The Pat Conroy Cookbook (14 page)
Read The Pat Conroy Cookbook Online
Authors: Pat Conroy
This recipe came to me from Julia Anderson, a local artist, and we didn’t change it a lick. It was perfect.
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SERVES 8
⅓ cup vegetable oil
⅓ cup all-purpose flour
1 whole chicken
1 large onion, peeled and quartered
1 cup diced celery, plus leafy tops of 1 bunch celery
1 bay leaf
2 tablespoons coarse or kosher salt
¼ cup olive oil
1 cup diced green bell pepper
1 cup diced red onion
1 teaspoon red peppe flakes, or to taste
½ teaspoon freshly ground white pepper, or to taste
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
¾ teaspoon gumbo filé
¾ teaspoon dried thyme, or 1½ tablespoons chopped fresh thyme
6 garlic cloves, finely minced
½ pound bacon, coarsely chopped
1 pound smoked andouille sausage, cut into ¼-inch-thick slices
One 16-ounce can tomato purée
1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 pound picked crabmeat (optional)
The first step to making gumbo is to get all the ingredients ready. Once you are set up to cook, this dish goes together quickly
.
1. Place oil and flour in a small saucepan over medium heat and whisk to combine. Cook, whisking constantly, until the mixture turns a dark caramel color and begins to smell like toasted almonds. This is called a roux and it will take about 15 minutes to produce a smooth paste that will not only thicken your gumbo but lend a deep, rich color. Transfer the roux to a small bowl and let cool to room temperature. When the roux is cooled, drain the excess oil. (This can be done in advance and refrigerated for no more than 24 hours.)
2. Place the chicken, onion, celery tops, and bay leaf in a large stockpot. Cover chicken with water, add the salt, and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer until the chicken is tender and the water is infused with flavor, about 60 minutes. Remove the chicken and let it cool. Strain the stock and reserve. (You’ll need at least 4½ cups.) When chicken is cool enough
to handle, strip the meat from the bones and shred into bite-size pieces.
3. Wipe out the stockpot and return it to medium-high heat. Warm the olive oil and add the green pepper, diced celery, and red onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to soften and color lightly on the edges, 12 to 15 minutes. Combine the red, white, and black pepper, the filé, and thyme together in a small bowl and sprinkle evenly over the vegetable mixture. Cook, stirring constantly, until the vegetables are well coated, about 8 minutes. When the spices are cooked, mix in the garlic, cooking for another 3 minutes.
4. Heat the stock in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk ¼ cup of the stock into the roux until it forms a smooth paste. Add it to the stockpot along with the shredded chicken and the remaining stock, stirring well to combine. Bring the mixture to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 60 minutes, stirring occasionally.
5. While the gumbo is simmering, cook the bacon in a heavy skillet until the fat is rendered and the bacon is crisp, 5 to 8 minutes. Add the andouille sausage and stir to coat with the bacon drippings. Reserve.
6. After the gumbo has simmered for 60 minutes, add the tomato purée and bacon and sausage mixture. Take 1 cup of the hot gumbo liquid out and deglaze the bacon pan. (Deglazing means to return the pan to the heat, add the liquid, and bring it to a boil while stirring and scraping the bottom and sides of the pan to loosen any browned bits.) Add these pan juices to the gumbo and continue simmering until the gumbo is slightly thickened, about another 30 minutes. (This recipe can be prepared in advance up to this point.)
7. Stir in shrimp and crabmeat (if using), cooking only until the shrimp are pink, about 10 minutes.
ICED FRUIT TEA
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MAKES 3 QUARTS
4 tea bags
1 lemon
1 orange, sliced, plus more for garnish
½ pint strawberries or raspberries, plus more for garnish
1 cup cubed fresh pineapple, plus more for garnish
1. Place the tea bags in a large heatproof pitcher. Using a vegetable peeler or small paring knife, remove the rind from the lemon, being careful not to include any of the bitter white pith. Cut into strips and reserve. Juice the lemon and reserve.
2. In a kettle, bring 10 cups fresh, cold water to a rolling boil. Pour over tea bags and let steep for 10 to 15 minutes, depending on your preference. Remove the tea bags and discard. Add the lemon rind, lemon juice, and other fruits. Refrigerate overnight.
3. Strain the fruit from the tea and discard. Pour the tea over ice cubes and garnish with a pineapple cube, an orange slice, or a strawberry.
ROQUEFORT DRESSING
In the summer of 1962, I first tasted Roquefort cheese dressing at Harry’s Restaurant on Bay Street in Beaufort. Nothing had tasted so rich or wonderful to me; I had never heard of Roquefort cheese in my life; no Roquefort ever set foot into the Conroy household as I was growing up. Harry’s salad dressing had a body and an elegance I had never tasted on a salad. It was the first time I realized that something as simple as lettuce could be raised to sacramental levels by something as simple as a sauce.
For years I have begged Harry Chakides for the recipe for his Roquefort dressing. Harry is a Citadel man, and I had a crush on his wife,
Jane, when I was in high school. (Girls of Beaufort—a confession—I had a crush on all of you.) But Harry joins other secretive Beaufortonians who hoard their recipes and refuse to share them with me for the appreciation of the larger world. In every decade I have begged Harry for the recipe, but he will not deliver this pillar of his Greek family heritage. One thing is certain: this dressing cannot be called Roquefort cheese dressing unless the provenance of the cheese you use is Roquefort, France. If not, it is called blue cheese dressing.
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MAKES ABOUT
2
CUPS
¼ cup strained fresh lemon juice (1 lemon)
¾ cup olive oil
¾ pound Roquefort, at room temperature
6 tablespoons buttermilk
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce (or more depending on your preference; start slow, you can always add more)
½ teaspoon coarse or kosher salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
In a medium mixing bowl, stir together lemon juice and olive oil. Use a wooden spoon to mix in the cheese until you have a thick, lumpy texture. Blend in the buttermilk, Worcestershire, salt, and pepper with a few quick strokes. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
M
y love of story has been insatiable since I was a young boy and growing up in the story-haunted South with fighter pilots engaging in faux dogfights over the Atlantic. I can remember falling asleep as my Grandmother Stanny told me about safaris in Tanganyika, belly dancers in Lebanon, and the illegal ivory markets of Hong Kong. My mother, who was no stranger to wildlife, collected poisonous snakes and once told me that a copperhead I caught her for Mother’s Day when she was pregnant with my brother Jim was the most thoughtful present she had ever received. In Kissimmee, Florida, long before Disney World, a mandrill grabbed my arm and refused to let go until my mother and Aunt Helen fought the ape off. “Thank God it was not a great ape,” my mother said in the retelling. My great-grandfather on my father’s side, J. B. Hunt, was a sea captain who claimed he brought salmon to the Great Lakes. He also said a painter named Francis Millet rented a room from him and paid his rent with his paintings years before Millet went down with the
Titanic
, and every Good Friday in Anniston, Alabama, my Uncle Cicero walked with a wooden cross to commemorate the Passion of Jesus. It was a source of great pride to my mother’s family,
shame to her, and wonder to me. A poet grew up in the bedroom next to mine, and when she was five, my sister came up after dinner and said to me, “Our parents are both crazy. Both nuts.”
“No, no, Carol Ann,” I said. “Don’t say that. That’s our mom and dad.”
“I’ve been watching how families act on TV shows,” she said. “Our family is nuts. You’ll see. You’ll see.”
Stories have always hunted me down, jumped out at me from the shadows, stalked me and sought me out, grabbed me by the shirtsleeves, and demanded my full attention. I’ve led a life chock-full of stories, and I know now that you have to be shifty and vigilant and ready to receive their incoming fire. Sometimes it takes the passage of years to reveal their actual meaning or import. They disguise themselves with masks, disfigurements, chimeras, and Trojan horses.
When I write, I wait for the sudden appearance of signs and portents in the air, always on the lookout for secret messages encoded in graffiti or heralds disguised as strangers in the club cars of trains. A bright encounter with twins, a brother and sister, on a morning flight to Rome changed the entire configuration of the Wingo family in
The Prince of Tides
. The wife of a former mayor of Mobile, Alabama, took me out to her yard overlooking Mobile Bay and told me the story of her three-year-old daughter who could not sleep in the heat of the summer. The mother brought the girl out to the end of the dock to watch the sunset, then turned and saw the moon rising out of the east. As the sun disappeared, accompanied by radiant clouds along the horizon, the moon kept rising, pale gold, then pale silver, then a deeper silver, with the child spinning to see both the sun and the moon. When it was over, to her mother’s delight, she said, “Oh, Mama—do it again!”
I told the mayor’s wife at that instant, “Madam, consider that story stolen.” The story fills the prologue of
The Prince of Tides
with just the right spillage of light, and it anchors the last chapter with the sudden coming of darkness. Alertness is a requirement of the writing life, staying nimble on your feet, open to the stories that will rise up and flower around you while you are walking your dog on the beach or taking the kids to soccer practice. The great stories often make their approach with
misdirection, camouflage, or smoke screens to hide their passage through your life. Once when I was a boy, I witnessed an angry father ricochet a basketball off the back of his son’s head after the kid had beaten him in a game of horse. That image was lost to me for twenty years when I wrote a chapter about Ben Meecham defeating his fighter pilot father in a one-on-one game early in
The Great Santini
. I needed a scene of unendurable humiliation for the son, then I recalled that man bouncing that basketball off that lost boy’s head. As the Great Santini followed his son Ben into the house, he taunted him all the way to his room, mimicking again and again that terrible father who had followed me out of time to present me with a story which had all the immediacy, power, and cruelty to demonstrate what Ben Meecham’s life felt like at that very moment he had beaten his father in a game for the first time. Ironically, my father and I would witness the filming of that alarming scene and watch as Robert Duvall and Michael O’Keefe would play it to perfection while Blythe Danner looked on in horror in the film version of
The Great Santini
. A diminutive older woman who was on the set that day approached my father with some trepidation and asked, “How often did you and Pat play games like that, Colonel?”