Posted on 09/12/2009 10:15:52 AM PDT by Lorianne
Just found out about this magazine and wanted to share.
I’ve read it for a while. My take, it’s Southern Living for people with a higher amount of disposable income.
Good for them, I enjoy the magazine. To each his own.
If somebody comes up with “Horse and Gun”, I’m there!!!
I’m looking for “Bacon and Guns”
“Bacon and Guns”?
yeah, that sounds good, too!
Nice magazine of high-class culture unapologetic about their non-PC pleasures. One letter to the editor complained about the gun angle; edito
responed in essence “we are who we are, suck it up and cope”. Another issue had a very nice article about the active moonshine community. Guns are not a big part, but they ARE a part.
You don't have to go far to find Southerners with a secret--whether it's a favorite barbecue shack or a hidden dive bar. The trick is getting them to divulge. We canvassed the region to uncover the best Dixie has to offer. Here's what we found.
Ancient Trees
The oldest trees in the South are an unforgettable sight, giant anvil-topped bald cypress looming over tea-colored swamps. One tree, known as BLK 69, dates back to at least A.D. 372. But first you have to find these trees. They’re deep in the black-water swamps of North Carolina, in the Nature Conservancy’s three-thousand-acre Black River Preserve. You can go on a big-tree hunt by canoe or kayak, but only if you want to get there badly—there are no signs, no trails, no markers. Locals will tell you to paddle to the Three Sisters, a trio of meandering swamp channels that wind under the biggest boles. Good luck. But even if you don’t find BLK 69, you’ll still be surrounded by a thousand acres of old-growth cypress trees, trees that were alive when there were Carolina parakeets and warring Tuscarora.
Band
The Time Jumpers, a country-and-western swing band, plays the Station Inn in Nashville every Monday night—and they’ve been doing so for ten years. In the process, they’ve been nominated for two Grammies, and everybody from Vince Gill to Robert Plant drops by to sit in. But awards and accolades haven’t changed the music or the fact that they play every Monday night at the Station Inn.
Beer Joint
With old-time neon signs above the door and in the window, a sandy parking area out front, and the skies above it shaded by live oaks dripping with Spanish moss, Wisteria Tavern is an atmospheric seventy-five-year-old Pensacola, Florida, institution that just keeps getting better. (Want proof? Until not long ago, the men’s room was a dirt-floored outbuilding with a trough.) A country grocery in the 1920s and ’30s that began serving “beer only” late in the day to sportsmen headed to town following excursions in the Panhandle’s wilds, Wisteria over time developed the kind of lived-in character that can’t be bought. Eventually, it prospered so much as a beer stop that groceries ceased being delivered, which left more room for things like pool tables and pinball. Today the jukebox and pool table go virtually nonstop, and more than a hundred brands of chiller-fresh beer are for sale. Yes, Wisteria is still a “beer only” establishment, though owner Terry Abbott would like to change this. To draw more customers, he recently petitioned for a wine-license upgrade, only to be summarily denied by the city attorney. “We are planning to appeal,” he says.
Boules Court
There are three things you do if you’re a local eating at Chez Fon Fon, chef Frank Stitt’s award-winning French bistro in Birmingham, Alabama: 1) Order an Orange Thing; 2) Get the Fon Fon Burger; 3) Ask for the peppermint ice cream at Christmas. But you could live years in the Magic City without realizing that there’s something else on the menu that you absolutely have to try—the boules court out back. Open all year, but best enjoyed spring through summer, it seats up to thirty people and offers the same France-in-Alabama vibe the restaurant does, only you’re sitting under a charming arbor and you get to play games while you wait for your food. But be forewarned: It’s first come first serve, and the few people who do know about it fill it up fast.
Cajun Spice
Seems like every third Cajun has come out with some brand of spice or shrimp boil or seasoning shaker. The one known as Ms. G’s is the best-kept secret, and the best. Developed by Goldie Comeaux, who ran Mulate’s in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, until she passed away last year, it’s a blend of garlic, black and red pepper, paprika, salt, and oregano that hits the perfect notes: You taste the Cajun, not the salt. It’s available only at Mulate’s, or over the phone. If you call, ask nicely.
Herring Shack
Each year, from January through April, as the herring and shad storm up eastern North Carolina’s Roanoke River, the weathered doors of the Cypress Grill open up to hundreds of Jamesville locals and a handful of tourists lined up to sample the almost-forgotten gifts of the old-time herring shack. You can order other fish—striped bass, called rock in these parts; perch; catfish; and a few saltwater staples. But they’re on the menu mostly to placate the unbelievers. The faithful routinely order their herring either “sunny-side up” (just barely baptized in hot oil so that the skin can be scraped away to reveal the flesh beneath) or “cremated” (cooked till the fish turns the color of a waterlogged cypress stump and hardens up so you can eat it like a cob of corn). Either way, it’s a taste of times gone by.
Smallmouth Honey Hole
Stretching across south-central Kentucky and northeast Tennessee, the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River transects some of the American Southeast’s most rugged territory. Which means that, as it courses through sandstone canyons and gorges sometimes six hundred feet deep, the Big South Fork and its tributaries host some of the most remote and isolated smallmouth bass fishing in the region.
Bring a fly rod, popping bugs, and streamers, and hit the river in spring and fall, when the water is cooler and the fish are active. The best stretches for fishing, whether on foot or by canoe, are probably the middle sections through the Recreation Area. Go slow; get out and explore the tributaries, where the quarters are usually closer but the fish rarely see sportsmen.
Supper Club
Not even Shawn Thackeray knows for sure exactly when a small cadre of men began gathering every Wednesday evening for dinner along the banks of Wadmalaw Sound in South Carolina, but he reckons that he’s been making this weekly ritual a part of his life for at least the last twenty years. Thackeray is a Wadmalaw Island farmer, famous among Charleston locals and chefs for his stellar South Carolina heirloom tomatoes, but to a motley assortment of fellow farmers, fishermen, ex-cons, and businessmen, he’s the chairman of the Wadmalaw Island Supper Club.
The “suppah club” is not exactly a secret society, but to join the boys for dinner, you’ll have to stumble upon a member willing to invite you to sample local oysters, wild turkey, steak, shrimp, or produce fresh off Thackeray’s farm. Several months ago, renowned Charleston chef Sean Brock prepared barbecue and Italian pork jowl on his night off as executive chef at McCrady’s. “I think it’s the coolest thing in the whole damn universe,” Brock says. “But the problem is that Wednesday is my day off and no women are allowed. If I went every Wednesday, my wife would leave my ass in a heartbeat.”
Tradition
Okay, for this one, you’ll need a friend in Texas…who happens to be good with black powder. Oh, and you’ll need a fair amount of open space and an anvil. While other Southern states also lay claim to this tradition, the most pervasive legend holds that, to celebrate their secession from the Union on February 23, 1861, the good residents of Austin, Texas, marked the occasion as only Texans would. They packed a big charge of black powder beneath an anvil they’d humped out into a field. Then they stepped back quite a ways and detonated the charge. Provided the powder is packed uniformly beneath the anvil, there’s a deafening explosion, and the anvil launches four hundred to five hundred feet straight into the air. This practice, called an anvil shoot, is still carried on today, though given security concerns (and the danger associated with falling or shattering anvils), you’ll probably need to know someone fluent in anvil shooting to get invited.
We had this magazine sent to us free last year, and it was the first we had heard of it.
We enjoyed it. :-)
This was like a blast from the past. My ex-husband's late aunt held a huge 4th of July picnic every year in Wichita County, Texas and the anvil shoot was the main event. She was a heck of a woman!
I lived for a few years in Dallas. While there, I became acquainted with a young woman from Wichita Falls and she was a heck of a woman as well. The second fondest memory of my time there is Red Bryan’s Barbecue (we should start a “Favorite BBQ joint” thread). My favorite town was Fredericksburg and surrounding country, but I never, ever recieved an invitation to an anvil shoot.
Small world. I grew up in Dallas and was raised on Red Bryan’s Barbecue. I’d never heard of an anvil shoot (being from Big D and all) until I married and was introduced to the 4th of July tradition. It was infamous in some circles in the Wichita Falls area. This particular lady could hunt with the best of them and never missed a rattlesnake roundup. I was in awe of her.
That was excellent. Think any beer was involved?
We have been getting this for a good while. There is something of interest to my husband and me in every issue.
It all comes together so quickly: ice, rum, ginger beer, and maybe a little lime, stirred with the blade of a knife, a kebab skewer—whatever’s handy. Then even after you’ve had a few, the Dark and Stormy is still a breeze to navigate, darker when you’re generous with the rum, stormier when the peppery ginger beer bubbles over the brim.
The drink flows from a nautical past. During the mid-nineteenth-century rum runs between the UK and the British Virgin Islands, the British Royal Navy had a daily ration: two ounces of the local dark rum, typically richly complex with hints of molasses and licorice. It was only natural to mix the spicy rum with ginger beer, a locally bottled British specialty and a traditional remedy for seasickness.
Christened Bermuda’s national drink, the Dark and Stormy is “officially” made with the territory’s largest export, Gosling’s Black Seal Rum—the two-century-old family business actually holds the drink’s trademark—and Gosling’s Stormy Ginger Beer. But when Michael Schwartz, chef/owner of Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink in Miami, came up with his own version using homemade syrup in place of the ginger beer, our curiosity was piqued. “I wanted to stay true to the Dark and Stormy’s classic flavors while giving it a handcrafted element that makes the drink unique,” he says.
The syrup affords a fresher taste: nice and gingery, with some kick thanks to added jalapeño. “We use Myers’s Dark Rum because it is a tad lighter than the traditional Gosling’s, allowing the spice and flavor of the syrup to really shine through.” So we’ll admit, our new favorite Dark and Stormy isn’t exactly authentic. But we can assure you it’s smooth sailing.
Got Ginger?
For a Southern twist on the traditional Dark and Stormy, try using any of these Dixie ginger brews
Ale-8-One: a family-secret recipe, bottled in Winchester, KY, since 1926
Blenheim: founded in the Marlboro County village of Blenheim, SC, in 1903
Buffalo Rock: first formulated in 1901 in Birmingham, AL
Michael’s Genuine Dark and Stormy
Ingredients
2½ oz. Myers’s Dark Rum
2 oz. homemade ginger/lemongrass syrup (see below)
Club soda or sparkling water
Garnish: candied ginger
Fill a Tom Collins glass with ice. Add rum and syrup, and top with club soda or sparkling water, stirring to mix. Garnish with candied ginger.
Ginger / Lemongrass Syrup
Ingredients
1 large piece fresh ginger (4-–5 oz.), peeled
1 large stalk lemongrass, lower bulb end and tough outer leaves removed (this will give you a 4- to 5-inch piece)
1 cup water (8 oz.)
½ cup white granulated sugar
½ jalapeño (split but with seeds)
Coarse-chop ginger and lemongrass in a food processor. In a saucepan over moderate heat, dissolve sugar in water. Add chopped ginger/lemongrass mixture and jalapeño, and raise heat to bring to boil. Reduce heat to low, and simmer until syrup is infused with flavors, about 20 minutes. Remove from heat, and strain through fine-mesh sieve. Discard solids. Cool before using.
YIELD: about 8 oz., enough for 4 drinks
Traditional Dark and Stormy
2 ounces Gosling’s Black Seal rum (6 cl, 1/2 gills)
3 ounces ginger beer (9 cl, 3/4 gills)
1 lime wedge, for garnish (1/2 oz, 1.5 cl, 1/8 gills)
Build in an ice-filled highball glass. Add the garnish.
Serve in a highball glass (9.0 oz)
Sorry, ran off for the day and just found this. The drink looks good but a lot of work, huh?
You sure got that right. Upon a second reading I realized that Mr. Schwartz was reinventing the wheel by trying to make his own full flavored ginger ale. If he didn’t like Canada Dry he should have found another. Jalapenos will add a little zip but a good ginger ale will have a spicy snap from the ginger. I’m tempted to try this but I’ll have to find a good, dark rum. Hail Britannia!
If you’re ever in Waco go to the Dr Pepper Museum and visit their fountain. They serve the best old fashioned fountain ginger ale I’ve ever had. You will have to be discreet with your rum!
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