Alabama's Hot Summer Food by Ruth Paget

Alabama’s Hot Summer Food by Ruth Paget 

A meal of fried chicken, corn on the cob, cornbread, stewed collard greens with ham hock pieces, and iced tea is always welcome in Alabama, but cooks in summer there tend to do barbecue and cold foods to deal with the sweltering heat. 

As the world grows hotter, some of Alabama’s traditional ways of dealing with extreme heat and humidity might be appealing to chefs in other parts of the country and world. 

I thought the following recipes in Alabama Hometown Cookbook by Sheila Simmons and Kent Whitaker give a good picture of Alabama’s cool cuisine for beating summer heat: 

-Crawfish cornbread – the sweet, cooked tails of the “crayfish” are chopped and added to the batter in this recipe. Jalapeño peppers, cream style corn, and cheddar cheese also go in this dish. This recipe qualifies as a simple man’s hidden luxury. 

-Crawfish hushpuppies – “crayfish” hushpuppies made with chopped crawfish tails, onion, and buttermilk that are deep-fried balls of crunchy delight 

-peach preserves – made simply with chopped peaches, sugar, and water by boiling and storing in hot jars. These are perfect on pancakes, French toast, waffles, and ice cream 

-Creole eggs – a sauce made with onion, Andouille sausage, and Ro-tel tomatoes is poured over raw eggs in ramekins and baked. 

 -marinated slaw – this is just the thing to go with BBQ. It is made with shredded cabbage and chopped green bell pepper, onion, and celery with a vinegar and oil dressing. It is refrigerated overnight and served cold with BBQ. 

-cranberry salad – set in cherry Jell-O with cranberries, celery, pecans, and chopped oranges 

-orange gelatin salad – made with orange Jell-O, orange juice, cheddar cheese, crushed pineapple, mayonnaise, and evaporated milk 

-grape salad – made with green and purple seedless grapes, cream cheese, sour cream, sugar, vanilla, and chopped pecans 

-stewed collard greens with ham hocks – stew made with ham hocks and collard greens 

-muffeletta sandwiches – Louisiana’s heat beater is a favorite in Alabama, too. It is made with a black and green olive salad, pickled Italian vegetables, ham slices, salami, Swiss cheese, and provolone cheese on deli rolls. 

People who are looking for heat beater recipes can find many in the Alabama Hometown Cookbook by Sheila Simmons and Kent Whitaker. 

By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Alabama Trip by Ruth Paget

Alabama Trip by Ruth Paget 

On a trip to Maxwell Air Force Base outside Montgomery, Alabama’s capital, my husband Laurent and I retraced some of the literal steps taken to launch the Civil Rights Movement in 1965. We bought groceries and, then, set out for Selma with the destination of Montgomery. 

The Selma to Montgomery March of 1965 had as its objective an end to voter discrimination. The March achieved its objective with the passage of the Voting Rights Act. However, all along the 54-mile long highway from Selma to Montgomery there were “Beware of Dog” signs. Marchers in 1965 had to deal with police dogs, so these signs are disturbing. 

Perhaps the signs indicated that racism was still alive and well, because the economy was still not providing living wages to many people who were competing for jobs. The Maxwell Air Force assignment was a short one with a trip to visit my family in Atlanta, Georgia in between. 

I was proofing my book Marrying France and was planning to edit and proof Virginia Mom, because I wanted to record where descendants of James River Plantation slaves outside Williamsburg could find slave ledgers. 

The day before leaving we drove into Montgomery to go to the Aviatior Bar and visit the Alabama Riverfront. Laurent said you had to go through the old slave market to get to the park. 

I said I did not want to go and sat in the car. I did not want anyone to walk through the slave markets, especially children. But, they were an intact historical record of what a slave market looked like, so maybe historians could deal with this issue. 

A saxophone player appeared and started playing. I think musicians in the South look for “white-guilt people” and start busking for money. Laurent came back and gave him some. 

As we were entering the Aviator Bar, I noticed a building with a huge pink bordello bathtub on its roof.

“I guess that’s an advertisement for where the nearest brothel to the capital is,” I told Laurent. Sexism was alive in Montgomery, too. I ordered Shrimp Creole and counted my shrimp when the waiter brought my dish to me. 

I signaled the waiter and said, “I hate to count, but I only got 11 shrimp not 12 in the Shrimp Creole I ordered.” 

The waiter counted and said he would be right back. The twelfth shrimp was a monster gambas shrimp presented on folded over white linen napkin. 

The Shrimp Creole was delicious, and I liked the multiracial wait staff and patrons of the bar. I wondered if Coleman Young, the one-time mayor of my hometown of Detroit, Michigan ate at the Aviator Bar when he was studying to be a pilot at Tuskegee, east of Montgomery. 

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks (Japan) and Teen in China

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