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Sunday, February 19, 2006
Praise the lard!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I honestly can’t remember the last time I bought lard, but last night was a special occasion. The friends I regularly get together with for Sunday dinner were coming over to celebrate the life of our Southern culinary hero Edna Lewis, who died last week.
Our menu consisted of some of her greatest hits: wilted salad, catfish stew, corn pone, biscuits and blackberry cobbler with brandy sauce (most of those recipes can be found in “The Gift of Southern Food,” which she co-wrote with her best friend, chef Scott Peacock of Watershed in Decatur.)
Aside from the light, herb-redolent catfish stew, it’s doubtful anything else on the menu would escape the nutrition police.
The salad not only contained bacon but its rendered fat, which was mixed with cider vinegar and sugar for the dressing. The corn pones were deep-fried.
And the biscuits and pastry for the cobbler achieved their melt-in-your mouth flakiness to pork fat in the form of lard — which has fallen so far out of favor these days it took a major scavenger hunt to find a tub of it.
But I have to tell you, honestly: we all unanimously agreed that they were the best biscuits and cobbler we had ever tasted. We also unanimously agreed that we felt no guilt for enjoying them.
Especially in light of recent reports that trans fats — found in common lard substitutes like shortening and stick margarine — are probably even more likely to clog your arteries than saturated animal fat. Since homemade biscuits and cobbler are rare treats for me, when I have them I don’t want to compromise. I’d rather cut the biscuits a smaller, and eat a half-portion of the cobbler.
That was yet one more lesson I learned from Edna Lewis, who I had the pleasure of dining with on several occasions. She ate whatever she wanted, but knew when to stop. And she lived most of her 89 years in excellent health.
So I ask you — is lard deserving of its bad reputation?
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