Winter

Savannah holds the second largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the United States. It is quite a sight to see: Our city turns green and corned beef and cabbage is everyone’s favorite dish for the day.

Before I give you this recipe, I must tell you a story. It is about a tall, handsome, talented young man who walked into our restaurant one hot Saturday afternoon. This beautiful young man had an equally beautiful and charming young woman on his arm. I could hear the wait staff just a’buzzing. Being ever watchful, I came out into the dining room to make sure all was well. I saw that our hostess had seated the couple, so I walked over and introduced myself and welcomed them to our home. That hot afternoon I had the pleasure of getting to know Harry Connick, Jr., and his lovely wife, Jill. I have Harry and Jill to thank for one of the most memorable nights of my life. Harry was performing that night at the Johnny Mercer Theater, but much to my dismay I had been too busy to get tickets. I laughingly told Harry that with the exception of him, just about everyone I cared to see in concert was dead, and because of my lack of organization I was going to miss this opportunity. With a sweet smile and a twinkle in his eye he said, “Well, I’m just not going on tonight if you’re not going to be there.” I repeated that I didn’t have a ticket. Harry and Jill just smiled and said, “Yes you do. We’ll have five tickets waiting at the box office for you and your two sons and their dates. Be there at 7:30.” Shortly before show time Harry called the restaurant to see what was cooking. Well, every Saturday night we serve our wonderful Southern Pot Roast and Mashed Potatoes on the buffet. Harry’s instructions were to put as much pot roast and mashed potatoes on one plate as we could, and to fill another plate with Jill’s favorite, the collard greens. I was home getting ready to attend the concert when our manager, Renee, called to ask if I could pick the plates up on my way to the concert. I agreed, and said, “While you’re fixing Harry’s and Jill’s plates, how about a platter of fried chicken and biscuits for the band members?” So my sons, their dates, and I, loaded down with food, took off for the concert. We had the pleasure of feeding the Connicks for a second time on that steaming hot day of August 21, 1999. The concert was wonderful! Harry left me speechless in the middle of his performance by recounting our meeting and describing the meals that he and Jill had enjoyed that day. Just when I thought he couldn’t be sweeter, Harry dedicated his next song to me. The song was “Sensational.” Needless to say, I was a puddle in my chair! Thank you, Harry and Jill, for a wonderful night. How proud your parents must be to have raised such gracious, thoughtful, considerate people. This one’s for you, Harry!

Don’t let the lengthy ingredient list scare you away. It’s really not as bad as it looks. Even my brother, Bubba, can make it. On a cold winter’s day it will make your tongue want to slap your brains out! This recipe serves two or three dozen people, but can easily be cut in half. It keeps for up to five days in the refrigerator or two months in the freezer.

Hot chocolate is not the only winter warmer. There’s a whole variety of spiced, sweetened, and heated beverages that contain no milk, no chocolate, and no caffeine. At Bubby’s, I’ve tinkered with some of these traditional hot drinks to come up with some beverages that have become pretty popular in their own right. Here are a couple of examples of our spiced, sweetened, and heated beverages.

This is another Junior League favorite. Make it in the winter and serve it at a cold-weather brunch. You could keep this hot in a slow cooker, turned to the low setting, for several hours.

Wonderful but very rich, eggnog is best served in small portions. Though good hot or cold, I always serve it hot in the winter. This can be made a day ahead of time and kept in the refrigerator.

Our friend Gerry has a farm in upstate New York, in Delaware County, and it is a trove of little wildly growing goodies. Each spring, around the end of April through the end of May, little leafy wild leeks, called ramps, spring up (ahead of the rhubarb, ahead of the asparagus) in patches on the side of streamlets. These wild leeks taste amazingly good with eggs, though we often pickle the bulbs and use just the leaves for scrambled eggs. At our local farmers’ market in Manhattan’s Union Square, ramps are one of the first green things to fill the winter-barren tables. If you can’t find ramps, leeks make a good substitute. Use one-quarter of a well-washed, chopped leek per serving. Also try substituting goat cheese for the Parmesan for a slightly different flavor. Serve with Skillet Hash Browns (page 211).

There is much that appeals about the crude crunch of a winter slaw—white, purple, and moss green—eaten under a gray and watery sky. The snap of raw cabbage under the teeth can be exhilarating, especially when there is some sharpness in the dressing. I use yogurt sometimes, or a vinaigrette with lemon instead of vinegar, and occasionally introduce a fiery flash of blood orange or even grapefruit. The pink variety works particularly well. The crucial point is that this salad has a clean bite to it. The idea of gummy mayonnaise and the traditional coleslaw doesn’t really enter into my head any more.

As turnips do so well with orange, it is only a small step to use them with marmalade. Duck has this affinity too, so the three can come together successfully in a darkly sweet and rich casserole. Like duck à l’orange but sweeter and more suitable for a freezing winter’s day. The orange flavors here, from both fruit and bitter marmalade, should not dominate. The final flavor can be tweaked to your taste at the end with lemon juice or, better still, a bitter Seville orange. Rice, pure and white, would be my first choice of accompaniment. If you start this dish the day before, you will have a better chance of removing most of the fat that floats to the surface.

Beef and tomatoes have enjoyed a long history together. Whether it’s tomato ketchup on your burger or tomato paste in your beef casserole, the two have an established friendship. Winter tomatoes—why do we buy them?—can add a surprising depth to gravy if they are roasted alongside the Sunday beef. I chuck them in with the onions and bay leaves that provide the background music for the gravy. The tomatoes sharpen up in the searing heat, their skin catches and burns, and they add a certain piquancy to the sweet onion and caked-on roasting juices. The winter tomato has at last found a point. You may well want some roast potatoes to go with this. I usually boil them first for ten minutes, then drain and add to the roasting tin.

Early February, icy-cold day. I find great spinach in the shops but little to go with it. I grab a bag of those factory-made vacuum-packed gnocchi that always make me feel as if I have just eaten a duvet. With cream, blue cheese, and spinach, they have a rib-sticking quality that would keep out arctic cold, let alone a bit of urban chill. Sometimes I just need food like this.

A warm scone is an object of extraordinary comfort, but even more so when it has potato in it. The farl, a slim scone of flour, butter, and mashed potato, is rarely seen nowadays and somehow all the more of a treat when it is. I have taken the idea and run with it, mashing steamed pumpkin into the hand-worked crumbs of flour and butter to make a bread that glows orange when you break it. Soft, warm, and floury, this is more than welcome for a Sunday breakfast in winter or a tea round the kitchen table. Cooked initially in a frying pan and then finished in the oven, I love this with grilled Orkney bacon and slices of Cheddar sharp enough to make my lips smart—a fine contrast for the sweet, floury “scone” and its squishy center.

Peppers, the red, collapsed horns in particular, are heavily linked with Hungary and its rust-colored stews. The Hungarians make ground paprika from them too, which has become their most famous culinary export. Despite their South American origins, Hungary is where I have found the most dazzling displays of peppers in the markets. Two minutes, even less, from the river and the Szabadsag Bridge, Budapest’s market stalls glow deep rust and gold with tins of paprika and strings of dried mahogany chiles. I love the crumbling wooden stalls of scarlet-capped mushrooms with their stray pieces of iridescent moss, wicker baskets of black sloes, and small sacks of red berries, and the apparently precarious piles of peppers, Christmas red, clean white, and burnt orange turning scarlet. The long peppers that curl back on themselves have the intrigue of Aladdin’s lamp but are awkward in the kitchen, tending to tip their stuffing out into the baking pan. You can roast them, though, with olive oil and lots of salt, and eat them with sesame bread torn into chunks. The most useful, called Gypsy and the size of a fat rodent, are perfect for stuffing: with spinach and cream; translucent onions, capers, parsley, and garlic; cracked wheat, green olives, and toasted pine nuts; ground lamb and cumin. But mostly they are baked with a shake of the olive oil bottle and a grinding of salt until they collapse, wrinkle, and melt into silken strips. You’ll need bread then, in fat, rough chunks, and maybe a glass of bright beer. From August to the close of the year is when the market has the most from which to choose. After that the peppers come dried, in long strings of tobacco, madder, and soot. They shouldn’t be despised. By then the stalls are mostly piled with roots and cabbages, endless sausages, and wholesomely fatty pork. The paprika stalls, stacked with red and gold tins, are kitsch in a Hansel and Gretel way, their shelves covered in fastidiously ironed lace, like the old women who run them. Gulyas, or goulash, means “cowboy” and was traditionally cooked over an open fire. My paprika-scented pork stew—you could use beef-departs not too radically from the classical dish. I include dried mushrooms and cook it in a low oven, giving it a particularly deep, smoky flavor.