Lowcountry Cuisine Fall/Winter 2019-20

LC 67 www.LCCmag.com | www.LCcuisineMag.com | www.LowcountryCuisineMag.com lowcountry cuisine I t was the morning of my grandmother’s funeral a few years back, and there I was: elbow deep in flour and yeast, kneading a warm, shaggy dough with an eye on the clock. I was on a mission to connect to her somehow, and in the kitchen that day, I did. She was a phenomenal cook, but not one to use recipes – instead, she measured in sights and smells, and she also spoke mostly in French – the language being somewhat of a barrier to explaining her cooking process. I only have one recipe from her – written hastily on the back of a piece of paper – for “Mimi Bread.” It was a warm, crusty loaf that she had perfected over the years to feed her family of eight. It was a constant presence; whenever we visited, there were loaves of freshly baked Mimi Bread that we shared together, and she always sent us home with a loaf still steaming out of the fork pricks. That was the recipe I was staring at as I kneaded the dough that morning, remembering the day we wrote it. I had begged for the recipe, and she invited me over one summer day to make it with her. She measured what she normally would have eyeballed and wrote the ingredients in her careful handwriting. Then she handed the paper to me to write the instructions – a contrastingly teen-aged scribble. I wished now that I had been more careful, more detailed. As I made the bread that funeral morning, I remembered her soft touch as she took my fingers and put them in the water heating up on the stove, instructing in broken English to use it as soon as it reached a comfortable bathtub temperature. I punched BY ANNE SHULER TOOLE Recipe for thePast The Importance of Writing it Down Grandmama cooks in her kitchen on Hasell Street in Charleston in 1946. She still has that cast iron skillet. Photos provided.