This week I’m doing cookbook reviews from the series A Savor the South Cookbook from the talented and food-loving folks at the University of North Carolina Press. If these reviews seem a tad familiar, you have a good memory. I posted them in the past but, in putting up our new website, why, golly, they disappeared. So here again are some friendly notes about great books you will truly enjoy. And cook from.
Today, it’s Buttermilk from Debbie Moose. Debbie has a half dozen cookbooks — you’ll love her Wings book. And she has another cookbook in the Savor the South series: Southern Holidays. We’ll get to that one. It’s time for Buttermilk.
Debbie grew up in the South and remembers her father breaking up old cornbread, putting in it a glass and topping it off with buttermilk. Real buttermilk. She can still sense that first taste.
The buttermilk we get today in our grocery stores is not the buttermilk of old. There are some good store brands out there and Debbie gives you hints for buying and storing. Why use buttermilk? Well, the joke is that traditionally this liquid is what was left over after churning to get the butter out. What was left was a thin and acidic liquid. But, oh, what treats it can yield.
The book has four chapters:
- In the Morning [breakfast breads and, of course, biscuits]
- Time for Dinner [using the acid to help you cook]
- Sweet Endings [more baking but now cakes and cookies and ice cream]
- Good Things Anytime [dips and dressings and drinks]
The power of buttermilk is surely foremost in baking, in recipes like:
Buttermilk Herb Rolls
Buttermilk Pound Cake
Cinnamon Raisin Rolls
Cinnamon Spice Muffins
But the power of buttermilk extends to savory as well:
Fiery Fried Chicken
Pan-Fried Soft-Shell Crabs
Buttermilk-Poached Fish with Cilantro-Lime Butter
Potato Salad with Buttermilk Chive Dressing
Cool Cucumber Soup
Roasted Sweet Onion and Garlic Dip
You can actually have a buttermilk feast from this book. Begin with the Roasted Sweet Onion and Garlic Dip along with the Favorite Summer Cooler [buttermilk + cumin + mint]. Enjoy the Cool Cucumber Soup and then slide into that Fiery Fried Chicken with the Potato Salad on the side. You can finish with the Buttermilk Pound Cake topped with her fragrant Lavender Ice Cream.
If you have never had fried chicken made with pieces marinated overnight in buttermilk, then you have never had the best fried chicken possible. I know, you pour buttermilk from the carton or bottle and it is hard to imagine it being something awesome, a culinary powerhouse. But it is. And so is Buttermilk.