Author: Paul Gerald

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Christmas Spirit

Jeff Guinn is a man who created a world around Santa Claus. Where most of us see a mythical gift-giving saint (or, for the more cynical, a way-overdone marketing scheme), Guinn saw an amazing story as well as a career path.

First, there was Guinn’s book The Autobiography of Santa Claus, which traces the reality of Saint Nicholas (born 280 AD) and the development of the legend surrounding him. Next up was How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas, which fictionalizes actual events of 17th-century England, when peasants marched to save Christmas from the Puritans, who had deemed it sinfully pagan. In that tome, Guinn turns a great literary trick, combining the origins of the candy cane and Oliver Cromwell in the same book.

And finally there was The Great Santa Search, in which Saint Nick descends from the North Pole to defend Christmas from the tide of commercialism.

Guinn, a native of Fort Worth, Texas, and author of several non-Christmas books, says that since food was always part of Christmas, his books always included some fabulous feasts — and readers wanted the recipes. This led Guinn on another research trip.

“It became obvious that to really understand Christmas history all over the world, you should look at the traditional foods people use to celebrate,” he says. The result is Santa’s North Pole Cookbook (Tacher), which Guinn will be touring to publicize this month. He’ll be at Davis-Kidd on Tuesday, December 11th.

Guinn confesses he had no idea what he was getting into with a cookbook.

“I started out wondering if I could find two dozen Christmas recipes from around the world,” he says. “I wound up with just under 400 of them. We had some huge tasting parties over the last two years.”

He settled on 75 recipes, and he’s brought the formula from his “Christmas Chronicles” into the kitchen: do the research then lay out stories and facts to expand your knowledge of Christmas. He says 85 percent of the recipes are taken straight from traditions of specific countries, while a chef friend, who appears as Santa’s private chef Lars, has created some “North Pole specialties.”

“I don’t claim to be in any sense a gourmet chef,” Guinn says, “but I am one of those people who enjoys getting into kitchen and trying to make things. We have a good mix of recipes to challenge world-class chefs and also to be fun for families to prepare together. I wanted to make sure everything in the book could be done at home.”

Among the five breakfasts, six breads, nine appetizers, 16 entrées, nine sides, six drinks, and over a dozen desserts, you’ll find little historical notes like where the word “Christmas” comes from and how turkeys get their name.

Some recipes didn’t make it. “Some things, after four or five tries, we finally decided that’s just the way it tastes,” Guinn admits.

Much of what made it won’t strike you as traditional Christmas fare, unless you’ve done Christmas in, say, Italy.

“In Italy, a lot of people were poor and seafood was readily available, so a lot of Christmas dishes feature some kind of seafood,” Guinn says. He’s given us a recipe for capitone fritto, or fried eel.

Can’t find eel in town? There’s also doro wat, an Ehtiopian chicken stew with cardamom, nutmeg, and ginger root. And there’s the Greek christopsomo (Christ’s bread), a raisin-walnut concoction that kids decorate. From Egypt, there are sweet cookies also enjoyed by Muslims.

There is — gasp! — a fruitcake recipe, as well as the story of fruitcake.

“Fruitcake was originally a road food for armies that would could keep forever,” Guinn explains. “Egyptian pharaohs loved it so much that for a while it was illegal for common people to eat it.”

His book has a recipe for “Black Christmas Fruitcake” from Trinidad and Tobago, whose complicated preparation is part of the festivities.

You’ll also find out that there are no plums in plum pudding; rather, the name comes from putting all the ingredients in a bag and boiling them until they expanded to “plum fill” the bag. Guinn’s recipe has 14 ingredients.

And you’ll learn that “palascinta,” or lemony Hungarian pancakes, were thought to be flown in by Jesus and a band of angels.

“I want to expand your Christmas knowledge while expanding your waistline,” Guinn jokes. “The most wonderful thing for me is realizing Christmas really is global. The means by which Saint Nick delivers his presents change, but everybody at some point sits down to the table and has a big feast.”

Jeff Guinn and “Lars” talk cooking, sign copies of Santa’s North Pole Cookbook, and offer baked goods at Davis-Kidd Booksellers on Tuesday, December 11th, at 5:30 p.m.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Get Your Game On

“ESPN Gameday Gourmet is a cookbook aimed at football fans who are tired of just bringing a six-pack to the tailgate.”

So food writer and native Louisianan Pableaux Johnson stakes out his turf in the introduction to his new book. But in talking with him, it’s apparent that the book’s appeal is broader, and its impact greater, than one might first think.

Johnson, who has written food articles for The New York Times and two restaurant guidebooks to New Orleans, came at this book more from a food angle than a football angle. “I did not speak the language of football,” he says. “I just grew up in southern Louisiana as a big, hungry boy.”

But in Louisiana, everybody has a connection to Louisiana State University, and hence to LSU football games, and therefore to the ritualistic pre-game feast. Johnson, who is also a travel writer, says he always arrives in a new place and asks, “What do y’all got to eat?” So in that sense, the book is an exploration of America by way of its food traditions, from Duke Blue Devil Cheese and Bacon Dip to Union Bay Salmon from the University of Washington, where fans actually “stern-gate” on Lake Washington before games at Husky Stadium.

Along the way, there are some odd stops, like the (North Carolina State) Wolfpack Beer Can Chicken and (Wisconsin) Badger Orange Dip. But Gameday Gourmet, Johnson insists, isn’t just a fat-and-grease tour.

“I’m a big fan, as a cook and a partygoer, of having a specialty,” he says. “A specialty is a great place to start, not just for tailgating but also in the kitchen. What I want to do is show you how to take this technique, focus on the fundamentals, and get back into the kitchen.”

Still, there is a lot of football in the book, which was published by ESPN Books; the word “gameday” ties in with ESPN’s Saturday college football broadcasts, and several network luminaries contributed.

“It’s a fantastic subculture,” Johnson says. “Let’s say you walk through a lot wearing enemy colors. Folks are gonna give you some grief, talk about the game, then feed you and put a beer in your hand. It’s where generosity and rivalry come together.”

To research the book, Johnson says he reached out to people all over the country, seeking “hereditary tailgate recipes.” One of the goofier ones is “from a tiny-ass town in Wisconsin.”

“My basic formula,” Johnson says, “was to say, ‘Dude, it’s not a tailgate unless you have … what?’ And this friend in Wisconsin said, ‘Orange Dip.’ I said, ‘Excuse me?’ It’s got cream cheese, French dressing, onions, salt, and ketchup; you serve it with pretzels. It sounds horrible, but after the first time I had it, I would have stabbed somebody in the hand to get at that stuff.”

Such over-the-top reactions are common in a chat with Johnson — and also in any conversation with a Louisianan about food or football. He says, for example, that some dishes are routine at home but “take on transcendant powers” at the game. Of overlooked gameday foods like breakfast, he says, “When you show up at a tailgate with a cooler full of pre-wrapped breakfast tacos and a thermos of coffee, you’re a minor god.” He says you can learn to make proper biscuits for sausage sandwiches and “bask in the glory.”

For that old classic, Velveeta-RoTel Dip, which Johnson calls a “gooey bowl of boisterous flavor,” the book has two variations: the standard and the “beefed-up” version, which he calls “basically the love child of cheese dip and chili con carne.”

“People trash-talk Velveeta Dip,” he says, “but as soon as you taste it, you need a bag of chips. If we can improve on our childhood classics, I figure we’re good to go.”

The book is full of practical cooking advice; without coming right out and saying it, Johnson is appealing to the male ego that A) doesn’t know a spatula from a spoon, and B) wants to impress people. “We wanted to concentrate on recipes with a really high success rate,” he says.

He even casts his advice in football terms: Focus on the fundamentals, start with a strategy, develop a specialty, and practice, practice, practice.

“One of my core tenets is that you shouldn’t be trying to put together your tailgate when you’re standing in front of the beer cooler,” Johnson says. “Any good tailgate starts in the kitchen, and that’s where we want people to start.”

Pableaux Johnson will sign copies of ESPN Gameday Gourmet on Tuesday, September 11th, starting at 6 p.m., at Davis-Kidd Booksellers, 387 N. Perkins. Afterwards, the store’s Brontë bistro will serve recipes from the book. He will also be cooking at Zoo Rendezvous 2007, whipping up some red beans and rice (for Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q) on Saturday, September 15th.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

King Creamy

You probably didn’t wake up this morning thinking either of these two things: that we need some more variations on the peanut butter cup, or that we need some more Elvis-centered promotions. But, thanks to the folks at the Hershey Company, we now have both.

That’s right. Reese’s Elvis Cups have come to a store near you. Playing on the King’s reported love of the peanut butter and banana sandwich, the Elvis Cup features a thin layer of banana crème in addition to the usual chocolate and peanut butter.

If you haven’t been paying attention, Hershey has been tweaking the Reese’s formula for years now. It’s introduced “Crispy Crunchy Bars,” “Big Cups” with nuts, caramel cups, “Nutrageous” bars, the “Fast Break” with nougat, white-chocolate cups, dipped cookies, layered cookies, and brownies.

And now Hershey has applied the Elvis formula. First, add banana — though a true Elvis snack would have to be fried, and we’ll give you extra points if you figure out how to fry one of these peanut butter cups. Next, since this was an Elvis product launch, Hershey added members of what their marketing director called “Elvis’ inner circle.” (“Memphis Mafia” is not a PC term, apparently.) So Larry Geller and George Klein got a trip to New York City for the Elvis Cup launch, held last week.

Next, there has to be music, so the New York event included several “tribute artists” (you know them as “impersonators”). And, of course, there has to be a pink Cadillac — in this case, a 1957 that Boyd Coddington of American Hot Rod on TLC has tricked out into a 500-horsepower Elvis Tribute Car. It’s the grand prize (along with $150,000 in cash) in the “Live Like the King” sweepstakes. And, of course, since this is an Elvis contest, there must be televisions. The Elvis Tribute Car has several, as well as an MP3 player, DVD player, and a fridge in the trunk. In fact, they’ve been building the car on Coddington’s show, and the final installment airs on Thursday, July 26th. Other contest prizes include a trip for four to Graceland, a scarf worn by Elvis, Elvis-style shades, and an Elvis license plate.

Brandon Solano, marketing director for Reese’s, says the brand is betting big on the King: 50 million Elvis Cups and 100,000 store displays are being created in the biggest promotion in Reese’s history, he says. Reese’s has even decked out Kevin Harvick’s #29 NASCAR Reese’s car with “Elvis all over it” for an upcoming race.

“Elvis is as relevant today as ever,” Solano says. “He’s an American icon, and in a lot of ways, he’s timeless. I’m told that at Graceland, nearly half the

visitors are under 35.”

Solano says the Elvis Cup idea was born last summer when an episode of American Idol was shot in Memphis.

It took several months to work out the recipe.

“We went through a number of samples,” Solano says. “We had to figure out how much banana to use, should it be ripe or green banana, should it be a circus-type peanut flavor.”

There are four different images of Elvis available on the packaging: Vegas Elvis and ’50s Elvis on the standard cups, Hawaii Elvis on the “King Size” big cups, and ’68 Comeback Elvis on the minis.

Solano says Elvis collectors were already on the scene in Manhattan and ordering in bulk.

“The inner-circle guys where happy with the promotion,” Solano says, referring to Klein and company. “That was very gratifying for us.”

Solano says the cups will be available through December. The tribute car will also be appearing at Graceland during Elvis Week activities.

For more information on Hershey’s Elvis Cup, go to Reeses.com.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

See and Eat

CREDIT: Joe York

Hanna Raskin is driven by a basic belief about people and their relationship with food.

“It’s amazing how many people watch TV shows or movies about food, but I think food is meant to be eaten,” says Raskin, a food writer and restaurant critic who has founded American Table Culinary Tours. “I also think if you’re going to eat it, you ought to see where it comes from.”

In fact, Raskin often sounds like the graduate student that she was until 2001, when she finished a master’s thesis on the relationship between Jews and Chinese food (more on that later). Here’s what she had to say about the mission of American Table Culinary Tours:

“The most important thing is to contextualize the food that we’re eating. Obviously, if you just want to eat a bunch of food, you can stay at home. We want to impart to people the important role food plays in American culture. It’s more than sustenance; you can use it as a prism through which to view so many issues facing our culture.”

If that doesn’t whet your appetite, consider Raskin’s first offering: a September 13th to 15th tour to the heart of barbecue culture in and around Memphis. The tour kicks off at the Center for Southern Folklore with a meal and a lecture by Lolis Eric Elie, a columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and author of Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country. The next day includes a judging seminar at The Peabody, hosted by the Memphis Barbecue Association, then an eating tour with behind-the-scenes visits of local ‘cue spots. Day three is a tour of West Tennessee with Joe York, maker of the documentary Whole Hog. Through York’s local connections, the group will follow pitmasters as they buy their wood, meet local barbecue purveyors, and even witness the slaughtering of a pig. And eat a whole mess of barbecue, of course.

As may be obvious by now, this is not a gourmet foodie tour.

“We won’t be talking about which wine or champagne to pair with pig,” Raskin quipped. “We want to give people the chance to get out into the field and have the experiences that typically only the hosts of TV shows get to have. We want people to actually meet the people who are keeping these food traditions alive.”

The tour price of $595 per person includes all meals and activities but not lodging. (Group participants do get a break on the rates at The Peabody and the downtown Sleep Inn.) Raskin is also offering a discounted rate of $275 to anyone living within 100 miles of Memphis.

Two tours are set for 2008: one to Detroit in June, looking at the impact of immigrant workers on American food, and an October bourbon-focused tour of Kentucky.

Raskin is drawing on not only her academic and professional experience in writing about food — she’s the food editor and restaurant critic for the Mountain Xpress in Asheville, North Carolina — but also the connections she made during a year she spent as “field-trip maven” for the Southern Foodways Alliance. The Alliance gave her its blessing to start American Table and also granted her access to their oral-history library, which she’s using as a basis for her itineraries.

Raskin uses the word “foodways” often; she says it “encompasses everything pertaining to what ends up on your plate: fishing, farming, and all of the production, in addition to the preparation and how it’s served.”

She says the tours aren’t focused on what’s new and exciting: “For example, there’s a big trend for eating local and organic, and then there’s the Slow Food Movement. We’re less aspirational and more about authenticity.”

Now, about Jews and Chinese food. Raskin says she grew up in a Michigan family with no good cooks, so she was always interested in eating out. She also noticed that her Jewish family, and many of their Jewish friends, had a fondness for Chinese food. Years later, after getting a history degree at Oberlin College, she was a grad student at the State University of New York and decided to explore this for her thesis.

She says there are several theories for this “cherished Jewish tradition of eating Chinese food once a week,” most often on Sunday evenings. One, which she didn’t think too much of, is that since Chinese food is so chopped up, “you can’t tell that it’s not kosher.” Another theory is that Chinese restaurants tended to be open on Sunday evenings and didn’t discriminate against Jews because they didn’t make a distinction between Jews and other whites. Raskin’s favorite theory is that American Jewish culture basically adopted New York Jewish culture, and everyone in New York eats Chinese, especially the large Jewish community that once populated the Lower East Side, adjacent to Chinatown.

Whatever the reason, Raskin says nobody had ever bothered to ask why this was the case, much less written about it. And that’s just the kind of thing she hopes her food tours will impart to people — even to Memphians who are surrounded by barbecue culture.

For more information on American Table Culinary Tours, visit tabletours.org.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Calling All Cooks

Somehow, it makes sense that when a magazine celebrating “the heart of Southern culture” has a recipe contest, the winning entry would be for Sweet Potato Cinnamon Rolls. What says “South” like the sweet potato?

What might surprise you is that last year’s winner, Maureen Tischue, is from that cradle of Dixie culture known as Kent, Washington.

Geography has nothing to do with the Southern Living Cook-Off. This year, there isn’t even a Southern-focused category, which means you could win without frying a thing or busting out a single pecan. Heck, in 2004, the Grand Prize winner was some healthy, wholesome thing called Grilled Shrimp Orange and Watermelon Salad With Peppered Peanuts in a Zesty Citrus Dressing.

In fact, there are only three rules in the contest: Recipes have to be original; they have to be postmarked by June 6, 2007; and they have to use at least one cook-off sponsor’s product.

After that, says Scott Jones, Southern Living‘s executive food editor, what you get is a referendum on what folks are cooking at home.

“Each year we are amazed to see the quality of entries that come in from across the country,” Jones says. “The competition really provides some interesting insight into what food trends are emerging and what people are creating in their own kitchens.”

And what are the recent trends?

“We’re seeing a lot of different ethnic flavors,” Jones says. Examples from last year include Shrimp Bruschetta with Guacamole, Cuban Pork Flautas With Mojo Mayo Dip, and Mexi-Texi Bistec Pedazos on Roasted Corn and Garlic Chipotle-Cilantro Mashers.

“This is a chance for us to see some trends, and we’ll often turn that into stories and recipes that we run in the magazine,” Jones says.

And, should anyone forget exactly which magazine this is, a finalist from last year was, brace yourself, Bacon-Wrapped Fried Chicken With White Barbecue Sauce — although that one came from a cook Minnesota.

Another trend appears to be increased use of coffee. The 2005 Grand Prize winner, for example, was Chocolate-Coffee Cheesecake with Mocha Sauce.

Sometimes, Jones says, you get something you’d never expect. Last year’s winner in the Super-Quick Family Favorites category was Spicy Braised Pork Ribs with Peach Gravy and Green Rice — and the gravy included powdered peach Jell-O. (Jell-O was a sponsor.)

“We thought it was odd,” Jones says, “but it added an incredible flavor and richness to the recipe.”

Every year, about 50,000 entries come pouring in, and Jones says the staff goes into “all hands on deck” mode to pare that down to 100 recipes, which are referred to the magazine’s test kitchen. This, Jones says, is where entrants’ writing skills come into play, because the kitchen follows the recipe exactly.

“Even if we know your intent, we can’t change a thing,” Jones says. “If you accidentally say tablespoon instead of teaspoon, that’s how we’ll make it.”

From there, three finalists in each category are flown to Birmingham for the cook-off, at which point actual cooking skills come into play.

“That’s the intangible,” Jones says. “You have to be able to re-create this. We give you more time than you need, but you are cooking in a competitive situation. That’s one reason we encourage people to cook their recipe over and over and ask their friends to cook it to make sure it’s written down properly.”

Category winners get $10,000 for the charity of their choice, but the Grand Prize winner gets $100,000 to take home. This year’s categories are Your Best Recipe, Quick Weeknight Favorites, Sweet Endings, Good For You, and Party Starters.

There’s no fee to enter the contest — well, other than the hours spent in the kitchen and perhaps some weight gain in the process. For more information on the Southern Living Cook-Off, go to southernlivingcookoff.com.

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Food & Wine Food & Drink

Another What?

If there’s anything the world didn’t seem to need, it was another Southern cookbook. Grits, buttermilk biscuits, country ham, sweet potatoes — we get it. But the Lee Brothers, Matt and Ted, think there’s something new to say, mainly because there are new things to use.

“The spirit of resourcefulness, using the ingredients you’ve got, has always been part of Southern cuisine,” Ted says in a recent phone interview. “People always say, ‘Don’t mess with Grandma’s recipes.’ But it’s very likely that she messed around with other people’s recipes to get hers. There’s no reason to put Southern food in a museum.”

The Lees will be at the Beauty Shop restaurant on Friday, May 4th, signing The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook: Stories and Recipes for Southerners and Would-be Southerners (W.W. Norton). But what’s new enough to merit yet another Southern cookbook? It’s simple, Ted says: We have access to ingredients that Grandma didn’t.

“Consider fresh tarragon,” Ted says. “Back in the 1980s, you couldn’t find it anywhere, but now it grows like heck in Southern gardens. And it’s great with crab. Smoked paprika is another one. It’s made in Spain and just in the last few years become available across America. It adds so much smoky flavor, which is key because we all have vegetarian friends who want to eat tasty collard greens but can’t eat a smoked pig’s foot.”

The Lee Brothers would seem the perfect tour guides in this new world — although Ted admits his culinary training consists of “maybe one knife-handling class.” Nor did they grow up writing. Ted and Matt arrived at their first cookbook after a trip that started with a bout of homesickness.

They were born in New York, but the family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, when Ted was 8 and Matt was 10. They were immediately taken with Southern cooking, especially the direct connection between people and their food. Ted remembers learning how to tie a string around a chicken neck to go crabbing, exclaiming to his new friends, “Whoa — you catch your own food?!”

After college, the Lees resettled in New York and took “dead-end jobs.” They missed the food, specifically boiled peanuts, and during what Ted calls “the dark winter of 1994,” they decided to cook some up. Then they decided to sell what they presumed, in a fine bout of 20-ish male grandiose thinking, would be “the snack of the ’90s.”

But all the trendy “Southern” restaurants in New York at the time were owned, Ted says, “by guys from Long Island.” Still, Southern ex-pats in the city were interested, and a business was started in the brothers’ tenement apartment. Again thinking big, they sent a batch of the peanuts to a New York Times food writer, who hated them but whose husband, from Virginia, vouched for them. She put a few words in the Times, and 100 orders came in that day.

A few days later, the Lees made plans to go back to Charleston and make a go of it. Thus was born the Lee Brothers Boiled Peanut Catalog (boiledpeanuts.com), which soon came to include baked goods, preserves, pickles and relishes, sorghum, country ham … basically everything former Southerners need to stay in touch. The site won awards, which led to writing assignments, and here we are: two guys hip to the restaurant scene, cooking trends, food writing, and old-style Southern cooking. Ted even says things like “Allan Benton’s is the country ham everybody’s groovin’ on right now.”

“We are obsessed with authentic Southern recipes,” Ted says, “especially the ones from those community cookbooks. Part of me understands the impulse not to change these things. But at the same time, there’s all these new ingredients, so let’s use them.”

The book ranges from “super-traditional recipes” like fried chicken with ultra-thin crust all the way to the “kid-playing-with-the-chemistry-set” stuff like chocolate grits ice cream, which was inspired by a French chef in New York who hardly knew what grits were but made a chocolate soufflé with them. “That one really gets the traditionalist’s hackles up,” Ted says.

But this is not a novelty book; there’s no “country-ham cotton candy,” Ted says. Instead, for example, the brothers took inspiration from the famous buttermilk pie at the Hominy Grill in Charleston and created a sweet-potato buttermilk pie. They separate the eggs, whip the whites, and fold them back into the batter; that, plus a little buttermilk in the puréed potatoes gives it what Ted calls “a chiffon-like texture with a sweet-potato cheesecake flavor.”

“We make this thing for grandmas all over the country,” Ted says, “and they don’t say, ‘What have you done to my pie recipe?'”

The Lees won’t be cooking in Memphis, but they will be signing their book, and Beauty Shop owner Karen Carrier is putting on a prix fixe menu of dishes from the book, including butter-bean pâté; cold rice salad with country ham, English peas, and fresh mint; pan-fried soft-shell crab wrapped in prosciutto and sage with chow chow and muddled horseradish blueberry sauce; and fig preserve and walnut cake … and, of course, boiled peanuts.

Matt and Ted Lee will sign their book at the Beauty Shop on Friday, May 4th, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Dinner will follow the signing. The prix fixe menu is $55 with wine pairings, $40 without. Diners can also order from the à la carte menu.

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Near Miss

CREDIT: Courtesy of Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort

The thing about golf is, you never really know how you’re going to play until you go out there and play. So it came as quite a letdown when my first shot at Sandestin’s Baytowne Golf Club went straight down the middle of the fairway. “Great,” I thought. “Watch me shoot a great score, and then I’ll have to come back.”

Not just come back to golf, you understand — on that I am hopelessly hooked, pun intended — but come back to the resort life. Maybe it’s aging, or maybe my demagogic travel mind is finally opening up a little, but a guy could get addicted to renting a house between the bay and the beach, playing some golf in the morning, and choosing between a few nice restaurants for dinner.

Consider: I woke up that morning in a room with a view of Choctawatchee Bay, walked over for a big breakfast in Baytowne Village, then called for a free shuttle to the course, where I was set up with a cart, clubs, and a four-color guide to the course. Even the course designer knew how to get a duffer like me. I scanned the scorecard and saw that the first hole was a straight-ahead par 4 with no water, 381 yards from the gold tees … but only 281 from the white! My companions — two salesmen from Birmingham and a local — and I looked at each other, shrugged, and said, “Let’s play the whites!” A golf course is no place for pride.

The other thing about golf is, it suffers from a double-barreled bad reputation: one, that it’s a refuge for guys who want to get away from women, and two, that it’s a refuge for rich, white assholes. (Certainly, the latter would have been my view, had I been visiting Florida in my usual Greyhound/campground mode.)

As for the first, well sure, sometimes the guys want to be with the guys. And sometimes the ladies want to be with the ladies. And sometimes everybody wants the kids to be with the kids. So let’s just put gender aside and say you’re a golfer, traveling with other golfers. And let’s say you’ve decided to stay at Sandestin. And let’s say you want to get in 18 holes while the rest of the crew does something else.

Just as a quick sampler, here are some options, golf first: On the 2,400-acre Sandestin property, you’ve got four courses to choose from: Raven, designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr., has mango-scented towels and people who clean your clubs for you; his brother Rees Jones’ Burnt Pine rolls along the coastline for 7,000 yards; Baytowne, which winds through the resort and features kids’ tees; and The Links, which has views of the bay and marina.

So my Guy Mind was whirling on that first fairway. But what if I were married and had kids? What to do with the non-golfers? Obviously, there’s the beach, but there’s also more shops than flagsticks around (including the world’s largest factory outlet mall) and the inevitable salon/spa in the resort. The wife can send the kids out for a sailing lesson, tennis camp, or a ride on a pirate ship, or she could just drop them off in the KidZone to do games, arts, and crafts.

And then there’s the money. They’ve got “stay and play” packages that include lodging, greens fees, cart, and practice balls. Prices vary by season. Four people can spend two nights in a house and play two rounds at Baytowne for $230 in winter up to $356 in summer. Two people can share a hotel room and play The Links twice for the same amount of money. You can spend more than that, but getting together a few friends for a couple nights and a couple rounds and spending a few hundred bucks each is downright reasonable, even to a guy who used to have as his life motto: “Don’t pay rent — pay bus fare!”

That’s why I was in so much trouble on the first hole at Baytowne. I mean, there’s the comfort. And the convenience. And the variety. But now this: a reachable par 4? It got worse when I hit my approach onto the green. Walking up there for my 10-foot birdie putt, I had visions of grandeur: the rental house on a lake, walking to the beach in the mornings, a different course every day, the fishing, the sun, the surf …

It’s a good thing I missed that putt.

portlandpaul@mac.com

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Hooked

The redfish, like the folks who come to chase them, have figured out how to get comfortable around Florida’s Choctawhatchee Bay. The fishermen relax off the water at fancy hotels, white sandy beaches, high-end restaurants, golf courses, and spas. The redfish, in the winter, come in from the ocean to spawn and dine in the warm, shallow waters of the bay.

The fact that the redfish found a warm spot under a state highway bridge takes a moment to get used to. One might long for the quiet, forested inlet of the magazines and imagination, and such longings might not jibe with the sound of traffic overhead or trolling as close to the concrete pilings as one can.

But the first time a 13-pound redfish attacks the lure and the captain swings the boat dramatically away from the bridge, the fight is on, and exuberant contact with nature has been made. Seeing the beast emerge from the waters confirms not only nature’s bounty but also its toughness. A wave of construction and tourism in South Walton County has perhaps made peace and quiet a little tougher to find, but nature and its various entertainments have not been chased off entirely.

In fact, my guide for the day is a perfect example of the adjustments of nature — in this case, human nature. He owns a small boat and contracts with the Sandestin resort. He used to live in Panama City with his family, and now, like many of the locals around Fort Walton, he works for the tourist industry and lives across the bay, in cheaper hotels. He considers it a good life, cruising around chasing big fish and the occasional tourist’s daughter, and one doesn’t feel disposed to argue with him — even as he’s tying on another spinner under the shadow of State Route 293.

Some 25,000 acres, or about 40 percent of South Walton County, is divided into parks with hiking, biking, camping, canoeing, and kayaking opportunities. Seventeen lakes dot the area. More than half a dozen endangered species inhabit the forests, streams, and beaches, including alligators, sea turtles, and snowy plovers.

While some (including myself, at times) might call it a marketing-oriented effort to distinguish themselves from nearby wackfests like Destin and Panama City, the truth is, the people of South Walton have made a concerted effort to save as much of this nature as they can. The local Tourist Development Council is the only one in Florida to engage a coastal scientist full-time. A volunteer program protects nesting turtles in the summer. A state-appointed board developed a plan to manage growth, set building codes, and engage in restoration projects like replanting native sea oats, which stabilize the native sand dunes.

So even as developments spring up wherever they can, there remain retreats such as Grayton Beach State Recreation Area, with more than 1,100 acres of pristine coastal vegetation and Western Lake to paddle around on. Topsail Hill State Preserve is another 1,600 acres with more than three miles of walk-in-only beaches. Point Washington State Forest has nearly 20 miles of hiking trails through forest, prairie, beach, and swamp.

Coming back to the harbor at the end of the day, my guide and I decide to cast for fish along the docks. Apparently little redfish like to hide under the docks and eat shrimp, so we baited our hooks with live shrimp. We didn’t catch a thing. And we didn’t care.

In one direction, I could see the towers of Sandestin’s hotels and condos, and I could just make out the sound from the dueling pianos at the Jimmy Buffet-style bar in The Village.

But looking the other way, I saw the sun setting over the bay, and with the boat gently bobbing, a cool breeze coming off the ocean, and the promise of a hungry redfish, I let out a sigh and cast into nature again.

Categories
News

South Walton vs. The Machine

Everywhere one goes in the Beaches of South Walton, people say “10 years ago … “: This was a lonesome beach 10 years ago. None of these strip malls were here 10 years ago. Heck, 10 years ago, this was a two-lane road through a forest. You could get a house around here for nothing 10 years ago.

Traveling east on US 98, my host and I headed for Scenic Highway 30A, a 20-mile strip along the Gulf Coast that is the heart of the place I’d been brought in to see.

“Up until about 10 years ago,” my host says, “hardly anybody knew this road was here.”

No more. By the end of my tour, when I had seen all 13 “eclectic beach communities” collectively known as the Beaches of South Walton, it was astoundingly clear what happened here about 10 years ago: The Machine found the place.

You know the Machine. It finds places and fills them up. It develops sleepy little nooks into communities of resorts, condos, fancy restaurants, and golf courses. It forms marketing plans to fill $200 hotel rooms and sell $35 steaks. It raises property values and brings in hordes of service-industry employees who live on the fringes and work three jobs driving shuttles and making lattes and folding sheets. It serves cocktails on the beach. It surrounds fishing towns with skyscrapers.

The Machine has come for South Walton, and it can’t be stopped. But the folks who live here have a plan. It’s apparent that they looked around at their neighbors and said, “Not here — not all of it, anyway.” They set aside forested strips of land as state parks, even reserving some beaches for walk-in-only access. All the other beaches are entirely accessible to the public, and boardwalks connect 30A to the white sands at numerous places. They limited buildings to four floors. They make serious, successful efforts to keep the beaches clean. Even the name, “Beaches of South Walton” (which, of course, is less than 10 years old), reflects a collective search for an identity — and/or a slick marketing campaign. Even as construction explodes in every direction, the PR materials constantly refer to “the pure and simple Beaches of South Walton.”

Such is the pitch: great beaches and every luxury you could want but not completely over the top. We still have some real nature! And we barely got touched by the hurricanes!

And yet the Machine churns. As America gets older and the rich get richer, the Machine gets hungrier. And it doesn’t build for the working class. Scenic Highway 30A is now the scene of such things as Blue Mountain Beach, which “offers spectacular views of the coastline, making it a hot spot for lavish homes and condominiums.” Offerings include Redfish Village, the Village of Blue Mountain Beach, and the Retreat.

WaterColor and WaterSound Beach, owned by a logging company, are both “Southern [themed] coastal resorts.” Seaside is “designing buildings to fill empty parcels” while planning a “splendid plaza” and a tower “in the center of town.” Alys Beach bills itself as “a traditional neighborhood development” with “environmentally friendly courtyard homes with whitewashed masonry and rooftop terraces.” Seacrest Beach touts “marshlands perfect for wading birds” and extensive plantings of live oaks — on a golf course. Rosemary Beach, all of 11 years old, went for the Dutch/West Indies theme: “Bermuda shutters, wide second-floor porches, and arched garage doors.”

It’s a heaping helping of Vegas in the Florida Panhandle, with “beach solitude” replacing “win big” as the central pitch. In both places, the Machine churns out high-end shopping and dining, seven-figure homes and condos, designer golf courses, and brand-new “towns” filled with the food and music of other places.

Consider: A couple years ago, Sandestin, the biggest and oldest resort around, built its own “village” of shops that includes an Acme Oyster House straight from New Orleans and an artificial pond with an “Italian” gondolier. Through this village, every year, winds a golf-cart Mardi Gras parade.

Or this: Seaside proudly proclaims that it was the main location for The Truman Show — a movie about a man who unknowingly lived in a false world.

There’s more of this coming: a big, new airport — the Machine demands multiple nonstops daily — and developments popping up everywhere you look.

The question remains: Can you market a place to death? In South Walton, the counted-on answer is to make peace with the Machine and try to limit it: in other words, be a shopping/dining/beach/condo/gallery/golf destination that manages to retain more than its share of quiet, natural moments.

If, on the other hand, you’re looking for that quiet little fishing village with the mom-and-pop restaurant out on the dock, it’s too late for South Walton. The Machine already got it.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Dessert Done Light

You really love big, splashy desserts, don’t you? And you’re a little scared of them too, right? Scared to try to make one; scared of what it will do to your waistline?

We all are. And Nick Malgieri has a couple of messages for us. “A lot of good desserts are naturally low in calories,” he says — and, yes, you read that right. “Not everything has to be as rich as an 800-calorie slice of cheesecake.”

And then there’s this: “Baking isn’t science. You don’t need to put on your lab coat and sterilize everything. Sometimes, when people are writing about food, they think that describing a complicated process adds a veneer of credibility or scientific accuracy. I don’t know where that came from.”

To tackle these two myths, Malgieri has teamed up with healthy-cooking author David Joachim to write Perfect Light Desserts (Morrow, $29.95). The subtitle suggests the book’s twofold mission: “Fabulous Cakes, Cookies, Pies, and More Made with Real Butter, Sugar, Flour, and Eggs, All Under 300 Calories Per Generous Serving.”

On Wednesday, January 24th, Malgieri will do a baking workshop at the Viking Cooking School.

To create the book, Malgieri drew on his personal collection of some 8,000 cookbooks and 60,000 recipes, one dating back to when he was 6 years old: his Sicilian grandmother’s recipe for arancini di riso, or rice balls. He speaks Italian, French, and German, so he draws information from several cultures.

Perfect Light Desserts pretty much takes you by the hand and shows you how to bake; in fact, How To Bake is the title of an earlier Malgieri book, which won the James Beard Award. With this one, he starts with a discussion of equipment and ingredients, all of them “familiar to the home cook and easy to find in the average supermarket.” Malgieri says he’s “big on plain old ingredients. People have to be able to get what I used so the recipes have credibility.”

He also gives basic instructions on things like how to measure flour. (You should spoon it into the measuring cup, to avoid compacting it.) He also discusses how long to beat egg batter, choosing the right pan, and even specific brands to look for and why.

He insists that the low-cal angle isn’t a gimmick.

“There are no artificial ingredients in the book,” he says. “The most ‘far-out’ thing is reduced-fat dairy products. Sometimes it worked out that it wasn’t necessary to omit more than a small percentage of the fat to make our 300-calorie goal. One of the custards is even made with whole milk and whole eggs!”

If that surprises you, Malgieri had a few “a-ha!” moments of his own working on the book.

“You can really achieve excellent flavor and texture with reduced fat,” he says. “We have a Viennese caramel custard, for example. It has caramel inside and out, and a four-ounce portion is only 250 calories and five grams of fat. And you only have to make minimal alterations in the pastry-dough recipes to lower the amount of fat enough.”

The 125 recipes are divided into chocolate, cakes, pies and tarts, puddings/custards/soufflés, fruit, frozen, cookies, and sauces. And each one comes with amazingly detailed directions as well as serving instructions, storage suggestions, possible variations, and complete nutritional information.

The overall message of the book is “get this stuff, do it this way, and you will get this amazing dessert with this amount of stuff in it.” Sprinkled throughout are mini-essays on topics such as “Get the most from spices and herbs,” “Egg alternatives,” and “Lower the carbs — keep the flavor.”

Neither the book nor the dishes lack style. It’s a beautiful volume, with an eye-popping cover shot of the Old-Fashioned Raspberry Tart (236 calories per serving). Another stunner is Mary’s Cappuccino Brûlé, a coffee-flavored custard baked in a coffee cup and topped with a fluffy meringue that’s browned so the whole thing looks like a cappuccino.

There are also more grounded offerings: a Ginger-Lover’s Pound Cake, Vanilla Bean Chiffon Cake, Old-Fashioned Chocolate Pudding, and Lemon Yogurt Mousse.

At Viking, Malgieri says he will bake three low-cal cakes (fat-free devil’s food cake, raspberry mousse cake, and a blueberry crumb cake) as well as three non-light cakes: a “pull-out-all-the-stops chocolate cake that’s so chocolatey it’s like an enormous brownie,” plus a Dutch apple cake and an Italian buttery hazelnut cake.