Note: I developed this recipe in 2002 while reading a book about the life of Jesus in the context of Nazareth two millennia ago. The author mentioned foods and spices that would have been available in that place and time and I was inspired to experiment with ingredients as authentic as possible -- this recipe is the result.
INGREDIENTS:
/ / Lamb roast, about 2 lbs.
/ / 2-3 cloves of garlic
/ / 4-6 medium yellow onions
/ / 2 Tablespoons olive oil
/ / fresh rosemary, ½ - 1 tsp
/ / fresh sage, ½ - 1 tsp
/ / lentils, orange or yellow, 1 lb.
/ / salt
/ / water
PROCESS:
1. Cut lamb roast into 1-inch to 1-½-inch (more or less) pieces.
2. Using a wooden cutting board, crush unpeeled garlic cloves with a wooden garlic crusher or the back of a wooden spoon. Cut off the stem ends and remove the peels, then chop the garlic into pieces.
3. Peel the onions, then cut them into quarters lengthwise.
4. Bring the olive oil to medium heat in the bottom of a Dutch oven or other suitable stew pot.
5. Add garlic to heated oil and sauté until garlic begins to brown.
6. Add lamb pieces, sprinkle with a pinch of salt, and sauté until the lamb pieces are browned.
7. Add onions and sauté for several minutes until they begin to clarify.
8. Add 4 cups water and vegetable bullion for that amount of water, then add ½-1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary and ½-1 tsp chopped fresh sage; bring to a boil, then turn heat down to a simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.
9. Add 2 cups water and 1 lb. orange or yellow lentils; bring to a boil again, then return to a simmer for about 25 minutes or until lentils are soft.
10. Add salt if needed.
Some substitutions are acceptable -- dried rosemary or sage if you don't have fresh available -- but please don't add modern ingredients which would not have been in Mother Mary's kitchen. The herbs and garlic are specified in ranges to accommodate differences in taste -- I like rosemary and garlic, so I use the high end amounts of those, but others may prefer less.
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Break time at sorgum molasses operation in Racine, WV. Library of Congress.In Southern Appalachia, sweetnin' refers to sugar in its various forms, including white sugar, brown sugar, honey, and sorghum syrup. For almost a century following the introduction of sugar sorghum to the United States in 1857, sweet sorghum -- popularly known in the region as "sorghum molasses" -- was the sweetnin' of choice.
{To coninue click HERE}
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1915 recipe for "Pebble Dash" or Shoo-Fly Pie. Click on image for larger view.Like Stack Cake, Shoo-Fly Pie is a genuine example of folk cuisine, its origin obscure and its recipe subject to variation. There are two conventional wisdoms concerning Shoo-Fly Pie, one holding that it is a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch food and the other that it is an example of old-time Southern vernacular cuisine. There is however no evidence that Shoo-fly Pie existed prior to the expansion of sorghum molasses production in the last half of the 19th century and it seems likely that, also like Stack Cake, Shoo-Fly Pie resulted from the increased availability of this inexpensive form of sugar.
The earliest printed reference to Shoo-Fly Pie appeared in a book published in 1915, Mary At The Farm And Book Of Recipes Compiled During Her Visit Among The "Pennsylvania Germans," by Edith M. Thomas. A digital image of the recipe is shown above. The next such reference was published in 1926. Earlier publications contained recipes for "Molasses Pie" -- Recipes Tried and True, compiled by the Ladies' Aid Society of the First Presbyterian Church, Marion, Ohio, (1894), and The Inglenook Cook Book, compiled by Sisters of the Brethren Church, Elgin, Illinois (1906). The two Molasses Pie recipes are very different but the 1894 version is quite similar to recipes for Shoo-Fly Pie.
The origin of the name "Shoo-Fly Pie" of course has contending versions. One version is that "Shoo-Fly" is an Anglicisation of the French word "soufflé." Seems unlikely, since Shoo-Fly Pie bears no resemblance to an soufflé. The other attribution claims that the pies were so sweet that they attracted flie which had to be "shooed" away. Take your pick.
While the name "Shoo-Fly Pie" probably originated in Pennsylvania Dutch country, its use spread throughout Southern Appalachia, where the availability of sorghum molasses had made such delicacies popular. For a make-from-scratch recipe and illustrated step-by-step instructions, go here:
Christy Jordan's Southern Plate, Shoofly Pie and Subtitling Southerners
More recipes:
South of the Gnat Line, Shoo-Fly Pie
That's My Home, Shoofly Pie
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Apple Stack Cake. Click on image for source and licensing information.One sure sign of a genuine specimen of folk cuisine is an abundance of old family recipes which are generally similar but differ in details. Stack Cake is the real thing -- you can collect as many "authentic" recipes for stack cake as you would like.
Stack Cake is made of 6 to 8 layers of cake with an apple-based filling between the layers. A common apocryphal story is that it originated as poor-folks' wedding cake, with several guests each contributing a layer. Another story holds that it was brought to Kentucky in 1774 by pioneer James Harrod; but this seems unlikely, since Stack Cake did not become known until a century later.
The emergence of Stack Cake in the second half of the 19th century seems to have followed the widespread availability of two of its important ingredients -- refined wheat flour and sorghum molasses. Along with the use of sorghum molasses in the cake, the use of dried apples to make the filling is consistent with an origin, if not in Kentucky, at least somewhere in Southern Appalachia. The ingredient list also is consistent with numerous family traditions holding that Stack Cake was made at Christmas -- a season when Backcountry families would have had plenty of flour, sorghum molasses, and dried apples, and the time to make Stack Cake, which takes some doin'.
How can you recognize one of the "genuine" Appalachian Stack Cake recipes? I suggest that the ingredients should include sorghum molasses, shortening (Crisco or lard), buttermilk, and dried apples, and should exclude anything which would not have been available in Appalachia in the late 19th century.
When you're ready to make stack cake, here are some recipes for starters:
Appalachian History, Stack Cake
Appalachian Heritage, Dried Apple Stack Cake
About.com: Southern Food, Tennessee Apple Stack Cake
Uncle Phaedrus, Kentucky Stack Cake
Cooks.com, Dried Apple Stack Cake
Suite101, Apple Butter Stack Cake
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The Super Bowl provides a convenient excuse to make a batch of guacamole. As do many events in my household, I must confess. Here's my recipe:
-- 4 ripe Haas avocados (see image)
-- one lime
-- garlic salt
-- freshly-ground pepper
-- salsa verde
-- sour cream
Cut the avocados in half, remove the seeds (saving one), and scoop out the edible part into a suitable bowl. Use a potato masher to roughly mash the avocado flesh. Sprinkle with the juice of one lime and with garlic salt and pepper, to taste. Add 2 Tablespoons of salsa verde and 2 Tablespoons of sour cream. Mash well with the potato masher until ingredients are blended, then use a spoon to make sure the guacamole is thoroughly mixed. Plop the avocado seed in the center of the mix (this is supposed to retard oxidation) and serve with corn chips.
Salsa verde is a Mexican picante sauce made from tomatillos. I like the Herdez brand. It gives a mild picante flavor to the guacamole.
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Odd and unusual foods in the Southern Backcountry cover a broad range of delicacies (and indelicacies) -- fried pickles, deep-fried Oreos, fried green tomatoes, frogs' legs, fried grits, chicken-fried squirrel, and others, mostly with the word "fried" expressed or implied. Outstanding among these is livermush, including liver pudding, a Backcountry phenomenon with its epicentre in central North Carolina.
One of our local groceries recently began carrying a variety of liver pudding, Jenkins, which serves the purpose well when the need for livermush arises. Before I go further, let me hasten to acknowledge that livermush purists -- yes, you read that right, livermush purists -- will insist that liver pudding is not really livermush. Nonetheless, when we were kids, liver pudding was called "livermush," and that's how we think of it.
Specifically, what we called "livermush" was and is Neese's Liver Pudding, made in the North Carolina Piedmont and distributed throughout much of North Carolina and into parts of the Virginia and South Carolina Piedmonts. Neese's also makes Neese's Liver Mush, distributed in Western North Carolina, a hotbed of livermush purism. Both products are made with hog's liver; the spices are somewhat different and liver pudding contains more corn meal.
The story of Neese's Sausage has a classic Backcountry beginning:
The Neese history begins with family members immigrating to America in the early 1700s. In 1769, George Neese (born 1744) moved to what is now Guilford County, North Carolina, traveling the great wagon road through the Shenandoah Valley from Berks County Pennsylvania.
Neese's Company History. The company remains a family-run business and still makes its product line with pure ingredients, delivered fresh to its customers. Which explains why we unfortunately can't get the real thing where I live and have to make do with a substitute.
There are four other North Carolina producers -- Mack's Livermush and Meats and Jenkins Foods, both in Shelby, Hunter's in Marion, and Frank Corriher Beef and Sausage in China Grove, all of which have avid followings. And if you think I'm overstating the case by the use of such terms as "purist" and "avid," consider that North Carolina boasts three (3) annual livermush gatherings -- the Livermush Festival in June in Marion, North Carolina, the Fall Festival and Liver Mush Expo in Shelby, N.C., and another Livermush Festival in Drexel, N.C. As far as I can determine, these are the only such events in the known universe. Purists. Avid.
How does one cook livermush? Fry it, of course. Traditionally, in bacon drippings or lard, but I recommend a vegetable oil such as Crisco or peanut oil, and on the sparse side. There are, inevitably, two schools of thought on the matter of cut -- thick and thin. "Thick" means you cut off slices of one-half inch or so, and brown both sides in oil until heated through. "Thin" livermushers prefer slices of one-fourth inch or less, fried in oil until the slab is crispy. Serve with a side of grits (boiled, not fried) and eggs over-easy, or scrambled if you must.
There are variations, such as the livermush sandwich for lunch and -- you had to know this would be so -- Livermush-on-a-Stick, Mack's specialty at the Shelby Liver Mush Expo: slices of livermush which have been battered and deep-fried.
So where do I stand on this vitally important point of Backcountry cuisine? Non-purist Neese's Liver Pudding, sliced thick, with yellow grits and eggs over easy. Those thin-slice, white-grits, scrambled-eggs types just don't know what they're missing.
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As I write these words, a Backcountry culinary tradition is cooking in the charcoal grill on my patio: applewood-smoked trout.
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