Les Dames Event at Sylvia Ganier's Home Oct. 9, 2015

Nashville Les Dames and more than 50 Nashville food lovers gathered in the home of Dame Sylvia Ganier Oct. 9 to hear author David Shields, and cookbook authors Dame Cynthia Graubart and Grand Dame Nathalie Dupree speak about Southern ingredients, old and new.The three authors were in town for the Southern Festival of Books, held in downtown Nashville. Sylvia Ganier is the owner of Green Door Gourmet, a large organic farm that supplies many of Nashville's restaurants with produce, and Sylvia is a Nashville Les Dames board member and chair of the Green Table committee.The crowd assembled first in the large spacious kitchen sipping drinks. Food was a cross section of vegetable hors d'oeuvres from Sylvia's farm - fried green tomatoes, of course - as well as country ham on angel biscuits from Dame Mindy Merrell, smoked salmon, and fresh sage and cheese wafers prepared by Dame Emily Frith. Food was assembled by Sylvia and fellow Dames Nancy Koepfel (check spelling), Jessica Collins, and Marylou Tate.Then, the authors moved to the fireplace where they sat in chairs alongside Sylvia and had a fireside chat about vegetables, Southern ingredients making a comeback, and interesting personal stories.Nathalie Dupree shared her passion for Southern peas and said that "vegetables are the music when we eat" a meal. Our early vegetables from gardens "determined the palate of the South." And while most outsiders think of Southern vegetables as overcooked and greasy, she defended their preparation. Using fatback of bacon to season beans or greens was an economical way to infuse meat and fat into the hard-scrabble southern diet. If you compare this to today in restaurants where pork belly is served with abandon - and she reminded everyone that pork belly is "streak o lean" bacon - the early Southern cooks were much more gentle handed in serving fatty meats than chefs today.The focus shifted to watermelon, as Sylvia has a passion for good heirloom watermelon, which she grows on her farm and sells at her store. She has grown frustrated with patrons who prefer seedless watermelon to avoid the seeds. She says seed-spitting is just part of enjoying a good watermelon. The crowd applauded! And David Shields chimed in that the best watermelon variety to savor and from which to spit seeds is the Bradford out of South Carolina, or the Georgia Rattlesnake melons.These early varieties did not stand the test of time because their thin-vulnerable skins split in shipping, and southern farmers made more money when they trucked their melons to market.David Shields is working to bring back the Bradford watermelon with the help of Nate Bradford, a descendent of the family that first produced it. The author of Southern Provisions who has been likened to Indiana Jones of searching out old discarded foodstuffs to revive, Shields said to bring back an old variety such as the Bradford melon has challenges in the 21st Century. "How do you fight the tides of taste and market?" His answer was that you use all of it - what watermelon isn't sold fresh is boiled down into watermelon molasses, and the rind is turned into pickles or brandy.Nathalie chimed in that people used to eat all of the food, that this sustainable movement going on is actually an old one. It used to be called resourcefulness. And old cooks used to know why certain vegetables instinctively went together - such as okra and tomatoes. The acid in the tomatoes removes the sliminess of the okra. And okra is the favorite vegetable of Cynthia Graubart, who has co-authored books with Nathalie and produced her mid-1980s television shows in Georgia. Cynthia prefers to roast okra pods whole after tossing them with olive oil, then she sprinkles them with salt, and snacks on them like popcorn.The favorite vegetable of David Shields is the fresh turnip, not only because of the beloved turnip greens of Tennessee, but also the root itself. "Farmers used to chew them raw, they were so sweet," he said. His favorite preparation of turnips is to roast with duck. He also loves the old Creole onion of the Deep South. And he has focused his efforts lately on reviving the American chestnut.A native tree and nut to Tennessee, the American chestnut is all but gone because of a blight in --- (need year), but that will change in the next three to five years because researchers are developing a blight-resistant chestnut tree. "The American chestnut is sweeter than other chestnuts," and he talked about the ways to incorporate chestnuts into cooking, especially in desserts such as making caramels with chestnuts.And the South Carolina English professor had a moment to wax poetic about Southern sorghum, the cheap replacement to sugar post-Civil War, when he called it "the bronze sun blooming in your mouth."Bronze sun sorghum, chestnuts, turnips, okra, peas, and sweet watermelon with black seeds for spitting. All are foods beloved in the South, especially in Tennessee, and foods not only a part of our heritage but ready to withstand the challenges of the 21st Century. It was an uplifting and insightful fireside chat with a researcher, a farmer, and two well-known cookbook authors. And it was a benefit for the scholarship fund of the Nashville Les Dames, thanks to the generosity of hosts Sylvia and Al Ganier.