Southern cooking

Pecan pie, steaks and my husband’s birthday

March 21, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

We celebrated Crayton’s birthday last night.

We’re lucky enough to be visiting his parents in Phoenix, so we had a special meal. Crayton’s dad grilled some insanely thick steaks, and his mom made her famous pecan pie. (She buys the pecans from Albany, Georgia, because the ones in Arizona aren’t as good.)

We also had ramekins full of mashed potatoes, bacon, scallions and cheese. Crayton was in heaven. I couldn’t resist telling him: “Aren’t you just super excited for the big bowl of vegetables I’m going to make when we get back?”

We drank Elizabeth Spencer wine, and sipped cognac. At least one of us noted: “I wonder what the poor people are doing right now.” (This is one of Crayton’s dad’s favorite phrases, as a subtle way to say that we’re blessed.)

It’s nice being here. The house is quiet, and the weather’s sunny but not too hot. Today we’re going to a baseball game and later Crayton and his mom are going to watch the Phoenix Suns beat the Trailblazers.

Instead of going to the game, I’m heading out to Barrio Cafe with Crayton’s dad, which I am super excited about. The chef, Silvana Salcido Esparza, is a semi-finalist for a James Beard Award this year. Plus I have a new orange strapless summer dress I’m dying to wear.

Just grateful to be with family. Hope you’re feeling the same way too. Un abrazo, and more later.

My week of gluttony, Southern-style

September 21, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

I’m back from the South, and I feel like a stuffed penguin.

A few pounds is worth it, though. (Half of me just cringed. It is?) Yes. It is. Sometimes you have to ignore pesky little “calories” and submit to the lure of bacon, cheese and mayonnaise. Just for a few days.

Sometimes you gotta just order a pimento cheese sandwich for lunch, bulging with grated cheddar and mayo.

And then go home and make a buttermilk pie for dinner.

Sometimes you have to buy honey-roasted pecans from a small-town Georgia gift shop, because, well, it’s a small-town Georgia gift shop. And they serve the nuts in paper cones!

But all that doesn’t even come close to my most gluttonous of gluttony acts, committed while we were in Atlanta. My friend is a restaurant critic there, and last Friday, he took us out for a fabulous meal at Cakes & Ale, a “farm-to-table” style restaurant (in the parlance of our times) where most of the food is made with locally grown produce.

While we stuffed our face with fried okra with homemade ranch, smoked salmon with beets, rabbit terrine, trout, bean salad with bacon, and the most heavenly pork chop ever, covered in crunchy breadcrumbs and fried in clarified butter (somewhere, I just heard my mom gasp) — we happened to bring up hamburgers. My friend mentioned that a restaurant nearby had one of the best burgers in Atlanta. Would we be interested in dining there, after this meal?

Only someone as loony about food as I am would suggest eating dinner at two restaurants in one night. But I loved my friend for it. With stars in my eyes, and a burger-inspired flush in my cheeks, we headed to Holeman & Finch Public House in Buckhead.

The H&F burgers are kind of a cult thing in the city right now — they’re not on the menu, and the kitchen just rolls ’em out at 10 p.m. You get them while they’re hot.

At about 10:30 p.m. — even though I’d already eaten a three-course dinner — I had the juiciest, moistest burger I’ve ever had in my life.

The next day, I nursed my food hangover with salad and water. But Sunday, there was more.

For brunch, we dined at Greenwoods on Green Street, a home-cooking restaurant in Roswell, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. Our plates filled the entire table. You could seriously barely see the wood.

We had fried green tomatoes….

And corn muffins… made with white corn, not that blasphemous yellow stuff.

We had fried chicken, with a sheen of oil still clinging to its crunchy, hot flesh.

I ordered a truly insane slab of meatloaf, topped with a few curls of onion.

And then came the pie.

Apple. Buttermilk. And dark chocolate, topped with messy tufts of whipped cream.

When we got to the airport a few hours later, I could barely keep my eyes open. “Just let us win!” the pie whispered to me. “Just go to sleep!” But I stubbornly stayed awake. The pie and its sugar-coma powers would not take me down.

So, now, finally back home in Mexico City, I am wearing my elastic-waistband pajama pants and wincing at the thought of putting on jeans to go to the grocery store. But I need detox food — veggies, fruit, tofu. Crayton rolls his eyes when I crow, “I’m going on a detox!” because I never stick to it, but this time I swear it’s true. It’s soups and salads for me, for the next few days. And I don’t want to see red meat again for two months.

Crunchy lil’ buttermilk biscuits

August 25, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

I have seen the light, and it is fatty, soft and pearlescent.

It’s lard. And it’s freaking heavenly in biscuits.

Made a batch of biscuits this morning, for the first time in years. My friend Tricia is hosting a South Carolina shrimp n’ grits meal at her house later today, so I decided to whip up some biscuits to go on the side. I’m always looking for excuses to try out Southern dishes, being married to a Southern boy. And I hadn’t tried the biscuit recipe in The Gift of Southern Cooking, my favorite Southern cookbook ever. It called for lard only. No butter.

Luckily, lard is everywhere in Mexico. After doing the stairstepper for an hour at the gym this morning (ironic, no?), I stopped by our local teeny mercado, and bought 10 pesos worth. In USD that’s less than $1, and it equaled about two cups. It looked like a French cheese. Isn’t it pretty?

When I got home, I mixed together my flour and baking powder, and then squished in the lard with my fingers. I rolled out the dough and proceeded to cut out the biscuits with a drinking glass. (Biscuit cutters don’t reside in my house.) Unfortunately, I ignored the “DO NOT TWIST YOUR BISCUIT CUTTER INTO THE DOUGH!” rule, because really, I’ve always twisted my cutter, in the umm… maybe three times that I’ve made biscuits. How the heck else do you make a clean cut?

I should have headed Mr. Peacock and Ms. Lewis’ advice, though, because when the biscuits came out of the oven, they were disappointingly flat. Crunchy and hot and yummy, but flat.

The next round, I did not twist. Too bad I only had three biscuits left to make. But they emerged light and fluffy.

Who knew twisting your biscuit cutter would make such a difference?

Recipe below, if you want to try it yourself. Just please, please don’t twist your biscuit cutter into your dough, or else this biscuit will swallow you with his gigantic biscuit mouth.

…