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Pat Branning’s Carolina Cooking: Fried Green Tomatoes & Spoon Bread

Pat Brannings Carolina Cooking

Fried Green Tomatoes & Spoon Bread

While driving down Highway 17 through the vast expanses of marshland and centuries old live oaks, I imagine heaven surely must be some celestial branch of the South Carolina Lowcountry.

For now, though, this earthly place is quite heavenly enough. It is a place where the land and the sea yield their rich bounty year after year as dependable as the tides. This is a place where divine food is presented with gracious hospitality in the elegant surroundings of homes built in the 1800s. Families still live in these homes; children play, go to school, and grow up.

Even though Beaufort is the hometown of “The Big Chill,” “The Prince of Tides,” and ‘Forrest Gump,” the homes are not Hollywood sets but real homes with real people.

The food culture has been passed down through the generations with meals that define Southern eating at its best, from steaming hot biscuits slathered with butter to fried green tomatoes and spoon bread and sideboards of tantalizing desserts.

Even a short visit to Beaufort reveals that the hospitality and manners of the Old South are alive and well in the modern South. While the pace of life is a bit slower, this by no means implies that Southerners do not work as hard as those in other regions.

It was Harper Lee, author of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” who explained away the perception that since Southerners do not move quickly, they do not work as hard. “We work hard, of course, but we do it in a different way. We work hard in order not to work. Any time spent on business is more or less wasted, but you have to do it in order to be able to hunt and fish and gossip.”

With that being said, a couple of recipes for two of the South’s most famous specialties are in order – Fried Green Tomatoes and Spoon Bread.

First I’ve chosen the recipe for Fried Green Tomatoes loved by Lewis Grizzard, the famed columnist from the Atlanta Journal- Constitution. Following a visit to the Blue Willow Inn in Social Circle, Georgia in 1992, he wrote rave reviews about the food they served and especially the Fried Green Tomatoes.

Fried Green Tomatoes

3 green tomatoes
1 ½ cups buttermilk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
½ PLUS ½ tsp. salt
½ plus ½ teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon plus 1 ½ cups self-rising flour
2 cups vegetable oil

Wash and slice the tomatoes into ¼ inch slices. In a bowl mix the buttermilk and eggs. Add ½ teaspoon of the salt, ½ teaspoon of the pepper, and 1 tablespoon of the flour. Mix well. Place the tomato slices in the buttermilk and egg mixture. Set aside to rest. Preheat the oil in a heavy skillet or electric fryer to 350*. In another bowl, mix the remaining 1 ½ cups flour, ½ tsp. salt and ½ tsp. pepper. Remove the tomato slices from the buttermilk/egg mixture and toss them, one at a time, in the flour mixture, coating them thoroughly. Carefully place the tomato slices in the heated oil and fry until golden brown. Turn them two or three times. Be careful not to crowd the tomatoes during frying. Do not allow them to overlap or they will stick together. cook until crisp. Drain on paper towels. Serve immediately. YIELDS: 6 servings.

Spoon Bread

It gets its name from the fact that it’s served from a casserole dish with a large spoon. It actually looks like a cornmeal soufflé.
4 eggs, separated
2 cups milk
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. cream of tartar

Beat the egg yolks with an electric mixer at high speed until thick and light. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine the milk and butter. Once it gets hot, stir in the cornmeal, baking powder and salt. When the batter thickens, remove from the heat, and gradually beat in the egg yolks. preheat the oven to 375*. In a bowl, beat the egg whites with the cream of tartar until they are stiff. Gently fold the egg whites into the batter, and pour into a greased 2 quart baking dish. Bake for 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Serve at once with plenty of real butter! Yields: 8 servings.

Pat Branning, the former women’s editor for WSB, Atlanta, is food editor for The Beaufort Tribune. She and her husband, Cloide, work together to help the underserved and uninsured in health care through a nonprofit organization called Wellness4America. Her new book of Lowcountry recipes, “Shrimp, Collards and Grits, recipes from the creeks and gardens of the South Carolina Lowcountry”, is available at bookstores in Beaufort and on Hilton Head.

Click here for more information about Pat Branning’s new cookbook.

Related posts:

1. Pat Branning’s Carolina cooking: Shrimp for supper
2. Pat Branning’s Carolina Cooking: Zucchini breakfast casserole
3. Pat Branning’s Carolina cooking: Christmas party time hors d’oeuvres
4. Pat Branning’s Carolina cooking: Bountiful Berries
5. Pat Branning’s Carolina cooking: Soup’s On!

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