Fate and Fried Pies

Pity the poor soul who's never had a fried pie...then buy him one.

You miss out on so much when you don’t spend time in the South. Case in point–fried pies.

I was traveling across Texas with two globe-trotting military experts. Every morning as we drove to a secure location just down the road from Fate, Texas, we saw it: a giant billboard beside the interstate proclaiming “fried pies.”

One of these worldly fellows pondered aloud, “I wonder how they fry the pies. Can you fry a key lime pie?”

Gracious. The man thought you submerged a whole, circular pie into the deep fryer.

Fried pies, y’all, are turnovers, I told them.  Empanadas. “You mean like hot pockets?” the other one asked, eyes wide.  Yessir, I do.  Where’ve you been?

The poor fellows had never had fried pies. They’d never even heard of them.  Might I add, neither of them were that young.  It seemed a shame. And I’d been craving fried pies since the first time I laid eyes on that billboard.

Seemed like fate was directing us to take that exit and dig in.

1001 Uses for Bacon Fat

Bacon drippings, shaped and chilled

Some late night experiences leave you with regrets.  And some, it seems, leave you with an abundance of bacon drippings.  A friend and I have taken up the habit of making a bacon snack around midnight.

Good bacon, good bacon fat

We have a fondness for bacon from Caw Caw Creek.  And every bit as good as the bacon is the fat that’s rendered when we cook it.

For a while now, I’ve been experimenting with ways to use all those tasty bacon drippings–something beyond the way my mother uses them to season vegetables and for pan frying.  When we were kids, my sisters used bacon drippings instead of Hawaiian Tropic at the beach one day.  As people walked by, they’d say things like, “Does it smell like breakfast out here to you?”  In more recent times, I’ve saturated newspaper with bacon grease and used it to start my charcoal grill.

But I knew that was a waste of awesome flavor, so I started to wonder how I might use bacon grease for deep frying or in baked goods in place of lard.

Chef & the Farmer

Even the tulips were from a local farm.

“No reservation? We don’t have a table open until 9:30.”

Not what I expected to hear in Kinston, North Carolina, a place where people wait in line for barbecue but only make reservations at the country club for the Mother’s Day buffet.

That’s when I realized that Chef & the Farmer is like that quirky guy you’re crazy about: you’re shocked to find out that everyone else thinks he’s hot too.

Ever since I heard about it three or so years ago, I’d been reading more about Chef & the Farmer with each month that went by. I’d finally made it in. And now, really, no table?

“We do have open seats at the counter overlooking the kitchen.”

I didn’t even consult my companions.  “Yes, that will be great,” I said.

Like so many restaurants these days, Chef & the Farmer is (no surprise) all about the fancy farm to table thing. But this isn’t Chapel Hill, Raleigh or even Wilmington. This is a small town in eastern North Carolina where you expect to find tobacco auctions, not fine dining.  And I appreciate it even more because this is where I grew up eating farm to table every meal, every day–all the while wishing my godforsaken family could just drive into town and have dinner at Pizza Inn.

The Cafe on Concourse B

Really, had I found charm at the Atlanta airport?

I’ve read the articles about good meals that food writers discover in airports, and they make me wonder what’s wrong with me.  Even though I’ve had a few bits of luck (Seattle, Baltimore, D.C.),  it’s not the norm. I assume it’s because I’m just not that clever.

So I didn’t want to get my hopes up when I stepped off the escalator at Concourse B in the Atlanta airport this week. But there it was, looking so gosh darned charming, a “sidewalk” cafe in front of a bookstore. White table cloths. Twinkling lights.  People lingering over glasses of wine and pots of tea as if they were at Laduree in Paris.

I had two hours before my flight might even hope to start boarding. I decided to give this Cafe Intermezzo a try.

I was led to a table inside, not far from the curving bar, a space with warm wood paneling, polished copper accents, and more white linens.  As I balanced my stuff in the spare chair at my table, I looked up to see the guy across from me accepting delivery of a giant piece of red velvet cake. I don’t get the fuss over that particular flavor, but I had to admit to myself: the cake looked pretty good. He swore it was and did an admirable job of polishing it off.

Why So Crabby?

Would it be crazy to think they have, say, crab on the menu?

Dear Baltimore, I’m sure your residents don’t eat crab three times a day. Or do they?

I just arrived here for an overnight assignment, after so many delays I feared my return flight might leave before I even landed.  Tired though I was, the prospect of my hotel’s restaurant wasn’t too appealing. I wanted to venture out into Baltimore, if only a half block.  With the concierge’s help, I did.

“I was hoping for some place I can walk to,” I told him.

“Do you like beer?” he asked.

I hesitated. Was this a trick question?

“Yes,” I said.

He handed me a card for a free beer and directed me to Luna Del Sea Bistro.  I admit, I did think he said “lunacy” at first, and that suited me just fine.  “It’s the place with the white lights in the trees,” he instructed me.  A bistro and white lights.

And of course, that was followed by, “They have excellent crab cakes.”

Stovetop Mac ‘n’ Brie

When there's no cheddar in the house....

A few years ago, I wrote a Food Network show that posed the potentially world-changing question: could you make real mac ‘n’ cheese on the stovetop that was (almost) as quick and easy as breaking open a box of Kraft?  And could that homemade version satisfy a box-mac-n-cheese-loving kid?

Brie, on a board made by Maine prison inmates.

I’m not the biggest mac ‘n’ cheese fan, and I like it baked with some of the noodles on top browned and crunchy, the way my grandmother made it.

It was lunchtime on a cold, rainy day and for some reason, I craved macaroni and cheese.   There was no cheddar in the house.  I wasn’t going to the market, and I was too hungry to wait around for an oven concoction.

I did have a huge hunk of mediocre brie in my fridge, a cheese so average I could barely bring myself to eat it. And bowtie pasta, eggs, butter, and milk. Could I make a brie version of stovetop mac ‘n’ cheese? Macaroni and brie?

Out of Teppan, Into the Fire

A teppanyaki standard-the onion volcano

“You know it’s bad when we’re excited to eat at a Japanese steakhouse.”

My colleague, Honey Pannacotta, had summed up the situation perfectly. We were on assignment in Orlando, Florida, based in a hotel across from the entrance to Universal Studios. The work had been grueling. We were grateful for any respite, any small comfort. Even a Japanese steakhouse.

The restaurant was chilly, so we asked for a table in a warm spot. The hostess took us literally. We were seated ringside, around a giant hot griddle.

Honey is a former Food Network host who has eaten at many of the nation’s best restaurants. She’s also traveled quite a bit of the world. “Have you ever been to one of these before?” I asked her.

“Once when my daughter was young. How about you?”

I had, when I was a very young 22. A boy took me there on a date. I was appalled.

But tonight, more mature and secure, I was looking forward to some silliness and stir fried vegetables. I hadn’t seen many vegetables in the last 72 hours. And with luck, perhaps there would be a gong.

My Darling Clementines

Standing by to make citrus reticulata sherbetus

Clementines are that bit of sunshine that gets you through the winter, I’ve decided.

For years, when I’ve spent winter weeks in Paris, I’ve loved that I could buy bottles of deep orange clementine juice at the corner grocery. At home, clementines are everywhere come December, in their cute little crates, making them a great fruit treat to take to a dinner host (surpassed for me only by the pineapple).

I’d bought a crate for myself and had been enjoying daily salads made of sunflower sprouts tossed with clementine wedges and toasted almonds, drizzled with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Then a family crisis forced me to be out of town for some weeks. When I returned, the clementines needed to be consumed or we’d have to just say goodbye.

Before the crisis, I’d though I might try making clemoncello–a variation on limoncello with clementines. But I wasn’t in the mood to bother with it. Life had already become too difficult, at least for the moment.  I was exhausted just by the thought of trudging over to the liquor store to buy Everclear.

So I decided to make a simple sherbet with my aging clementines.

Variations on a Snow Cream

A bowl of snowy goodness

I’ve never understood the attraction of snow cream. In my experience, it always turned out a watery, milky mess.  Once I tried pouring maple syrup over snow, the way they did in Little House on the Prairie (the book is one of my major culinary influences, by the way), hoping to get some kind of frozen candy effect. Nothing.

A snowy day in the South is always a holiday.

Over Christmas, my mom was recalling the joys of snow cream in her youth. “We didn’t have ice cream all the time, so it was a real treat for us,” she said. Today, we have plenty of snow to burn, so I decided to set past disappointments aside and give it a go. I mixed sugar and a bit of vanilla bean into milk. I scooped up a big bowl of snow from my backyard. Then I combined to make a slushy. It was pretty decent, sort of a milky granita.

Which got me thinking about other possibilities.  How about espresso and snow?  Or bourbon and snow?  A day of experimenting lay ahead…