Stacks O’Fun

ATime to get out the banjos! This week, we’re heading across the Atlantic and touching down somewhere in the Deep South of the US, way below the Mason-Dixon Line, where, in my imagination, we’re driving our pick-up truck through the deep forests of Tennessee.

We’re a world away from the sophistication and bustle of the big coastal cities.

Here, you’re through a town before you notice it, and the countryside, stretching beyond one’s field of vision, is dotted with little farmsteads and shacks.

Here, pleasure is taken in cooking those lovely old recipes that the city folks have overlooked.

We’re cooking an apple stack cake today, an Appalachian treat.

Traditionally one of the United States’ more impoverished regions, Appalachia, stretching south-westerly from the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia (I know, I sang it too!) to the Great Smoky Mountains of Alabama and Mississippi, has a strong culinary tradition.

In the same vein as last week’s Italian ‘cucina povera’, the cooking of Appalachia tends to be basic but hearty – food for hard workers, nothing fancy, and nothing at all expensive.

Hunting and foraging was, and to some extent still is for many, a primary source of ingredients.

Rabbits, deer and game birds feature heavily in the canon, as do the abundant trout and catfish from mountain lakes and streams.

Beans, corn and pulses are used in many recipes, as a bulking agent in soups and stews, and also dried and milled for flour. Meat was expensive, and used sparingly, hence the creation of sauces like sausage gravy, a thick white sauce to be ladled over ‘biscuits’ – savoury scones – where a little sausage meat goes a long way.

I tried this a while ago, and it’s absolutely delicious (recipe at : https://bit.ly/2DsPlb2) - do have a go.

Canning and preserving is still extremely popular in the southern states, where gluts of crops are never wasted, instead being pickled or preserved to tide families over during the leaner months.

And when apples are in season, lots of people in the Deep South make apple butter.

It’s a lovely ingredient, a deep, dark sticky apple jam scented with cinnamon, which can be stirred into sauces, baked into pies and tarts, or simply spread on hot toast.

I like a spoonful whisked into a creamy sauce for a pork chop, or stirred into a reduced stock sauce for a roast game bird or joint of lamb.

In Appalachia, it features in many hundreds of recipes, but it’s perhaps most famous for being the co-star of a brilliant dish, the famous apple stack cake.

Traditionally this was served as a wedding cake, when the usual expensive ingredients were simply not affordable, but it’s now a tea- time classic, and is quite spectacular when served and sliced, showing off its many layers of apple butter and rich, gingery cake layers.

It’s brilliant as it is, with a good cup of coffee, but paired with some excellent vanilla ice-cream or maybe even a good old jug of custard it can become a rather successful dessert, too.

This is one for the patient cook, but really isn’t too fiddly, and well worth the effort.