Paper Palate

Last January I picked up the issue of Gourmet that was on newsstands because my husband and I were planning a trip to Nashville. The January issue was a collector’s edition about Southern cooking with an article by author Ann Patchett about the food of Nashville.

I didn’t get to Patchett’s article until long after our trip, though, because I got sidetracked by “Staying on Alone,” an article by Laura Shapiro profiling Scott Peacock, executive chef at Watershed in Decatur, Georgia. I fell in love with his book The Gift of Southern Cooking: Recipes and Revelations from Two Great American Cooks upon its release in 2003.

I’d never heard of Peacock or his co-author, Edna Lewis, until a friend, whose husband grew up with Peacock in Alabama, recommended the book to me. Miss Lewis, who passed away at the age of 89 in 2006, was considered by many to be the Grande Dame of Southern cuisine. A native of Freetown, a town founded by emancipated slaves in Virginia, Miss Lewis moved to New York while still in her teens. After working briefly as a seamstress, she started cooking at hipster hotspot Cafe Nicholson in 1949. By the 1970s, she was writing cookbooks, most notably The Taste of Country Cooking, which remains one of the definitive guides to Southern cuisine. She returned to the kitchen in Brooklyn’s Gage and Tollner until she retired in the mid-1990s.

She mentored Peacock from 1988 until her death, and together they researched the history of Southern cooking, founding the Society for the Revival and Preservation of Southern Food (a precursor to the Southern Foodways Alliance). Before meeting Miss Lewis, Peacock was determined to move away from his Southern roots and into a pastry career in Europe until she convinced him otherwise. During Miss Lewis’s final years, she lived with Peacock and he acted as her caregiver until the very end.

The profile in Gourmet, which can now be read on their Web site, features an update on Peacock’s life since Lewis’s death, along with a glorious brunch spread of his modern Southern classics like pimento cheese toasts, braised-pork hash, low country breakfast shrimp with creamy stone-ground grits, and ambrosia without a canned fruit in sight.

The article prompted me to revisit The Gift of Southern Cooking. I had nearly forgotten how beautifully Peacock’s writing captured the stories of his and Miss Lewis’s lives, the food that came from their friendship, and the lovely photographs from their personal collections. And the recipes! While it focuses on Southern cooking, the book exemplifies the wonderful properties of all good cooking — the history and love that go into them.

One of my favorite recipes from the book is so simple, but so delicious: Miss Lewis’s Roast Chicken.

Roast Chicken

Makes enough to serve 3 or 4

from The Gift of Southern Cooking by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock

• One 3.5-pound chicken, brined*
• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 3/4 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 small onion, peeled and quartered
• 1/2 cup water

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
2. Rinse the brined chicken and dry thoroughly, inside and out, with paper towels. Mix together the softened butter, salt, pepper, and dried thyme until well blended. Rub the butter mixture over the chicken and inside the cavity as well. Truss the chicken with butchers’ twine, making sure you secure the wing tips and tie the legs so that the whole bird is in a tight, plump form.
3. Place the chicken on a wire rack in a roasting pan that will hold it comfortably. Put the quartered onion and water on the bottom of the roasting pan. Set the roasting pan on the middle rack of the preheated oven, and roast for 40 minutes without opening the oven door. After 40 minutes, remove the roasting pan and carefully pour off the fat and juices from the bottom of the pan into a small bowl; reserve. Return the chicken to the oven for approximately 20 minutes longer or until the juices from the thigh run clear when pierced. Remove from oven, and transfer chicken and the onion to a warm platter. Tent with foil while you prepare the sauce.
4. Skim off any visible fat from the bottom of the roasting pan, as well as from the roasting juices reserved in the bowl. Set the pan over high heat, and pour the juices in, scraping the bottom of the pan with a large spoon to dislodge any browned bits and caramelized juices. Boil hard for 2 or 3 minutes, until the juices have reduced slightly. You should have just a small amount of delicious sauce. Taste critically, and adjust the seasoning if needed.
5. Bring the chicken to the table and carve, portioning out light and dark meat as wanted plus a quarter of the onion, spooning a little sauce over each serving.

*How to Brine the Chicken

Stir kosher salt into cold water until dissolved, in the proportion of 1/4 cup salt to 1 quart of water. (Don’t use table salt in this formula, by the way; it will be too salty.) Mix enough brine to cover the poultry completely in a (nonreactive) bowl or pot. Store refrigerated for 8 to 24 hours (after 24 hours, the chicken will become too salty).