Birds of a Feather

In her 1987 work A Birdwatcher's Cookbook, late author and ornithologist Erma Fisk ("Jonnie" to her friends) doesn't have much to say about the sophisticated, discriminating concept of appetite. Instead, she caters to people who cook out of hunger: to those for whom it is a hobby and a pleasure but also a necessity, to those who can't run to the store when their three perfect courses don't go as planned, to cooks whose lives beyond the kitchen sometimes override those within it, and to those who have to improvise when culinary disaster strikes. In other words, she's practical.

Yet what constitutes "practical" changes with time, and after 21 years, many of the recipes in A Birdwatcher's Cookbook are dated. Canned cream-of-mushroom and instant onion soups, both of which make appearances throughout, just don't play like they used to. Despite such shortcomings, the book's appeal lives on nonetheless. Chalk it up to Fisk's one-of-a-kind charisma.

Her unique brand of kitchen wisdom includes wisecracks, rants, lessons in natural history, and philosophical meanderings--all alongside recipe instructions that border on stream-of-consciousness, with rhetorical questions scattered here and there, like birdseed, for the reader ("Did I mention that already?" she wonders aloud, midway through steps). The bookflap of the original edition even includes a photo of Fisk in which she looks like a wise, ornery owl, surrounded by darkness and peering out suspiciously from the right edge of the frame.

That quirky attitude fills the book. At its very beginning, Fisk dispenses with a foreword and instead gives the reader a warning, which she divides into statements, like a manifesto. One in particular sets the tone for the chapters to come:

If guests are hungry, they will eat anything, I've found, especially if they are sitting about the kitchen or standing (usually in the way) while you bustle about, tantalizing them with fragrances from your kettles. I've tested most of these dishes. Some I don't particularly like, but others do, so maybe you will.

It's easy to disregard remarks like that as glib. But press on through the stories and travelogues (cleverly disguised as recipes), and you discover that Fisk really does mean it. She's certainly had plenty of hungry guests to test her theory on: For decades, she moved through the western hemisphere, along with the seasonal bird migrations, crossing two continents and a handful of islands, from the arctic to the tropics. All the while, she cooked whatever she got her hands on--for her peers, mentors, family, friends, and, eventually, her students.

A colleague in Belize taught her how to roast the armadillos that had terrorized her garden; another, in the Caribbean, informed her that a well-cooked termite tastes like shrimp, and that a raw one tastes like pineapple (understandably, the latter claim is from one of the recipes that the author herself didn't test). A farm woman in Pennsylvania passed on her recipe for scrapple, a regional specialty, which calls for a 48-gallon kettle, three pigs, one steer, two pounds of coriander, and enough cornmeal and flour that the long-simmered mixture pulls away from the pot when stirred. At the end of the recipe, Fisk nonchalantly suggests that the reader may want to scale down the proportions for his or her own purposes.

Fisk also relates firsthand how the intimacy that birders share with nature leads them to waste nothing--even if it means consuming the occasional subject. At a birdbanding station she ran in south Florida, where the locals brought her fresh birds that had met accidental deaths, she found "mourning-dove breasts wrapped in bacon excellent, grosbeaks tough, cedar waxwings and robins tender." When a friend of hers, a well-known ornithologist, found out she was compiling a cookbook, he refused to disclose his method for cooking the white ibis that native guides liked to supply on research trips in the tropics. His grant money depended too much on his image as a conservationist.

That's the extreme end of things. Your taste for birds doesn't need to be quite so literal to enjoy the rest of the book. Plenty of recipes offer sustenance for early-rising birders: overnight oatmeal prepared directly in the thermos; a slapdash affair called Lazy Biscuits, stuffed with ham or cheese; and Bus Breakfast Spread, a vaguely Mediterranean blend of bananas, honey, walnuts, raisins, and cream cheese, favored by young, itinerant Audubon researchers. None of the dishes will win you a Beard Award, but that's missing Fisk's point. Regardless of what you're hungry for, be it market-fresh nettles, hand-picked morels, or a glimpse at a white-eyed vireo during the great spring migrations that are just winding up for the year, Fisk's ultimate commandment is this: Get outside, appreciate the season, and take in the bounty it offers.

Catch David on "Martha Stewart Radio"

Tune into "Living Today" on Sirius Radio Channel 112 at 1:00 p.m. on Monday, May 19th. I'll discuss the barbecued ribs article I wrote for the June issue of Martha Stewart Living, which hits newsstands the same day. I'll also talk about my favorite topic: Portuguese food. You can even call in and ask questions. If you don't have a Sirius Radio account, you can sign up for a free three-day trial.

Guest Post: Pimiento Cheese

Barbecue, catfish, and grits are true Southern culinary icons, to be sure. Yet despite their humble beginnings, these Dixie-born gems have gone on to become quite popular across the country. As a result, it's not particularly difficult to find foods such as Memphis-style barbecue or garlic-cheese grits in New York or LA (and I don't mean Lower Alabama).

Enter pimiento cheese.

Now, if you read the Otis, My Man! post back in March, you know that pimiento cheese is one of my favorite foods. I'll happily eat it morning, noon, or night (and all times in between).

First off, in my neck of the woods, the word pimiento is pronounced "PUH-minnuh" (just like the old guys in the bait shop pronounce minnow, only without the "PUH").

A cookbook codifying one true recipe for pimiento cheese, let alone the many regional variations such as adding smoked paprika or jalapeno peppers, is almost impossible to find; favorite recipes seem to survive by way of oral tradition. Therefore, the popularity of this unique spread remains largely confined to states below the Mason-Dixon, where it rightfully assumes its place as an authentic Southern delicacy.

So what exactly is pimiento cheese? To the uninitiated, it's little more than a one-dimensional combination of grated cheese, some chopped pimiento peppers, and a dollop or two of mayonnaise. However, to those passionate fans who rank pimiento cheese right up there beside cold fried chicken and deviled eggs as essential provisions at any proper picnic, it's more, much more. (Speaking of deviled eggs, try substituting pimiento cheese for mayonnaise in your favorite recipe.)

Novelist and North Carolinian native Reynolds Price says, "It was the peanut butter of my childhood." As an adult, he now swears by its restorative powers. "I've been caught eating a pound in two days, especially if life is hard. On rough brown bread, it's a sovereign nerve salve," he admits. To other devotees, a tub of pimiento cheese in the kitchen becomes a multifunctional must-have--elevating an ordinary grilled cheese to something heavenly (particularly when combined with sliced Roma tomatoes and crispy bacon) and dramatically raising the bar on the everyday cheeseburger and omelet.

Admirers regularly agree that sharp cheddar cheese is the backbone of the mixture--the sharper, the better. High-quality mayonnaise, such as Hellmann's or Duke's, is also a given. But here's where the opinions begin to fork off in more directions than tributaries leading into the Mississippi. On the issue of texture, should the cheese be grated or mashed? If grated, does coarse or fine yield the best results? If mashed, is the fork or the modern food processor the best tool? Then there are the legions who make pimiento cheese by running all ingredients through a meat grinder (a.k.a. "the old-fashioned way").

In my search for the definitive blend, I asked Mary Allen Perry, a member of the Southern Living Foods team (and long recognized for her exemplary pimiento cheese-making skills), to share her secret recipe. She happily (and thankfully) agreed. However, Perry, giving credit where credit is due, admits, "My recipe was originally that of my Great-Grandmother Kersh, who lived a vibrant life until she was 98--slim, trim, and fearless of fat content."

The recipe eventually made its way to Perry's aunt Carolyn, who added a touch of Worcestershire sauce and finely grated onion. "They worked by taste and feel, dismissing the exactness of measurement," says Perry, explaining how she drew upon childhood memories to record this fabulous formula. So, whether you use pimiento cheese to fill celery sticks or cherry tomatoes, or spread it on crackers or a slice of your favorite bread, you should feel confident with this terrific version.

Classic Pimiento Cheese
Makes 4 cups

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups mayonnaise
One 4-ounce jar diced pimiento, drained
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon finely grated onion
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
One 8-ounce block extra-sharp cheddar cheese, finely shredded
One 8-ounce block sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

Method
Stir together the first 5 ingredients in a large bowl; stir in the cheeses. Store in the refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Variations
Jalapeno Pimiento Cheese: Add 2 seeded and minced jalapeno peppers.

Cream Cheese-Olive Pimiento Cheese: Reduce the mayonnaise to 3/4 cup. Stir together the first 5 ingredients, one 8-ounce package softened cream cheese, and one 5 3/4-ounce jar of sliced salad olives, drained. Proceed with the recipe as directed.

Pecan Pimiento Cheese: Stir in 3/4 cup chopped pecans, toasted.

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Southern Living Executive Food Editor SCOTT JONES is a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America. Jones has received awards from the International Association of Culinary Professionals and the James Beard Foundation. In addition, he holds a degree in magazine publishing and journalism from the University of Mississippi and is the author of the Southern Living Wine Guide and Journal. Do you have a great pimiento cheese recipe? Please share it with Scott (and it might even make it into the magazine).

So You Wanna Buy a Knife, Huh? Part 2

Warning Signs (How Not to Buy Garbage)
Sometimes it can be a little hard to tell quality knives from knives that simply have better marketing budgets. Here are the warning signs that the knives you are looking at might be not be all that they seem:

Locale -- you generally don't find quality kitchen knives at the grocery store, the gas station, the hardware store, the sporting goods store or the bait and tackle shop. The local big box retailer is also not a place to buy good kitchen knives. Yes, they may actually have recognizable and reputable brand names, but it's not the top of the line. The margins just aren't there. Stick with a specialty kitchenware shop, cutlery store or online cutlery retailer. You can find decent knives in department stores, but the clerks don't have the knowledge or flexibility you need to get exactly what you want. You either buy their box or go home. Go home. You can do better.

Price -- Most of the time you do indeed get what you pay for. A good chef's knife generally costs somewhere between $80 and $150. Some are substantially more than that. There are some bargains out there, but for the most part a six piece set of knives (with block!) for $49.95 is no bargain. Expect to pay upwards of $400 to $500 for a good matched set of knives, if that's how you are inclined. This is a big reason I'm not a fan of boxed sets of knives. On a per-knife basis a set can be a good deal, but you also pay a hefty surcharge for knives you don't need. Most manufacturers offer a two or three piece "starter set" for this very reason.

Mystery steel -- If they won't tell you what's in the steel, they probably aren't very proud of it. There also are manufacturers who feel that you have no need for this information and would be too dumb to make use of it if you did. They don't deserve your business. At a bare minimum, you should see the words "high carbon" somewhere. That phrase is open to very flexible interpretation, but it at least means you are in the ballpark.

Weasel words -- Beware of meaningless marketing drivel, words like "surgical steel." There is no such thing. The word "stainless" all by itself without the "high carbon" modifier tends to be a bad sign, too. It sounds authentic, but low carbon stainless steel is awful. It is hard to sharpen and will not take or hold a decent working edge. It can be manufactured and sold cheaply, however, which is why a lot of people end up with knives that just make them miserable.

Flex -- fillet knives aside, a good knife blade is fairly stiff. You shouldn't be able to bend it or flex it very much. If you can, that's usually a sign of cheap, low carbon steel or a heat treatment that left the knife softer than you want in your kitchen. If the blade feels flimsy, it is.

Never needs sharpening -- Yes they do, you just don't want to. "Never needs sharpening" is the weasel term for a serrated edge, even if the maker tries strenuously to avoid calling it that. These knives are garbage. Avoid them at all costs. They are lousy performers to begin with and when they do eventually go dull they cannot easily be sharpened back to usefulness. They tend to be made with very cheap steel and depend entirely on the ripping action of the teeth to work. Might be handy in the tackle box, where corrosion resistance is more important that cutting ability, but these knives are not something worthy of your kitchen.

Country of origin -- The knife making centers of the world are (or were) justly famous for their products: Solingen in Germany, Thiers in France, Sheffield in England, and Sakai and Seki City in Japan. When you buy a kitchen knife from one of these places, you stand a pretty good chance of getting a quality knife. When those manufacturers farm the work out to another country, you're probably getting cheap steel, punched out and slapped together by the thousands to feed the gaping maw of commerce. Put another way, a knife from Solingen stands a good chance of being high quality. A knife from a Solingen-based manufacturer who has the blades stamped out in Paraguay and assembled in Bora Bora probably isn't worth a damn, even if it does have the logo of a famous brand.

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CHAD WARD is the author of An Edge in the Kitchen, available in June from Morrow Cookbooks. He has been a writer and (sometimes professional) cook for more than 20 years. His work has appeared in publications ranging from Best Food Writing to Aviation International News. He lives in North Carolina.