor clams the chef had dug up from the sand himself from the Washington State coast just the day before. The minerality and sweetness was positively and distinctively seductive in my mouth. Rich lamb tongue salad was counteracted with an bracing mustard vinaigrette; meltingly soft smoky cedar plank salmon was paired with sweet, green sauteed pea shoots; rabbit was stuffed with meaty mushroom farcie, wrapped in caul fat and roasted until smoky and brown.

Veal sweetbreads on a perfect julienne of apple and pear with bitter lettuce. Even thinking back to that bite induces a dreamy sigh of contentment from me as I type. The Heathman food was really amazing. Very, very balanced flavors and just really good cooking.

IACP, or the International Association of Culinary Professionals conference was great. Kim Severson , NYT journalist and author of Spoon Fed (Ahem, BUY IT.) enjoyed her inner Ellen with Ruth Riechl. Ruth Riechl addressed the Big Elephant in the Room about the demise of Gourmet magazine. The opening reception was amazing with a great assembly of restaurants and representatives from the PDX street food culture. There were tons and tons of great seminars and of course, the cookbook awards. The best of the best for the year. One of the books nominated for an IACP award was Golden Door Cooks at Home by Chef Dean Rucker and Marah Stets.

Um, no caul fat. None. Not the first bit.
Spas? Their point is to make that stuff go away.

Marah and I were at LaVarenne together working with Anne Willan back in the 90s.

We were laughing last week. I walked into the kitchen the first day, scared to death, really. Thinking I was going to peel potatoes or chop onions or such, I somewhat hesitantly leaned in to ask Marah, "So, um, what can I do?"

She cleanly looked at me and replied, "Cook dinner."

Alrightly, then.

And there I was and it was most likely the best words that could have been spoken. Those two words meant, "You are a cook, so cook. This is a busy place. Sink or swim, but don't weigh anyone down in the meanwhile. Get to work. Don't be scared. And, when you are done? Do the dishes." I have long admired her no nonsense New England attitude. She hired me to do some work on The All New Joy of Cooking; it was an real honor to work with her. Lest I make her sound like an ogre, she is not. She's an absolute master at French, speaking proficiently in lyrical, dulcet tones, and yet was always exceedingly patient with my clumsy butchery of her adopted tongue. She's a dear beautiful, smart woman and a first rate editor and writer.
 

Ok, enough with the niceties and back to that caul fat.

Julia and Julie: Yes, the Swap Is Intentional

July 15th I had the real pleasure of seeing a sneak preview of Julie & Julia. Tony Conway, owner of Legendary Events in Atlanta hosted an amazing Girls Night Out. Following cocktails and dinner, a group of about 400 women filed into the theater at Phipps Plaza. The movie doesn’t actually premiere until early August! The event itself was truly spectacular and a perfect example of why Tony Conway is regarded as one of the best in his business.

The movie was so charming that I left wanting to see it again. Based on true stories, Julie & Julia intertwines the lives of two women in a fascinating way. I am a huge Meryl Streep fan and she was amazing. She is such a chameleon and, of course, had Julia’s voice and mannerisms nailed.

But, it triggered something that’s been nagging me ever since.

First, the movie. In short, the plot is the story of a frustrated temporary secretary, Julie Powell, embarking on a year-long culinary quest to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She chronicles her tribulations in a blog called “The Julie/Julia Project: Nobody here but us servantless American cooks.” The blog caught on and was eventually featured in a piece in the New York Times by food writer Amanda Hesser. Julie’s life was changed forever, her blog turned into a best-selling memoir, Nora Ephron wrote her screenplay, and now Amy Adams is playing her on the big screen.

The film, also covers the years Julia Child (Meryl Streep) and her husband Paul (Stanley Tucci) spent in Paris during the 1940s and 1950s. Their portion of the story was adapted from My Life in France, written by Julia Child with nephew Alex Prud’homme. Basically, this was the time when Julia became Julia, attended Le Cordon Bleu and met her collaborators Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle. They began to teach cooking to American women in the Child’s kitchen, calling their informal school L’Ecole des Trois Gourmandes. For the next decade, as the Childs moved around Europe and finally to their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the three researched, developed, and tested French recipes for the American kitchen. The result of this long collaboration was Mastering the Art of French Cooking edited by the imitable Judith Jones.

I promise this will eventually address the source of my irritation. Stick with me.

The first time I met Julia Child was at a book signing when I was in culinary school at L’Academie de Cuisine in DC. I stood there like a zombie in front of her, incapable of speech. A friend eventually jolted me out of my stupor and pushed me along.

After DC, I became an editorial stagiaire for Anne Willan at Ecole de Cuisine LaVarenne. I was supposed to be there for three months, but was there on and off for almost three years. Julia actually encouraged Anne to open the school. My first year I was working with none other than Amanda Hesser (see above), who at the time was also working on her first book, The Cook and the Gardener. During that time Julia would come to visit, staying weeks at a time. The staff at LaVarenne was predominantly young food-knowledge hungry Americans. We had grown up seeing her on TV and she was one of the reasons we were there in France. We would vacillate wildly from “OH MY G*D, IT’S JULIA CHILD” to complete nonchalance. It was normal. She was always very pleasant. I don’t remember why, but once at the dinner table, in her famous warbling voice she declared Eisenhower nothing more than a “big powder-puff." Sure wish I could remember the context…. One winter at the Food Writer’s Symposium at the Greenbrier we shared a suite. I treated her like my grandmother, made sure she didn’t forget her cane and carried her books. (That was a hoot! I’ll write about that some other time.)

Promise. It’s coming.

After France I moved to New York to work for Martha. I ran into Julia at food events, and that was pretty much the extent of it.

OK, here we go.

I also read the Julie/Julia Project blog and for a time, I followed Julie Powell. I was very intrigued by her nerve actually, of cooking the book. Pretty stiff stuff for an untrained cook. Good for her, I thought. What an undertaking. But one day she made a comment implying a recipe being wrong for roast chicken. I honestly don’t remember what it was, but it struck me as being so disrespectful, completely without deference to Julia Child, that I stopped. What the hell did she know about food? Had she even heard of poulet au Bresse? Didn’t go back. No malice. Just didn’t want to follow anymore.

That brings me back to the present. Wednesday night I watched the Julie & Julia movie.

“Had a lovely time, Tony, thanks so much for a lovely party.”

The next night I saw a link on Twitter from an older article from the New York Times. I clicked through and read. It was in my opinion, decent writing, good writing, but it wasn’t about food. It made me think it maybe needed to be in a blog. It was not appropriate on that stage, on that level. It was the damn New York Times!

To be clear, it was NOT written by Amanda Hesser.

And, then it all made sense. My underlying malaise.

Hotter Than Georgia Asphalt: July 4th Barbecue Chicken

In the heat of the summer, there’s nothing better for keeping the heat out of the kitchen than firing up the grill. My grandfather used a potent vinegar bath on grilled chicken that produced a pungent, meaty odor, sending out billowing clouds of steam and smoke as the chicken cooked. I like to make a batch of the marinade and keep it in the refrigerator in the spritz bottle. It works well with pork chops, too.

The birds in the photo are spatchcocked and threaded on a spit. Spatchcocking is a technique used with small birds like Cornish hens, quail, or even small chickens. You remove their backbones and spread them open so that they are fairly flat. Besides creating an intriguing presentation and making them simple to carve, a spatchcocked bird requires less time cooking, so the breast meat is more likely to be moist and tender.

To spatchcock a bird, place the bird on a clean cutting board, breast side down. Using poultry shears, make a lengthwise cut on both sides of the backbone from neck to tail. Remove the backbone and save it for stock. Open the bird like a book. Proceed with the recipe. For an especially flat bird, place the bird on a baking sheet, top with a second baking sheet and weigh it down with a brick or several large cans of tomatoes for several hours or overnight in the refrigerator.

Bon Appétit Y’all!
VA

Dede’s Barbecued Chicken

Ingredients:
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup peanut oil, plus more for the grate
2 tablespoons hot sauce
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon coarse salt, plus more for seasoning the chicken
1 (4 to 5-pound) chicken, cut into 8 pieces
Freshly ground black pepper

Directions:
1. Prepare a charcoal fire using about 6 pounds of charcoal and burn until the coals are completely covered with a thin coating of light gray ash, 20 to 30 minutes. Spread the coals evenly over the grill bottom, position the grill rack above the coals, and heat until medium-hot (when you can hold your hand 5 inches above the grill surface for no longer than 3 or 4 seconds). Or, for a gas grill, turn on all burners to High, close the lid, and heat until very hot, 10 to 15 minutes.

2. Combine the water, vinegar, peanut oil, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, and salt in a squirt bottle. Set aside.

3. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Apply some oil to the grill grate. Place the chicken on the grill, leaving plenty of space between each piece. Grill until seared, about 1 to 2 minutes per side for legs and thighs, and 3 or so minutes for breasts. Move the chicken to medium-low heat or reduce the heat to medium; continue to grill, turning occasionally and squirting with the marinade, until the juices run clear when pierced, 12 to 18 minutes. Remove the pieces from the grill as they cook and transfer to a warm platter. Give them a final squirt of sauce for flavor and serve immediately.

Serves 4 to 6

Virginia Willis Culinary Productions, LLC © 2009
Adapted from Bon Appétit, Y’all: Recipes and Stories from Three Generations of Southern Cooking by Virginia Willis, copyright © 2008. Published by Ten Speed Press.

--Virginia Willis

Virginia Willis's Buttermilk Cornbread

I could make a meal out of just buttered cornbread. Except perhaps for barbecue, cornbread is as close to religion in the South as any particular food gets. At the top of the list of cornbread sins is adding sugar. You will notice a complete lack of sugar in this cornbread recipe. Sugar is more often found in what is referred to derisively as “Yankee cornbread.”

Adherents of white versus yellow cornmeal are like Methodists and Baptists--some think you’re going to hell if you follow one path and not the other. I am of the white cornmeal sect. The theory is that white corn was less hybridized and is closer to the original grain than yellow. Plain white cornmeal can be surprisingly tricky to find, even in Atlanta; most of what lines the grocery store shelves is a mix or self-rising, which already contains the leavener that makes the cornmeal rise. Although yellow and white cornmeal are interchangeable, plain and self-rising cornmeal are not.

Warming the skillet and bacon grease or butter in the oven prepares the skillet for baking and melts the fat. Most often, I use butter. I like to let it get just barely nutty brown on the edges. The brown flecks give the cornbread extra color and flavor.

Buttermilk Cornbread
Makes one 10-1/2-inch skillet bread

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons unsalted butter or bacon grease
2 cups white or yellow cornmeal (not cornmeal mix or self-rising cornmeal)
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups buttermilk
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Place the butter in a 10-1/2-inch cast-iron skillet or ovenproof baking dish and heat in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, in a bowl, combine the cornmeal, salt, and baking soda. Set aside. In a large measuring cup, combine the buttermilk and egg. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and stir to combine.

3. Remove the heated skillet from the oven and pour the melted butter into the batter. Stir to combine, then pour the batter back into the hot skillet. Bake until golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes.

Variation: Instead of baking in a skillet, this batter may be prepared as muffins. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Melt the butter in a small pan over low heat or in the microwave. Prepare the batter as directed; after mixing with the melted butter, spoon the batter into a 12-cup standard muffin tin, filling each cup no more than two-thirds full. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes.

Reprinted with permission from Bon Appétit, Y’all: Recipes and Stories from Three Generations of Southern Cooking by Virginia Willis, copyright © 2008. Published by Ten Speed Press.

--Virginia Willis

Fried Chicken: A Love Story

I’ve been cooking as a professional for a little over 15 years, but my passion actually started when I wasn’t tall enough to reach the counter in my grandmother’s country kitchen. I called her Meme and she was the light of my life. My mother now lives in her home, the simple country house my grandfather hand-built over 60 years ago. The kitchen hasn’t really changed much. There never has been enough space for everything. The light still hums. Her recipes still are posted on the inside of the cabinet, some written directly on the wood. Her worn wooden-handled turning fork still hangs from the cabinet, and her skillets and pans still hang on nails behind the door propped open with the same antique solid cast-iron pressing iron.

She and I spent hours together in the kitchen. There are photos of me as young as 3 years old standing on a stool “helping.” I remember we’d roll out the biscuits and she’d let me make a hand print with the scraps of dough. The tiny fingers on my hand-print biscuit would cook very dark in the heat of the oven, taking on a slightly bitter, almost nutty taste. I know that’s where my love for cooking took root, working at her side on her linoleum countertop in the gentle breeze of the oscillating fan.

Oh, she could cook. Her pound cake was legendary. She’d wake in the early morning before the heat of the day and prepare fried chicken, buttermilk biscuits, old-fashioned butterbeans, creamed corn, okra and tomatoes. Fried chicken would be my hands-down choice for my last supper if I were “on the way to the chair.” Meme knew how much I loved it and spoiled me. When I lived far away and flew home to visit, it didn’t matter what time of the day or night I arrived--2:00 p.m. or 2:00 a.m.--she would be at the stove frying chicken to welcome me home. I was undeniably spoiled absolutely, positively rotten.

She was not the first bit shy about pretty much acknowledging me as a favorite grandchild. My cousin Gene was the male counterpart. He and I seemingly could do no wrong. However, she and my sister were oil and water, far too much alike to ever get along. She wasn’t exactly a twinkling-eyed docile grandmother. She was formidable--a veritable force of nature. Before I was born, I was told she got tired of driving into town to go to church. Not going to church wasn’t an option. So, she had my grandfather donate the land and build a little country church.

My grandfather adored her and called her his better half. She would literally make the man take his shirt off so she could wash it. That never made a lick of sense to me. She would start on something and wouldn’t stop until her will was met. He’d mumble quietly under his breath, “Lawd, have mercy,” but he would have moved a mountain range for her. My grandfather, with his blue eyes twinkling, said he always got the “last word,” and those words were, “Yes, beloved.”

For as long as I can remember, they had a motor home, a camper. They drove as far south as the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico and the far north as the end of the Alaska Highway. I was able to take several long trips with them when I was young. Meme had an even smaller kitchen, but she would still fry me chicken and we would stop at farm stands for fresh produce. Dede and I would hike and walk in the woods, often bringing her buckets of wild berries and she would make cobbler.

Once the three of us drove north, through Detroit into Canada, east to Nova Scotia, and caught the ferry to Newfoundland. Not a small trip. To familiarize you with the roads of Newfoundland, imagine a squiggly horseshoe starting on one end of the island that zigzags and meanders to the other side. We were about halfway across the island when Meme looked at my grandfather and said, “Sam, pull over in that gas station and turn around, I’m ready to go home.” He did, and we did.

The very last time I saw my grandmother was on Mother’s Day nine years ago. She had a sore throat, went to the doctor, and was diagnosed with cancer. She was 91 and quickly conceded defeat when she heard that ugly word. I thought my heart would break. I never knew anything could hurt so badly--I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was living in New York and would fly home at least every other weekend to see her. When I returned to that simple country kitchen, our tables were turned, and I cooked for her. It was not fried chicken that I prepared, but soft, rich custards and creamy desserts that she loved.

The very cruel irony is that the cause of death listed on Meme’s death certificate is actually starvation, not cancer. The tumor prevented her from swallowing. A feeding tube would have been an inviolate injustice. Nine years later and there’s still hardly a day that goes by that I don’t think of her. To this day, the smell of chicken frying reaches into my soul. I often wish I could show her a copy of my cookbook and I so wish I could be in the kitchen with her just one more time.

Happy Mother’s Day, Meme.
Love you still.

Meme’s Fried Chicken and Gravy
Serves 4 to 6

Ingredients:
1 (4-pound) chicken, cut into pieces
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more if needed
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 cups canola oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cups chicken stock or low-fat, reduced-sodium chicken broth, or 1 cup milk plus 1 cup chicken stock or broth

Directions:
1. Season the chicken generously with salt and pepper. Set aside. Place the flour in a shallow plate and season with cayenne, salt, and pepper. Set aside. Line a baking sheet or large plate with brown paper bags or several layers of paper towels.

2. Heat the oil in a large skillet, preferably cast iron, over medium-high heat until the temperature measures 375 degrees F on a deep-fat thermometer.

3. Meanwhile, to fry the chicken, starting with the dark meat (since it takes longer to cook) and working one piece at a time, dredge the chicken in the seasoned flour, turning to coat. Shake to remove excess flour. Reserve any leftover seasoned flour for the gravy.

4. One piece at a time, slip the chicken into the hot fat without crowding; the fat should not quite cover the chicken. Adjust the heat as necessary to maintain the temperature at 375 degrees F. At this stage, a splatter guard (a wire cover laid over the pan) may prove useful to contain the hot grease. The guard lets the steam escape, while allowing the chicken to brown nicely.

5. Fry the pieces, turning them once or twice, until the coating is a rich, golden brown on all sides, 10 to 14 minutes. Decrease the heat to medium-low and cover the skillet. Continue cooking until the chicken is cooked all the way through and the juices run clear when pricked with a knife, an additional 10 to 15 minutes. (An instant-read thermometer inserted into a thigh should register 170 degrees F.) Remove the pieces and drain on the prepared baking sheet. (Do not hold the chicken in a warm oven; it will get soggy.)

6. To make the gravy, remove the skillet from the heat. Pour off most of the grease, leaving 2 to 3 tablespoons and any browned bits.

7. Decrease the heat to very low. Add the butter and cook until foaming. Add 4 tablespoons of the reserved seasoned flour and stir to combine. Cook, whisking constantly, until golden brown, 2 to 3 minutes. Whisk in the stock. Increase the heat to medium and bring to a boil. Cook, stirring often, until the gravy is smooth and thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Add more stock or water to achieve the correct consistency.

8. Taste and adjust for seasoning with salt and pepper.

--Virginia Willis

Photo of Virginia and Meme by Terry Allen

Virginia Willis's Black-Eyed Pea and Ham Hock Soup

In the summer, we’d sit on the porch shelling the black-eyed peas that my grandfather had picked that morning. The purple hulls dyed our fingers smoky violet. I’ve used frozen black-eyed peas to prepare this soup, but don’t use canned, as they are too soft. If using frozen peas, reduce the cooking time according to the package instructions or until the peas are tender. Note that the dried peas must soak overnight or have a quick soak. Don’t skip the essential step of simmering the ham hocks in the chicken stock. The flavor and aroma are what make this soup extraordinary.

Black-Eyed Pea and Ham Hock Soup
Serves 6

Ingredients:
2 cups dried black-eyed peas, washed and picked over for stones
4 to 6 cups chicken stock or low-fat, reduced-sodium chicken broth, plus more if necessary
2 smoked ham hocks
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 onion, preferably Vidalia, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, very finely chopped
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 bunch collards, tough stems removed and discarded, leaves very thinly sliced in chiffonade
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions:
1. Place the peas in a large bowl and add water to cover. Soak overnight. Or place the peas in a large pot of water and bring to a boil over high heat, then remove from the heat and set aside for 1 hour. Discard any floating peas and drain before cooking.

2. In a pot, bring the stock and the ham hocks to a boil over high heat. Decrease the heat to low and simmer until the flavors have married, at least 30 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, in a large, heavy-bottomed Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots, and celery and cook until soft and translucent, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, 45 to 60 seconds. Drain the peas and add to the pot. Add the red pepper flakes and ham hocks with stock to cover. Bring to a boil over high heat, decrease the heat to low, and simmer until the peas are tender, 2 to 2-1/2 hours.

4. Just before serving, bring the soup to a boil over high heat. Add the collards and stir to combine. Cook until wilted, about 5 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. Ladle into warmed bowls and serve immediately.

Reprinted with permission from Bon Appétit, Y’all: Recipes and Stories from Three Generations of Southern Cooking by Virginia Willis, copyright © 2008. Published by Ten Speed Press.

--Virginia Willis

Food Television: A Canned Illusion

A life in food television isn’t as easy as it looks; in fact, sometimes it’s not what it looks like at all.

Many moons ago, I found myself in a small television-studio bathroom having a crying jag over a failed ginger flan. It seemed my life and culinary career were over. Fortunately, someone extricated me from the recesses of my private asylum and convinced me to return to the kitchen.

I’ve put more than 1,000 television cooking shows beneath my belt since my food and television career started 12 years ago--and I’ve endured what seems like a thousand life lessons similar to that of the failed flan. I started as a lowly unpaid apprentice with former Atlanta resident and Southern cooking expert Nathalie Dupree. Since then, I've cooked for President Clinton, Michelin-starred chef Roger Vergé, and Aretha Franklin, and made Lapin Moutarde à la Normande with Julia Child. My work has taken me from picking yellow lemons on the steep, sunny cliffs of Amalfi, Italy, to the cold windy coast of Connecticut where I have tasted an oyster straight from the salty waters of the Atlantic.

From my jobs with Dupree, I moved on to France to learn cookbook writing with culinary expert Anne Willan and then was an editor for The All-New Joy of Cooking. But the sirens of television called my name which led me to work with grill master Bobby Flay and eventually brought me to the kitchen door of Martha Stewart Living Television. I’ve traveled the world with Epicurious TV and now own my own production company.

Food television, at its best, is entertainment and education. Sometimes it’s just one or the other. In the worst circumstances it’s neither. In any case, it is often a grand illusion. Herbs are miraculously chopped, lettuces are always cleaned, and twenty-pound turkeys cook during two-minute commercial breaks. Watch carefully and sometimes you will see there is actually no real cooking in front of the camera. It’s all an illusion. There is however, always an army of cooks behind the scenes really getting the job done.

“Living” with Martha
As one might imagine, at Martha Stewart, where I was kitchen director, there was no illusion of much of anything and a very real emphasis on perfection. (And, yes, Martha really does want to learn something new every day.) Instead of sending a lackey to the market, it was my job to go to Union Square and the myriad of Manhattan markets several times a week. More than once, I found myself bundled up on a cold morning perusing a case or two of pears for a perfect, unblemished dozen with stems and leaves attached.

Working for Martha was incredible. People often ask was she nice, was she mean, and on and on. Frankly, the experiences were astonishing. When we cooked for President Clinton, I called a fisherman in Alaska and had him go catch a salmon that afternoon. He sent overnight for our luncheon the following day. The fish was so tender and succulent it really seemed a shame to cook it.

While everything did not turn out perfect all the time (and, yes, those times could be less than pleasant), while working with Martha, we were surrounded by first-rate people who gave 150 percent, and we had seemingly limitless resources. I was well compensated and I, too, learned something new everyday. Who could ask more?

Eventually it was time to move on. When I resigned from MSL, I didn’t know if it was the right career move. But two weeks after my arrival at Epicurious they asked me if I would go to Italy for a few weeks. I had hit the food TV jackpot. They wanted to pay me for this?!

Breakfast in Italy
A few weeks later, our crew pulled up to a remote harbor in Sicily around 5:30 a.m. as the boats were coming in. It was barely light, and I soon realized I was one of three women among 500 fishermen on the dock. They greeted us with leering whistles, big grins, and lots of flirting. My colleague, Michael Lomanaco, former chef at Windows on the World, quickly became my older brother who kept the wolves at bay. One older man with gnarled hands gave me a brilliant yellow starfish as large as a dinner plate. But the tall, dark stranger that truly won my heart served me a sandwich made of hearty, homemade semolina bread, freshly marinated anchovies, and olive oil--a Sicilian fisherman’s breakfast.

Michael explained that the boats go out at night with great lanterns to simulate the moon and draw the anchovies into the nets. The men take a few fish from the first catch and remove the bones. They place the filets in a bowl and drizzle them with freshly squeezed lemon juice and olive oil, then heartily season the mix with salt and pepper. The fish cures during the night much like ceviche or escabèche. When they return in the morning with their catch, breakfast is ready.

Despite what goes on for the cameras, the people I meet in my work and travels are very real. Expressing the joy and passion I have for them and my profession is perhaps impossible--much like that odd Sicilian breakfast, which had a taste beyond words. In this world of food television, so much of the atmosphere is manufactured; so much that seems real is not. But I am thankful and blessed. I am well fed in the spirit, the soul, and the table, and that is something that is most certainly not an illusion.

--Virginia Willis

Southern Sweet Tooth

The Southern sweet tooth is a formidable force. Sugar is more than an ingredient in the South. It falls somewhere between condiment and food group. No Southern cookbook worth its “um…sugar” would be without a glorious chapter filled with wondrous desserts.

What is this curse of the Southern sweet tooth? Sugary desserts are with us at special moments. We have desserts at birthday parties, holidays, and special occasions. People want to experience those memories again and are experiencing their pasts through dessert. Mamas calm crying babies with sugar. (Mama dipped my sister’s pacifier in Karo® syrup, she finally put a stop to it when Jona was old enough to reach the bottle on the dresser herself.) We drink tea so sweet it will make your teeth hurt, slather jam and jelly on biscuits, eat ham cured in sugar and salt, often put a pinch of sugar in slow-cooked greens, and finish up the meal with a sweet wedge of pie.

Some food historians reason that the Southern fascination with sugar is a practical one. In the hot, humid South, sugar was originally a means of preservation. That’s why we have sugar-cured ham and bacon, sweet pickles, and boiled icing to protect cakes. Another rationale is tied directly to slavery. Sugar production is undeniably backbreaking work and very labor intensive. Sugar cane was grown in parts of the South and in the Caribbean. Sugar followed the movement of African slaves through the islands of the Caribbean and into the plantations of the South. The vast majority of all the sugar grown in the US during the antebellum period was from Louisiana, and according to the Louisiana State Museum, the state produced between one-quarter and one-half of the sugar produced in the entire United States. The mothers and sisters of the slaves working hard in the fields were in the kitchen, making the food that eventually evolved into Southern cuisine.

Sugar has been highly valued throughout the ages and its storage has long been held under lock and key. The issue was transportation. It would take months for sugar to travel from Louisiana to hill and mountain country. Southern craftsmen created a specialized piece of furniture known as the “sugar chest”. This sturdy decorative box was built throughout the South, most notably in Kentucky and Tennessee. Finally, with the advent of steamboats and improved shipping, sugar prices fell in the 19th century and sugar became more widely available.

Tender Turkey Talk

That beautiful iconic roast bird evocative of Norman Rockwell honestly mainly exists in fiction. Those picture-perfect birds gracing the holiday table of that food catalogue are most often an illusion. As a food stylist, I know that often those birds in the photos are raw and simply painted with a toxic combination of shoe polish, vegetable oil, and soy sauce. The cavities are stuffed with aluminum foil and loaf bread. The temperature never remotely reaches anything other than the top end of the danger zone. It's really a recipe for failure, consistently promoting these beautiful birds so that cooks across the country are overwhelmingly disappointed when they pull out their less-than-picture-perfect birds on Thanksgiving.

Many years ago, my mother and I decided to give brining a try. Brining is a magical alchemy that can transform turkey into a moist delicious bird. Muscle fibers absorb liquid during the brining period. Some of this liquid is lost during cooking, but since the meat is more juicy at the start of cooking, it ends up juicier. Moisture loss is inevitable when you cook any type of muscle fiber. The heat causes the coiled proteins in the fibers to unwind and then join together with one another, resulting in shrinkage and moisture loss. According to friend and food scientist, Shirley Corriher, normally meat loses about 30 percent of its weight during cooking. But if you soak your turkey in brine first, it reduces the moisture loss during cooking to as little as 15 percent! I like to think of it as a glass filled above the rim.

Brining promotes a change in the structure of the proteins in the muscle. The salt causes protein strands to unwind--the technical term is denatured. This is the same chemical process that occurs when proteins are exposed to heat; when they unwind, they get tangled up with one another, forming a web that traps water. Salt is commonly used to give processed meats a better texture. Sugar has little if any effect on the texture of the meat, but it does add flavor and promotes better browning of the skin. Through brining, we cause a change in the state of the cells so that they draw and hold more water than before. As we cook the meat, the heated proteins will begin to draw in tighter and lose moisture, but, since the meat has more water in it, the overall result is less moisture is lost!  For a very basic overnight (12 to 14 hour) brine, dissolve 1 cup Diamond Brand Crystal Kosher Salt per gallon of cold water brine in a large stockpot, if storing in the refrigerator, or an insulated cooler, if not. Two gallons of water will be sufficient for most birds; larger birds may require three gallons. Add the turkey and refrigerate for predetermined amount of time. If using a cooler, add ice or freezer packs to keep the bird very cold. Also, salts are different! Remember that 1 cup Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt = 3/4 cup Morton's Kosher Salt = 1/2 cup of table salt.