Seasons by the Sea: With Love From Edna Lewis

My son, Adrian William Taylor, turns 28 today, and this is the story of his enduring love for one particular cookbook.

It began in middle school. Every morning, along with Calvin and Hobbes, Tintin, and a variety of other books scattered around, under, and in his bed, I would find my copy of Edna Lewis’s “The Taste of Country Cooking.” This book has no pictures, no cartoons, no comic strips, no color photography. It is simply a book with recipes and reminiscences of Ms. Lewis’s life growing up on a farm in Freetown, Va. Her tone is cozy and upbeat, the menus mouthwatering but completely alien to most of us: dandelion wine, cymlings, salsify, divinity cream, quince, sorghum, smothered rabbit, watermelon rind pickles, and Tyler pie.

Adrian’s fascination with this book has never waned. Sometimes he would bring it in the car on the drive to school. When he went away to college I jokingly offered the book to him, along with a copy of “Joy of Cooking,” really the only cooking tome a college boy needs. Nope, he liked the idea of this book staying at home, so when he returned and continued his habit of reading and scattering books around his bed at night, Edna Lewis would be there.

He is now an editor at MSNBC, lives in Brooklyn, and returns home on the occasional weekend. When I found “The Taste of Country Cooking” splayed out on the floor of his room recently, I suggested that for his upcoming birthday dinner I would make any menu of his choice from this book. He solemnly replied, “I would like ‘A Cool Evening Supper.’ ” And so it began.

“A Cool Evening Supper” on page 132 consists of summer vegetable soup, soda crackers, ham biscuits, cucumber pickles, and Tyler pie. But wait, there’s another “Cool Evening Supper” on page 137. That one has lima beans in cream, smothered new cabbage, hot spiced beets, and watermelon rind pickles, so I decided to combine the two menus.

I knew a few of the items could not be duplicated or found anywhere north of the Mason-Dixon line. Country ham is a different animal from the hams we are used to. It is cured, super salty, and strong-flavored, served in thin little chips in beaten biscuits. Beaten biscuits are definitely an acquired taste. They are labor-intensive, hard, crumbly little things, not at all like the fluffy, rich, flaky kind most of us are familiar with. After some research, I decided to trust Broadbent’s of Kentucky to deliver authentic country ham and beaten biscuits. I ordered the watermelon rind pickles from Blue Ridge Jams of North Carolina, along with pickled beets and fire and ice pickles. Everything else was made from scratch.

I started the vegetable soup in the morning, still having no idea how many people were coming. I didn’t follow Ms. Lewis’s recipe to the letter, which included chicken feet, shank and bones, and “one pound of the bony part of the fowl,” as there is always the possibility of a vegetarian in our midst. All of the ingredients for this and the other dishes were bought from Saturday’s farmers market in Sag Harbor and a few other local farm stands.

Next came the smothered cabbage, lima beans in cream, and Tyler pie. Adrian trotted down to the 7-Eleven for Saltine crackers because Edna says “it was a great novelty to have soda crackers once in a while with soup or cheese. They were always fresh tasting and crisp and delicious with soup. They came in bulk and one could buy as many as one wished.”

Has a simple cracker that we take for granted ever sounded so alluring?

My biggest concern was the Tyler pie, full of butter, sugar, milk, eggs, and a wee bit of lemon extract. Many old recipes like this (buttermilk pie, chess pie) relied on these inexpensive and filling ingredients when fresh fruit, nuts, spices, or chocolate were not available or were too expensive. I bumped up the recipe with the addition of lots of freshly grated lemon zest and extra vanilla extract.

I sampled a beaten biscuit and discovered that the folks at Broadbent’s probably looked at our shipping address and said, “Damn Yankee New Yorkers. Let’s send them some biscuits that have been in the freezer since 1974. They won’t know the difference.” They were ghastly, so we threw them away.

By now I knew we had 10 guests, friends and family, probably all mystified by the unusual menu and so uncool, unHamptons early dining hour. My nephew William got to work assembling ham biscuits and immediately fell in love when he tried his first watermelon pickle.

We began our meal out on the porch with the vegetable soup in coffee mugs, because I don’t own 10 bowls. Next we gathered in the kitchen for the ham biscuits, smothered cabbage, lima beans, beets, and pickles galore. I have to admit the lima beans were not quite as popular as the other delicacies, but I adore them. Lastly, we dug into the Tyler pie with a birthday candle in it, and it was absolutely delicious.

I am well aware that our comfy, spacious house in Sag Harbor is worlds apart from the hard life of recently freed slaves farming their own land in Freetown, Va., a century ago. But food is the connector that keeps traditions alive and families together around the table.

Maybe some of our guests went home that night scratching their heads over the unique menu. My son retired to his room with his favorite book.

Happy birthday, Adrian, you have grown into a fine young man, and I am one proud mom!

Click for recipes