The Pat Conroy Cookbook (11 page)
Read The Pat Conroy Cookbook Online
Authors: Pat Conroy
LEG OF LAMB WITH ROASTED FENNEL
In 1968, I took my first trip abroad and found myself at a restaurant on the outskirts of Beirut. In front of me, I found a bowlful of sheep’s eyeballs, which I eyed with curiosity. Then I ate them with frightful relish. Below me was a rushing river with a pebbly bottom and a slight waterfall ahead. The owner of the restaurant pointed to a scene behind me, and I turned to watch a group of bedouins riding their camels across an aqueduct built by the Romans and a shepherd leading his sheep across the river where mythology tells us that Hercules was born. I remember thinking, I was born to see things as wonderful as this. When I turned around a leg of lamb had been put before me and my companions from a Greek cruise ship. The owner carved it into pale, juicy slices the size of playing cards. Small nuggets of garlic covered the plate, and the aroma of lamb and lemon and garlic made you believe that Hercules deserved to be born in this river. It was the finest meal I had ever eaten to that point of my life.
•
SERVES 6 TO 8 WITH LEFTOVERS
1 leg of lamb (about 7 pounds), trimmed but still on the bone
3 sprigs fresh rosemary, coarsely chopped
Coarse or kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil
3 fennel bulbs, thinly sliced (6 cups)
1 red onion, thinly sliced (1 cup)
1. Bring the lamb to room temperature. Make a paste of the chopped rosemary and salt and pepper, binding it with olive oil. Rub the paste on all sides of the lamb and let it sit for 30 minutes.
2. Preheat the oven to 425°F.
3. Mix the fennel and red onion, toss lightly with olive oil (until coated but not drenched), and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Transfer to a baking pan and roast until golden brown, stirring once or twice, 20 to 25 minutes. Cool on a rack and reserve in the pan.
4. Increase the oven heat to 450°F. Adjust an oven rack to the lower portion.
5. Place the lamb in a shallow roasting dish and sear in the oven for 15 minutes.
6. Lower the heat to 350°F and roast until the internal temperature reads 130°F on an instant-read meat thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the lamb, about 1 hour.
7. Transfer the lamb to a carving board and cover with a loose tent of aluminum foil. Let rest for 10 minutes before carving. Meanwhile, return fennel and red onion to the oven to heat through. Serve the lamb garnished with warm fennel and red onion.
RATATOUILLE
Ratatouille is one of those recipes I can make better than I can pronounce or spell it. When I lived in Paris, there was a shop on the rue Mouffetard that sold ratatouille by the pint, and I remember making a whole meal out of it one rainy night. In the summertime, I like to make this with fresh, peeled Beaufort tomatoes, which I consider to be the finest on earth. Ratatouille is the happiest marriage of vegetables I know of. •
SERVES 6
8 sprigs fresh parsley
2 sprigs fresh thyme
½ teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
1 bay leaf
4 garlic cloves, smashed
4 medium yellow onions, diced
2 pounds (about 6) medium zucchini, cubed
2 pounds eggplant, cubed
4 large green bell peppers, cored, seeded, and cubed
Olive oil
Two 35-ounce cans whole tomatoes, preferably San Marzano, drained and diced
Coarse or kosher salt
1. Place the first six ingredients in a large square of a double thickness of cheesecloth and, using kitchen twine, tie into a bag. Set aside.
2. In a large heavy skillet, cook the onions, zucchini, eggplant, and peppers separately in small batches, using only as much olive oil as needed to prevent sticking. (The onions should be lightly browned; zucchini, eggplant, and peppers should be cooked until they begin to soften. To reduce the amount of cooking oil, toss the eggplant cubes lightly in olive oil and set them aside until ready to use.)
3. As each batch of vegetables is cooked, transfer it to a large stockpot. Then add the spice and herb bag and the tomatoes. Cover and simmer until vegetables are softened, 35 to 45 minutes.
4. Gently spoon the vegetables into a colander suspended over a large bowl. Transfer the drained vegetables to a serving bowl and return the cooking liquid to the stockpot. Reduce over medium-high heat until thick and syrupy, about 5 minutes.
5. Pour the liquid over the vegetables, season with salt, and serve at once or allow to cool to room temperature.
I
n the summer between my junior and senior years, Bill Dufford gave me a key to the Beaufort High School gymnasium and a job as a groundskeeper for the summer. Because of some incurable wound my father suffered during the Depression, the Colonel instituted an ironclad rule that none of his seven children could take a job that would pay them a salary. Mr. Dufford was absolutely delighted that I would move tons of dirt from one end of campus to another while refusing to take a single dime for my labor. I thought the physical work would be good for me as an athlete, and I spent the summer outdoors in the blazing heat, resodding and planting grass on every bald patch that disfigured the vast greensward of my pretty campus. Mr. Dufford also let me practice basketball in the gym the last three hours of the day before he made me close up at six.
My favorite part of each day was when Mr. Dufford drove out onto the football or baseball field where I was shoveling dirt and motioned to me to get in his car. “You sorry damned pissant,” he would say. “I may not be able to pay you, but I can damn well feed you.”
His red Chrysler was high-finned and flashy, and it cruised down Ribault Road like a yacht as he headed toward the business center of
Beaufort for lunch. Each day we ate at the same table at Harry’s Restaurant, a town gathering place where businessmen and politicians and retirees came together—all drawn by the shaping, leavening power of gossip. Rumor was always hot to the touch and hot off the plate at Harry’s. Dufford was popular with the old-timers and newcomers alike, and everyone at Harry’s made an appearance at his table before he finished eating. I learned that summer that towns like Beaufort did not need novelists if they had restaurants like Harry’s. Daily, I listened for the news of sicknesses and obituaries and scandals and disasters as they passed in animated conversation between men bent low over coffee and at their leisure. The whole history of the town rose and ebbed each day in the great tides of conversation, and I felt like a deep insider in the underground movements of Beaufort when that summer was over. Mr. Dufford excelled in the art of conversation and debate and the fiery give-and-take that animated the lives of workingmen. My principal was golden and eloquent and in his prime that summer. He mesmerized the movers and shakers in the town with his views on education and politics. The integration of the Beaufort schools was three years away from becoming a reality, yet its storms had already built up hurricane force, gathering at the town gates.
Harry’s Restaurant also opened up the floodgates of a whole culinary world I never knew existed until that summer as Dufford told me to order anything that suited my fancy. For the first time in my life, I tasted crab cakes and shrimp salad, fried oysters and stuffed flounder. On one magical Friday, I mustered up the courage to order Roquefort cheese dressing to put on my tossed salad. I’d never tasted anything so exotic or delicious in my life. There were chowders and stews and she-crab soups and heaping, glistening salads enlivened with olives, peppers, and generous slices of cheese and meats built from scratch by Harry Chakides’ Greek mother. I drank glass after glass of iced tea, sweet enough to count as dessert. Homemade biscuits and yeast rolls floated out of that kitchen, light as clouds, and the laughter of the black cooks followed the smoking bread to our table. Because of my principal, I learned how a small town worked, how it was held together by the fabulous buzz and pollination of
its own most heinous or joyful stories, and I learned it while consuming the best food I had ever eaten. I would leave Harry’s every day feeling as sated and gluttonous as a king. Though, in my mind, Harry’s Restaurant remains a paradise of tastes and smells, it is the first sharp, fresh taste of Roquefort cheese that still leaps out as a small miracle of surprise to my immature palate.
There was another surprise at Harry’s that took me over a month to ask Mr. Dufford about, but it was so incongruous and out of the order of things that I did not know how to phrase the question at first.
“Mr. Dufford,” I said, “I thought that Beaufort was segregated by law.”
“It is, pissant. It’s not going to be for long. But you’ve got our all-white high school and two miles down the road, you’ve got the all-black Robert Smalls High School. It doesn’t get more segregated than that.”
“Then why’s Harry’s Restaurant integrated?” I asked.
“It isn’t,” he said. “It’s against the law to serve food to black people.”
“What about that man?” I said, pointing to a long, slim black man who was eating at the lunch counter.
“That’s Tootie,” Mr. Dufford explained. “Tootie Frutti, the kids call him. He leads all the parades at football games and the Water Festival. Sometimes he’ll direct traffic at the big intersection.”
“How come he can eat here? Everyone smiles and laughs when Tootie comes in. Like he’s their best friend in the world. Harry feeds him lunch every day right in front of all these white folks. How come?”
“Tootie’s retarded, Pat. I think pretty severely. A couple of years ago, he came in here for the first time and things got pretty quiet. Harry sat Tootie down and tried to explain to him about integration and segregation, and Tootie didn’t know what Harry was talking about, so Harry said the hell with it and just brought him lunch.”
Bill stared at Tootie with new awareness and said, “Come to think of it, I’ll be damned. Who’d’ve believed it? Tootie Frutti integrated the restaurants of South Carolina, all by himself, and it didn’t require a court order or a single demonstration or calling out the National Guard.”
Because their impact cannot be measured, the teachers of the world drift through their praiseless days unaware of the impact and the majesty
of their influence. I want to fall on my knees in gratitude whenever I conjure up the faces of those nameless men and women who spent their finest days coaxing and urging me to discover the best part of myself in the pure sunshine of learning. Because this country dishonors its teachers and humiliates them with lousy pay and a mortifying deficiency of prestige among other professions, they do not receive the gifts of gratitude that brim over in men and women like me when we remember and honor their patient, generous shaping of us into citizens of the brighter world. Bill Dufford occupies a place of highest honor among the teachers who found me directionless and yearning to become a person of consequence as I stumbled through my childhood. That summer, I took the time to study Bill as he made his way among his fellow townspeople. He attracted people with his authentic approachability the full attention of his gaze, and the passionate authority he brought to bear on any subject that arose in Harry’s. I wanted people to look at me with the admiration that those Beaufortonians showed to my high school principal. From watching Mr. Dufford, I learned that the principal of a high school is one of the central players and politicians in the life of a town. I discovered that Dufford was principal in parlous, aggravated times. The subject of integration was on everybody’s minds and lips that summer of 1962. I got to watch Bill Dufford going through the painful switch from his upbringing as a Southern racist to his transformation into a Southern liberal who would play a courageous part in the integration of South Carolina schools.