Damon Lee Fowler

 

If we're paying attention, every venture into the kitchen is an opportunity for us to learn and improve.

 

A few weeks ago, a friend asked if I had a chilled cucumber soup recipe that I could share. It was funny that she would ask just then, because I'd been craving that very thing for several days. And as it happened, there was a recipe for it in my book Essentials of Southern Cooking. I sent it along to her, then toddled off to the store to buy the ingredients for a batch of my own.

 

But while I was making it, I found myself dissatisfied with that recipe as it was published.  Read More 

 

There's not a day, nor a time within them, that I don't miss my maternal grandparents, but mid-summer is when I always miss them most. Not because that's the time of year that, twenty-one years apart, they left us, but because the summer school holidays were when my brothers and I each got to visit them all on our own for two whole weeks.

 

The lion's share of those visits was spent in the kitchen with MaMa Read More 

 

The best cooking is always the simplest. When the ingredients are first rate, a wise cook knows to do no more than is absolutely necessary to bring out their flavor. This is especially true in summer, when produce is at its peak and the heat, even when the air-conditioner is going full blast, makes spending time in the kitchen deeply unappealing.

 

And when we go back to Savannah and are lucky enough to come home with a pound cake from Mollie Stone Read More 

 

One of the loveliest dishes in all of French cooking and arguably the greatest of all summer salads is sliced boiled or steamed potatoes simply dressed with oil and vinegar and served at room temperature. Called "salade de pomme de terre à la Parisienne" or sometimes "pommes de terre à l'huile," it's lighter than its mayonnaise-dressed cousins, and is served both on its own or as one of the components of a composed salad.

 

But regardless of how it's dressed, the French secret to great potato salad is that before that dressing touches the cooked potatoes, Read More 

 

My introduction to Savannah, where I spent four decades of my life, was a preservation internship in the summer of 1980. It was one of the hottest summers on record, and we met the heat with weekends on Tybee trying to catch a sea breeze, gallons of ice, chilled white wine and gin kept in the freezer, and windows that were perpetually frosted—on the outside. The heavy, damp air rang with a steady soundtrack of whirring air conditioner condensers and ceiling fans.

 

But of all the ways we dealt with the heat, the most memorable was Jean Soderlind's, who was my big-hearted landlady. I lived on the top floor of her grand Victorian house  Read More 

 

When most of us use the words "comfort food" we usually mean something that warms us both inside and out, wrapping us up physically and emotionally. But during the dead heat of summer, when the humidity turns the air into hot mayonnaise, the sun turns the pavement into a short-order griddle, and we're all, as old-guard southern ladies persist in calling it, "glistening," comfort turns ice cold and is served in tall, frosted glasses and chilled bowls.

 

The irony is not lost on me that two of my own ultimate comfort foods are soups that are at their best in that dead heat, when their key ingredients are at their peak: my grandmother's vegetable beef soup Read More 

 

Perhaps it's the monotonously regular summer menu of salads and cold or room temperature food, but even in the warmest of days, there are times when a hot soup is not only welcome, but the only thing that really satisfies us. There's rarely a summer day, however, when venturing into a hot kitchen to make soup, even a cold one, is welcome.

 

Luckily, most soups don't take a lot of the cook's time, nor necessarily have to simmer for hours to be good.  Read More 

 

The summer heat and humidity in our corner of Southern Virginia may not be quite as intense as it was in coastal Georgia, but it's still summer in the South. My cooking continues to be heavy on summer comfort food: lots of fresh produce, pan-roasted meat and poultry, salads, and cold soups.

 

Luckily, Petersburg has a lovely Farmers' Market in an open lot of Old Towne's River Street, Read More 

 

Summer in the South (or, for that matter, anywhere) is full of irony for cooks. The bounty of produce inspires us at the very moment that the heat and humidity kill off any interest in being in front of a hot stove. The compensation is of course that summer is when the ingredients need the least amount of help from the cook. Indeed, they often don't need any help at all.

 

There's not much one can do to improve on a good peach or tomato that has been allowed to ripen to peak flavor on its tree or vine. If you doubt that, then you've never plucked one of either, given it a wipe or rinse, and bitten into it on the spot.

 

You might call it lazy, but there's wisdom (not to mention less chance of heatstroke) in knowing when to leave things alone. Read More 

 

People often ask why I never considered opening my own restaurant. My ready answer is that I'd as soon climb onto a chair, put a noose around my neck, and jump. I like cooking and want to keep it that way. But it's actually deeper than that: the truth is I've cooked professionally—only a little, but just enough for me to promise myself I'd never do it again.

 

While awaiting the publication of my first cookbook back in the early nineties, in what can only have been a moment of complete insanity, I let myself get talked into running the kitchen of a lunch café in downtown Savannah. The owner, who I suspect was a few bricks shy of a load (for goodness' sake, she'd hired an ex-architect who'd never cooked professionally to run her kitchen), had decorated the place without any idea of what kind of food it would offer.

 

Nor had any thought been given to how that food would be prepared.  Read More 

 

Probably no one will disagree that this has been the oddest of summers. It almost feels as if it passed us by without really happening. Yes, we've had the fresh produce, the heat and humidity, long hours of sunshine, and crashing thunderstorms that mark the season.

 

And to get out of the apartment and see something other than one another and the same four walls, we've enjoyed long walks in the lovely summer-green parks that make Savannah unique and have even walked on the warm surf-washed sand of Tybee Beach. But for us, at least, it's been with a kind of odd detachment, as if time suspended in March and hasn't really caught up.

 

My cooking this summer has been reflective of that: Read More 

 

Tradition has been defined as "how it was done when you were a child." Whether that's a general truth or just a jaded observation of how lifelong behavior patterns form at a very early age, we do tend to hold onto things, both good and bad, from our childhoods.

 

Regardless of when and how they begin, as so many personal and family traditions have been laid waste in this time of pandemic isolation, never have the ones that we can still keep seemed more important.

 

One of mine, which began when I was about ten, is making shrimp creole every summer. Even at that age, cooking and cookbooks were already a source of endless fascination. Read More 

 

More on the skillet steamed squash from the last essay of that name.

 

The method was the one my maternal grandmother, known to us as MaMa, used to cook the sweet, young yellow crooknecks from my grandfather's garden throughout the summer, although she did it in a deeper saucepan rather than the skillet I use nowadays.

 

But while she did sometimes bring them to the table whole, she more often took them one step further and creamed them. Read More 

 

Summer squash of all kinds are a staple in my kitchen throughout the season. There are almost always a few yellow crooknecks or zucchini (or both) in the refrigerator's vegetable bin and often a tub of cooked leftovers right next to the tub of pimiento cheese.

 

More often than not, they're simply cooked by steaming them in their own juices, a method I included in a recent column for the newspaper. It's basically how my grandmother used to cook them, with a few touches of my own added through the years, and is very simple, requiring next to no skill and only a very little attention from the cook. And it works for any summer squash, though it's especially nice for our sweet yellow crooknecks. Read More 

Before July slips completely away, here’s one last word on those old-fashioned chopped meat salads, specifically, one that’s quintessential to a Lowcountry summer: shrimp salad.

No one would argue that tomato sandwiches are the primary hallmark of summer for most of us. We eagerly anticipate that first really vine-ripened tomato so we can thickly slice it, tuck it into soft white bread slathered with mayonnaise, and relish it wearing an old shirt (or no shirt) while standing over the sink, because it’s going to drip all over us when we bite into it.

But here in the Lowcountry, the hallmark sandwich of summer is shrimp salad.  Read More 

It’s funny how, when we talk about “comfort food,” we almost always mean something that will provide comfort in the cold season, that keeps us warm and cozy inside when it’s cold and bleak outside: a hearty stew, a big bowl of chili or chicken and dumplings, a savory pot pie or pot roast.

But in the heat of summer, we often need comfort just as much as we do in cold weather, and while we may welcome a warm dish in the midst of a steady string of salads, cold soups, and sandwiches, the things that are so comfortable in the cold season are usually not all that appealing when the heat index soars. Read More 

I’ve never been very interested in clever cooking. And the older I get, the less interested in it I become. I’m not talking about being genuinely and intelligently creative or inventive in the kitchen, but about the kind of cooking that’s more about being clever for the sake of novelty, and all too often at the expense of flavor.

If, when one sits down at the table, one is obliged to be cerebral and analytical about what’s in one’s mouth, or wade through a thicket of startling and even conflicting aromas and flavors that crowd one another out, quite frankly it gets completely in the way of any real pleasure.

In short, if I have to think over what’s in my mouth before I can decide whether I like it, in my opinion, the cook has failed at his job.  Read More 

Toward the end of the summer of 1979, while I was in graduate school at Clemson University, my mother came for a short visit. As usual, she left me with a cache of produce from her garden, supplemented by baskets of fragrant late peaches and blueberries from local orchards.

It was my first apartment, and therefore the first kitchen that was wholly my own: usually, such gifts led to a day of curious cooking, but a project deadline loomed and my un-airconditioned apartment was too hot to consider turning on the monstrous avocado-green electric stove that dominated my little kitchen. Read More 

Because it's Independence Day and I'm missing my grandmother more than usual today, tonight's dinner includes the very old-fashioned American-style potato salad that MaMa always made, with celery, sweet onion, sweet pickles, hard-cooked eggs, and mayonnaise (she used Duke's) laced with a little yellow mustard for zip and color.

My grandmother diced the potatoes and then boiled them, but I've always boiled the potatoes whole, in their skins, to preserve their flavor and keep them from being sodden.  Read More 

While lingering with friends at our table after dinner recently, the discussion turned (as it often does here in the South) to food. And as we began to share some Lowcountry specialties with a member of the party who’d recently moved to the South from New England, I was given a sharp reminder of how singular our experiences with food can be. Read More 

The perfect accompaniment for any grilled meat, poultry, or fish, an indispensable component of classic Salade Niçoise, and almost as simple to make as a tossed salad with oil and vinegar dressing, this French version of potato salad is one of the great dishes of French home cooking. It’s also one of the greatest of all summer salads. Read More 

While summer tomatoes are still at their peak, indeed, overflowing in some home gardens, here is another lovely thing to do with them.

I submit this in response to the persistent myth that Southerners historically had no subtlety with the vegetable pot: it comes from a late nineteenth century Savannah manuscript.  Read More 

There’s never a time that I don’t miss my grandmother, but summer is probably when I miss her most. That was when, for two wonder-filled weeks, we each got to stay with her all by ourselves. The best part for me was the time spent with MaMa in the kitchen, making homemade vegetable soup and pimiento cheese, frying chicken, doughnuts and turnovers, and baking—even in the dead heat of summer with no air conditioning.

Of all the things we cooked together, nothing recalls those days more poignantly or delectably than one of MaMa’s great specialties: young swan-necked yellow squash, steamed, scooped out and filled with its own pulp mixed with stale crumbs and seasoned simply with sliced green onions, salt, and pepper.

 

Ever since the first time I crumbled the bread for them fifty years ago, MaMa’s squash have been a regular part of my summer table—although, through those years, I’ve strayed from the simple elegance of her formula, adding at various times bacon, prosciutto, seafood, sausage, sage, thyme, Parmigiano, Cheddar, and garlic. But when it comes down to it, if the squash are good to begin with, all that just gilded the lily and got in the way.

To achieve perfection as my grandmother did, choose four medium-sized yellow crookneck squash that are impeccably fresh. They should have clear, glossy-smooth skins and stems that are plump and bright green. Wash them carefully under cold running water and steam them whole in a steamer basket set over at an inch of simmering water until barely tender, about 12-15 minutes, depending on size. Rinse them under cold water to stop the cooking and let them cool enough to handle.

Position rack in center of the oven and preheat it to 350° F. Generously butter a nine-by-twelve-inch baking dish. Lay the squash on a cutting board with their crooknecks to one side so that they lie flat. Slice off about a quarter of their tops, chop it coarsely, and put it in a ceramic or glass bowl. With a melon baller or teaspoon, carefully scoop the pulp and seeds from the squashes, leaving their outer walls intact. Gently squeeze the excess moisture out of the pulp, chop it, and add it to the bowl. Invert the squash shells over a rack and let them drain for a few minutes.

Meanwhile, trim, wash, and thinly sliced enough green onion to make half a cup. Add them to the squash pulp along with a generous cup or so of finely crumbled stale but still soft biscuits, dinner rolls, or loaf bread. Season to taste with salt and a fresh grinding of pepper. Lightly beat an egg until it’s well mixed and just moisten the filling with it; you may not need all of it. Mix well and spoon it evenly into the shells, mounding the excess up on the top. Sprinkle the tops generously with more crumbs, gently pat them in, and put the squash in the prepared dish. Cut thin slices of butter over the tops and bake until hot through and golden brown, about half an hour.

Let the most intense flush of heat dissipate for a few minutes, then sit down with a glass of sweet tea and taste the pure essence of summer on a fork.

 Read More