South Carolina’s Sunshine Food by Ruth Paget
I always liked going to South Carolina as a child, because I could go swimming every day. My sister lived outside the resort town of Myrtle Beach in a small town called Murrells Inlet.
Après my daily nage, I would check the crab trap that hung off the dock to see if we would get some fresh crab for lunch to go in salad from the garden. If I was unlucky and did not get a crab, I still did not worry about lunch, because my sister had a freezer full of bass, grouper, red snapper, and shrimp. She also had cupboards full of canned crab.
K. fried fish and made fritters from the shrimp and crab. I would run over to Pittypat’s Porch Restaurant next door and get a bag full onion-flavored, deep-fried batter balls called hushpuppies. K.’s garden provided us with salad and green beans.
I was a happy kid who loved swimming and eating. I thought South Carolina was the greatest place for a vacation without even counting amusement park trips to Myrtle Beach.
Now that I am an adult, I think South Carolina’s culinary heritage has dishes that the entire United States might be interested in trying, especially in summer when you do not want to heat up the house for too long. South Carolina is famous for delicious food that is not too hard to prepare.
I thought the following dishes from South Carolina Hometown Cookbook by Sheila Simmons and Kent Whitaker capture the spirit of the state:
-grilled figs topped with goat cheese and wrapped in prosciutto. Figs grow well in South Carolina’s hot, humid climate.
-seafood cheese ball made with cream cheese, crabmeat, and seasoning. It is chilled and rolled in chopped pecans to coat the ball. Pecans also grow well in this region.
-coastal shrimp fritters – The batter for these is like a lumpy pancake mix that is made with shrimp, chopped red pepper, and chopped onion before pan frying them into fritters.
-South Carolina crab dip – so easy to make with vegetable seasoning mix, sour cream, and crabmeat and then chilled.
-Warm Tomato Pie Dip – a baked dip made with diced tomatoes, chopped and cooked bacon, ricotta cheese, Palmetto cheese, and basil.
-Plantation rice muffins – cooked rice is used in place of flour in these recipes. Rice used to be grown in South Carolina before other areas could do it more profitably like Louisiana.
-Peach bread made with peaches and almonds
-easy Lowcountry soup made with cooked shrimp or crab, chopped red bell peppers, chopped onions, and cream of mushroom soup. Lowcountry refers to southern South Carolina where the land is below sea level like the Netherlands.
-Inlet shrimp salad – made with steamed shrimp, celery, and onion in mayonnaise. Served chilled.
-Peach and shrimp salad – Fried shrimp combined with arugula, avocado, peaches, and onion.
Peaches abound in South Carolina and show up in many recipes. I ate tons of ripe ones as a child and did have proverbial peach juice run down my arms. No worries! I just went back swimming to clean up.
To evoke summer memories like these, readers might be interested in purchasing South Carolina Hometown Cookbook by Sheila Simmons and Kent Whitaker.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
