Southern secrets from Edna Lewis - Cuisine

American Visions, Feb-March, 1997 by Gwendolyn Glenn

Look at Edna Lewis' smooth, virtually lineless face, and you would never know that she celebrated her 80th birthday last year. You can't tell by looking at her busy schedule, either. Lewis, the undisputed Queen of Southern Cooking, has not slowed down much since she began her career as a chef over 40 years ago.

Dressed in a long burgundy and gold Ghanaian skirt and matching shawl, her hair pulled back in her signature bun, the regal Lewis admits to being a little exhausted this evening. She has just returned to her cozy apartment in downtown Atlanta from cooking a hearty Southern lunch for her friend, author and chef Julia Childs. "We cooked ash cakes --- corn bread cooked in ashes -- fresh greens cooked in pork stock, potato salad and a poundcake," Lewis says. "We made homemade ice cream, too."

Preparing the special lunch took longer than usual because, in addition to making sure that all of the ingredients were fresh -- a requirement for Southern cooking, according to Lewis -- the dishes were prepared over an open hearth in an authentic detached kitchen. "Growing up, we had a detached kitchen because kitchens were made of pine logs then, and if the kitchen caught on fire, the whole house was in danger," she explains.

Lewis was born in Freetown, Va. Founded by her grandfather, Freetown was an isolated, rural black village. It was here that Lewis learned to cook food in the Southern tradition. by watching her mother, aunts and neighbors. "The main thing about Southern cooking was that the food was homegrown, fresh and not hybridized," Lewis says. "You picked the food from the garden each day, and nothing was store-bought. You had your own meat or you bought it from a neighbor. We made our own butter and didn't give our cows pills to make them give more milk. The food had a better taste when it wasn't injected with something, like everything is today."

It saddens Lewis to watch this authentic Southern cooking fade from the culinary landscape, black households included. Due to career demands, few people have the time it takes to prepare true Southern dishes with, for instance, hominy and lard made from scratch, as was the practice years ago. Plus, in fear of calories and cholesterol, many people use substitutes in place of classic Southern ingredients, such as pork, lard, sugar and butter -- all ingredients that Lewis feels are necessary to qualify a dish as Southern.

Particular about what she eats, Lewis says that she knows the Southern diet is healthy, because until farmers in her hometown started spraying their fields with chemicals, most people in Freetown lived to be 100 and older eating pork, butter, lard, sugar and other Southern favorites. As for Lewis, she rarely gets sick. in addition to eating fresh Southern cuisine, she takes vitamin C daily, drinks bottled water and organic milk, and avoids chemically treated meats and vegetables.

So she makes no apologies for putting strips of ham in her fried chicken, quail and vegetables for flavor, and she often prepares homemade lard for her pie crusts, cakes and breads. "The secret is in the ingredients," she says. "If you don't put Southern ingredients in, it's not Southern cooking. ... Some think the ingredients are too heavy or out of date, but I don't think we should throw away our culture because of some fad or new ideas."

Another staple of Southern cuisine, according to Lewis, is fresh herbs. "Southern cooking always had rosemary and other herbs. ... I like black and red pepper, and I use thyme in soups and vegetables. ... Parsley is another herb thought of as a garnish, but it has good flavor and I use it a lot. I use salt sparingly and add it last to vegetables, because it changes the taste of foods. I never use garlic salts. Fresh garlic is too plentiful."

Lewis gained her reputation as a master chef of Southern foods in New York City. In the mid-1950s, she and a friend owned and made famous the Cafe Nicholson, a Manhattan restaurant where Lewis' pork chops with cranberries, roast chicken, filet mignon and Sunday night sheet cake lured everyone -- from stars of the Harlem Renaissance to Eleanor Roosevelt. After Lewis left the Cafe Nicholson, she opened a catering business and then. in the 1970s, left the city for several years to serve as executive chef first at the Fearrington House in Pittsboro, N.C., and then at the renowned Middleton Place in Charleston, S.C.

When a broken leg landed her in the hospital in 1969. Lewis started writing down recipes to keep from having to listen to the gossip of the other patients. The fortunate result -- the folksy cookbooks for which she is well-known: In Pursuit of Flavor (Knopf, 1988), The Edna Lewis Cookbook (Ecco, 1983) and The Taste of Country Cooking (Knopf. 1916).

Six years ago, not long after the publication of her third cookbook, Lewis retired as the executive chef of New York City's oldest restaurant, Gage and Tollner, and returned to Freetown. There, her life slowed down considerably: "I relaxed and bought two cows that I milked and fed early every morning," she recalls. "I didn't mind doing it -- except when it snowed."