Guts and Glory

We are at the Kingstree Pigpickin’ on a cold, muddy October morning. It is my fourth event as a novice judge; the event where I am to be awarded my apron signifying that I am finally a certified barbecue judge, and I am wondering if I have the guts to go through with it. There are about 16 tables lined up in four rows in the unheated gymnasium where the judging will take place. I watch the other judges filter in and exchange greetings and war stories but my mind is on other things. My wife calls me over to meet a couple she has found from our own neighborhood. We exchange pleasantries. I talk man talk with the husband (“When did you leave town? How long did it take? What route did you drive? Are you going back the same way?”) Still, I’m having trouble concentrating. Something’s weighing on my mind, affecting my confidence in being able to successfully carry through with the day’s events.
Yesterday was bosses day, and since I am both a boss and a subordinate, the day was a moveable feast. My folks honored me with breakfast at the local Cracker Barrel restaurant, where I ate eggs, bacon toast and grits. I, in turn took the old man out to lunch at a swanky downtown joint in my home town, where I had a large tuna salad sandwich and some tasteless bread pudding.
Then upon arriving in Kingstree late the previous night We stopped by Brown’s Barbecue and rubbed elbows with the Realtree® crowd while taking a couple of swings at the buffet(Excellent barbecue, turkey and dressing, collards, rutabagas and a large salad). Browns had been recommended by Lake High, and if he recommends a barbecue joint, you need to pay attention. Then, upon leaving the motel, the next morning and feeling sorry for my wife, who wasn’t going to get to eat for several hours, we stopped at the Huddle House, to get her some food, and I and had a sympathy breakfast of two eggs and bacon with coffee.
There are now four meals stacked in my colon, and I’m wondering when they will want out. Kingstree is one of the largest events in the state. There are 65 cookers who have been up all night slogging through the mud in the cold rain. One has set his tent on fire. They all expect us to give them our best shot at picking one of them as the premier barbecue cooker of the day.
A good number of judges have shown up. Because the barbecue is very good, many judges refuse to miss this event. Still, it is clear that there is going to be a lot of barbecue for me to judge. I’m wondering where I’m going to put it. My biggest fear is that all of the previous day’s food will decide to find a way out at the wrong time, forcing me to bolt from my table in the middle of the judging causing great embarrassment to me and perhaps a disqualification for my table. At the last minute before the judges instructions I excuse my self and head for the nearest stall where I spend a few minutes in unproductive solitude.
Back at the auditorium, I ask the event Marshall if there is to be a novice table. Due to the large amount of barbecue and the relatively small number of judges there is not.
“Were gonna throw you to the wolves and watch you like a hawk.” He says.
I find a seat on a hard steel folding chair and wait through the instructions. There is a small controversy over who will be our table captain, but it is quickly sorted out. Then there is a minor ceremony where newly certified judges, including myself are given our aprons.
As we wait for the onslaught, I decide that if I take very small bites of the coming barbecue, as well as the bread and water we use to cleanse out palettes between samples, I may be able to get all seven or eight samples down without causing movement to begin. We exchange small talk across the table until we here the air horn signifying it is time for the cookers to start bringing in their product. The rest of the morning is a blur of smelling, tasting and scoring as the boxes fly in the door. When it’s over I have the remnants of seven samples on my mat. All of it of very high quality, but the spiciness we had expected from these low country cookers has been somewhat subdued this year.
I turn in my score card and clean up my space, grateful that I have made it through the judging without the need for an embarrassing exit. I have time to visit the grazing table where the left-overs are being sampled, and get my wife a plate, and some to take home as well. There is plenty to go around.
Finally we start the two hour drive back home, taking time to stop and buy some handsome collards and turnips on the way out of town from the back of a pick up owned by a farmer who tells me he turned 90 the previous day.

* * *
On the road home, we stop at a farm stand about a half hour east of town. While my wife is browsing the produce, I sneak into the cold, bare men’s room. After about 15 minutes of staring at an unconnected water heater in the corner and counting cob webs stuck to the rough hewn planks in the corners of wall, I emerge feeling somewhat lighter on my feet.
I cinch my belt up an extra notch, and go off to find my wife.

Safe at home, the Diner sports his new apron.

The Dillard House

"Yeah, it's that good." An unidentified diner makes a dive for the roastingears at the Dillard House in Dillard Ga.

Do this: Rent a copy of the movie Deliverance. Fast forward to the final scenes, when Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Jon Voight walk into an old inn by the river and are met by an ample woman who feeds them home cooking and puts then up for the night. That woman was Nancy Dillard and her inn was a way station for river rats along the Chattooga in North Georgia for many years. It was her nephew Billy who played the part of the banjo picker in the movie.
The Dillards have had a long tradition of feeding the hungry in the Northeast corner of Georgia, along the Chattooga and the Stekoa. My wife and I find an excuse at least once a year to make the three hour (one way) trip to this picturesque part of the country where the peaks of the Blue Ridge seem to be melting into blue-green lumps and there is still breathing room between the conglomeration of strip malls and fast food joints that has polluted even the smallest of small towns in America.

Our excuse this time was the annual Foxfire Festival that is held on the grounds of an old Rabun school in Dillard Georgia. The Foxfire story deserves a column in its own right. The brainchild of Elliot Wigginton, who received a McArthur Fellowship for his work, Foxfire began as a small magazine written and edited by Wigginton’s Rabun High School English classes. His mission was to record the fading traditions, folklore and ingenuity of the old mountain folk so that it would be preserved for future generations. Forty-three years after its inception, the idea has become a movement, with the magazine still going strong and 14 volumes of The Foxfire Book in print. I stumbled across the first volume of the Foxfire book in a mall bookstore shortly after it was published in 1972. Printed on the cover was a short list of the topics covered: Hog dressing, Log Cabin Building, Mountain crafts and foods, Planting by the signs, Snake lore, Hunting tales, Faith healing, Moon shining. It was all the stuff of stories, some told to me directly, some learned by eavesdropping, that I had heard from the people of my grandfather’s generation since I was a small child. My grandfather, who was a Constable, made extra money busting moon shine still in the foothills of the Blue Ridge during the depression. He fed his family through hard times by hunting in the hills and raising crops and meat on a small holding in northern Greenville County, SC.

One of the stars of the first volume of The Foxfire Book is Aunt Arie, a widower in her eighties at the time of publication who lived in alone a small cabin in the mountains She was immortalized by Jessica Tandy in the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie Foxfire not too many years ago.
Many of the books have old time recipes, including the recipe for Brunswick Stew my wife and I use today. These recipes were most likely repeated from memory into a tape recorder. The measurements are often spotty, and since much of the cooking was done on wood stoves, cook times and temperatures are often only a guess.

Next door to the old Rabun school is the Dillard House, founded by another member of the Dillard family many years ago. The Dillard house is a family style restaurant, meaning you don’t get to pick and choose from a menu, the entire menu is brought to your table in bowls and on plates and you can eat all you want and more. The rustic dining room looks out across the Stekoa valley to the bucolic campus of the Nagoochee school.

It was a chilly, wet afternoon when we stomped the rain off our shoes at the door to the lobby. We had arrived between the breakfast and lunch hours and were given a number. We browsed the gift shop until our number was called and then we were led to a table by the window which gave us a panoramic view of the valley. On the table were a Waldorf salad, a bowl of slaw and a salad of fresh tomatoes, onions and cucumbers in a vinaigrette. It wasn’t long until the rest of the food arrived, and the table top was covered in dishes, bowls and plates. Meats included country ham, barbecued pork ribs, and fried and baked chicken and roast beef. Sides included collards, braised potatoes, cabbage, their marvelous acorn squash souffle, fried apples, green beans, field peas and corn on the cob. Seconds were offered whenever the waitress noticed we had emptied a serving vessel. I took her up on several items including two refills of collards. Dessert was coffee and apple pie a’ la mode.

It’s easy to forgive a restaurant that provides this amount of food for skimping here and there on quality, but at the Dillard House everything is perfectly seasoned. It’s as if a squadron of grandmothers is scurrying around the kitchen putting their best Sunday Dinner efforts into the victuals. More than a meal, this is an experience to be savored. This is not a quick bite. This is slow food, to luxuriate in, taking time to enjoy every morsel. This is food that relaxes, that unleashes brain chemicals usually known only to long distance runners or Alpinists. This food gives you a natural high.

The Dillard house has become my gold standard for good, simple food. It’s about the best use of a twenty dollar bill I can think of.

Diner rating: 5

Brunswick Stew
2 pounds cooked ground beef
1 pound cooked lean ground pork
1 small cooked chicken, chopped
3-4 diced potatoes
1 pint whole kernel corn
1 cup lima beans
2-3 chopped onions
1 pint tomatoes or tomato juice
catsup
chile powder
salt
black and red pepper
worcestershire sauce

The directions say,"Put all ingredients in a big pot and cook for a long time."

From The Foxfire Book, edited by Elliot Wigginton, New York, Random House, 1972

You can almost hear an old mountain woman rattling off the ingredients while tapping her fingers and gazing off into the distance. We substitute boneless skinless chicken breasts, which we boil, then cut into pieces, for the cooked chicken, and we add frozen green peas and a couple of bay leaves. We serve it over rice. The recipe calls for a “pint” of tomatoes and corn because the mountain people preserved their own vegetables in pint or quart canning jars. Of course now you get your tomatoes off the grocery store shelf. Use a 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes and frozen corn. This makes a hearty, highly caloric dish. It is designed for people who spend their days chopping wood, herding cattle or hoeing corn, not sitting at a desk punching buttons. Use your own judgment on the spices and condiments. This dish freezes well.

The Dillard House Acorn Squash Souffle

1½ cups mashed acorn squash
½ cup mashed butternut squash
¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs separated
½ cup heavy cream
¼ cup butter, melted
½ cup flaked sweetened coconut

Halve the squash and remove the seeds. Boil the squash until tender. Let cool and remove the pulp and puree in a blender or food processor.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Lightly grease a 2-quart casserole dish and set aside. Beat the squash well in an electric mixer. Add the sugar, salt, ginger and vanilla and beat well. Mix in the cream and melted butter. In a separate bowl beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold the egg whites into the squash mixture. Pour into the casserole and sprinkle with the coconut. Bake 30-40 minutes until puffed and lightly browned.

(from www. projects.eveningedge.com/recipes)

Pigging Out

High Marks. Hite's Barbecue occupies a small cinderblock building on a two lane road in West Columbia, SC. Note the smoke emanating from the rear of the building and the pickup, which obscures a large pile of wood by the back door.

The Caroliner Diner's Rules for Spotting a Good Barbecue Restaurant

It’s a shame to go to a ‘Q joint and plunk down good money for sorry meat. So how do you know if a BBQ place is good or not before having to pay nine or ten bucks for a plate? Below are some guidelines that have served me in the past. Think of your favorite place and see if it doesn't fit several of these criteria.

1) SMOKE. Al Gore be damned! There must be smoke, and to hell with the carbon footprint! Real barbecue is cooked with smoke, and the smoke has to come from good hardwood trees. You should see it, and smell it when you pull into the lot, or at least when you get out of the car.

2) WOOD. There should be a wood pile on the premises, and it should be used for cooking. Oak will pass, but Hickory is king. Mesquite will do in a rush if you’re out west. Other viable woods are apple and pecan, though these are scarce and expensive and usually only used to put a finish on the meat. Beware of “decorator wood” that is only for show where the pork is actually cooked on a gas flame.

3) FAT PEOPLE. Fat people love to eat and usually know good food when they taste it. If there are no fat people eating there, the food is probably only so-so. Beware of a restaurant filled with skinny people in exercise gear. Those people don’t know how to eat.

However fat people can’t be the sole indicator. They sometimes indicate food that is simply cheap.

4) PORTABLE COOKING RIG parked outside. Serious barbecue cookers love to compete with their fellows to see who can make the best barbecue at a given time and place. This is where their skill is honed to a high art and where they learn secrets from other cookers about how to improve their product.

5) TROPHIES. If you’re gonna compete, you better be able to win at least once in a while.

6) PIGS. Like the ancient Minoans who worshipped bulls and kept images of them around house, True BBQ aficionados keep porcine totems around them. The more pictures, statues and stuffed pigs in the dining room the better the restaurant. One of my favorites is a sign hanging on the wall at Henry’s Smoke House in Greenville, SC. Inside the outline of a pig, it says, “People Eat People’s Meat."

Nice Rack. Stacks of decorator wood outside Maurice's Piggy Park in Cayce, SC. The Barbecue is actually cooked next door.
7) COUNTRY MUSIC has to be playing on the speakers. Anyone who cooks pork in the presence of any other mode, except gospel or bluegrass has no sense of proportion.

8) PICKUP TRUCKS in the parking lot. A lot full of BMW’s indicates the pork is either too expensive or too artsy or both.

9) SAUCE ON THE SIDE, not on the meat. If they have to sauce the meat to make it palatable, there’s something wrong with it.

10) THE BUILDING. Don’t even slow down for one of those cookie cutter fancy brick and steel facades that look like they were built last year. Somebody has to pay for that building. Real barbecue cookers build the pit first and then as an afterthought put some kind of enclosure around it, perhaps getting the idea when they hear the first raindrops sizzle on the grill. Look for a simple wood or cinderblock building, preferably out in the country. The fewer lanes to the road that goes there the better. Extra points are given if it has a gravel parking lot, tables in the yard, or a porch to eat on. Barbecue is meant to be eaten outside where the smoke in the air enhances the smoke in the meat for a complete barbecue experience. Screens are optional.

11) THE MENU should have barbecue as the main, or only item. If the menu has the barbecue listed somewhere down there between the Fiesta Chicken and the Shrimp and Sausage Penne, It probably comes to the restaurant frozen in a tub or plastic bag.

12) A SINGLE ENTITY. Beware of chain restaurants. A man runnning a pit out in the country is free to live his dream. Chains come with a large beauracracy whose main job quickly becomes maintaining the status quo vs. making excellent food.

I Couldn't Eat the Sausages

People are always telling me where to go. Once-in-a-while they’re talking about a restaurant. When two of my colleagues individually recommended the Thunderbird in Florence, I decided the next time I was down there I would give it a try. My chance came a few weeks ago. The Thunderbird is actually a trio of businesses sitting just off I-95. Included are a motel, a bar and grill, and a “country buffet.”
First the good part: for about $10.00 you can gorge yourself with a wide variety of food. The day I was there, entrees included fried chicken, ham, turkey and dressing stewed beef, and some rather lewd-looking fried sausages. Sides included macaroni and cheese, green beans, collard greens, and candied yams, among others.
The salad bar was pretty extensive and the vegetables were all either shredded or coarsely chopped making them easy to handle. There was a wide variety of desserts including two or three cobblers and banana pudding and a menagerie of cake and pie slices.
However, what the buffet offers in quantity, it lacks in quality. The ham was full of gristle. The collards and many of the other vegetables seemed to have been dumped directly from cans, with little or no seasoning. Much of the food was bland. Some of it tasted downright strange. Three saving graces were the fried chicken, the salad bar and the apple cobbler.
I couldn’t bring myself to eat the sausage.
The tea is served in small 12 ounce glasses, which get emptied pretty quickly, though the servers are attentive most of the time. Soft drinks aren’t on the menu.
The place was busy with an early supper crowd and most of the customers seemed satisfied with their meals, but I didn’t see a lot of people returning to the bar for a second pass.
At the Thunderbird you can shovel in food until you throw up. Just don’t let it spend a lot of time around your tongue.
Diner rating: 3
Next up: How to spot a good barbecue joint.