Good Ol' Carolina Seafood

GREENSBORO --

What started as a book signing for a new anthology of Southern food writing ended as a celebration of local food last Wednesday at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen.

Lucky 32 sponsored the book signing for Cornbread Nation 5 (University of Georgia Press), the fifth in a series of anthologies put out by the Southern Foodways Alliance, an organization that promotes Southern food traditions. The book was edited by Fred W. Sauceman, who teaches a class on the foods of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tenn.

Sauceman drove to Greensboro for the book signing, which also included a dinner and a showing of raw footage of a documentary on North Carolina crabs by Carroll Leggett and Gregg Jamback, both of Winston-Salem. They attended the dinner.

In Cornbread Nation 5, Leggett, a public-relations professional with a passion for Southern food, wrote about the Crab Ranch, a business in Beaufort County on the North Creek of the Pamlico River, and how he had started working on the documentary with Jamback, who owns the Swiftwater Media film company.

The documentary, which isn't completed, tells the story of Debbie Cutler and her husband, Curtis Wilkins, and a couple of other crabbers. It focuses on the fascinating process in which crabs shed their shells and how crabbers catch them at just the right time to give us all the wonderful delicacy of soft-shell crabs.

A highlight of the evening was the presence of Cutler and Wilkins, who brought along some soft-shells. Jay Pierce, the executive chef of Lucky 32, turned those crabs into one of five courses that featured Carolina seafood and a dessert.

"Debbie and Curtis are exactly the kinds of people we seek out to honor in the Southern Foodways Alliance," Sauceman said. "It was great to see the way people appreciated their food and through the video saw the strenuous labor that goes into harvesting those creatures."

Between Cutler's 25 years of experience in crabbing and Pierce's Southern but modern menu, the evening turned into a tasty blend of old and new, where Southern traditions meet a younger generation's hunger for local, seasonal, sustainable food.

The meal started with pickled shrimp from Port Royal, S.C., where both South Carolina and North Carolina shrimp are processed. The shrimp were served with a radish butter and piece of spoonbread.

Next came clam "chowdah," full of smoky bacon and chunks of fingerling potatoes and wonderfully tender littleneck clams from Sneed's Ferry in Onslow County.

The third course was a salad of trout farmed in the mountains in Andrews, N.C. Pierce smoked the trout and served it with toasted almonds and a fig-butter vinaigrette, which had a slight sweetness that contrasted nicely with the smoked fish.

The main event was the soft-shell crabs, fried and served with slaw, Hoppin' John and tartar sauce mixed with chowchow.

"Some of these crabs I got out at 8 o'clock this morning," Cutler said, adding that none were older than 30 hours.

Pierce said he had never cooked soft-shells this fresh. That freshness showed in the incredible softness of the shells and the almost lighter-than-air texture. Yet the crabs still had all of the crab flavor.

Dinner ended with a lemon poundcake with fresh strawberries from Rocky Point and yogurt from Goat Lady Dairy in Climax.

In an ironic twist of a meal featuring local seafood, Cutler mentioned that she actually sells most of her crabs to Maryland, where they are always in demand. "There doesn't seem to be a market for it here," she said.

Pierce hopes to change that, at least a bit, by working out a way to get regular deliveries from Cutler for Lucky 32.

He already gets a lot of local food for the restaurant. On weekly trips this spring to the farmers market, he picks up local collards, sweet potatoes and cabbage. He's buying whole pigs from a local farm -- even going so far as to render his own lard for homemade biscuits.

In the past couple of years, Lucky 32 has slowly honed its menu to focus on Southern food, and it just changed its name, tacking on "Southern Kitchen" about six months ago.

What was fascinating about the dinner was the coming together of Southern traditions with the recent locavore movement.

"It definitely bridges a gap," said Mitchell Britt, who attended with John Bryan. They are two of the partners in Krankies Coffee, which supports a farmers market for local, sustainable food.

Pierce's passion for local food and Southern traditions reminds us that there was a time when the South had mostly local food. It also shows that older generations who revere Southern traditions and younger generations who want wholesome, local food have a lot in common.

"It's kind of like a passing of the torch," Pierce said of his cooking. "I feel like it's my responsibility to cook the food that Carroll and others are writing about so we don't lose these traditions."

"It's coming full circle," Sauceman said. "People ask me if this food is dying away. And it's not. It's evolving."

Pickled Shrimp

Recipe adapted from The Outer Banks Cookbook (Three Forks, 2008) by Elizabeth Wiegand.

3 pounds shrimp,

unpeeled, preferably large (about 26 to 30 a pound)

3 sweet onions

1 large lemon, very thinly sliced

2 tablespoons capers

4 bay leaves

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 teaspoon celery seed

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

1½ teaspoons freshly ground pepper

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce

½ cup tarragon or

white-wine vinegar

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 cup olive oil

1. Fill a large pot with water to a depth of 3 inches and bring to a boil. Add shrimp and return to a boil, then cook about 2 minutes, or just until shrimp are pink. Drain, then peel under running water, leaving the tails attached. Drain again after peeling.

2. In a large serving bowl, layer shrimp, onions, lemon slices, capers and bay leaves.

3. In a small mixing bowl, place mustard, celery seed, salt, sugar, pepper, Worcestershire, Tabasco, vinegar, lemon juice and olive oil. Whisk to combine, then immediately pour over the shrimp layers. Cover tightly and refrigerate for at least 8 hours and up to 3 days. Be sure to stir the mixture occasionally.

4. Serve as an hors d'oeuvre with toothpicks, with radish butter or over a bed of chopped iceberg or romaine lettuce.

Makes 12 or more appetizer servings, or 8 servings as an entrée.

Radish Butter

Recipe adapted from The Lee Brothers Simple Fresh Southern (Clarkson Potter, 2009).

½ pound round red radishes, trimmed, at room temperature

½ pound unsalted butter, completely softened

¼ teaspoon salt

⅛ teaspoon freshly ground white or black pepper

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1. Put the radishes in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until the radishes are chopped into a very fine dice, four or five 3-second pulses. Wrap chopped radishes in a length of cheesecloth or clean dish towel and squeeze hard to wring out excess liquid.

2. Transfer radishes to a bowl and add ¾ of the butter, or 12 tablespoons. Use a spatula to cream the mixture together. Add salt, pepper, lemon juice and remaining butter. Cream until smooth and well-blended. Serve immediately. (If making ahead, cover and refrigerate for up to 2 days; remove at least 15 minutes before serving to allow the butter to soften a bit.)

Makes about 8 servings.

Clam Chowdah

Recipe from Jay Pierce of Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen.

5 pounds medium North Carolina clams,

preferably wild-caught

½ pound thick sliced bacon, chopped

½ pound fingerling

potatoes

5 cups whole milk, warm

2 tablespoons bacon drippings

¾ cup finely minced celery

⅔ cup leeks, rinsed, chopped

1 pint heavy whipping cream

½ teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground white pepper

½ teaspoon cayenne pepper

½ teaspoon

Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon dry cooking sherry

¼ cup cornstarch

dissolved in ¼ cup water

1. Wash clams well in three changes of water, making sure to eliminate all sand. Steam clams in a heavy bottomed pot with about an inch of water until clams open; reserve clams and juice. Discard any clams that do not open.

2. Render bacon in a large skillet until desired doneness; leave a tablespoon or two of drippings in the skillet and set aside the chopped bacon. Meanwhile, steam or boil potatoes in salted water and cool; then slice. Set aside potatoes.

3. Warm milk in double boiler or pan; be sure not to scald. Heat drippings in a skillet and sauté the celery and leeks. Add heavy cream, spices and Worcestershire. Bring to a simmer and add hot milk. Bring to simmer again. Stir sherry into cornstarch slurry and add to pot, whisking constantly. Return to boil, and turn off heat. Add steamed clams and reserved juice. Stir gently. Serve or store for later use. Garnish with steamed sliced fingerling potatoes and cooked bacon.

Makes 2 quarts or more.