Just in case anyone wants to make a festive dessert for our favorite Hallmark holiday…I am reposting my recipe for Red Velvet Pound Cake!

Sarah’s Red Velvet Pound Cake

Mystery surrounds the Red Velvet Cake; the particulars of its origin and ingredients vary from cook to cook. But any bona fide Southerner better have one in their repertoire. Mine comes in the form of a pound cake, as I feel the density stands up beautifully to all that cream cheese frosting! And I certainly don’t go light on the food coloring, since red is the point, after all.

2 ½ cups sugar
8 large eggs
1 14-ounce can condensed milk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 pound unsalted butter, melted
2 ¼ cups cake flour
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup red food coloring
Cream Cheese Frosting (see recipe below)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease a Bundt pan with softened butter and then dust with cocoa powder.

Combine sugar, eggs, condensed milk, vanilla, and salt in a food processor; mix until combined. While running, pour butter into food processor bowl and continue running until thoroughly combined. Pour this mixture into a large mixing bowl. Sift flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder into egg mixture, whisking as you go. Add red food coloring; whisk to combine. Pour batter into pan.

Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 1 1/2 hours. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Release from pan onto serving plate.

Allow to thoroughly cool.

Applying frosting to a cake is a battle against crumbs. It is easier done when the cake is cold since it will be less likely to crumble; thus, there will be several trips back and forth to the refrigerator during the icing process.

To frost: Refrigerate the cake until cold. Once cold, remove the cake and apply a thin layer of Cream Cheese Frosting using an icing spatula. Return cake to refrigerator until frosting hardens. Remove cake and apply remaining frosting using icing spatula. Refrigerate until frosting stiffens up a bit. Slice while cold, but cake is best served at room temperature.

YIELD: 16 to 20 servings

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
24 ounces cream cheese, softened
15 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Combine the cream cheese and butter in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until smooth and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the sugar, vanilla, and lemon juice and mix on low speed until combined.

P.S. The icing can be made in advance and refrigerated but should be brought to room temperature before using.

Okay, so maybe it’s not as cold in Charleston as further north, but the dreary days of winter are certainly upon us. And I happen to have the perfect solution for the February blues…our World Famous Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce.

World Famous Bread Pudding

At the GO, we have served this dessert since day one, and we have called it “world famous” since day one — it is just that amazing! The secret to its intoxicating powers lies in the beautiful, golden egg yolks that come courtesy of Celeste Albers. Her happy Wadmalaw Island hens lay the best eggs in town, and they are essential to the success of our bread pudding.

Read Celeste’s story in my earlier blog!

15 egg yolks
¾ cup plus 3 tablespoons sugar
4 ½ cups heavy cream
1 ½ cups milk
2 ¼ teaspoons vanilla extract
12 cups soft French bread, diced into 1-inch squares
3/4 cup chopped pecans
Whiskey Sauce (see recipe below)

Combine egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl; whisk to combine. Add cream, milk, and vanilla; whisk to combine. Add bread and pecans; stir with a wooden spoon until well combined. Cover and refrigerate overnight. (The mixture must be soaked at least overnight and up to a few days in advance.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Stir mixture well and pour into 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Bake until surface feels firm, 30 to 40 minutes.

Serve warm with Whiskey Sauce. You may pour Whiskey Sauce over pan of bread pudding or pass around in a dish or guests to pour over their individual servings.

YIELD: 8 to 10 servings

WHISKEY SAUCE
1 cup milk
½ cup sugar
2 egg yolks
¼ cup bourbon

Combine egg yolks in a medium bowl and have near stove with a ladle for tempering. Combine milk and sugar in a medium pot over medium heat. Heat milk-sugar mixture until steaming. Ladle about 1 cup milk-sugar mixture into bowl with egg yolks. Whisk to combine. Add egg mixture to pot with milk-sugar mixture and whisk to combine. Heat until the mixture just begins to simmer.
Remove from heat and pour through a chinois or other fine-meshed strainer into a medium bowl. Fill a large bowl with ice water and set the medium bowl of sauce in this larger bowl to chill. Add bourbon; stir to combine. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use. This can be made several days in advance but should be brought to room temperature before serving.

YIELD: About 1 ½ cups

As most of you devoted readers know, I am writing this blog as a companion project to our forthcoming cookbook — Glass Onion Classics — which should be on the shelves in May.

Many folks have helped with this cookbook — the farmers who have shared their valuable time to enable my telling of their stories; my partners (Charles and Chris), who created most of the delicious recipes; my invaluable editor Suzanne who thankfully never tires of attention to every last detail…

But here I would like to personally thank Lisa Maki, a dear friend who has helped tremendously with the recipe testing for the final chapter — Sweets! Appropriately, one standout recipe in this chapter happens to be Lisa’s Coconut Cream Pie. I am happy to share that with you along with the GO recipe for pie/tart dough. Of course, you could just buy a frozen shell from the grocery, but if you have the time why not make your own from scratch. The difference will be delicious. And trust me, Lisa’s pie deserves that little extra effort, as it is an outstanding dessert!

Lisa’s Coconut Cream Pie

I met my good friend Lisa first as a customer at the GO. She had a neighboring startup business, and they basically thought of us as their personal corporate cafeteria. At the time I had no idea what a talented cook Lisa happened to be, but many Sunday suppers later I felt just as enamored of her food as she did of ours. And I coveted her Coconut Cream Pie recipe! She claims that a west coast restaurant inspired hers, but I think it totally belongs to Lisa. I’ve only restaurantfied it slightly — using my go-to custard technique as I know it’s foolproof.

1 unbaked frozen pie shell (see recipe below)
2 large eggs
1 13 1/2-ounce can unsweetened coconut milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch
1 1/2 cups flaked coconut, toasted
Whipped Cream, for garnish (see recipe below)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line pie shell with a sheet of tinfoil. Spread rice or beans across the pie shell, mounding them up a bit on the sides and going more lightly in the center.

Place pie shell on baking sheet. Bake until edges are dark golden brown and center has just begun to golden. Check crust’s progress at 30 minutes, but total baking time should be about 45 minutes.

Remove from oven and allow to cool with tinfoil and weights still in place. Once cool remove weights and reserve the weights for another day. Reserve crust until filling and meringue are both made. The crust can be baked off one day in advance, wrapped and held at room temperature.

To make filling, combine eggs in a medium bowl and gently whisk. Keep near the stovetop as you work on the rest of the recipe.

Combine coconut milk, cream, vanilla, and salt in a large pot. Mix the sugar and corn starch together in a medium bowl. Add a half cup of coconut milk mixture to sugar mixture and whisk to combine. (This is a slurry!)

Heat the coconut milk mixture over medium heat until steaming but not simmering. Add the sugar mixture to the coconut milk mixture and cook, stirring constantly, until it begins to thicken. The time for this mixture to thicken may vary as it is all dependent upon the corn starch reaching a certain temperature, but it will be obvious. The mixture will subtly thicken and then quickly become very thick. At this point it will be at a rolling boil and pulling away from sides of the pot. Remove pot from the heat.

Slowly drizzle a cup (using a ladle is helpful!) of the hot mixture into the eggs, whisking as you do so. (This is called tempering and should prevent the eggs from scrambling if done very carefully. But do not fret if your egg whites cook just a bit — the mixture will be strained during final stepping, eliminating any unsightly lumps.)

Next, slowly pour the warmed eggs into the hot mixture in the pot, whisking as you do so. Return the pot to the stove over medium heat. Cook, whisking, until the mixture begins to gently boil. Remove from the heat and strain through a chinois or other fine meshed strainer into a medium bowl. It can be helpful to use a ladle to push the custard through the chinois. Fill a large bowl with ice water and set the medium bowl full of custard in this larger bowl to chill. As custard chills a slight “skin” will form on surface; vigorously whisk to eliminate. Once cool, stir in 1 cup of toasted coconut.

Spoon custard into reserved pie crust, spreading with rubber spatula to evenly distribute. Cover and refrigerate for at least a few hours or overnight. (This will insure that the custard fully sets, and the pie is easy to slice.)

Remove from refrigerator when ready to serve. Cover entire pie with Whipped Cream (see recipe below) and garnish with remaining 1/2 cup of toasted coconut.

YIELD: 8 servings

P.S. Lisa covers the pie with whipped cream before slicing (as described above), but if you will not be serving the entire pie in one serving you can simply garnish each slice individually with whipped cream and toasted coconut.

WHIPPED CREAM
1 cup heavy cream cream
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Whip cream until soft peaks form using a whisk or electric mixer. Sift in powdered sugar, add vanilla, and continue whipping until moderately stiff peaks form.

Pie/Tart Dough

Even if you happen to be intimidated by pie dough, please do not skip this recipe. I am here to rest your fears and give some realistic advice. First, the actual making of the dough happens to be relatively easy with the help of the trusty food processor. Second, achieving the end result of a beautiful, golden brown pie crust to fill with your favorite ingredients relies on nothing more complicated than freezing your formed crust in its pan, which protects against shrinking during the blind baking process. Forming the pie crust is the last step in this recipe, and then you will be ready to move on to our specific pie and tart recipes. Finally, if your first batch of dough does not come out to your liking — please try again. There are subtle nuances to knowing when your dough has reached that perfect consistency, and over time you will become an expert.

1 pound butter, cut into pea size pieces
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
½ cup water

Freeze butter for 30 minutes. Combine flour, sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and run until combined. Gradually, add cold butter (while running) until the mixture resembles wet sand. Gradually, add water (while running) until the mixture balls together. (Your dough may require more or less water – so it is important to add gradually.) Remove dough from food processor. At this point it should be holding together nicely, but you might need to knead it with your hands to form a solid ball. Divide ball into 3 equal pieces if making dough for pies or divide into 2 equal pieces if making dough for tarts.

Wrap balls in plastic wrap and flatten to form approximately a 4” wide disk. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before using. Dough can be made in advance and refrigerated for up to one week or frozen up to one month. Simply allow to come to a pliable temperature before using.

Once ready to use, roll out your dough on a lightly floured surface using a rolling pin. Roll with light pressure from the center out. Combat moderate sticking by dusting liberally with flour. If dough seems excessively sticky it is probably too warm and should be returned to the refrigerator for another 15 minutes. (You can drape it over the back of a pie plate if you need to put it back in the refrigerator.)

Continue to roll out the dough, dusting with more flour as necessary. Stop several times to turn dough (as if winding a clock) so that all sides receive equal attention. You might also flip dough over or at least dust other side to make sure there is no sticking on the backside! When the dough is about 1/4-inch thick place pie or tart pan on top to check for accurate size. Your disk of dough should be about 10 inches in diameter.

To transfer the dough from the table to your pan, simply fold it in half and then in half again so that you have a triangular piece. Place this in your pan with the pointy end at the center of the pan. Unfold and press into pan. At this point there are slightly different techniques depending on your goal of pie or tart.

To finish your pie: press dough firmly into the bottom and sides of the pan. Some crust should be hanging over edges of pan; trim with scissors so that only about 1/4-inch hangs over. Using a fork, press dough into rim of pan; this technique is decorative but also helps to prevent shrinkage during baking, in my opinion. Wrap again in plastic and freeze crust for at least one hour but up to one week in advance.

To finish your tart: press dough firmly into the bottom and fluted sides. There should a good amount hanging over edges. Trim with scissors or simply roll your rolling pin over the top of the pan. The sharp edge of the pan should trim dough neatly.

This next step is an extra precaution I have invented to deal with shrinkage of crust during baking. Take excess dough (that you just trimmed from outer edges) and roll out onto floured surface until about 1/4-inch thick. Cut dough into strips that are about 1-inch in width. Press these strips into dough that is embedded in fluted edges of pan. Line the entire edge of pan with this “reinforcement”. The dough should be pliable enough to adhere to one another, and the two pieces will ultimately form one piece during baking. Discard any remaining dough. Wrap and freeze crust for at least one hour but up to one week in advance.

Yield: 3 9-inch pie crusts or 2 9 1/2-inch tart crusts

P.S. From here you can move on to any pie/tart recipe. I do blind bake all of my crusts, meaning that I bake them until golden brown before adding any sort of filling (even if further baking is required after filling.) I include this process in all of our pie/tart recipes.

Just last week I met two very nice customers who loved their first meal at the GO. They especially loved our cole slaw, which I describe as a classic rendition.

“But there was something special in it…” the gentleman said.

Ah, I realized he had hit upon the secret ingredient — our GO pickle relish. We drain our housemade pickles and puree them in the food processor to make a pickle relish that adds beaucoup deliciousness to our cole slaw, potato salad, and other dishes.

So, per this gentleman’s request I am sharing the recipes for our cole slaw and housemade pickles to let you in on our little secret!

GO Cole Slaw
1 head of green cabbage
1 serving slaw sauce (see recipe below)
½ cup plus 1 tablespoon sweet pickle relish
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons chopped green onions
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 tablespoon kosher salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

Remove outer leaves from cabbage. Cut into quarters and cut out core. Cut each quarter in half (not lengthwise) and then thinly slice each of these chunks lengthwise.

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and toss to combine. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Yield: 8 to 10 servings; about 2 quarts

SLAW SAUCE
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup plus tablespoons cider vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon honey
½ teaspoon hot sauce

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk to combine.

P.S. The slicing directions might seem a bit complicated, but we are trying to insure you end up with easily edible pieces of cabbage. At the restaurant we use an electric slicer, which makes things simpler! But this method should yield a relatively fine slaw.

P.P.S. You can go totally GO and make your sweet pickle relish from our Housemade Pickles recipe (see recipe below). Simply drain the pickles and pulse them in a food processor or blender until they are roughly pureed.

Housemade Pickles

My partner Chris refers to these as “Holy Crap Those Are Good Pickles.” These pickles really are outstanding, and on top of that they are super easy to make. You should make these all summer long when local cucumbers are dirt cheap and delicious. At the GO we serve them as a side, and we also puree them for homemade pickle relish. The have just the perfect amount of sweetness to seduce the palate without overwhelming it.

10 cups sliced cucumbers, peeled on 3 sides and sliced ¾-inch thick (about 5 medium cucumbers)
1 cup thinly sliced sweet onion (about ½ medium onion)
3/4 cup thinly sliced red bell pepper (about 1/2 medium pepper)
1/4 cup sliced carrot, peeled and thinly sliced into rounds (about 1 small carrot)
½ cup kosher salt
4 cups cider vinegar
4 cups sugar
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon mustard seed
½ teaspoon celery seed
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes

Combine cucumbers, onion, pepper, carrot, and salt in a large bowl or storage container. Let sit for one hour. Rinse thoroughly with cold water. Return to a large bowl or storage container.

Combine remaining ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil. Pour liquid over vegetables, cover, and refrigerate. Refrigerate overnight before serving.

YIELD: About 2 quarts

As we all know (or as every publication tells us) we should start the new year off with lighter fare. While this adage seems a bit tired, I suppose that even the strongest palate needs a break after a heavy holiday season. On this note, I would like to share the GO’s vinaigrette recipe. This is a staple at the restaurant — always dressing our Straight From the Garden Salad and oftentimes dressing seasonal specialty salads like green beans in the summer or roasted beets in the winter.

If you have never made your own salad dressing, it can be quite liberating to turn your back on expensive bottles and scary preservatives. Besides, surely you need some task to fill the void left by all that holiday baking.

House Vinaigrette

This is really a classic French vinaigrette, and that’s all nice lettuce needs. Here at the restaurant, we use a hydroponic Bibb lettuce from Wes at Kurios Farms, located in nearby Moncks Corner. When available, we also use his black cherry tomatoes and gorgeous cucumbers.

¼ cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Creole mustard, or other whole grain mustard
2 teaspoons minced garlic (about 2 medium garlic cloves)
2 teaspoons minced shallot (about 1/2 medium shallot)
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
¾ cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

Combine vinegar, mustard, garlic, shallots, and lemon juice in a food processor or blender; blend thoroughly. Gradually add olive oil and vegetable oil while machine is running. The mixture should emulsify — come together — into a relatively thick consistency. Season with salt and pepper.

YIELD: 1 cup

P.S. Now is the time to break out the nice olive oil – we cut it with vegetable oil so you don’t have to break the bank — but the flavor of the good stuff really stands out!

Gingerbread Pound Cake

I can’t imagine a more holiday aroma than gingerbread with all its warm spices. The fragrance and flavor truly seems to connect folks with sweet memories that they love to share. One such customer told me of his mother’s gingerbread with a lemon glaze, and the contrasting flavors intrigued me so much that I took his advice. To me, this is how the best foods come about — by sharing. So, please pass this recipe along and feel free to add your own favorite variations!

1 ½ cups light brown sugar
1 1/4 cups dark molasses
1/4 cup honey
8 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 pound unsalted butter, melted
3 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons ground ginger
2 tablespoons ground allspice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and flour a Bundt pan.

Combine sugar, molasses, honey, eggs, vanilla, and salt in a food processor. Mix until combined. While running, pour melted butter into egg mixture and continue running until thoroughly combined. Pour this mixture into a large mixing bowl. Sift remaining ingredients into egg mixture, whisking as you go. Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake until a tester comes out clean, about 1 hour. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Release from pan onto serving plate. Brush with lemon glaze (see recipe below) while still warm.

Allow to cool completely before slicing.

YIELD: 16 to 20 servings

LEMON GLAZE
½ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup sugar

Combine ingredients in a small pot and cook over low heat until sugar dissolves and syrup forms. Remove from heat and brush on cake.

My partner Chris Stewart celebrated his birthday yesterday, and I can think of no better way to commemorate it than by publishing his recipe for Chicken Liver Mousse and Holy Crap Those Are Good Pickles! These dishes really showcase the knowledge Chris has garnered over the years.

Furthermore, the mousse seems an ideal way to also celebrate the Glass Onion’s 2nd Annual Offally Delicious Dinner that will be take place this coming Monday, December 6 — a true foodie extravaganza. Check out the menu at www.ilovetheglassonion.com/tasting — YUM!

Chicken Liver Mousse

After much deliberation, we decided to share our recipe for sublimely elegant Chicken Liver Mousse. Here you will find a starter that will blow your guests away, but be forewarned: you need a few special tools. First, you will need a pate terrine. This might seem like a frivolous investment, but it enables you to delve into a whole new realm of cooking. Second, you will do yourself a favor by going out to your local wholesale warehouse (think Sam’s or Costco) and buy some commercial plastic wrap. While the grocery store variety will work, you will find the heavier-duty stuff proves much easier to manage for lining your terrine and for wrapping up all your leftovers! Finally, you will need to order “pink” curing salt from a website, unless you happen to have a genuine butcher that can provide you with some. This preservative is a necessity, as it will keep your mousse a beautiful, rosy shade in the center as opposed to dull, brownish gray. One website to check out is www.butcher-packer.com for this and other cool charcuterie items.

Now, the rest should be a breeze. Just be sure to check your mousse after about 40 minutes to make sure all is going well. Serve with our housemade pickles (see recipe below), Creole mustard (or other whole grain mustard), and butter crackers.

1 pound chicken livers
2 cups buttermilk
Vegetable oil, for greasing terrine
4 large eggs
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons freshly ground white pepper
1/2 teaspoon “pink” salt (see head note)
1 quart heavy cream

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Grease a 1 1/2-quart pate terrine with vegetable oil; line with plastic wrap.

Puree livers in food processor or blender until smooth. Add eggs, salt, white pepper, and “pink” salt; pulse to combine. Add 2 cups of heavy cream; pulse to combine. Strain mixture through a chinos or other fine-meshed strainer into a large bowl. A ladle will help you push the mixture through the strainer. Add remaining 2 cups cream; whisk to combine. Pour mixture into the terrine. Place the terrine in a roasting pan and put into oven. Fill a large bowl with scalding hot water and pour into roasting pan until the water comes three-quarters of the way up the side of the terrine. (This is a water bath!)

Bake mousse until mixture is firm when jiggled, 50 minutes to 1 hour. Allow to cool. Refrigerate until completely cold. Remove from refrigerator, run a paring knife around the edges of the mousse, and invert to release on a baking sheet or serving tray. If the mousse will not release, allow to warm slightly (about 15 minutes) and then it should release easily.

YIELD: About 12 generous slabs; enough to be served as an hors d’oeuvre at a 40-person cocktail party.

Holy Crap Those Are Good Pickles

5 cucumbers, peeled on 3 sides and sliced ¾-inch thick
½ sweet onion, thinly sliced
½ red bell pepper, thinly sliced
½ carrot, peeled and thinly sliced into rounds
½ cup kosher salt
1 quart cider vinegar
1 quart sugar
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon mustard seed
½ teaspoon celery seed
½ teaspoon crushed red pepper

Combine cucumbers, sweet onion, pepper, carrot, and salt in a large bowl or storage container. Let sit for one hour. Rinse thoroughly with cold water. Return to a large bowl or storage container.

Combine remaining ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil. Pour liquid over vegetables, cover, and refrigerate. Refrigerate overnight before serving.

YIELD: 1 1/2 quarts

Anne’s Grillades and Grits

If one dish could epitomize New Orleans comfort food I would place my bet on grillades (pronounced “gree-yadz”). Many associate it with brunch, but my partner Charles most enjoyed it for his birthday dinner. His mother, Anne, makes hers with beef, but lots of New Orleanians would insist on veal. Defying both these traditions, we make ours with pork butt, which happens to be very affordable and flavorful. Serve this dish in the depths of a cold, dreary winter when you have nothing better to do than cook the day away. You will be sure to win many fans!

2 cups red wine
3 ½ pounds pork butt, diced
2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup vegetable oil
¼ to 1/2cup flour
3 cups chopped onion, about 1 1/2 mediums onions or 1 large onion
2 cups chopped green bell pepper, about 2 1/2 medium bell peppers
2 cups chopped celery, about 3 stalks
1 quart chicken stock or canned low-sodium chicken broth
28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
¼ cup hot sauce
1 ½ tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
About 20 sprigs of thyme, tied in a bundle
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 bay leaves
4 whole garlic cloves

Bring wine to a boil in a medium saucepan and reduce by half. Reserve for later use.

Season pork with 1 tablespoon salt and 1 tablespoon pepper. Heat a large Dutch oven or other large pot over high heat. Add pork butt and sear until all of the meat is well browned and has released some fat, 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer the meat to a large baking dish and reserve for later use.

Reduce heat to medium. (Be sure to allow the pot’s temperature to reduce a bit so that you do not immediately burn the flour. This will also calm down the spitting and spatting that the leftover pork bits are most likely doing.) Add oil and flour (amount of flour will depend on amount of fat released from pork butt. If it released a lot of fat you could need up to 1/2 cup flour. Basically, add enough flour to form a thin paste. This is your “roux”!) Cook, stirring constantly, until your roux has become dark chocolate brown in color, 15 to 20 minutes. This obviously take a little while and is a very important part of the process. The key with a roux is patience. If you try to speed up the process by increasing the heat you risk burning the roux. This will ruin the entire dish as it is the foundation of the flavor. Simply relax and stir. Also, be careful of splashing yourself with the roux as it is molten hot!

Once you have achieved desired color, add the onions, celery, and bell pepper to the pot. Season with remaining 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of black pepper. Saute until onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the reserved wine, stock, tomatoes, hot sauce, Worcestershire, thyme, oregano, bay leaves, garlic, and reserved pork. Stir to combine. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook until meat is very tender (it should fall begin to shred when prodded with a fork), about 3 hours. Discard thyme bundle and bay leaves before serving.

Serve over grits.

YIELD: About 8 servings

P.S. At the GO we often add shrimp to this dish to create our Wintertime Shrimp and Grits. To do this, simply add one pound of peeled and deveined shrimp as the last step in the cooking process (once your meat is fork tender.) Stir and cook until shrimp are just pink and firm, about 5 minutes. This will increase your yield — giving you 10 to 12 servings.

My partner Charles and I both grew up with homemade tartar sauce as a fixture. His father Bland made his with plenty of capers and dill. The cook at my grandmother’s beach house, Ruth, made hers with sliced green olives. For the GO we decided to combine both these ideas with for the best tartar sauce ever! I guarantee you will never go back to the jarred stuff!

1 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon capers
3 tablespoons pickle relish
3 tablespoons pureed olives
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon hot sauce
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons dried dill
Pinch of cayenne

Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir thoroughly.

YIELD: About 1 1/2 cups

P.S. Come try this out at the GO with our Mustard Fried Catfish!

In the South there’s just no escaping braised greens! Collard greens, turnip greens, mustard greens — they are like the life force of the region. At the GO we mostly cook collards, and we prepare them in a fairly traditional way — start with some pork fat and onion, simmer and voila! We do use a fair amount of vinegar in ours so that you might not even need to serve them with the precursory condiment of pepper vinegar, but you be the judge.

P.S. This recipe is a perfect example of how Allan Benton’s bacon elevates a dish. For more on Allan Benton read the previous blog or visit his website Benton’s Hams to order some of his deliciousness.

Braised Local Greens
6 ounces Benton bacon, or other high quality bacon, chopped
2 to 3 pounds, cleaned and cut collard greens (4 bunches) (about 1 gallon once cut and cleaned)
2 cups sliced onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 teaspoons hot sauce
4 quarts water
1 tablespoon Kosher salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

First, a note on cleaning and cutting greens. Washing your greens is of utmost importance because often times they can be extremely sandy. If yours do not seem especially dirty you can try simply washing the individual leaves under cold running water. But if your greens are straight from the field you might need to fill the largest vessel in your kitchen with cold water and dunk your greens in — giving them a good swim. Once your greens are washed simple cut out the thick spine running up the middle. Then lay the destemmed leaves on top of each other and slice yielding a nice, bite-sized rectangle (you might also think of this as a thick julienne cut.) Now you are ready to cook some greens!

Heat a large pot over a medium-high flame. Add bacon and cook until browned, about 10 minutes. Add onion, salt and pepper and cook until onions are soft, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add vinegar, brown sugar and hot sauce and stir to combine. Add water, reduce to a simmer and cook until greens are tender, about 2 hours.

YIELD: 6 to 8 servings; about 2 quarts