Ingredients
3 tablespoons bacon grease (or vegetable oil or real butter)
1½ cups cornmeal
½ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk (My sister uses buttermilk, but I’ve never liked buttermilk cornbread . . . and now she knows!)
2 eggs
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 cup cracklins or chitlins
Directions
Preheat the oven to 425°F and put the skillet inside so it gets nice and hot. Add the bacon grease or the butter and rotate it a bit (carefully: those skillets are heavy) to coat the bottom and the sides. Put it back in the oven. Getting the skillet to the right temperature is what makes that crispy bottom edge that everyone fights over.
Combine the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt and baking powder.
In another bowl, combine all the wet ingredients. Mix wet and dry together, and add the cracklins. Don’t bother trying to get all the lumps out.
Remove the skillet from the oven and pour the mix into the skillet. Bake at 450° for about fifteen minutes and then test it. Heat longer if needed.
You can also substitute bacon for the cracklins, or turkey bacon for the bacon, or just pull a Lucy and leave it all out. But then it wouldn’t be cracklin’ cornbread, would it?
Let it sit for another fifteen minutes on the stove top, slice, and enjoy!
Chow Chow
The first time I heard someone mention chow chow, I thought it was a Chinese dish. No one can tell me where it came from, or how it got its name. But, boy, is it delicious! Think peperoncini, but with more flavor, and you can make it right out of your own garden. Plus, it only takes about thirty minutes to prepare (instead of jarring and pickling, which can take a whole day), and it lasts up to a week in the fridge.
Ingredients
2 cups apple cider vinegar
1 cup sugar
1 tablespoon celery seed
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon turmeric
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (I make a little batch for my husband that has a few chopped chiles de árbol and 2 teaspoons of cayenne, but for myself, I don’t like it burn-your-face-off spicy)
1-inch piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
2 pounds firm green heirloom tomatoes, cut into quarters
2 medium onions, diced
Directions
Combine vinegar, sugar, celery seed, dry mustard, turmeric, mustard seeds, cayenne pepper (or not) and ginger in a stockpot and bring to a rolling boil. Reduce and let it simmer ten minutes. Your house is going to smell delicious! Now, add the tomatoes and onion. Stir gently but don’t mash. It’s more of a chutney than a sauce. Reduce heat and simmer for twenty minutes. Remove from the heat and let it cool slowly to room temperature. Place it in a piece of pretty vintage Pyrex and put it on the picnic table between the sweet corn and the roasted baby potatoes. (Well, that last part isn’t essential, but it always works for me.)
Although I love the flavor of Black Zebra, Black Krim and Cavern heirloom varieties, they don’t look nice in this sort of dish. It looks like chunky, fragrant mud. I usually use a combination of Candy’s Old Yellow, Siletz and German Red Strawberry, if they’re all available at the same time. You can usually find heirloom tomatoes at your local farmers’ market if you don’t have a little plot of your own.
I always use Walla Walla sweet onions (which are like Vidalias for Northwesterners), but you can use normal yellow onions, too. I have a friend who makes this with purple onions and adds red cabbage and it’s beautiful! I’m not a cabbage fan, so I’ll stick with onions.
This recipe makes quite a lot of chow chow, but we go through it pretty quickly in the summer with all the barbecues and picnics.
Enjoy!
Easiest Blackberry Cobbler Ever
Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease a nine-by-thirteen-inch pan. I’ve always used a large, round Fiesta baking dish that holds about three quarts. The cobbler doesn’t rise much, so don’t be afraid to fill the dish.
Ingredients
1¼ cups sugar
1 cup flour
1¼ teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
stick butter, melted
1 teaspoon real vanilla
2 cups fresh (or frozen) blackberries
Directions
Mix 1 cup of the sugar and 1 cup of flour, along with the baking powder and salt together. (I usually forget to limit the sugar to 1 cup, putting in all the sugar at once. It won’t ruin the recipe, but the ¼ cup that is meant to be sprinkled over the top gives it a special something. So, if you remember, just add 1 cup at this point.)
Whisk in the milk, then the melted butter and the vanilla. Pour the batter into the baking dish. Add the berries on top. They’ll sink down a bit, and if the tops of the batter are showing, it will be okay. The cobbler rises a little and the berries cook down. Now sprinkle the remaining ¼ cup sugar over the top.
Cook for about an hour until the cobbler begins to turn brown around the edges and the middle is firm. Test with a wooden skewer, and if it comes out clean, remove the cobbler from the oven and let cool for fifteen minutes before serving. My friends like this with vanilla frozen yogurt, but it’s perfect as is, too.
During peach season, this is a great recipe with peaches as a substitute. Instead of vanilla, you can add a bit of cinnamon.
A perfect recipe for a Sunday-morning brunch with family or when you need an easy dessert for company.
Acknowledgments
Many people provided assistance and support during this project, mainly through gifts of chocolate or caffeinated beverages or pretending to listen to me while I plotted out loud. Mindy Postlewait, your enthusiasm for trying out new recipes in a tiny kitchen filled with small children is a gift in itself. Here’s to hot lattes, homemade salted caramel ice cream and 1877 cookbooks that list carbolic acid as an ingredient. Christalee Scott May, I appreciate your Southern input on food, manners and dialect. Thank you for the perfectly timed shipments of chai (chia!) tea, fingerless gloves and never-ending pep talks. Our 2:00 a.m. conversations kept me awake and inspired. Cindy Ferreira Whitney, thank you for your generous assistance with marketing and advertisement design. Stacey Brower, for your willingness to Skype with me when I haven’t showered in four days; you deserve an award. Thank you for all those times we held books up to the tiny laptop cameras and described our latest reads. Not many people would make the effort to continue a long-distance relationship that was begun in a toy kitchen at the local Children’s Museum. (To Mr. Brower, Jimmy and Mindy . . . because I can’t leave you out.) To Sandra Bell Calhoune, for giving me advice on Lucy’s hairstyles and how to accomplish them. To Stella Hale-Wheat, for keeping me company on the other side of the world while I write in the middle of the night. Thanks to my football-loving friend Jason Postlewait, for what I think is the funniest line in the entire book. To Barbara and Larry Nafziger, for being the best neighbors a thirteen-year-old girl could have, and the best friends a forty-year-old mom could have.
Many thanks to my editor, Beth Adams of Howard Books. Your insight, humor and keen editorial eye have made this series so much more than it was when we started. As hard as I have worked, you have always worked harder. I hope you know how rare that is and how much I appreciated it. A big thank-you to administrative coordinator Katie Sandell for her gracious and capable handling of any concerns I had. No matter how many e-mails I sent in a row (or how many times I forgot to send the attachment) she replied with speed, precision, grace and perception, even on a Monday.
A huge thanks to Mandy Rivers over at the South Your Mouth blog for posting such delicious recipes that kept my family happy while making me laugh
at the same time. Thank you to the many regional Jane Austen Society of North America coordinators who agreed to review this book. To the vibrant Facebook communities who keep the rest of us entertained with all things Jane, including Austen in Boston, My Jane Austen Book Club and All Things Jane Austen.
Last but never least, a heartfelt thank-you to all the readers who have enthusiastically embraced this quirky series. I’ve enjoyed your letters, input, forwarded links and family histories. You were always willing to weigh in on whether chow chow is better than muscadine jelly, whether a Confederate soldier was better off using a Lorenz or a Whitworth rifle, and whether Mr. Tilney deserved to marry Catherine Morland. (The jury is still out on that last one.)
About the Author
Mary Jane Hathaway is the pen name of an award-nominated writer who spends the majority of her literary energy on subjects unrelated to Jane Austen. A homeschooling mother of six young children who rarely wears shoes, she’s madly in love with a man who has never read a Jane Austen novel. She holds degrees in religious studies and theoretical linguistics and has a Jane Austen quote on the back of her van. She can be reached on Facebook at Pride, Prejudice, and Cheese Grits.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Mary Jane Hathaway
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First Howard Books trade paperback edition November 2014
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Interior design by Jaime Putorti
Cover design by Peachpie Design Studio
Front cover dress photograph © Trevillion
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hathaway, Mary Jane.
Persuasion, Captain Wentworth and cracklin’ cornbread / Mary Jane Hathaway.
pages cm—(Jane Austen takes the South ; book 3)
1. Austen, Jane, 1775–1817—Parodies, imitations, etc. 2. Heiresses—Fiction. 3. Physicians—Fiction. 4. Mansions—Fiction. 5. Mississippi—Social life and customs—21st century—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.A8644P47 2014
813’.6—dc23 2014012311
ISBN 978-1-4767-7753-5
ISBN 978-1-4767-7701-6 (ebook)
Persuasion, Captain Wentworth and Cracklin' Cornbread Page 27
