Fresh Tomato and Olive Aspic
CONSIDERED BY MANY SOUTHERN HOSTESSES TO BE the ultimate “party dish,” tomato aspic has been widely served at bridge luncheons and on buffets since the introduction of granulated gelatin more than a century ago. Unfortunately, most of the tomato aspics found today are overly sweet concoctions dependent on canned tomato juice (or V8) and Jell-O, […]
Pineapple Raisin Coleslaw
OF THE MORE EXOTIC SOUTHERN COLESLAWS SERVED with fried chicken and seafood, this is my favorite—at least for the time being. Curiously, it was inspired by a slaw I found one day in Chattanooga when a friend and I stormed out of a pretentious restaurant that was serving a putative Creole gumbo flavored with lemongrass […]
Buttermilk Coleslaw
A RECENT BOOK ON COLESLAW (ALWAYS ONE WORD IN the South) informs us that no less than 61 percent of all coleslaw recipes in the United States are Southern; that 41 percent of the population prepare coleslaw year round; and that the salad is most often eaten with barbecue and fried chicken or fish. Without […]
Minted Greek Chicken Salad
WITH LARGE GREEK COMMUNITIES IN CITIES SUCH AS Tarpon Springs, Florida, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Lexington, Kentucky, a veritable Greek American style of Southern cooking has evolved over the past century that couldn’t be any more distinctive. (Having been raised in a part-Greek family in North Carolina, I should know.) Composed salads, in particular, have […]
Layered Club Salad
COLORFUL LAYERED SALADS HAVE BEEN A HOLIDAY tradition in some Southern families for almost a century, served either on an elaborate Thanksgiving or Christmas buffet or, with no more than cheese toast or biscuits, at casual brunches. I’ve seen these salads layered with cubed ham or beef, hard-boiled eggs, various cheeses and blanched vegetables, red […]
Delmarva Tuna Apple and Walnut Salad
BEING VIRTUALLY UNAWARE OF (OR OBLIVIOUS TO) the fashionable fresh tuna rage elsewhere in the country, Southerners have a veritable obsession with canned tuna and have come up with every way imaginable to transform ordinary tuna salad into dishes fit for the most gracious luncheons, bridal receptions, and picnics. In Southern delis and even cafeterias, […]
Arkansas Caviar
LOUISIANIANS, MISSISSIPPIANS, AND TEXANS LAY AS much claim to the creation of black-eyed pea “caviar” as the folks in Arkansas, but since the best version I ever tasted was at an outrageous deer, possum, bear, and partridge barbecue I once attended near Jonesboro, Arkansas, in the Ozarks, I assign credit to what I call the […]
Bacon Horseradish Potato Salad
SOUTHERNERS HAVE NO MONOPOLY ON CLASSIC American potato salad enhanced with all sorts of other ingredients and dressed primarily with mayonnaise, but they do draw a strict line when it comes to the variety of potato. Round, red boiling potatoes are the cardinal rule in the South (russets and other baking potatoes are considered too […]
Shrimp Wild Rice and Spinach Salad
MY SISTER GOT THIS RECIPE FROM AN OLD COLLEGE friend who lived in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and many is the time she has served the elegant salad with cold roast pork or beef, ham biscuits, a fruit cobbler, and churned ice cream. It’s also a great salad for a summertime deck party, in which case you […]
Soused Shrimp Red Onion and Avocado Salad
SOUSING, A COOKING METHOD WHEREBY SEAFOOD IS completely immersed and simmered in a highly seasoned pickling liquid, can be traced back to the classical Greek kitchen and was most surely introduced to the South by the first English settlers. To souse, of course, is little more than to marinate, but from Brunswick, Georgia, to Panama […]