Pecan

Brining, or soaking poultry in salted water before cooking, is the answer to dry, tasteless white meat and rubbery dark meat: brined poultry loses only half as much moisture during cooking as unbrined. In this recipe, I use buttermilk instead of water for the brine. Buttermilk is traditional in some fried chicken recipes and has the added benefit of acting as a tenderizer. If doubling this recipe, do not double the amount of salt, as the chicken will be too salty. Serve this with a dollop of Vidalia Honey Mustard Dressing (page 284) as a sweet complement to its savory flavors.

I cannot serve this salad without thinking of my friend Stephanie Stuckey-Benfield. Her family is the Stuckey’s of the roadside stores and Pecan Log Rolls. Her grandfather opened his first pecan stand in 1937. This simple stand evolved into a veritable empire of Stuckey’s Pecan Shoppes, the highway heaven of souvenirs, cold drinks, and pecan candy. The pecan log roll, for the uninitiated, is a secret combination of sweet, fluffy goo in a coating of crushed pecans, created by Stephanie’s grandmother. In this recipe, once the goat cheese is rolled in pecans it looks undeniably like the candied confection, although the taste is savory.

Honey is a fine example of the French concept of terroir—quite literally, a little bit of the earth of the surrounding area is imparted to every jar of honey. Dede loved honey and enjoyed it on his toast or biscuits. When I grew older and started to travel, I would always bring home a jar of the local honey as a gift for him. Although he has long since passed away, I have continued the tradition and always bring home a jar of local honey as a memento when I travel. The shelf in my cupboard resembles an amber rainbow. I once had a bit of pecan-crusted goat cheese left over from another recipe and served it the next day, nestled in a quartered fresh fig and drizzled with honey—that’s how this recipe was born.

Mama found the original of this recipe on the back of a box of Bisquick, a premixed baking product containing flour, shortening, salt, and leavening. According to General Mills, the recipe continues to be one of their most popular. Mama added pecans to the sausage balls, which she served during the holidays and at cocktail parties. I made a few additional changes and developed this “from scratch” version. This recipe works best if you grate the cheese yourself rather than buying it already grated, which is coated to keep the pieces from sticking together. You can add additional cayenne if you like, or use extra hot sausage.

In south Georgia, farmland not used for peaches is often planted to pecan groves. Evenings in the fall, we would search for the elusive nuts hidden among the fallen brown leaves, the bare trees black in the evening shadows, the sunset sky a colorful vermillion. We’d return home and store our harvest in large sacks of netting. After shelling and cleaning, Mama and Meme made these nuts for the holidays.

Southerners always seem to have candied and spiced pecans around to nibble on during the holidays. My grandmother always made sweet pecans crusted with egg whites and sugar, using the nuts she and my grandfather had collected in the fall. So this version, with extra-virgin olive oil and herbs, is a real departure for my family. Recipes such as this, with a short ingredients list, are completely determined by the quality of the ingredients. The shorter the list, the better the ingredients must be. Pecans are the star, but the choice of olive oil and salt is crucial to the success of the dish. Use the finest possible. This recipe is splendidly simple, just perfect with apéritifs and for cocktail parties.

Although native to China, peaches have been grown in Georgia since breeders began developing new varieties during the early 1900s. And while pecans are native to Texas, today they too are grown commercially in Georgia. This is a simple cobbler that requires little attention after the ingredients have been assembled and put in to cook, and it tastes simply delicious.

I like to think of this as a Mexican banana split, which isn’t as crazy as it sounds when you realize how important and prevalent ice cream is in Mexico. Quick, easy, and irresistible—you will have this dessert on the table faster than anyone can eat it, which is quite a statement considering how unbelievably mouth-watering it is.

I know that bars may sound old-fashioned, but they’re just like cookies and they’re a lot faster to make. These bars are like pecan pie with a thicker crust and less filling so you can eat them with your hands. If you are making these for a special occasion, it looks cool if you use pecan halves instead of chopped pecans and arrange them in rows on top of the filling.

Okay, so I know you’re thinking, “Potato chips in cookies, that’s too weird.” But I promise you these are a real treat. The potato chips give the cookies a little extra crunch and a nice salty flavor. Besides, what else are you going to do with all the little chips in the bottom of the bag?

So you think you don’t like goat cheese, huh? Well, have you ever tried it? This salad is a super tasty combination that is perfect for hot summer days when you don’t want to make anything warm. And, if you’re absolutely opposed to goat cheese, feta or blue cheese also works well.

This is the perfect date ice cream. Ha ha…er, sorry about that. Ahem. Anyway, sweet dates and rum make a good duo, but having lived in San Francisco for many years, where it’s often whispered that there’s no better way to liven up a pairing than by adding a third element, I offer you this ménage à trois of flavors in one sybaritic ice cream. Be careful when heating the rum and dates: The rum can flame up, so keep an eye on the action before it gets too hot to handle.

There seems to be no agreement as to the origin of the word “butterscotch.” Some culinary scholars argue that its name is taken from “butter-scorched,” a theory worthy of consideration, since the process does indeed require cooking butter. Yet others academically assert that the term is derived from the word “butter scoring,” as in “cutting.” Not as in, “Dude, I scored some awesome Butterscotch Pecan Ice Cream from David!” S0 I’d like to offer my own theory, one that’s a bit simpler: It’s because buttery butterscotch always tastes better with a shot of scotch in it.

If there’s an easier candy out there, I haven’t found it. When I worked as a pastry chef, I think I made a batch of these every day. And since they’re so easy, why not? (Actually, I pretty much had to since I discovered all the other cooks in the kitchen couldn’t resist dipping into the container when I wasn’t looking.) Great nibbled on their own, these nuts are also good used in place of the toasted nuts in Chocolate Chip Cookies (page 188) and Robert’s Absolute Best Brownies (page 196), or in place of the almonds in Pistachio, Almond, and Cherry Bark (page 223). They can be chopped and folded into just-churned ice cream, or sprinkled on top of scoops of ice cream that are sauced with a ladleful of warm Rich Caramel Sauce (page 241).

This recipe is much easier to make than conventional tuiles because the batter isn’t as fussy and it doesn’t need to be painstakingly spread out on a baking sheet with a spatula. The heat of the oven takes care of the spreading, making sure that the cookies expand to the right dimensions as they bake. No, unfortunately, the oven can’t mix up the batter for you, but maybe in a few years kitchen technology will make that an option. The cookies can be coaxed into an endless variety of shapes warm out of the oven—they can be curled over a rolling pin for traditional tuiles, wrapped around the handle of a wooden spoon into cigar-like tubes, or molded over the bottom of an overturned teacup into nifty cookie cups for holding ice cream. You’ll have to do that part yourself, too, but then again, why let your oven have all the fun?

When I think of cookie cultures, Mexico doesn’t immediately spring to mind. However, there are Mexican wedding cookies, or polvorones, the nation’s answer to Scottish shortbread. Their delicate texture and mild sweetness make them muy simpático next to a bowl of Sangria Sorbet (page 158) or Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream (page 148).

The Scottish have shortbread and the French have their sablés (sandy-textured butter cookies), but both cultures and cookies are so hidebound in tradition that you’ll rarely find variations. To them I say kick off those highlanders, get your heads out of the sablé, and think again. These pecan shortbread cookies are delightfully crisp, with a delicately caramelized flavor thanks to the addition of brown sugar. If you’ve seen a fancy European-style butter or a locally made cultured one and you’ve been wondering what’s a good use for it, these buttery rectangles are just the things.

These are the darkest, most chocolatey cookies you’ll ever sink your teeth into. A whopping full pound of chocolate and two cups of chocolate chips ensure an express route to chocolate heaven. While the cookies bake, watch them carefully and remove them from the oven while they still feel molten in the center and just barely cooked around the outer edges because you want them to remain soft and chewy once they’re cool. But I suspect a few will go missing before they have a chance to cool completely.

My parents were pretty strict with desserts. I wasn’t completely deprived, but sweets were few and far between. (I’ve since made up for lost time.) One treat they did keep on hand was a bag of store-bought pecan shortbreads, which were quite thick, had a sandy texture, and seemed a bit more sophisticated and “adult” than most other supermarket snacks. Whenever these cookies were in the house, I ate as many as I could and left a seriously plundered bag for my parents to discover. Times have changed and I’m sure the quantity of pecans in those cookies has dwindled since the good ol’ days. Now that I’m all grown up, I can enjoy pecans in any way I choose, and that doesn’t mean just pecan shortbread, but also this rich pecan-studded ice cream.

If you’ve never made brown butter, it’s simple. You put butter in a pan and cook it until it develops the wonderful nutty aroma for which the French named it: beurre noisette, or hazelnut butter. Here, custard flavored with brown butter provides a rich background for a tart filled with dark rum–spiked pears and toasted pecans.