It's All Gravy

Donis here, facing a conundrum...what to write today. My blogmates have introduced so many interesting topics over the past weeks. I'm really enjoying reading about who to cast in the movies made of our books, and I'd love to tackle that subject. In fact, I will do that when next I post on December 27. You wouldn't believe some of the suggestions I've heard over the years as to who should play Alafair Tucker in the movies.

But today I must add one more entry about food in novels. Type M's own Charlotte Hinger mentioned on Facebook that I had included a recipe for red eye gravy in my latest novel, Forty Dead Men, and many FB denizens replied to her post with their fond memories that most Southern of dishes. So I thought that I'd relate that recipe here, just before Christmas, so you can try it with your leftover Christmas ham. I'm going to include another fabulous family gravy recipe that I grew up with–chocolate gravy! We used it on biscuits for breakfast, and I can't think of a better Christmas treat.

If you've never tried red eye gravy or chocolate gravy, you're in for an experience. Farm families used all kinds of interesting things for gravies and sauces, mostly because you used what you had on hand and never let anything go to waste, and in this case, necessity is the mother of some really delicious culinary inventions. Besides, they're easy! So give them a try. You won't be sorry.

Red Eye Gravy

After frying several slices of country ham in butter, deglaze the skillet (a cast iron skillet is best) with a cup of strong black coffee. Use a spatula to loosen the meat bits that have stuck to the bottom of the pan. Add a cup of water and simmer the gravy until it has reduced by half. After the gravy is poured into a dish or gravy boat, the coffee and meat bits will sink to the bottom and the drippings will rise to the top. Long ago, some clever wag decided that the dark coffee under the clear grease looks like a human eye looking up from the bowl. Yum! Give it a stir before spooning the gravy onto your rice or potatoes. Be sure to use quality pieces of ham to fry.

Now, I never ate red eye gravy made with anything but coffee, but there is an equally beloved recipe made just the same way but with Coca Cola instead of coffee. My books are set in the 1910s, so Coca Cola was available, but I can't imagine that Alafair would waste money by using a fancy bottle of soda to make gravy. You can add a tablespoon of flour to thicken the gravy, but that's not the old way. If you try it, Dear Reader, let me know what you think!

Chocolate Gravy

The recipe for chocolate gravy came into my mother's family through my Aunt Loreen. When I spent the night with my cousin, my aunt would make this with homemade buttermilk biscuits in the morning. I wonder sometimes if I was more interested in the chocolate gravy than I was in playing with my cousin. My family also uses variations of this recipe for pudding and pies. This gravy is quite simple to make, but potent. You must be an extreme chocolate lover to eat this. One of my brothers-in-law pronounced it too rich for normal human consumption, and this guy will eat boiled sheep's eyes. The rest of my family loves it.

Mix together thoroughly 1/4 cup of powdered cocoa (I use plain old Hersheys), 2 cups of sugar, 1/4 cup of white flour, and 1/4 tsp. of salt. Add 2 cups of milk to the dry ingredients and mix well. Cook in a heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens to desired consistency. I usually wait until it begins to boil with a dull plop. Remove from heat, mix in 1 tsp. of vanilla. Delicious on any kind of bread (think chocolate-filled croissants), or anything your heart desires.

Have a merry and delicious holiday season!

Preserving a Taste of the Past - Grape Dumplings!

I'm sticking with our food-in-literature theme this week, Dear Reader, since food is such a big part of my Alafair Tucker Mysteries. Many years ago, as I began outlining ideas for my series, I heard that the wonderful old pear tree in my mother’s back yard had died. All during my childhood, my mother made the most delicious pear preserves from the sweet, hard pears from that tree. I have never before or since tasted anything like it. My first thought on the demise of that tree was that no one will ever taste those preserves again, because nobody cooks like that any more. Or eats this way, either. I'm thinking of my grandfather, who buttered his green onions before he ate them. I decided that I wanted to take the opportunity to try and evoke not just the events of the time, but the smells, the tastes, the sound, the hot and cold of it — the daily one-foot-in-front-of-the-other life of a farm wife with ten children.

The 1910s American country cooking that I write about is heavy, rich, and fattening, and I tend to overindulge in my test products. I was raised on this kind of food, and this is the way that my mother taught me to cook, so it isn’t foreign to me. However, I’ll let you in on a little secret, Dear Reader. This is not at all the way I cook at home. We are very health-foody. I’m all over the organic, local, meatless style of cooking. However, just because I don’t generally eat like that any more doesn’t mean that I don’t have a certain nostalgia for it. For my books, I concentrate on American Appalachian-style food, because just like my mother's pear preserves, the kind of cooking that my protagonist Alafair does is disappearing. That is one reason that I always put a special section of recipes and food lore in the back of each of the books.

When time comes to test and write about the recipes for the dishes that I mention in the books, I have to say that I really enjoy the heck out of myself. Here's one of my favorites, a true heritage recipe:

Cherokee Grape Dumplings

This is the recipe I used to make my dumplings. It is from a traditional Cherokee cookbook. Some recipes call for an egg, which makes the dumplings more noodle-like. I dropped my dough into the juice from a spoon rather than rolling and cutting. My dough was not as stiff as it should have been. Be sure to add a little more flour if your dough turns out too sticky. This is delicious with ice cream.

Grape Dumplings
1 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp shortening
1/2 cup grape juice (I use plain old Welches purple grape juice, but suit yourself)

Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, salt and shortening. Add juice and mix into stiff dough. Roll dough very thin on floured board and cut into strips ½” wide (or roll dough in hands and break off pea-sized bits). Drop into 3 cups (or more if desired) boiling grape juice and cook for 10 – 12 minutes.

Some Cherokee cooks continue to make their grape dumplings by gathering and cooking wild grapes, or ‘possum grapes’ instead of using commercial grape juice. Here is the finished product, with juice: