Thursday, October 16, 2008

I Brake For Boiled Peanuts



I grew up eating boiled peanuts. My mother spent a brief period in Florida before I was born, which is where I think she discovered the little jewels and smuggled them up to the cutting edge of the Mason-Dixon line. Rutters mini-marts carried them up until I was in middle school but after they stopped the boiled peanut made a sad exit from my life for many years.

In 2004 Anna took a trip to visit her daughter in Georgia and brought back boiled peanuts at my request. They were heavenly - everything I remembered. I simply had to have more, but, while managing a grocery store gives me transcendent food-sourcing abilities, it wasn’t until Wegmans moved into Maryland that a grocery store here offered them - not even the Carolina-based Food Lion. Millbrook, Weis’ then-gourmet vendor, could not source them, and our produce buyers flat-out refused to purchase in-shell raw peanuts. So I finally turned to the internet for help.

It’s odd that I took so long to look to the internet for boiled peanuts. I made my first webpage in 1995 and I bought my first domain in 1996. I was on the #html channel on DALnet back before Michelle from SapphireBlue.com married Don from RatBastard.org. I am so old school. But I freak out when I can’t find cruelty-free shampoo within a twenty minute drive, and I go without boiled peanuts for years when the local grocer can’t get them. Such is life.

Naturally my search for boiled peanuts led me to http://www.boiledpeanuts.com where I discovered the Lee Bros, who make their living selling the South to disenfranchised southerners and - as their cookbook title suggests - “would-be” southerners. Their website is a plethora of southern foods, from grits to pickled peaches, and I was absolutely amazed by it. I ended up buying my boiled peanuts elsewhere, because the Lees sell theirs frozen which makes shipping expensive, but I vowed to return.

It wasn’t until I saw Anthony Bourdain’s Charleston, SC episode of No Reservations - which featured the Lees heavily - that I actually did return and purchased their cookbook. Since then I have made the following recipes from it:

  • Lee Bros. Sweet Tea
How do you get away with a recipe for sweet tea? Mix 150 parts sugar to 1 part tea. Done. But their recipe uses a simple syrup versus plain sugar, which I find to be an elegant solution.
  • Mint Simple Syrup
My grandmother had huge patches of mint at her house and we all grew up on mint tea. The smell of it steeping in the summer kitchen is one of my favorite memories of childhood. I miss my grandmother so, so much and the first taste of mint-infused sweet tea using the recipe in this book almost made me cry. I’ve tried a few variations on this, including raspberry and mango syrups, but I really do prefer the mint. The coolest thing is this: make a pitcher of regular tea, unsweetened, and keep a couple jars of variously flavored syrups handy. Mint tea, sweet tea, mango tea - they’re all just a tablespoon away.
  • Edamame
Ok, so I made this before I bought the cookbook - but how savvy of those crafty Southerners to be hip to edamame. Heck, even my MS Word isn’t in-the-know.
  • Coleslaw
A decent recipe that does away with blanching the cabbage, resulting in a nice peppery finish. The second time around I opted for a straight-up dill relish instead of the “not too sweet” sweet relish the recipe requests. It makes a nice difference.
  • Matt’s Honey-Glazed Field Peas
I had to ask my Goya rep to bring in a case of cow peas especially for me to make this recipe. The two bags I bought - back on the fourth of July - remain the only two we’ve sold. I replaced the country ham in this recipe with a vegetarian ham I bought at Roots Market and an absolutely glittering Tupelo honey from Wegmans. The result was a smoky, rich baked bean that was so much better than any baked bean I’ve ever had. But, to be honest, I wouldn’t mind using a larger bean next time around.
  • Shrimp Burgers (for my dad on Father’s Day)
A note for vegetarians trying to make shrimp for their father: if the recipe calls for you to steam the shrimp until pink, don’t start off with pink Gulf shrimp. I paired these up with the aforementioned coleslaw for Dad, who in his typically detached, Eeyore-esque way said “Thanks.”
  • Sweet Potato Buttermilk Pie
This pie is incredible. The Lee Bros said they created the recipe as a reaction to the typically leaden Sweet Potato pie and in that light this is a revelation. It easily trumps even the best of pumpkin pies. The crust is great, although it calls for lard, so I had to substitute shortening. I want to try exchanging the sweet potato for pumpkin.
  • Sorghum Pecan Pie
The sorghum syrup which binds this pie together has a nice hearty tang to it that is dimly reminiscent of tomatoes. It wasn’t the smash hit that the Sweet Potato pie was because of that, I think. Today’s Pecan Pie is a high fructose corn syrup monstrosity that overwhelms the earthy flavor of the nuts with its sweetness, which provides nothing else in terms of taste.
  • Red Velvet Cake
I was so excited about these. Big, fluffy red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing, all from scratch. Despite growing up with my Depression-era Grandmother, who had an affinity for homemade icings, I had never had a homemade cake before. I expected it to be superior to box cakes in all ways: lighter, sweeter, more tender. The result required a little introspection, because I hated it at first. The cake was dry and leaden, the superfluity of red food coloring felt wrong - like that green chocolate syrup Hershey’s came out with during the release of The Hulk. The Lee Bros recipe uses the zest from two oranges and cocoa powder which results in a very orangey sort of chocolate. In the future I am considering making the chocolate one of the liquid ingredients and reducing the orange zest.
  • Bird-head Buttermilk Biscuits
Underwhelming. I added 1/3c. Extra sharp cheddar cheese to the recipe which had the effect of cancelling the buttermilk’s tang while not imparting any cheese flavor whatsoever. The worst of both worlds!


In addition to great recipes The Lee Bros cookbook is a treasure chest of stories from the brothers’ past which are very enjoyable. I recommend it wholeheartedly. I plan on buying the “Charleston Receipts” cookbook from their website as well, which will hopefully be a deeper dive into Appalachia. Until then, The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook: Stories and Recipes for Southerners and Would-be Southerners is one of my favorite cookbooks.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love that I made your blog. You are obsessed with peamuts baby, admit it.

Anonymous said...

Sigh. You are right, pumpkin. I think about them even more than I eat them, which is probably too often. It's the Kung Pao Tofu, I think, that pushes me over the line from "infatuation" to "obsession." Next up is peanut possession!

You should come up with some cool peanut recipes for me and put them on your website!