Alafair Tucker 01 - The Old Buzzard Had It Coming

tablespoon or so of unsalted butter over the top of your bowl.
    3. Pour about 1/3 cup of heavy cream over the cobbler.
    (For an authentic experience, don’t try this one unless you have a cow and can make your own cream, or you can go back to anytime before 1950 to buy the cream. Cream like Alafair used is very hard to come by in the United States these days.)
    BUTTERMILK BISCUITS
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
4 tsp. baking powder
5 tbs. shortening (lard, butter or vegetable shortening)
1 cup buttermilk
    Sift flour, salt and baking powder together. Cut in the shortening with a fork until the mix resembles coarse crumbs. Add buttermilk all at once and stir until dough follows the fork around the bowl.
    Turn the dough onto a board and knead for 30 seconds. Roll out or pat the dough 1/2 inch thick.
    Dip a drinking glass, mouth-side down, about an inch into the flour sack. Cut out the biscuits with the floured mouth of the drinking glass. Press the glass down firmly on the dough and give it a smart twist. Lift the glass, and the biscuit will come up with it. Shake the biscuits loose into your hand and place them on an ungreased baking sheet an inch or two apart.
    When you’ve cut out as many biscuits as you can, ball up the dough and roll it out again. When there isn’t enough dough remaining to cut out any more whole biscuits, shape the remainder with your hand into a mini-biscuit and stick it in some likely corner of the baking sheet. This is the “pony.” The pony goes to the youngest child. (A mason jar will do for cutting dough, or a jelly glass if you want petite biscuits.)
    Bake on the ungreased baking sheet in a hot oven (450 degrees) until brown on top (12-15 minutes).
    Makes 12-14 large biscuits.
    A POT OF BEANS
1 pound dried brown, pinto or navy beans
7-8 cups water
1 ham hock, knuckle joint or good sized piece of fatback
salt to taste
    Spread the dried beans out in a single layer over the kitchen table. Pick through the beans carefully to remove all the rocks and pebbles and broken beans.
    Rinse the sorted beans well, then leave to soak in clean, cool water for several hours. Discard floaters.
    Pour off the soaking water, then refill the pot with 7-8 cups water. Add remaining ingredients.
    Heat to boiling, then reduce heat. Cover and simmer for an hour to an hour and a half, until the beans are soft and the stock is dark and soupy.
    If using ham hock or joint, scrape the meat off into the soup and remove the bone before serving.
    VARIATIONS:
    1. Add a bay leaf during cooking. Remove before serving.
    2. For a nice kick, cook with several whole peeled cloves of garlic, or 1/4 cup of minced onion. Or, if you are among friends, do both.
    3. Cooking with one whole raw carrot or one 1" piece of raw peeled ginger is purported to make the beans more digestible. Neither seems to affect the taste of the beans to any degree.
    FRIED HAM AND GRAVY
    HAM
1 large smoked ham on the bone, with fat
    Slice six thick slabs of ham (at least 1/4") off the bone and fry over medium high heat until heated through and browning on both sides.
    Remove from skillet and pile on a serving plate. There should be two or three tablespoons of drippings, along with scrapings, left in the skillet.
    GRAVY
3 tbs. ham drippings and bits of ham left from frying
3 tbs. flour
2 cups milk
    Blend the flour into the drippings in the skillet. Cook over low heat, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan frequently, until smooth and bubbly.
    Stir in the milk. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly, until gravy thickens, a minute or two.
    NOTE: There is a lot of controversy over the correct method for making lumpless pan gravy. Conventional wisdom says to add the milk to the flour mixture all at once. Some swear by adding the milk a bit at a time, making a roux first, then thinning it gradually with a thin stream of milk.
    CORNBREAD
    Cornbread is beautiful thing. Three recipes are included here, any or all of which Alafair would have used, depending on the ingredients she had on hand. Please note that cornbread is bread. It is not cake. Sweet cornbread is very tasty, but it is not true cornbread.
    RECIPE 1
1 1/2 cups yellow cornmeal
1 cup milk
1/2 cup flour
1 egg
3 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
    Vigorously beat all ingredients together in a bowl until smooth. Pour into a greased 8" x 8" x 2" baking pan. Bake in a hot oven (425 degrees) for 20-25 minutes, until top begins to crack and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
    RECIPE 2
1 cup