I have a neighbor who is a kindred spirit: We both have roots in North Carolina. (An even deeper connection: We also both believe that barbecue comes from a hog and is properly dressed in a thin vinegar-based sauce.) Recently we were talking about North Carolina, and of course, the food. He told me he was planning to make turnip greens with dumplings, and a few days later he called me. “Hey, come over and get some dumplings!”

Keith and I have shared food back and forth in the years we’ve lived here in our downtown Southside condos. He’s invited me over for some great Italian sausage with tomato sauce; I’ve left him several batches of cookies and homemade chocolates. Once when I was ill he brought me a huge container of homemade soup. For building-wide parties, he makes a decent chili and a light cornbread studded with corn kernels… I could eat a pan full.

Keith grew up in Albemarle Sound and studied at NC State in Raleigh. He learned how to make greens with dumplings from his great-grandmother. “Oh, there’s no recipe, it’s all in the head,” Keith says. “I’ve asked my mother if she’d make it, and she says, ‘I can’t do that.’”

Keith’s Greens and Dumplings

Keith told me the basic method—it’s very simple—but there are a few tricks. “You gotta have the right corn meal,” he says. “I’ve tried some of these other brands of corn meal, but they don’t work. The dumplings just fall apart. The only corn meal that works is from North Carolina.” He reaches in his fridge and pulls out a paper bag of Moss Corn Meal, which is water ground and made in Kitrell, North Carolina by Buffaloe Milling. “I have my mom send this,” he says. (For those of us without a mom in eastern North Carolina, you can order Moss Corn Meal from ShopWell.com, or you can email Buffaloe Milling at buffaloemilling@yahoo.com.)

He starts by putting a ham hock in a large pot with enough water to cover the hock. He brings it to a full rolling boil and cooks the hock until the meat falls off the bone.  He adds cleaned, cut greens and the peeled, quartered turnips with some salt and pepper. They continue boiling, and he starts to make his dumplings.

Here’s where his other secret comes in. “You make a paste with the corn meal, with water, salt, pepper, and a little sugar. And then you make the dumplings,” he says, cupping his hands together as he would if he were shaping corn meal paste between them. His dumplings are large, round, and flattened out a bit. “My little secret is, I microwave the dumplings for about 2 or 3 minutes, until they firm up. Then I put them in the greens.”

About ten or fifteen minutes later, Keith says, the dumplings should be cooked, the turnips tender, and the greens are ready. Ladle the greens in bowls and add a dumpling, a turnip piece, a bit of ham hock meat, and some of the potlikker to each serving. It’s almost instinctive to say ‘y’all come’ when you’ve got such rustic, belly-satisfying eats piping hot and ready on the stove.

Everyone needs a neighbor like this.

Amanda Storey knows her kitchen. And she’s very comfortable in it. She already had a wine glass and a bottle of an Oregon Pinot waiting for me when I visited her. (Totally awesome!) And right away she says, “Okay. A few things. First, this is one-butt kitchen. There’s just no room for two.” Next to the Pinot, she’s got her Mac set up, with the recipe she’s making in the browser window. My job, she says, is to sit across the counter from her and tell her the next steps in the recipe as she cooks. All her ingredients are prepped and in bowls, a perfect mise en place. And I don’t think she asked me to look at the recipe more than once.

If you know Amanda, you know she’s incredibly passionate about food. The posts on her blog, Food Revival, are bursting with it. She stays busy as the coordinator of the Healthy Kids, Healthy Communities project, working to reduce childhood obesity in Jefferson County (HKHC is one of the sponsors of this weekend’s Food Summit, Friday and Saturday, November 12-13; $25 registration). And, there’s the signature Amanda Storey pose (which has been mimicked, lovingly, by some of her friends…): Embracing a bunch of locally-grown produce with a Sesame Street smile. During our conversation she says, “I am so over cookbooks—I have too many, and I really just need one.” (Something I’d expect to hear from someone who’s been cooking and collecting cookbooks for decades.) All of this, and here’s what made my jaw drop: This food-focused Amanda, queen of her kitchen, master of any CSA box you give her, and on a mission to change the world’s food for the better (or at least, the food in Jefferson County) has only been around two years. Two years!

“The Food Summit and the Barefoot Contessa made me who I am,” Amanda says.

Amanda wasn’t much of a cook two years ago. (Seriously. She told me the story of roasting her first whole chicken: While washing it over the sink, the packaged innards fell out of the bird’s cavity. She threw it into the air and screamed. I laughed ’til tears came.)

That’s when she attended the Food Summit, a project of Greater Birmingham Community Food Partners. What she heard deeply resonated with her—it changed her life. “Before then, I was a supermarket baby. I didn’t know what seasons were.”

“I’d studied black feminism in college, and I was really into justice, civil rights, and issues of race, gender, class, and equality. And at that Food Summit, someone got up and talked about food access, food justice, and civil rights. Wow. It was amazing to me that he made that connection—food brought it all together.” The Food Summit turned her on to the passions she now has—local produce, cooking, and urban farming. Eventually, it all led her to her current job. “I get to talk about gender, race, and class in the context of food—how awesome is that?”

A few months after attending the Food Summit, she did volunteer work for Jones Valley Urban Farms, and was paid with a CSA (community supported agriculture) subscription, which forced her to learn how to cook. “I’d look at what I have, and find recipes online or in my cookbooks, especially the Barefoot Contessa (Ina Garten),” she says. “I learned to master a few basic recipes and techniques from her.”

For our Sunday afternoon get together, Amanda had a lot of greens on hand. Earlier in the week I’d emailed Amanda a link to a recipe on 101 Cookbooks, Winter Pasta: Penne tossed in a sauce made of cooked, pureed kale and goat cheese. Amanda says, “Tell me what you think. She (Heidi Swanson, blogger at 101 Cookbooks) says you’re supposed to boil the kale with the garlic and shallots. But I think we should saute it all. And, I think instead of goat cheese in the sauce, we use Parmesan, and just top it with goat cheese.” I agree.  Then she says, “I want to point out, we’re almost totally local here! The greens are from Jones Valley, we’ve got Belle Chevre cheese, and the thyme is from my back yard.”

We talk while she works her magic, sauteeing the alliums and greens, moving them to a food processor, adding cheese, salt, and cracked black pepper. In a few minutes, we’re enjoying pasta tossed in the kale sauce, with some goat cheese and halved yellow cherry tomatoes on top. (The tomatoes, she says, are the last of the season from Jones Valley.) “The great thing about this is that it shows you don’t have to have stinky greens!” she says.

“Every time I cook now, I think about the people who grew my food. Before, I never knew who grew my food. But look at this Swiss chard,” she says, holding up some good looking leaves with brightly colored stems. “This is so-o-o beautiful! My friend Katie grew this. I know it was a lot of hard work to grow these greens. I can at least honor her time to grow it by taking the time to think about what I’m going to do with it,” she says. (Now we know what’s behind her uber-enthused poses with produce. It’s about more than the veggies, I think—it’s a tribute to the growers, too. Thanks, Katie!)

Next, Amanda pulls out some puff pastry, and she’s thinking she might take some of her lovely rainbow chard and make a sort of turnover. Totally winging it. She asks me what I think: Sounds great. So she sautées again, cuts the puff pastry, tops each piece with a mound of the chard and some cheese, folds them over and pops them in a counter top convection oven. About 15 minutes later we are diving into some seriously good eats. “Now this,” Amanda says, “is a great way to eat greens.”

Swiss Chard Turnovers

Makes 6

Note from Shaun: Definitely dry the greens after washing; too much moisture in the filling can tear your pastry. You could very likely use almost any green in this turnover. And, you could use any cheese you prefer. Amanda used Parmesan; I’m musing on doing this with some Comté.

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 shallot or small onion, chopped
1 bunch Swiss chard, washed and dried, stemmed, and cut or torn into pieces
salt to taste
freshly ground black pepper to taste
about 1/2 cup (or more) shredded cheese, such as Parmesan
1 sheet of puff pastry, thawed overnight in the fridge

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a skillet or sauté pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the chopped shallot or onion and cook until the shallot becomes translucent. Turn the heat up to medium high, add the chard, and sauté for about 3 to 5 minutes, until the greens wilt. (Avoid cooking the greens to the point that they lose color or give off water.) Season the greens with salt and black pepper to taste. Remove from the heat and set aside.

On a large cutting board or counter top, unfold the puff pastry. Cut it into six rectangles. Top one end of each rectangle with a mound of the chard mixture, then top the chard with some of the cheese.

Fold the unfilled end of the puff pastry over the greens, and press the edges to seal the turnovers. Place the turnovers on the baking sheet.

Bake the turnovers for 15 to 20 minutes, until the pastry is puffed and golden brown. These are best eaten as soon as they’re cool enough, and definitely on the same day.

Emily wasn’t really much of a cook before college, when she enrolled in a cooking class at Samford University—”for an easy A,” she says. Finding she liked to bake, she started making Christmas cookies for holiday parties, and then graduated to creating cookie centerpieces for a baby shower she helped host. When everyone at that party thought the centerpieces came from a professional, Emily decided to go into business.

From 2006 to 2008, she sold cookies for a living, first at the coffee shop she worked at in Mountain Brook Village, then by special order, and eventually as a fully incorporated small business working out of a borrowed commercial kitchen. That’s when Emily amassed her collection of more than 300 cookie cutters. (Her least favorite? The candy cane, because it’s hard to keep the stripes uniform when icing.)

The siren song of a full-time job and health insurance tore Emily away from her cookie business, but she still bakes them frequently. In fact, there are several bags of frozen dough in her freezer at all times.

Ironically though, Emily doesn’t really like her signature sugar cookies all that much—maybe it’s over-familiarity, but, she says, “I still bake to bring joy to people. Cooking for other people will always make me happy. I can’t really say that about anything else.”

Emily’s classic sugar cookies are rich and crumbly, but still strong enough to hold elaborate cutout shapes and travel or ship easily. The key is keeping the leavening-free dough at the right temperature—warm enough that it can be rolled easily but cool enough that it holds its shape as it starts to cook. There’s also a secret to rolling  out the dough to a perfect half-inch thickness: Emily bought two 1/4-inch dowels from a hardware store, puts them on either side of the dough, and rolls with a rolling pin along the tops of the dowels. And her simple icing, which dries hard so you can layer different colors for effect as well as stack and wrap the finished cookies without ruining the decorations, is another gem of a solution.

Emily’s Sugar Cookies

Shaun’s note: You can find meringue powder at stores like Hobby Lobby and Michael’s, or online from King Arthur Flour.

Dough:
12 ounces (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
8 ounces (about 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) sugar
1 egg yolk, preferably at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1  pound (about 3 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons) flour
1/4 teaspoon salt

Icing:
1 pound  (about 4 1/2 cups sifted) powdered sugar
2 tablespoons meringue powder

Cream butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment until light and fluffy. Add egg yolk and vanilla and mix to combine, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Stir together flour and salt in a small bowl and add gradually to the mixer. Mix until dough just comes together. Form dough into a disc, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate 30 minutes to 1 hour. (You can refrigerate the dough longer or overnight; if you do so, take it out of the refrigerator an hour before rolling.)

Preheat oven to 350°. Unwrap dough and roll out to 1/2-inch thickness. Cut out cookies as desired and place on a baking sheet, then refrigerate 10 minutes. (You can also freeze the cut dough at this point.) Bake 15 to 18 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool on baking sheet 5 minutes and transfer to a rack to cool completely.

To make icing, combine powdered sugar, meringue powder, and 1/4 cup water in the bowl of stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment. Whip on high speed until soft peaks form. Tint as needed with food coloring and use to decorate cooled cookies.

Susan Green is a relative newcomer to the Birmingham food scene.  She arrived in Birmingham in February, 2008 and opened Birmingham Bake & Cook Company later that year. I met Susan the other evening when a friend invited me to attend a cooking demonstration with her at Susan’s store. That night they were celebrating autumn with a class on “Rustic Autumn Inspired Desserts.” During the class Susan spoke often about eating seasonal foods which, of course, speaks to me. She believes, “if you are not eating seasonally, you are missing out on a lot. It’s the freshest that food can be.”  She says that these days, we need to make smart choices because we can get anything at any time of the year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a great idea.  She feels that eating seasonally is much more interesting… the anticipation of peach season – it’s like the saying, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”

Susan said that she really enjoys her shop and Birmingham.  She’s always been part of the food industry and has been inspired by food and cooking.  This all comes together in the store.  She said she feels lucky that Birmingham is where she decided to open a store–she’s very happy at how supportive the community has been.  

One of the things that quickly endeared me to Susan was her self-professed “crustophobia”–a fear of making pie crusts which I totally share.  She is working through her fear with the help of Melanie Thorn (pictured on Susan’s left above), who has been part of the Birmingham restaurant scene and is an excellent baker.  Melanie works with Susan by sharing her knowledge with clients during the classes that they provide at the store.  The night I was there, Melanie showed us how to properly mix up a pie crust and shared the secrets of an amazing caramel.  Susan is looking forward to her “Friday is Pie Day” that she plans to begin January on National Pie Day (January 23).  The first year she will bake a pie each Friday using someone else’s recipe, then after that first year she will begin with recipes that she devises herself.

When I asked Susan about her favorite food, she quickly answered, “a simple roast chicken.”  She said she cooks one almost every Sunday. She de-glazes the pan with vermouth and prepares rice to serve with the pan juices.

Simple, Simple, Simple (yet, classic!) Roast Chicken

Yield:  1 chicken

Ingredients:

1 4-pound chicken

1 stick (8 tablespoons or 1/2 cup) butter at room temperature

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper as needed

1 lemon

3 or 4 rosemary sprigs

1 or 2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

1/2 cup white wine or chicken stock (optional)

Method:

1. Wash and dry the chicken.  Remove any excess fat.  Let the chicken rest at room temperature for an hour or so.
2. Preheat the oven to 450-degrees F.
3. Smear (use your hands!) the butter all over the chicken.  Season with salt and pepper, including the cavity.  Squeeze onto the chicken the juice of 1 lemon.
4. Place the herb sprigs in the cavity of the chicken along with the garlic and the squeezed-out lemon rind halves.  Tie the legs together with twine.
5. Place the chicken in roasting pan large enough to hold it comfortably for basting.  No rack needed.  Pour in the white wine or stock, if you are using.
6. Roast the chicken for 15 minutes at 450-degrees F.  Baste with pan juices.
7. Reduce the oven temperature to 375-degrees F and cook for another 45 minutes to 1 hour until the chicken is done (160-degrees F on a thermometer).  Baste every 15 minutes or so during cooking.  The chicken should be golden brown and crisp.
8. Turn off the oven and with the oven door open, let the chicken rest in the oven for 15 minutes before carving.

Last week, some of the people in my downtown Southside condo building were trying to figure out who The Cook on the third floor is. Every place has one. Y’know, there’s The Cook in the office who brings homemade cookies to work (and bless their darlin’ hearts when they bring them on Mondays). Or The Cook in your congregation. And The Cook in the family who makes all the holiday feasts deliciously memorable.

“Don’t know who’s doing all the cooking, but the whole floor smells so good all the time!” my third-floor friends said.

I had a suspicion that The Cook on the third floor was a friendly young woman named Alexa. When we run into each other, we usually end up talking about food and food sites like Chow.com, and we keep promising each other that we’ll have dinner together. I saw Alexa Sunday, and told her people were raving about her cooking.

“Oh, it’s not me, it’s Jason!” she said. Jason’s her boyfriend. “He cooks everything. When it’s my turn to make dinner, we have cereal!”

Meet Jason—The Cook of the third floor.

Jason’s cooking is about comfort, simplicity, and quality. His favorite kitchen tool is his blue Le Creuset enameled cast iron dutch oven; his favorite television chef is Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten, and right now he’s really into mid-20th century recipes,  like the famous James Beard burger. “I started making Steak Diane recently,” he says. (Steak Diane is filet mignon with a pan sauce, and it’s flambéed with brandy at the table.) “It’s easier than people think, and it’s a spectacle. We’ve forgotten about these recipes.”

Jason says he learned to cook out of necessity as a latch-key kid–once, 8 or 9 and home alone, he took all the spices from the cabinet and thought if he mixed them together he would create something incredibly awesome tasting (not!). He watched Julia Child, Frugal Gourmet Jeff Smith, and other PBS cooking shows. (Julia, he says, taught him how to make an omelet. “She did it with sprezzatura, careful effortlessness,” he says.) For college, he left Alabama and went to San Francisco to study art–and says that’s where he started to evolve as a cook. “I didn’t have to cook for anyone, so I started to experiment. And there were such fresh vegetables, cheeses–every once in a while I got some illegal cheese (raw milk cheese) which was really good. Great bread, wine… and creme fraiche is such a weakness.”

After specializing in geometric abstract art,  Jason moved back to Alabama, where he now cooks for Alexa. (And tortures everyone on the third floor.) For Jason, food is like art. “Food shouldn’t be pretentious. Like art, it should be enjoyed on a basic level.”

When I asked him for a recipe, he instantly thought of potatoes. “You can make anyone happy with good potatoes,” he says. His recipe is below. Time to get happy!

A note: I’m going to be away from Birmingham for the next few weeks, so two members of the Birmingham Foodie Book Club, Jason Horn and Tina Artman, will be guest blogging until I return early November 2010.

Jason’s Luxurious Mashed Potatoes, Two Ways

Flavor these mashed potatoes with one of two luscious oils: Either white truffle oil or a homemade infused herb oil. Jason really hadn’t thought about specific amounts until he sat down to write this out for me, which suggests that you can play with the cream, butter, oil, and seasoning you add. He also tastes as he cooks, so let your palate be your guide, too.

serves 6 generously

3 lbs Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled

1/2 cup (or more) heavy cream

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

3 tablespoons white truffle oil or infused herb oil (recipe below)

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Boil the potatoes until they’re done (you should be able to jab them to their centers easily with a fork or toothpick).

In a small saucepan, combine the cream, butter, and either the truffle oil or the herb oil. Heat the cream mixture over medium-low heat until the cream is scalded (basically, you heat it until right before it boils). Remove the cream mixture from the heat.

In a large bowl, mash the cooked potatoes with a fork or a potato masher.

Pour the cream mixture over the mashed potatoes and mix them together until smooth. Serve immediately.

Infused Herb Oil

Make this several hours ahead of time to let the flavors of the herbs infuse the oil.

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

1/4 cup chopped fresh marjoram

1/2 cup olive oil

4 cloves of garlic, peeled

Directions:

In a blender, combine all the ingredients, and purée until well-blended. Pour into a jar and let the oil and herbs infuse for several hours. Strain the oil before using for a less grainy texture in your finished potatoes; or, you can use it without straining it.

Jason’s from Chicago, which is not a bad town for food, and he had an affinity for Asian food early on—his neighborhood Chinese restaurant catered his Bar Mitzvah. Jason says his mother used to tell him he should become a restaurant reviewer, which isn’t far from what Jason does now; he’s a freelance food writer. He did a stint working for the food site Chow.com in San Francisco (which is a great food town) before moving to Birmingham. (He also helped a friend raise and kill two pigs, but that’s another man’s story.)

So about this crazy picture: This summer I went to the Southern Foodways Alliance Buford Highway Field Trip, and while on my own eating adventure called The Nasty Bits Tour (that’s another story too, involving duck intestines and pig blood pudding), I met a woman named Barbara Hyman who gave me a recipe for kudzu jelly. I mentioned the kudzu jelly on my Facebook page… and Jason wanted to try it. He kept watch for kudzu blossoms, and we’d almost given up that they would even blossom at all this year. Finally, in September, he emailed me: He’d spotted some. We went to Vulcan Trail early one evening for our first adventure at foraging for food. Jason braved the edge of a steep drop to reach for some half-shriveled kudzu flowers.

We gathered enough for half a batch of jelly. And on our way back down the trail, we quickly discovered that tiny little bugs really like kudzu blossoms: There were a hundreds of them crawling around the bag. So, we got to Jason’s kitchen, plucked the blossoms from the stems, and rinsed. And rinsed. And rinsed… a dozen times.

Kudzu jelly’s very simple to make—simpler than some other jellies and jams. Once we’d gotten rid of the little bugs, we poured boiling water over the blossoms and let them steep for eight hours:

The next morning Jason strained the liquid through cheesecloth to get rid of the blossoms. Then he added lemon juice and pectin, brought it all to a boil, added lots of sugar, skimmed it, and poured it into jelly jars. And voila! Kudzu jelly, with a kind of purpley-rosy color, tasting and smelling faintly of grapes.

Kudzu Jelly

Makes 6 8-ounce jars

4 cups kudzu blossoms

4 cups boiling water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 1.75-ounce box of pectin (such as Sure-Jell Premium Fruit Pectin)

5 cups sugar

Wash blossoms in cold water and place in large bowl.  Pour 4 cups boiling water over blossoms.  Cover and refrigerate 8 hours, or overnight.

Sterilize six jelly jars.

Pour liquid into colander lined with three layers of cheesecloth to drain; discard blossoms. Liquid will be brownish.  Add lemon juice, which changes the color to a beautiful light magenta. Stir pectin into liquid.  Bring to a full rolling boil over high heat, stirring constantly.  Stir in sugar and return to full rolling boil.  Cook for 1 minute more, stirring constantly.

Remove from heat. Skim off foam with metal spoon. Quickly pour into prepared jars, wipe rims and cover with flat lids.  Screw on metal bands and invert jars for five minutes; then turn upright.

Let stand at room temperature for 24 hours.

(Shaun’s note: The US Government really discourages the method here of inverting jars to seal them: There is a risk that the vacuum seal won’t be as strong as if you boil your filled jars, and bacteria can seep in. Read more about canning at the National Center for Home Food Preservation, and here’s more about the boiling method for canning.)

He is a former interior designer turned food advocate who is devoted to the South, and to much more than food trivia. He tweets, blogs, does TV segments for Grow Alabama in his own kitchen, and he’s working on a TV series pilot and three books (including a children’s book). We talked about everything from farming, to why he thinks he might turn into a food-world bad guy, to what he’s afraid of. And, of course, he shared a favorite recipe.

Growing up:
“I grew up on a farm in Childersburg, Alabama, and in my senior year of high school we moved to Polaski, Tennessee. My mom bought animals no one else would buy, just derelict animals. I had to learn to take care of them. I learned real quick how not to let the goats out or they would eat everything—even the laundry. When I left, I didn’t ever want to be on a farm again, didn’t want to see a farm again, and didn’t want to be responsible for all of that. Now, I find myself wishing I had a place to have chickens. I’d love fresh eggs.

“My parents didn’t cook, so I cooked at home, and cooking was a burden. I did it because no one else did. When I left home, I didn’t want to cook at all. The kitchen was the place where all the pretty appliances should be. But I started eating at good restaurants, and I wanted that at home. I also connected with farmer’s markets, and I realized that the farmers were people I grew up with.”

On being The Foodimentary Guy:
“I only tweet about four or five times a day. I educated myself about food and social media—I used to wake up with nine books next to my bed, sticky notes in all of them. I learned to write and think in 120 characters. Basically, what I talk about is stuff people should already know… for example, how to tell if an egg is fresh. People don’t know what choices they have. There are vegetarians who just give up meat, but then they go buy processed food, and they feel like that’s the only choice they have in this world. No one’s giving them a choice. Eating meat, that’s life, and we need to come to terms to that. Your grandmother used to have chickens in the yard, and she would wring their necks and cook them. Your grandmother’s not going to chicken hell for eating chicken. Someone needs to say there are choices, so I’m probably going to be that bad guy.

“… I’m a food advocate. I feel it’s my duty to talk about food the way that I do, and to connect farmers to chefs and consumers. [I realized] farmers don’t always have the confidence that people will buy specialty produce. Most people don’t understand what it’s like to put your life on the line, working on a farm. You and I can make a living working on a computer. But for farmers, if you only have ten acres and that’s your life and living, it’s hard to take that risk. It’s easier if you know someone’s going to buy what you grow.”

What he’s afraid of:
“I’m afraid that someone’s going to become the Michael Moore of food. Food is not political, and it should not be political. Everyone opens their mouths and feeds themselves every day. Walmart’s signs used to be blue and yellow; now their signs are green, and that viscerally tells you something [about their food] that isn’t true. So I think we ought to buy local first. Organic is another word to make farmers work harder—it’s become so political now.”

What he’s been cooking:
“I love to smoke food, and I have a smoker at my place at Lake Martin. Once I discovered the smoker, I put everything in it. Smoked vegetables, smoked peaches…oh my God! Peaches and sugar, that’s all you need. Or a little honey or maple syrup. If they start to dry out, I put the best butter that I can find on them.

Smoked Peaches

fresh whole peaches
water
cinnamon
sugar, honey, or maple syrup
butter
ice cream (optional)

Prepare a smoker. (John-Bryan says he loves mesquite, and thinks maple would be good, too.) Cut peaches in half, and remove the pits. Where the pits used to be, fill the peach halves with water. Sprinkle the peaches with cinnamon and sugar (or drizzle on honey or maple syrup). Smoke the peaches for about 45 minutes. Remove the peaches from the smoker, and fill the peaches with butter or a scoop of ice cream.

All of it is made primarily by home cooks—most of them, members of Holy Trinity, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral. The Greek Food Festival takes an entire year of planning, and the cooking starts about a month in advance.

I got a behind the scenes look at part of the process: Cookie baking!

Sonthe Burge invited me to the workshops that started at the end of August. Cookies are arguably my favorite thing to make, so there was instant appeal for me. And then, there’s the cookie-lover’s dream experience.

First, I drove into the Cathedral garage, which is two floors below the kitchen, and the entire garage smelled like butter. Not engine grease or exhaust: Butter. Sonthe escorted me through the building to the kitchen, and there, in the middle, stood the stuff of heaven: Women standing around a huge stainless steel table, each of them sifting mounds and mounds and mounds of powdered sugar.

A giant table covered with sugar!

(The kid in me really wanted to sail through the air and land, face down, in all that sugar. Just once.)

About 20 men and women of all ages are grouped into stations in the kitchen. Some have been cooking for the Greek Food Festival for 20 or 25 years, or even longer. Others are still pretty new at it. Their goal is to make 4,000 kourambiethes, Greek wedding cookies that are coated twice in powdered sugar. Some people are patting out cookie dough and cutting it with crescent-shaped cutters. Others are manning the ovens, putting cookie sheets of ready dough into the oven, and taking cookies out. Still others are making dough, chopping huge bowls full of pecans, or manning speed racks.

Hoover's mayor, Tony Petelos, making dough for kourambiethes, Greek wedding cookies.

As I made my way around the kitchen, I found Tony Petelos, the mayor of Hoover, manning two Kitchen-Aid mixers, making cookie dough with butter, powdered sugar, flour, and what he called “corn extract” with a wink and smile—bourbon. “It really does bring the flavor out,” he said. “I made a batch without it once, and you can taste the difference.” Over the weekend of the food festival, he’ll make lamb kabobs. His parents came to the US from Samos Island, in the North Aegean Sea. Tony was born in the United States, but his older brother Angelo (who took on the fun job of dumping warm cookies on the sugar table) was born in Greece and came to the United States when he was 12.

I went back again, just after Labor Day, when Sonthe and another crew were making a different Greek cookie, a twisted butter cookie called koulourakia that is only slightly sweet, making it perfect for dunking in coffee or tea. The crew uses a recipe by Sonthe’s mother (below). They made 1,000 dozen koulourakia in two days.

You can’t watch this scene and not want to be a part, because everyone in the room is a part (even children help by packing the cookies). From my perspective, it feels that it comes together so easily, yet the truth is that it’s a lot of hard work and long hours. The entire process seems lubricated by a shared culture, a tradition people enjoy keeping alive, and a common goal. And, as Sonthe said, cookie making here is always about more than making cookies. It’s about fellowship, too.

The 38th Annual Greek Food Festival is held at Holy Trinity, Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Cathedral at 307 19th Street South in Birmingham.

Edited to add a cookie recipe.

These Greek wedding cookies are nearly done: They'll get another coating of powdered sugar before being packed.

Angelo Petelos dumps a sheet of Greek wedding cookies onto a table of powdered sugar: The sugar sticks better when the cookies are still warm.

Koulourakia, Greek butter cookies, waiting to go into the oven.

These ladies are shaping koulourakia, Greek twisted butter cookies.

Koulourakia (Greek Butter Cookies)

This recipe comes from Sonthe Burge’s mother.

1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 cup vegetable shortening (such as 1 Crisco All-Vegetable Shortening Stick)
2 2/3 cups granulated sugar, plus additional for sprinkling
6 eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
7 to 9 cups of all purpose flour
1 tablespoon water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a mixer, cream together the butter and shortening. Mix in the sugar, and add 5 eggs (save the sixth egg for an egg wash). Mix well.

In a separate small bowl, mix together baking soda and orange juice. Pour the orange juice mixture into the butter mixture.

Add vanilla to the butter mixture, and mix well.

Add baking powder, cinnamon, and 7 cups of the flour. Add enough of the remaining 2 cups of flour to make a consistency good for shaping by hand.

To shape cookies, pinch off pieces of dough about the size of a walnut. Roll into a ball between your hands. Now, roll each ball into a snake shape about 6 inches long and about the thickness of your pinky finger. Fold this in half and twist it twice. Place unbaked cookies on prepared cookie sheets, leaving about 1.5 inches between cookies.

In a small bowl, beat together the remaining egg with the water. Brush the cookies lightly with egg wash, and sprinkle a little sugar on top of each cookie.

Bake cookies in the preheated oven for 20 to 30 minutes, until lightly brown. Store in an airtight container.

I like to think of Connie Blalock’s work as being that of a culinary historian of sorts. Her formal title is manager of event planning and marketing promotions for Alagasco, a job that includes encouraging Alabamans to cook with gas. And so, as she’s promoted home cooking, she’s built a collection of Alabama’s favorite recipes in the process.

Connie was once responsible for finding the recipes tucked in with gas bills, gathering them from Alabama’s home cooks and professional chefs. Customers love the recipes, she says: “Once, we tried to take those recipes out; we thought people didn’t use them. The phones rang off the hook!” She’s overseen ten Alagasco cookbooks that are statewide community cookbooks of sorts—the proceeds have even gone to benefit various Alabama charities, in the tradition of community cookbooks. She’s also put together cooking segments on Alabama TV stations featuring local chefs, and even Iron Chef-style cooking competitions.

When I visited Connie at her home in Bluff Park, I caught her on a Sunday afternoon making beef stroganoff for her family (she has four children and two grandchildren who stop by for meals). She pulled out the cookbooks she’s done; many of them are collections of the recipes gathered from Alabama’s chefs and home cooks, some through contests. One, titled Truly Southern: A Collection of Traditional and Regional Dishes, features recipes from well-known local chefs such as Clayton Sherrod, Franklin Biggs (who owned Homewood Gourmet until this year), and restaurateur George Sarris (owner of The Fish Market and Dodiyós). The recipes call for regional ingredients like Alabama shrimp, Apalachicola oysters, and Chilton County peaches. There are also recipes from home cooks, such as cheese straws made by a Mrs. Rosalie Reynolds, who used to deliver them, along with her chocolate chip cookies, to Energen’s stockholder meetings. There are three different recipes for barbecue sauce, and only a Southern cookbook would have a chapter titled “Pasta, Grits, and Eggs.”

Connie Blalock is a good home cook herself, and took to the kitchen when she was in second grade. She’s had no formal training, but says she would like to go to culinary school some day. “I’ve just learned from the school of hard knocks,” she says. As a home cook, she prefers Mediterranean flavors—her favorite ingredients include olive oil, lemons, and capers. “A little goes a long way,” she says. She also loves the grill, and jalapeños—so she shared this recipe that’s a personal favorite from one of Alagasco’s cookbooks.

Cedar Plank-Grilled Salmon with Cilantro Pesto
Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus additional for salmon
1 cup packed cilantro leaves and smaller stems
1 clove garlic, peeled
1/4 cup pepitas or pumpkin seeds, lightly toasted
juice of 1/2 lime (or more to taste)
minced jalapeño (to taste; start with 1/2 of a pepper)
salt, to taste (start with 1/2 teaspoon)
ground black pepper, to taste (start with 1/4 teaspoon)
4 four-ounce salmon fillets

Instructions:

Preheat your grill or prepare coals for grill; use indirect heat, and keep the heat at 350-degrees or lower. Prepare cedar planks according to the package directions.

Place the olive oil, cilantro, garlic, and pumpkin seeds in a blender, and blend until completely smooth. Stir in the lime juice and minced jalapeño. Stir in salt and pepper to taste. Transfer cilantro pesto to an airtight container and store in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

Brush each salmon fillet with additional olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and black pepper.

Place salmon fillets on planks, place on the grill and close the lid. Your grill will turn into a smoker. Cook until salmon reaches desired doneness. (Generally, allow 4-6 minutes for each 1/2-inch of thickness.) Remove salmon from the planks with a spatula. Using tongs, remove planks from the grill and plunge them into a bucket of cold water. (You may be able to reuse them; consult the package directions.)

Serve salmon fillets with cilantro pesto sauce.

Adapted from and used with permission from Alagasco.

There are many people in and around Birmingham who know Valerie Kramer Davis as an athlete, a boot camp fitness instructor, and a freelance writer who specializes in health. I know Valerie as a former staff member at Health magazine (where I am currently an editor). And I also know that Valerie, the health nut who uses her cheerleader-like smile to motivate people to torch more calories, loves to bake.

“I’ve always had a sweet tooth,” Valerie told me in her kitchen in Pelham. “My mom always had homemade cookies and banana bread around. I wanted the same thing in my home, but healthier.”

But, Valerie’s not into the kind of healthier recipe changes that happened in the 90s. You remember: Fat-free franken foods that were just vaguely like the foods they resembled. We ate those Snackwells, Olestra chips, and the fat-free-cheese-that-wouldn’t-melt, and talked ourselves into believing those things were just as good as the real thing.

Nope, that’s not Valerie’s style. “I like to find healthier substitutes for things, and foods that are healthy. But I love to make them so people say, ‘Oh, it’s so good!”

(Valerie’s curly-haired husband, Ty, came into the kitchen at this point, and nodded. “Yeah. She’s good.”)

So, for example, Valerie brushes on olive oil where recipes call for cooking spray or butter. She serves up sweet potato fries instead of French fries for the extra dose of beta-carotene. She uses a Vitamix to make fruit smoothies or vegetable soups (butternut squash is a fave). She loves flavor. “I love good vanilla. I always double it. And I love cinnamon.”

To satisfy her sweet tooth and fill her home with the baked goodness she grew up with, Valerie took the recipe her mother uses for banana bread and made healthier switches. The result is sweet, moist, and flavorful, and it’s the kind of good where you don’t have to talk yourself into believing it’s good. It just is.

Cinnamon-Sprinkled Banana Bread

Valerie’s note: The more mashed banana you use, the better!

1 cup granulated organic cane sugar or turbinado sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) minus 1 tablespoon butter, at room temperature
2 eggs
2 to 3 medium bananas, mashed
1/2 cup natural no-sugar-added cinnamon applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (optional)
Cinnamon-sugar mixture (optional): Stir together 1 teaspoon granulated organic can sugar  and 1 teaspoon cinnamon; set aside.

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Coat a 9″ by 4″ loaf pan with a little olive oil.
3. In a large bowl, use a hand mixer to blend together sugar and softened butter.
4. Add the eggs, mashed bananas, applesauce, and vanilla to the butter-sugar mixture, and mix until incorporated.
3. In a separate bowl, stir the flour, salt, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves together.
4. Add the flour mixture to the egg-sugar-banana mixture at once, and use a hand mixer to blend all ingredients just until incorporated. Transfer batter to the prepared loaf pan.
5. Optional: Sprinkle cinnamon-sugar mixture on top of loaf before baking.
6. Bake 1 hour in a loaf pan.