A Tennessee Summer Meal

This is one of our favorite summertime meals, all from local farmers – no garden for me this year.

I thought I should post the recipes for you non-Southerners J

Fried Okra

Sliced okra

Cornmeal

S&P to taste

Crisco for frying (no substitute)

Fry until golden brown, turning often

Fried Corn

Corn, cut from the cob

S&P to taste

Butter for frying

Cook until warmer through, turning often

Green beans

Beans of your choice, this was a mixture

Country ham hocks

Chopped onion and garlic

S&P to taste

Water to cover

Cook until beans are soft – Bev used the pressure cooker

Watermelon for dessert

It was delicious and the previous night we had boiled new potatoes, corn on the cob, and green beans.  It’s not gourmet, but plain ole food is darned hard to beat – we may eat some meat tomorrow.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

7/5/15 event date

Country Steak – ALA Beverly

When I was a kid, my mom called this dish Swiss steak, which I later learned was actually made with a tomato gravy.  I’ve heard the dish called Country Style Steak, Country Fried Steak and Gravy, Baked Steak and Gravy – What is your name for it?  It should not be confused with chicken fried steak which is fried and usually topped with gravy but not baked in the oven.

At any rate Bev wanted to make it using her normal recipe, for which there is no actual recipe and it is a semi homemade version.

Her ingredients were:

Six pieces of cubed steak

Flour for dredging

S&P

Lawry’s seasoning salt

Some mushrooms she had in the fridge

Half an onion, chopped

One can cream of mushroom soup

Two packages of Pioneer Brown Gravy Mix, made per package directions.

1. Preheat oven to 325*

2. We added S&P to one side of the steak and Lawry’s to the other, dredged them in flour, and fried in oil until browned.

3. After skillet frying, the meat was placed in a prepared baking pan and the onion and mushrooms were sautéed in the skillet for a few minutes.  

4. Meanwhile the brown gravy was made per package directions and the soup was whisked into it.

5. The sautéed onions and mushrooms were added atop the meat and the gravy mixture was poured over it.  

6.It was then covered in foil and baked in a 325* oven for about 90 minutes.  Then the foil was removed and the gravy allowed to thicken for a few minutes (or maybe not at all) to the get desired consistency.

We served it over some mashed potatoes and I cannot imagine I could have liked it ant better no matter how fancy the recipe.  This was just about the ultimate comfort meal for a cool December day and perfect for when you want something delicious with minimal effort.  And another beauty of the dish is that it is almost as good leftover.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

12/18/14 event date

A Taste Of East Tennessee for our Wine Club - Part 2

In my last post, I discussed the September meeting of our wine club with the theme of “Food and Wine from East Tennessee” where each couple brought a bottle of wine from our area for the tasting and a small plate dish from this area or the southern mountains. 

Our selections were wild boar sausage gravy with buttermilk biscuits and a peach wine from Chestnut Hill Winery in Crossville. 

They make three dry, two semi-sweet grape wines and six sweet fruity wines.  This is the description for ours.  “Volunteer Peach: Made from a blend of several different wines with the natural peach flavoring added.  Enjoy the fresh peach aroma before you refresh your palate with this with wine.  Enjoyed as a social drink or after dinner.  Try pouring some over vanilla ice cream and you will find the taste will be amazing.”

While Bev is a regular bread maker, we generally use Pillsbury frozen biscuits, so she doesn’t have a lot of experience or a go-to recipe.  But since we wanted smaller than normal size biscuits and a homemade version, we both set off in search of recipes with the first three, including angel biscuits, all judged to be just okay.  

One recipe that we both thought looked good was from Angela Roberts over at her Spinach Tiger blog titled My Best Homemade Fluffy Southern Biscuits for My Southern Husband.  Rather than copy the recipe here, I’ll just refer you to her site for the recipe and some delicious looking shots, but mention the changes Bev made:  She used a little more buttermilk to get the dough to come together and she patted out the dough to a thinner ¾“.

We served them home style - stacked high on a plate.

The search is over and we now have a go-to recipe for scratch biscuits and they met all of my criteria – good flavor, light and flakey, split a little when baked.  Since they are far from diet food and we usually have them with something even more fattening, we rarely eat biscuits so it was great having them four mornings in a row as Bev tried different recipes and we have a bunch in the freezer as well.

For the sausage gravy, I used my normal cooking method:

1. Fry and break apart two pounds of sausage.

2, Move the meat to one side and tilt the pan to the other for a couple of minutes to estimate the amount of fat.

3. Re mix the meat and fat, sprinkle 1 Tbsp. of AP flour per Tbsp. of fat plus one more over the meat and cook for a few minutes, stirring often.  I never used to measure anything for this until I learned about the fat/flour/liquid ratio.  For this I used 6 Tbsp. of flour and 6 cups of whole milk.

Slowly and constantly stir in room temperature milk (about a cup per Tbsp, of flour used) to get the desired consistency.  I added about a cup for each of the first four times then the final two cups.  I had a little fat floating on top and sprinkled a little flour on top, whisk just that area and it took care of it.  This is after the second, fourth, and last milk additions.

One small confession – I didn’t really use wild boar but I did use Swaggerty’s sausage from nearby Sevierville, which is one of several sausage makers in the area and our favorite.

The normal gravy around here in restaurants is a white pasty concoction with a little bit of sausage flavor and meat, but mine is how Dad taught me to make it – I could have probably made a few gallons of the local version with this amount of sausage.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

9/29 & 10/2/14 dates

A Taste Of East Tennessee for our Wine Club - Part 1

We hosted the September meeting of our wine club and selected a theme of “Food and Wine From East Tennessee” so each couple was asked to bring a bottle of wine from our area for tasting and a small plate dish from this area or the southern mountains.  The photos are courtesy of Big Daddy Dave and should give you a sense of the evening.

We began with appetizers of pickled watermelon rinds, pickled beets, and Bev's pimento cheese stuffed celery washed down with some wine and margaritas.

For the entrees we had pinto beans and cornbread muffins - a first try ever from ex-Floridians.

Chicken and dumplings using grandma's recipe from West Virginia.

Creamed corn from midwesteners.

And our sausage gravy and biscuits plus we had some Lambert's Cafe Sorghum Molasses for the biscuits.

Let the eating begin.

The plates weren't quite large enough to hold some of everything.

After the food had settled a little we had our wine tasting  For the wines we had:

Blackberry from Stonehaus Winery
Rhubarb from Mountain Valley Winery
White blends from Savannah Oaks and Stonehaus Wineries
Peach from Del Monaco and Chestnut Hill Wineries
We also had one non East Tennessee mystery wine which turned out to be Gallo's Boone’s Farm Mountain Berry and Bev and I both enjoyed it.  

I found it interesting that with 19 East Tennessee Wineries most of which make a wide variety of wines, the closest thing to a dry wine that anyone brought was one semi-sweet and I was very surprised that no one brought muscadine - which is the native wild grape.

We finished the evening with two desserts - peanut butter cup bars and southern possum pie – perfect name for the theme.  They were both delicious but I got only a shot of the pie.

The food and drink were all very good, the theme was a hit, and everyone seemed to have a fine time - the measure of a successful party. 

LEFTOVER MEATLOAF request - At some point in the recent past, one of you posted a recipe containing leftover meatloaf and it was something I wanted to try, but I can't find it, remember what it was or who posted it - I would sure appreciate an email from the author.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

9/29/14 event date