Buttermilk

Any Southern cookin’ conjures up corn bread. Ours is sweet and mellow and goes great with the tanginess of our bar-b-que.

If you love good fried chicken, this is the quick version. It’s just like its namesake, “chicken-fried steak.” Breading up and frying a nice boneless flat piece of meat, whether it’s beef or chicken, will give you a meal in minutes. It makes a great main course, or try slappin’ the finished product in a crusty roll or even slicing it over a mess of salad greens.

We give catfish a good soaking in seasoned buttermilk before we coat and fry it. It tenderizes and sweetens up the fish, which we serve with our favorite spicy tartar sauce. You’ll find it on our appetizer menu every day and in a sandwich on Fridays.

Personally, I don’t know why this is considered a southern dish. With our short growing season in Central New York, there’s never a shortage of green tomatoes. It seems like the North should have thought of this dish first.

You can make the homemade pastry recipe if you like, but if you start with a purchased pie crust, this is a really quick and easy dessert. Be sure to use grated fresh or frozen coconut for ease in slicing.

My nephew Kyle requests this cake every year on his birthday. You know that if this is a twelve-year-old boy’s favorite cake, it’s gotta be good!

This is great bread for any meal, but one of my favorite ways to eat it is crumbled up in a big bowl with really cold milk. Mmmm! Beth likes it cold with buttermilk. Now that’s just wrong!

Biscuits are synonymous with southern cooking. If I had the time, I would have homemade biscuits at every single meal. They should be required in every household! When my niece Ashley was small, one of the things she liked best about going to Granddaddy and Grammy’s house was breakfast. There was usually a conversation the night before about all the awesome things on the menu—bacon, grits, sausage, and, of course, homemade biscuits. Ashley would be up early to help make the biscuits, standing on a chair beside Granddaddy, wearing a big apron and covered with flour.

Cornbread dressing is my absolute favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal. In fact, I have been known to make this recipe in July because I just can’t bear the thought of eating it only once a year! The recipe was never written down until Beth and I demanded that Mama show us how to make it. She came up with the ingredient amounts and demonstrated the mixing technique. (Hint: You’ve gotta get your hands in it!)

You can’t have fried catfish (page 106) without hushpuppies! Sometimes I add a few more jalapeños to the mixture for a little extra jolt. There are several stories about how hushpuppies got their name. My favorite is the one where an old southern cook was frying them one day and heard her dog howling nearby, so she gave him a plateful and said, “Hush, puppy!” It might just be folklore, but I like it.

This is a nice recipe for southern girls like me who love fried chicken but realize they can’t eat it everyday. The cornflakes give you that crispy crust like fried chicken without all of the added fat of deep-frying—not that I’m saying there’s a thing wrong with deep-frying! My motto is “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

This is my sister’s go-to appetizer for church socials, Super Bowl Sundays, and Christmas munchies. Several years ago, she put too much of the ranch dressing mix into the recipe, and it was hard to serve. My dad renamed it the “cheese wad.” We think Ranch Dressing Cheese Ball sounds more appetizing, but at our house, it will forever be known as Cheese Wad!

We can’t stress enough the importance of cleanliness when doing a recipe of this sort. That means a good washing of the jar and other equipment and yourself.

Consider making a double batch of Ed Lee's orange-honey butter to serve the next morning with toast or warm biscuits.

Pickled red onion adds crunch and punch. Serve with crudités.

This easy cake swaps out molasses for lighter-flavored sorghum syrup, a Southern staple.

Buttermilk is the tangy heart and soul of so many of our favorite Southern foods. Sadly, the supermarket stuff is "eh" at best. So we make our own.

This is my favorite cake of all time. The buttermilk adds a nice acidity and helps create a moist, light crumb that is a perfect complement to the fruit. This works just as well with pears, apples, and stone fruits; for best results, use fruit that is ripe but not too soft.

When you marry a pastry chef, you don’t have to perfect your baking skills, says Ben Barker, who participated in the 1990 Workshop. That’s why Chef Barker—whose wife, Karen, is a pastry authority—limits himself to simple “beach cottage desserts,” like this cornmeal cake. It’s a homespun, old-fashioned dessert that you can adapt to any summer berries. The sabayon dresses it up for company. Don’t be surprised by the unorthodox method—it really works.