Dark Corner Distillery, February

864-631-1144

Once upon a time, a good bit of the whole country’s illegal white liquor came from western South Carolina, so much so that Oconee County was refered to as Little Chicago during Prohibition. And it’s not an easy thing for for a tiger to change his stripes: as recently as last summer, authorities in Spartanburg County busted the Hyder family stil, confiscating 2,000 gallons of moonshine and a boatload of cash, what all most likely represented generations of work. “Mr. Hyder’s grandfather, his great-grandfather, maybe his great-great-grandfather did this, and it was more of hobby than anything,” Sheriff Chuck Wright said. “But they were sure producing a lot of it.” The moonshine was sold out of a local peach stand.

The entitlement of family history is one thing, but it’s often the attitude that makes the moonshiner. Even before Prohibition and well beyond it, these are proud craftsmen who believe they bear the right to make liquor and forgo taxes. Rather than run and hide, reports say the Hyders gave a tour of their operation upon arrest, demonstrating just how everything worked.

Co-owner of Greenville’s Dark Corner Distillery Joe Fenton says the temperament of the distiller has a profound effect on the character of the moonshine, knowledge he comes by legally. In 2009, SC eased liquor laws to make way for micro-distilleries, and the idea for Greenville’s Dark Corner Distillery, makers of South Carolina’s first legal moonshine, was born.

From a brick storefront right in downtown Greenville, Dark Corner’s spirits are hand-cut, meaning each 80-gallon batch is in the hands of an individual distiller as it travels the three overlapping phases from corn beer to corn liquor. Just when one process stops and the next begins is where the flavor happens.

And the guys at Dark Corner will teach you how.

Over the course of two Saturdays, you can train as a distiller under Joe Fenton and Richard Wenger (a long-time home brewer himself), monitoring all phases of the liquor-making process, from mash to wort to wash to finished product.  Call the distillery for details. Cost: $200

In our house, foodie TV has become what Saturday morning cartoons used to be. The Netflix run of The Cake Boss leads the pack. Yes, it’s the fat men with their Jersey accents, the unbelievably elaborate, towering creations, but too, the idea that you can build something with PVC pipe, cover it in “cereal treats” and sheets of fondant, and end up with a cake that won’t fit in the back of a van. It doesn’t seem to shrink the fourteen year old’s attention span that the delivery boy is cute.

Get your kids in the kitchen. This Saturday, Chef Corie Martin of Pink Lady Catering will teach the basics to making the perfect cupcake in a hands-on class at The Cook’s Station in Greenville. Each child gets to bake cupcakes from scratch, make buttercream frosting to pipe on their cupcakes with a pastry bag, and mold their own decorations using real fondant. Everybody takes a 6-pack of their own cupcakes home. Ages 8-12, reservations required. Cost: $30.

Decorating Cupcakes for Kids

The Cook’s Station, January 28^th, 9AM-11AM

864-250-0091

The holidays may be over, but sweet potatoes are a southern staple all season long. Ditch the marshmallows and candied pecans for a treat that can be enjoyed with your morning coffee or a late afternoon cup of tea. Tucked into baked goods, sweet potatoes add a boost of flavor well into the dark days of winter.

In a fit of inspiration, I decided to substitute fresh sweet potato purée for canned pumpkin in my favorite quick bread recipe. A hearty and easy recipe to make, the sweet potato lends itself to orange zest and ground cinnamon, a welcome change from the overly spiced pumpkin bread that can be found at the nearest coffee shop.

For an extra boost of flavor, I roasted the sweet potatoes to bring out their natural sugars before pureeing and mixing them into the batter. A handful of locally grown chopped pecans added a nice texture throughout the loaf in place of butter or vegetable oil. The nutty flavor of the grapeseed is clean and light, without making the bread oily. The combination of grapeseed oil with the mashed sweet potatoes results in a moist loaf packed with flavor.

Like pumpkin, sweet potatoes pair well with a variety of mix-ins. Feel free to experiment and toss in a handful of dried cranberries, raisins, or toasted walnuts. If you’re feeling truly indulgent, throw in a couple tablespoons of chocolate chips, or white chocolate chunks.

I prefer a slice of bread warmed with a pat of butter. Though I’d imagine it would make a lovely treat topped with fresh whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Roasted Sweet Potato Pecan Loaf

2-3 large sweet potatoes, roasted and puréed to equal 1 and 3/4 cups

3½ cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon grated orange zest

1½ teaspoons cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup sugar

1 cup light brown sugar

2/3 cup grapeseed oil

4 eggs, room temperature

2/3 cup water, room temperature

¼ cup chopped pecans, optional

Preheat oven to 350°. Line two 9×5-inch loaf pans with parchment paper. Stir flour and next six ingredients in a medium sized bowl.

Combine both sugars and oil in the stand of a mixer, stir until smooth. Add in egg one at a time, mixing well. Stir in water and sweet potato purée. Mix dry ingredients into wet until batter is combined. Be careful not to overmix. Stir in chopped pecans if desired.

Bake loaves for 45-55 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

There are two new additions to our farm, and as all baby animals seem to be, they are bright eyed, cute and fluffy. Their cheeping plucks at the heartstrings, brightening the cold, rainy days that are so common in winter. And they are a source of endless wonder for our one and a half year old son.

My wife and I got our first batch of chickens last year in March, picking them up at a United States Postal Service distribution center on a Sunday morning. Nineteen little balls of golden and black fluff—some with racing stripes down their backs—chirped in curiosity all the way home. And that is when our chicken adventures began.

We originally intended to buy a few laying hens to provide eggs, not realizing how prolific they could be during the warm summer months. As we made plans, our order grew until we had seven Silver Laced Wyandottes and seven Black Australorps, the breed that holds the record for most eggs layed in one year—an average of 309.5 eggs per hen. But our flock couldn’t be complete without some Americuanas to add some blue colored eggs to the mix. There was the surprise rare breed chick—which turned out to be a rooster—from the hatchery, along with a couple more bodies to help fill the box and keep everyone warm during shipping.

And then came another surprise rooster, which showed up in our yard during the week we were away on vacation. “Expect fertilized eggs,” a text from my father-in-law read. He didn’t warn us how mean the rooster was. Within days, it had attacked my wife, leaving a bruise on her leg and chasing me across the yard until I hopped up on the picnic table while it strutted around on the ground, asserting its dominance.

One thing we didn’t count on was having so many eggs. The first few weeks were great, with tiny brown and blue pullet eggs. They were so small that we doubled the amount used in recipes. But the novelty soon wore off as egg cartons filled our refrigerator. Luckily we have been able to sell most of them off and, now that the weather has cooled, the hens have scaled back on production.

But that mean old rooster, along with his younger counterpart, has been doing his job. In early November, two of our hens went broody, sitting on separate clutches of eggs. The first chick hatched out on Thanksgiving Day—a golden ball of fluff with black stripes running down its back. The only definite is that it hatched from a brown egg. With two different roosters and two breeds of hens that lay brown eggs, we really won’t know what it will look like until maturity.

And that is one of the fun things about owning a flock of chickens. In addition to giving an endless supply of fresh eggs, the chickens have been a source of entertainment and uncertainty—especially when the rooster is on the prowl. And if the flock gets too big, or too many hatchlings turn out to be roosters, they can grace our table. With all those benefits, the flock has been a pretty good investment.

Arguably the most popular of the winter squash family, pumpkins rarely make it to the kitchen in their natural form.  Poured from a can, pumpkin becomes pie filling, quick bread batter, and for the lucky few, a delicious layer cake adorned with cream cheese frosting. Once I’ve helped polish off such holiday treats, I am in desperate need for a healthy dose of vegetables.

Thick and meaty, pumpkin lends itself to a variety of flavors and preparation techniques. Instead of ditching the seasonal flavor of pumpkin, I turn it into a savory dish I can feel good about eating without having to invest in pants with an elastic waistband. Roasted and simmered in a flavored broth, pumpkin morphs into a velvety purée that’s both high in fiber and low in fat.
Though it requires slightly more effort than opening up a can, preparing a whole pumpkin results in a much richer flavor. Roasting brings out the natural sugars and creates a tender flesh. Simmered in chicken broth alongside caramelized shallots, curry powder heightens the flavor of the pumpkin. The addition of orange zest and a drizzle of crème fraîche make an elegant finishing touch.
Pan-fried pancetta or diced bacon would make a great topping for those who don’t shy away from a bit of meat in their diet. For those dinner guests who prefer vegetarian or even vegan fare, vegetable broth can be substituted for the recommended chicken broth. In lieu of crème fraîche, float some toasted bread cubes or top with toasted pecans.
Served with a side of South Carolina collard greens and fresh cornbread, pumpkin soup becomes an elegant and healthy meal to counteract all the indulgence of the season.

CURRIED ORANGE PUMPKIN SOUP

2-3 pound Sugar Pie pumpkin, chopped into 3 inch pieces and seeded

2 shallots, chopped

1½ teaspoons curry powder

½ orange, juiced

4 cups chicken broth

Crème fraîche to serve

Preheat oven to 425°F. Place the pumpkin on a large baking tray lined with foil. Coat pumpkin with 2 tablespoons olive oil and season liberally with salt and pepper. Roast for 45 minutes or until pumpkin is tender. Once pumpkin is cooled, scoop the flesh into a bowl and discard the skin.

Heat 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil in large pot over low heat. Add shallots and cook slowly until golden brown and soft. Stir in curry powder.  Turn heat to medium and add orange juice. Continue to cook for 2 minutes, scraping the pot for any brown bits.

Add reserved pumpkin flesh to pot and pour in enough broth to submerge. Bring to a simmer and cook for 5-10 minutes, allowing the flavors to mingle.

In batches, purée soup in food processor, adding more chicken stock to reach desired consistency.

Reheat gently to serve, topped with a drizzle of crème fraiche. Serves 3-4.

Winter always seems to be bland when it comes to the palate. Farmers markets are closed. Produce available in the grocery stores has been trucked in from far-off locations, picked early and ripened en-route, imparting a less-than-fresh taste. The vegetable garden in the back yard has died back, with winter-hardy weeds providing a splash of green among the dead stalks. The garden is in a state of dormancy, recuperating from the growing season. There is nothing to do but wait until spring planting time.

Or is there?

Living in the Upstate of South Carolina, gardeners are able to grow at least something year around. And that is a pleasant surprise for me, a transplant from the tundra of Minnesota, where the ground is permanently frozen for what seems like six months out of the year and snow piles up so thick that a snow shovel is needed to uncover the garden.

But now that I have joined the ranks of South Carolinians, where the weather is downright tropical compared to my childhood home, my family can have quality, fresh produce from the garden even in the dead of winter.

This season heralds my first foray into winter gardening, and it is already going quite well. In early October, I put several transplants directly into the ground—collard greens, broccoli and kohlrabi. Already, the outer leaves of the collards are ready to be harvested, leaving the plant intact for more production. The broccoli plants are showing nice little green heads—they should be ready in time to grace our Christmas table. And the kohlrabi has nice swollen globes on the stems. Peeled and cut into sticks, much like carrots, raw kohlrabi has a sweet, crisp flavor.

While these crops are pretty simple—just transplant the seedlings—my second project this winter required slightly more work. My task was to construct a salad bed, one that will produce greens during the cold months. First I built a raised bed, roughly four feet wide by eight feet long, with four scrap boards found in the shed. Then I turned the dirt with a garden fork. Now comes the fun part. In order to protect the plants from cool nights, I plan to use ½ inch PVC pipe to make an arch over the bed and enclose it in plastic. The mini-greenhouse will keep the soil warm, increase seed germination and give the salad greens a better chance of survival.

So even though winter is here, take heart. The fresh tomatoes, beans, carrots, sweet corn that bring joy in summer may be gone—just for a short while—but winter gardening is quite simple. Collards, broccoli, kale, Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi and, with a little more work, luscious lettuces can grace your table through the cool months.

This year as I make the farmers market rounds, I’ve decided to try something new. Being the super-structured, can’t-do-anything-without-researching-it-to-death-first, type-A personality that I am, my typical approach is to head in with an alphabetized, color-coded list organized all the way down to quantities rounded to the nearest hundredth. But in the interest of living more spontaneously, I’ve decided to throw caution to the wind. Yesterday I went crazy and didn’t even bring exact change.

This season, my approach is to pick up at least one new item each time I visit the market. You know the ones—those odd-shaped, strangely colored alien orbs you look at with a puzzled expression before going back to the tried and true staples you’re already familiar with. The first week of my living on the edge experiment I grabbed a spaghetti squash. Never mind that I’d never cooked one in my life and had no idea where to even begin. Luckily, my former über-organized self keeps a recipe binder at home for just this reason. (See! It is useful!) I quickly found the “how to roast spaghetti squash” recipe and got to work.

Aside from a ridiculous struggle to cut the thing open with my pathetic chef’s knife (subtle hint to anyone looking for gift ideas), the entire process was surprisingly easy. For my fellow squash deprived readers, here are the instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375° and halve squash lengthwise. Scoop out and discard seeds from middle of each half.

2. Arrange squash cut side down in a 9″ x 13″ casserole dish. Pour ½ cup water into the dish and bake until just tender, around 30 to 35 minutes.

3. Rake a fork back and forth across squash to remove flesh.

True to the gourd’s name, the strands really do look just like spaghetti. I decided to treat it as such and whipped up a little vegetarian marinara using garlic, onions, cannellini beans and the last of the season’s tomatoes and served it on top. My spontaneity was richly rewarded.

Fortunately for me, fall is the perfect time to try out this new approach. A quick tour of area farmers markets reveals myriad fall squash varieties, equal numbers of novel cold-tolerant greens like bok choy, mizuna and tatsoi, daikon radishes, fennel, hakurei turnips and kohlrabi. I believe I could get used to this. In fact, I feel myself becoming more spontaneous already. I think I’ll go research kohlrabi.

I recently took my three sons to visit my 96 year-old grandfather in Waxhaw, North Carolina, just outside of Charlotte where I grew up. He still lives by himself on what used to be a small working farm— three acres of forests, fields, ponds, and ramshackle sheds, surrounded by more forests and fields that have been worked and planted by local farmers for years.

My grandparents moved to North Carolina from West Virginia in 1978 to be closer to us.  For retired people, they worked hard—planting, harvesting, fishing, hunting. For them, growing and killing food was not a hobby, but rather the product of a rural life where food was never taken for granted, where families planted and hunted and farmed like their lives depended on it, because it did.

It was here on their farm that I learned to drive a little brown Datsun standard pick-up truck when I was eight, tooling around the rutted out roads that wound from the house to the main garden. I picked blueberries from five enormous bushes that lined the banks of the pond behind the house, snapped and peeled green beans in afternoons in the summer, fished for sunfish and bass in the small pond, remember pricking fingers on blackberry brambles in the vines behind the big shed.

Green and brown eggs were always available from little Bantams. Squash, corn, tomatoes, strawberries, cantaloupe, watermelon, peaches, green beans, venison, wild turkey, pheasant, and dove all graced the table in abundance, depending on the season. As a kid, having all of this fresh food at my disposal was just the way things were.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the scuppernong grapes my grandmother always put in my lunch, but I certainly didn’t complain either.  It was what and how we ate.

Summer always found them busy growing and harvesting numerous gardens and beds, until the year that only a few rows were planted, that the blackberry and strawberry patches went untended.  After that, there was less and less yield, until eventually the mini Ponderosa fell into a constant state of autumn.

I think of Frost’s “After Apple Picking,” of how my grandfather is “done with apple picking now,” of seasons that eventually blur and morph into one long unchanging season, and I’m tempted to be sad. But a visit to the farm reminds me, always, of the importance of farming and local food, of the necessity of teaching my kids where food comes from, and what it means to grow and eat locally.

The irony, of course, is that whenever we visit, we bring Wendy’s for Pap and the kids. And though the pecan trees are still full with fruit, the gardens are long overgrown, the blueberry bushes bare. But there’s something in the telling of tales, and the vision of where the gardens used to be, and the chicken coop that still stands, that I hope winds in, threads its way into the story of my children’s lives.

When we think of fall, some of the first images to come to mind are turning leaves, back-to-school, football, and a big Thanksgiving feast. In fact, few things are more uniquely American than nodding off to sleep after a family meal of turkey and dressing, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, cornbread, and pumpkin pie. As it turns out, few meals could be more American than the traditional Thanksgiving spread, since, as every school kid knows, everything served at the first Thanksgiving was indigenous to Massachusetts in the 1620s.

It’s interesting to consider what European cuisine may have been like without the so-called “New World” plants and animals (potatoes, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, cranberries, turkey, chocolate, and many more) that Columbus started bringing to Spain in the 1490s. While it’s sad to imagine a world without cheese, that’s exactly what the New World was, a place without so many staples of American cuisine that it’s almost unimaginable: no beef or dairy, no pork, no chicken, no bread or onions or wine. South Carolina, such as it was back then, had neither tomatoes, nor rice, nor peaches.

The names given by the English and Spanish to the indigenous crops and animals they “discovered” often contain stories as colorful and misguided as the naming of the West Indies after an Asian subcontinent. The word “turkey,” for example, dates from the mid 1500s and is the name the English gave to the large bird they found in the New World. The settlers chose the name “turkey” because our bird reminded them of guineafowl or “turkey-hens” transplanted to Europe from Africa and Turkey by the Portuguese.

Lots of New World foods are indigenous only to South America, not North. The “potato,” for example, comes from the Spanish word patata and that from the Quechua papa since it was the Spanish who brought potatoes back to Europe from the Andes. On the Continent, the potato’s high yield and easy cultivation spread quickly, even to places as far afield as Ireland. When the Irish found how easy the potato was to grow and store, they decided to bring them along on voyages across the Atlantic, back to New England, thus introducing the potato to the New World once again.

The word “corn” simply means “a grain or a seed” of any kind, as in a peppercorn. The name “maize” passed basically unchanged into English through the Caribbean Arawak or Taíno mahis and Spanish maíz, though English speakers settled on the name “Indian corn” which was eventually shortened to just “corn.” Considering its ubiquitous place in our foodways, it’s ironic that hardly anyone calls maize by its proper name, opting instead for the more humble and less descriptive “corn.”

Snooping into the secret life of words gives us new ways to connect with what we eat and where it may, or, in the case of turkey, may not come from. One of things we love about the Thanksgiving meal is that since its origins, it has always been local and seasonal, and while that might not characterize American cuisine on the whole, no one can dispute the New World roots of our favorite fall foods.

This fall, just as sure as the days will grow shorter, the leaves will change, and television networks will offer a new smattering of American Idol rip offs, I know that I will become obsessed with baking an apple pie. For those who have an affinity for baking, this may sound like a culinary cliché. For me, it has become a seasonal ritual that I am powerless to deny.

I blame Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins for my insanity, or, more specifically, the genius of adding sharp cheddar cheese to their piecrust. I discovered the recipe in The New Basics Cookbook over 12 years ago and cannot pass an autumn without making it. In the two pages following the recipe, Rosso and Lukins have charted the taste, texture and seasonality of over 25 varieties of apples, which can only make a food lover more curious.

Fortunately, we have a bounty of apple orchards in our region, so on some crisp Saturday morning I will throw my son and two nieces in the car and make my annual pilgrimage in search of the perfect combination of tart and sweet.

Like any pilgrimage, ours will be fraught with challenges. We will dodge angry swarms of yellow jackets. One of my nieces will slip on a patch of rotting fruit and sob while I wipe her down with my shirt. I will climb a tree to pluck an apple my son has spotted from the ground and incur minor injuries on the descent. In the end, I will pull my two nieces and a basket of apples in a squeaky red wagon up a seemingly endless hill and curse myself for not doing more cardio.

Once home, I will most likely cut my finger while peeling long spirals of red and gold, cover myself and a good portion of the kitchen in flour, and, after seven or eight attempts, roll out dough into shapes for which there are no geometric definitions.

But then the kitchen will fill with the smell of apples and cinnamon, the kids will dig holes in the back yard to plant apple seeds, and at some point, we will finally sit around the table with thick wedges of apple pie and scoops of vanilla ice cream. I will hold that first bite in my mouth, taste the tart apples, the spicy cinnamon, the sharp cheddar and sweet vanilla. The perfect combination. My own delicious, albeit messy, metaphor.

Apple of Her Eye Pie, from The New Basics Cookbook

Pastry

3 cups of unbleached all purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon dry mustard

Pinch of salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold

1/3 cup solid vegetable shortening, cold

3/4 cup sharp Cheddar cheese, grated

6 to 8 tablespoons ice water

Filling

8 tart apples, such as Granny Smith

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon grated lemon zest

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Topping

1 teaspoon sugar

Pinch of ground cinnamon

Prepare the pastry dough: Combine the flour, sugar, mustard, and salt in a mixing bowl, and toss well to blend. Using a pastry blender, two knives, or your fingertips, cut in the butter and shortening until the mixture forms small clumps. Then add the cheese, and work it in until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Sprinkle the water, 2 tablespoons at a time, over the mixture and toss with a fork until the mixture can be gathered into a ball. Knead it once or twice in the bowl and divide it into slightly unequal halves. Wrap both halves, and chill in the refrigerator for 45 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350.

Prepare the filling: Core, halve, and peel the apples. Cut them into 1-inch chunks. Combine the apples and melted butter in a large bowl. Add the remaining filling ingredients, and toss until the apples are evenly coated.

Roll the smaller portion of chilled dough out on a lightly floured surface to form a 12-inch circle. Transfer it to a 10-inch plate, and press it into the bottom and sides of the plate. Trim the dough leaving a 1-inch overhang. Reserve any excess dough.

Roll the larger portion of dough out to form a slightly larger circle.

Fill the pie plate with the apple mixture, mounding it slightly. Brush the edge of the bottom crust with water. Then transfer the top crust over the apples, tucking it slightly inside the rim. Trim off any excess, allowing a 1-inch overhang. Seal the edges of the crusts together with a fork and crimp decoratively. Trim away any remaining excess pastry.

Prepare the topping; Mix together the sugar and cinnamon. Prick the top crust with a fork in several places, and cut a small vent in the center. Brush the top lightly with water, and sprinkle it with the cinnamon sugar. If you like, cut out shapes, such as leaves or apples, from the dough trimmings and decorate the top crust with them.

Bake until the filling is bubbling and the top is golden, 1 1/4 hours. Serves 8.