Matt Lee - The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook: Stories and Recipes for Southerners and Would-be Southerners

THE LEE BROS.

SOUTHERN COOKBOOK

STORIES AND RECIPES FOR SOUTHERNERS

AND WOULD-BE SOUTHERNERS

MATT LEE AND TED LEE

Color photography by Gentl & Hyers

W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

New York London

Copyright 2006 by Martens Maxwell, Inc.

Color photographs copyright 2006 by Gentl & Hyers

All rights reserved

First Edition

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

Book design by Jean Orlebeke

Production manager: Andrew Marasia

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Lee, Matt.

The Lee Bros. southern cookbook : stories and recipes for southerners and would-be southerners / Matt Lee and Ted Lee.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-393-05781-2 (hardcover)

ISBN-10: 0-393-05781-X (hardcover)

1. Cookery, AmericanSouthern style. I. Lee, Ted. II. Title.

TX715.2.S68L446 2006

641.5'975dc22

2006022745

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

To the memory of

Dennis Croteau, Gordon Huskey, James Kearney, Michael Lee, Hazel Miracle, Rose Mitchell, Ted Phillips, Phil Powell, DuPre Sassard, Dan Stevens, William Washington, and Bill Williams, and our grandparents Charlotte Lee, Arthur Lee, and Charles Maxwell, Jr.,

and in tribute to

our loyal customers and readers,

and to

Elizabeth Scheuer MaxwellGranwho is always game and always the best of company.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is an absolute thrill to be able to thank in print the generous souls who gave their time, astute advice, good taste, and hard labor to the making of this book, and we will attempt to name them allaware that even with two of us on the task, our faulty memories may cause us to miss a deserving few in the process.

Those who nurtured us with their love, encouragement, and counsel include David Rawle and Carol Perkins Rawle, Carl Palazzolo and Vance Muse, Melinda Muse, Conley Rollins and Meredith Kahn Rollins, Lucy Wethers, Ginny Deerin, Joyce Gooden, the Hutcheson, Guckenberger, and Humphreys families, Adrian, Caroline, Magda, and Tony Jones, Susan and William Frost, the Kesslers, the Youngs, the Geers, the Wyricks, the Lefers, Janet Hopkins, Alice Phillips and Sarah Phillips, Peter Milewicz, Mayor Joseph Riley, Jr., Jean-Marie Mauclet and Gwylene Gallimard and the staff of G&M, Susan Simons and John Hagerty, Elisabeth Biondi, Alice Gordon, Alexander Smalls, Trish Richman, Terry Gillis, Gigi Guerra, Kiwon and Dan Standen, Erin and Thomas Moore, Mary Caldwell, Myra Mayman, Nils Schlebusch and Lisa Preston, David Tsay, Alma Montague, Tanya Atkins, Betty Bass, Carolyn Green, Betty Hill, Martha Jackson, Judy Kaplan, Margaret MacMillan, Ann Patrick, Mary Ellen Rickenbaker, Rene Skory, Marguerite Stoddard, Betty Taylor, Mary Welch, Ben Wizner, Carey Monserrate, Catherine Eng and Mark Helmuth, Whitney Lawson, Jennifer Rubell and Daniel Kim, and especially Elizabeth Verity Day, Louise Elliott Holt, Mom, Dad, Caroline, Gran, Uncle John, Pudge Pie, and Pickle.

Those who have also generously shared their expertise, opened their homes to us, or have patiently suffered our questions (and often all of the above) on culinary and other topics include Owen Lee, Bobo and Pamela Lee, Ronni Lundy, John T Edge, John Egerton, Nathalie Dupree, Lolis Eric Elie, Carol Daly, Damon Lee Fowler, Mindy Merrell, Elizabeth Sims, Jessica Harris, Joe Dabney, Mary Beth Lasseter, Leah Chase, Nancy Newsome Mahaffey, Fritz Blank, Robert Stehling and Nunally Kersh, Kathy Starr, Lynn Winter, Sara Gibbs, Karen and Ben Barker, Mike Riley and Family, the Southern Foodways Alliance, Bill, Bertie and Michael Best, Nichole Green, Dale, Ted and Rafael Rosengarten, Ben Moise, John Williams, The Fields Family of Johns Island, Mary Jo Wannamaker, Francisco Torres, Stephen Leong, Sam Calagione, Helen and Harry Spell, Ann and Ken Hutchins, Limehouse Produce, Gertrude, Allen, and Dayna Sassard, Austin McKenna and Windsor Beaver McKenna, Toby Bryce and Biz Mitchell, Hawes Bostic and Sherri Chambers, Hunter Kennedy and Maggie Brett, Trey Beck, Susan and Thomas Sully, Mason and Anne Pope, Isaac Templeton, Mary Calhoun, John Ziegler, Nina Liu, Billy Vandiver, Steve Hanson, Dora Keogh, Ponniah Vijeyaratnam, Randall Lanthier, Miss Linda Brackman, Bryan Simmons and Ralph Vetters, Charlie and Heidi Parnell, Annie Laura Perdue, Martha Lou Gadsden and Family, Sam and Jan VanNorte, Valerie VanNorte, Robert and Zedia Ellis, Paul Blanchard, Carver Blanchard and Laura Lawton, Dorothy Blanchard, Langhorne Howard, Dodie Condon, Frank Marvin, James Miracle, Marcus Samuelsson, Bill Wharton, Fred Scott, The Yavarkovsky Family, Rosaleen Poole, Margaret Braun, Robert and Julianna Layfield, Kurt and Pam Hirabara, Mark Ritchie, Frances and Neal Smith, Jim and Bonnie Swartzenberg, Rona and Dale Scott, Mannie Berk, Hamburg Inn No. 2, Linda Gadson and The Rural Mission, Kirk Pomper, John Kay, Stephen Foster Folklife Center, Nancy Morgan, Hilward Morgan, Helen Cribbs, Woody Woodard and Family, Mary Harris, Ruby Shaw, and Thisbe Nissen.

And for actually moving things forward, for keeping the world supplied with boiled peanuts, we thank Patrick Brantley, our shipping manager, and the alumni of his position: Octavia Peck, Corinne Cayce, Cecilia Post, John Dorfman, Todd Giacometti, Glenn Dickson, Charles Dickson, Jennifer Bryan, Emily Choi, Sinai Choi, Young Choi, Shannon Atkins, Alan Bielsky, Sasha Adams, Will Milner, and the family members or friends who valiantly stepped in to make a shipping deadline. And a heartfelt thanks also to the Board of The Confederate Home and College, Matthew Butterick, David Black, Robert Bruno, John H. Warren III, Elizabeth Broadwin, and Stirling Kelso.

Nancy Novogrod and Margot Guralnick at Travel + Leisure assigned us our first story, and were deeply grateful to them for encouraging us to put down the tape gun and hit the road. Others whove nurtured that impulse over the years were Dana Cowin, Pam Kaufman, Kate Krader, Pete Wells, Jane Margolies, Regina Schrambling, Michalene Busico, Adam Rapoport, Sam Sifton, Kathleen McElroy, Nick Fox, Kris Ensminger, Charles Klaveness, Howard Goldberg, Niloufar Motamed, Salma Abdelnour, Michelle Shih, Gillian Blake, Geoff Kloske, Sara James, Sarah Gray Miller, Jennifer Cole, Darcy Shankland, Marion Sullivan, Scott Jones, Donna Florio, Charles Walton IV, Kim Sunee, Marialisa Calta, Colman Andrews, Margo True, Lucinda Scala Quinn, Lynne Rossetto Kasper, Dean Olsher, Jane Daniels Lear, Laura Heon, Betsy Bradley, Joe Zee, Jonathan Paul, Debra Puchalla, and Margaret Roach.

And in the production of these very pages we owe our utmost gratitude to our agent David McCormick, Matthew Cole, David Lawrence Mitchell, and Hunter Lewis (ace cooks all, without whom this book would have taken a decade more to complete), Lela Rose, Andre Glover, Bobby Fisher, Kate Hays, Sally Anne McCartin, Jacqui Daniels, Jean Orlebecke, Liz Duvall, Andrea Gentl & Marty Hyers, Kate Sears and Daniel Hakkanson, Michael Pedersen, Sabine Tucker and Yuko Yamamoto, Alice Patrick and Croghans Jewel Box, Capers White, and especially the folks at Norton: our dear editor Maria Guarnaschelli, Debra Morton Hoyt, Sarah Rothbard, Robin Muller, Erik Johnson, Aaron Lammer, Nancy Palmquist, Susan Sanfrey, Louise Brockett, Samantha Choy, Starling Lawrence, Bill Rusin, Jeannie Luciano, Morgen Van Vorst, Wanda Bazemore, and Karen Walker.