Grits from McEwen & Sons Mill and Lime Buttermilk Chess Pie from Frank Stitt's Cookbook
Above is a pic of grits cooking. These came from McEwen & Sons mill in Wilsonville, Alabama; they're organic white grits that were made from a stone burr grist in their shop (205.669.6605). Really nice.
In August of last year, Frank Stitt (who's also from Cullman) came out with his book, "Frank Stitt's Southern Table: Recipes and Gracious Traditions from Highlands Bar and Grill" so of course I had to get it. Highlands is one of *the* restaurants in Birmingham (as an aside, some people think this Highlands is just the pinnacle of fine dining. I don't really think so, but it is a very fine place nonetheless). So I've had this cookbook for over a year and never made anything! Well, I had a bottle of Nelly and Joe's key lime juice in the refrigerator, and really I don't have much to use that for other than key lime pie.....so I was flipping through this cookbook and found his recipe for "lemon buttermilk chess tart"...and I thought, hmmm, lime might be even more interesting for this kind of thing. So.....
In the interest of time (because I didn't have three hours to let the dough chill, mostly) I used a frozen pie crust and proceeded with the filling. Here's the recipe, modified very slightly (for instance, I didn't have any vanilla beans, I hate the flavor of nutmeg, and I didn't have any limes tor zest):
1 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar
1-1/2 tsp cornstarch
splash good vanilla
pinch of kosher salt
1-1/2 cups buttermilk
3 large eggs
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled
2 tbsp lime juice (I think I actually used a little more. Taste the mixture and add more if you think it needs it, but be careful.)
Preheat the oven to 300*
Mix the sugar and cornstarch in a small bowl, add vanilla and salt. Set aside.
In a Kitchenaid, mix buttermilk on low speed until frothy. Add eggs, butter, lime juice. Add dry ingredients. Don't mix for a long time - just incorporate. (my note: the idea is to keep all of this nice and cool. Frank says to cover and put the mixture in the refrigerator for two hours, but again, it was late in the evening.) Pour the mixture when it's nice and smooth into the pie crust. Bake at 300*.
The cookbook says that this needs to cook for 20-25 minutes, until the filling is just set but still jiggly in the center. At 25 minutes, this filling was only beginning to set at the very edges. It took about an hour for it to cook properly (and again, you don't want it to be completely set in the middle).
This pie is better the next day. Late that night when we had the first piece, it was a little tart, like the flavors hadn't really come together. I'm thinking that if I'd had the time to let the mixture set in the refrigerator that two hours, that may very well have helped things, but... The next day, the pie was really, really nice. It's also a little different flavor in that lime puts a little sharper contrast to straight chess pie, which is just a very low-key, smooth delicious flavor. Really good.
posted by ginger Sunday, October 02, 2005
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