"The larger the radish, the spicier it is. Who here is afraid of radishes?" asked Rebecca Lang, author of The Southern Vegetable Cookbook. Leading a sold-out class on "Vegetable Versatility" at the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival, Lang saw no hands in the air.
This was a room full of food fans eager to learn veggie-centric cooking tips from chef Todd Richards of Atlanta’s White Oak Kitchen & Cocktails and visiting chef Digby Stridiron of the U.S. Virgin Islands. While Stridiron sliced into plantains and advised, “Buy the green ones in the market and let them ripen at home,” Richards passed samples of English pea soup garnished with fresh pea tendrils and said, “We try to use as much of the whole vegetable together.”
In its sixth year, the festival features Southern chefs and entertains guests with farm-to-table dinners, cooking classes and wine, beer and spirits tastings. There’s plenty of roast pig and peach cobbler to please, but there’s a celebration of the lighter side of the South, too. “Everyone thinks of pork first, but vegetables are the surprising foundation of Southern foods,” said chef Linton Hopkins of Atlanta’s Holman & Finch Public House and newly opened Linton’s in the Atlanta Botanical Garden. “I love vegetables and right now I’m excited about peas, especially lady peas.”
New Southern Cooks
No longer destined to be ‘cooked to death’ and coated in bacon fat, Southern vegetables are elegantly prepared today.
Instead of fatback, chef Rob McDaniel of Spring House on Alabama’s Lake Martin adds flavor with smoked turkey or chicken. McDaniel smoked whole beets in a Big Green Egg to make a beet sandwich with celery and blue cheese slaw. “Grilling is a great way to enhance vegetables because earthy and smoky flavors go really well together,” said McDaniel.
In the festival’s tasting tents, chef Josh Quick of Odette in Florence, Ala., garnished a golden lentil salad with Gulf shrimp relish and a tiny touch of ham.
Salt and sugar are still part of the recipe when cooking a ‘mess of greens’ but Arkansas chef Mark Abernathy of Red Door restaurant in Little Rock cautioned, “You can always add more later. You can’t take it out. The sweet and salty flavors will concentrate as the greens cook, so have a lighter touch.”
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