Beverages

Exotic, jewel-like, and demanding considerable labor to penetrate their maze of pulp, pomegranates are a ravishing winter treat. A constant on the Lucid Food cocktail menu during cold weather, this drink pairs well with food but also stands on its own. You can make the sangria the day before, but wait until the day you serve it to add the orange slices, as the pith can cause the drink to turn bitter. Use a cheap red wine; I prefer a rioja or a tempranillo.

This rich drink makes a filling breakfast. For a superb eggnog, add orange zest and rum, brandy, or bourbon. Before buying bananas, read about their production in “Must-Buy Organics,” on page 16. If you like nondairy milk, then blending your own nut milk, as described in this recipe, is much more economical than buying it premade. And unlike store-bought nut milk, it comes without added sugar, preservatives, and hard-to-recycle cartons. Homemade nut milk works beautifully for cereal, smoothies, baking, and simply drinking on its own.

In fall, look for clusters of deep purple berries on elderberry trees growing wild throughout the country. I’ve seen elderberries for a fleeting harvest week at farmers’ markets, but you can buy dried organic elderberries as a substitute. This powerful tonic has worked effectively for me over the last two winters; I take a tablespoon right when I feel a cold coming on, and I keep taking it every few hours until I feel better. It’s very tasty, too!

This is a popular dish in Japan that I love to prepare because it has so much going for it: complex sweet and tangy flavors, a heavenly ginger and garlic aroma, and wonderful textures. I’ve included puffed rice paper “chips” to add a nice crunch and a bit of flair. With its fiery colors, this dish makes a beautiful conversation-stopping presentation. I divided my recipe into seven small parts, each of which you prepare separately, then combine everything at the end. The trick here is to make sure you finish your prep before you cook—the actual cook time for the shrimp is only 5 minutes, so you’ll have to move fast! To make the recipe easy to follow, I have paired the ingredients for each step with the instructions.

The secret to this cool, summertime dish? Steaming the chicken. When you steam chicken, it stays moist and juicy even if you serve it cold. And caramelizing the skin beforehand adds lots of wonderful flavor. These are both techniques I borrow from Chinese cuisine. The angel hair pasta in this dish plays the same role as somen noodles: not too chewy or overwhelming when enjoyed cold.

This is the basic and versatile chicken stock I use for my ramen recipes, and it is flavored with Japanese ingredients. You can prepare a big batch and store any extra in the freezer.

It is necessary to sift the flour before measuring it for this cake. This is an anomaly; if flour is sifted at all these days (not that common anymore), most baking recipes call for sifting after it is measured. Here, the flour is sifted once before measuring, then an additional four times with the sugar to prepare this batter. It may seem like overkill, but it is completely necessary to achieve the traditional light-as-air texture of angel food cake. There is an unusual implement for cutting these delicate cakes found in many silver chests throughout the South. These old-fashioned rakelike cutters typically have a long, slightly offset handle with 3- to 4-inch-long tines that actually split, rather than cut, the cake. They can still be found online and in gourmet catalogs.

This soup is decidedly uptown and was inspired by one I had at the Ritz-Carlton dining room in Atlanta. It’s a perfect marriage of Southern ingredients and French techniques that clearly states, bon appétit, y’all! I like to serve it in mason jars or French glass yogurt cups so you can see the layering.

Other than sharing the quickbread gene, this beer batter bread doesn’t have much of a Southern heritage. For minimum effort and maximum results, it’s hard to beat. This takes the phrase “dump and stir” to a whole new level. Different beers produce breads with different flavors and textures. This recipe calls for stout, producing a bread somewhat dark in color with a slightly heavy flavor. It goes well with a hearty stew such as Boeuf Bourguignonne (page 91) or Old-fashioned Pot Roast (page 89). Lighter ale produces a lighter loaf and would be more appropriate with milder dishes such as Potato and Cheddar Soup (page 241).

A fish fry would not be complete without hushpuppies, yet another dish Southerners prepare with corn. Meme always added grated onion to the meal leftover from frying the fish, and then added an egg and enough buttermilk until the consistency looked about right. My late father-in-law used to host fish fries, cooking up what they’d caught over the weekend at Lake Lanier. Now, I never actually had one of his hushpuppies, but I’ve spent fifteen years trying to replicate one, based on what his family describes. He used beer instead of buttermilk and, it seems, lots of onion. It doesn’t matter how much onion I add, there’s never enough onion. I have a sneaking suspicion that a special food memory created on a sunny summer afternoon has bypassed reality and it’s actually not about the onion. No worries, I’ll keep trying. There are impossible quests that produce far worse results.

Only a Southerner, inheritor of the infamous Southern sweet tooth, would add massive quantities of butter and sugar to a dish and still regard it as a vegetable. Add a shot of bourbon? No problem.

Quail and dove shoots are still serious Southern rituals, and my father always hunted when I was growing up. Quail meat is darker than that of dove, which has a tendency to be dry. While I don’t shoot often anymore, I do love to reap the rewards from my friends and relatives who hunt. I can hardly eat or cook quail without thinking about a dinner party Mama hosted when I was young. She was frying the quail and her hand was splashed with hot grease. Instead of going to the hospital, she sat with her hand in a bowl of ice water in her lap under the table so as not to disturb her guests. Some people might think that was incredibly stupid, but all I can think about is her amazing hospitality and selflessness. Mama and I have laughed about it in later years, because the unexpected bonus is she has no age spots on that hand.

This classic French country dish consists of chicken cooked slowly in red wine with onions, mushrooms, bacon, and herbs. When we were young, Mama used to make a similar dish in her slow cooker. Opening the front door on a cold night and welcomed by the inviting smells of stew from a slow cooker can be a dream come true. But winter is not the only time a slow cooker is useful. As it puts out no heat, it makes a cool substitute for a hot oven in the summer, and it uses less electricity. For this dish, a slow cooker is fine, as is a Dutch oven set on the cooktop. If using a slow cooker, don’t skip the step of browning the chicken, or you will have a flabby, tasteless mess. This is a l-o-o-ng recipe, requiring many steps to create its layers of flavor, which may seem daunting to some cooks, but it’s not a difficult one. Consider making this dish ahead and refrigerating it overnight so the flavors will marry and blend: simply reheat it the next day. Note: A wooden spoon is perfect for telling you when your sauce is finished. The sauce will coat the back of the spoon when it has reached the proper coating consistency (napper in classic French cooking).

In classic French cooking, each dish has a name that indicates its precise ingredients and correct garnish. Bourguignonne is a term for dishes cooked in red wine, as some of the most famous French wines are from Bourgogne (Burgundy). These dishes are garnished with pearl onions, button mushrooms, and lardons of bacon. Never choose stew meat already in precut cubes. It’s more expensive and you have no idea if you’re getting, for example, leftover bits from the shoulder or rib-eye, two wildly different cuts that won’t cook at the same rate.

Short ribs are the meaty ends of the beef rib from the chuck, rib, and brisket. They are rich and succulent, but fairly fatty, so before braising, it is very important to first brown them well to render the excess fat. Short ribs are available cut two ways: English—cut between the bones so each piece consists of one rib, or flanken—cut across the bones, so each piece consists of several bones. Either cut is appropriate for this dish.

Meme made a paste of mustard, brown sugar, and sometimes Coca-Cola when she baked a ham. She baked it in a heatproof oven bag to avoid having a messy pan to scrub. Adding bourbon, which I use here, would have never crossed her mind. Only when she baked fruitcake was she anywhere near a bottle of bourbon. She and her neighbor, Cousin Eunice, would drive to the liquor store every November to acquire the spirits for the holiday baking—she would have never gone by herself.

Summer is unthinkable without watermelon. As children, my sister and I would stand for what seemed like hours on the back steps and eat and eat and eat chilled wedges of homegrown watermelon. The seed-spitting contests were fierce. As we were often barefoot and playing in the dirt, the watermelon juice served as an adhesive for a fine dusting of red Georgia clay. We would get so sticky and messy, we were barred from the house until we’d washed off with the hose. And, if we didn’t do a good job, Meme was more than happy to help. This watermelon salad is decidedly grown-up enough to eat indoors (barring any seed-spitting challenges). Spiking watermelon with vodka is an old trick, but the crème de cassis—a Burgundian liqueur made from black currants—elevates this to the extraordinary.

One of Mama’s favorite recipes is to simply peel and quarter Vidalias, top them with a pat of butter, and microwave the pieces until they are tender. This recipe is not much more difficult. Confit is most often meat, such as duck, that has been cooked and preserved in its own fat, but the term also describes a jamlike condiment of cooked seasoned fruit or vegetables. This confit is wonderful as suggested, served on toasts as a nibble, but it also shines served as a condiment with pork or chicken. It is absolutely incredible with blue cheese.

The gentle heat supplied by the slow cooker is an effortless way to temper chocolate without having to use a double boiler, standing over the pot to keep careful watch. With the small amount of chocolate required, the recipe works better in a 3-quart slow cooker rather than a 5-quart, for better control over the melting process. The recipe can also be doubled for double the chocolate indulgence.