10A MOORESVILLE TRIBUNE FRIDAY, MARCH 1479, 2004 Fast & Fit Turn leftover chicken or noodles into a quick salad with this Asianinspired dressing. It is from Ready When You Are: A Compendium of Comforting OneDish Meals (Potter, $32.50) by Martha Rose Shulman. Asian Chicken Salad Dressing Makes 4 servings. 1 tablespoon EACH: fresh lime juice; soy sauce; seasoned ricewine vinegar OR balsamic vinegar; 1 clove garlic, minced; 1–2 teaspoons finely minced fresh ginger; 2 tablespoons dark roasted sesame oil; 4–5 tablespoons plain nonfat yogurt OR nonfat buttermilk. In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix lime juice, soy sauce, vinegar, garlic, ginger, sesame oil and yogurt. Use to dress Asian noodle or chicken salad. Low-Carb Cooking Linda Gassenheimer’s “More LowCarb Meals in Minutes: A ThreeStage Plan for Keeping It Off” (Bay Books, 2003, $18.95) builds on her “Low Carb Meals in Minutes” (Bay Books, 2000, $18.95). In the more recent, she defines what low-carb means, has a list of foods to include and those to avoid, and a grocery list — categorized by supermarket section — of staples and perishables. Each recipe is quick, easy and short on ingredients for a dish long on flavor and includes complete nutritional analysis. Gassenheimer's dishes frequently call for seasonal ingredients, offer substitutions and have bold, often ethnic accents. She offers a 14-day plan for Quick Start menus that have 30–40 grams of carbohydrates per day. The next 14-day plan, Which Carbs? includes 75–85 grams of carbohydrates a day, and the final, Right Carbs, 125–135 grams per day. In each stage, most of the carbohydrates are slow or complex carbohydrates, which release more slowly and don’t cause spikes in blood sugar as simple carbohydrates do. “Low-Carb Meals in Minutes Quick Start Recipe Deck” ($14.95, Bay Books) is a collection of 52 recipes from the “Quick Start” sections of Gassenheimer’s books. It’s a great tool for shopping since each card has a grocery list on one side and a recipe on the other. For dining, there’s an “Eating Out” card. Other Guideline cards have tips and hints by category. Stress-Free Shopping As wedding shower season approaches, don’t get stumped on buy the bride and groom. Consider creative gift ideas such as a gift certificate to a local bed & breakfast; a wine of the month membership; outside decor for the home, including shrubs, planters and bird feeders; gourmet coffees; or two bottles of Champagne — one for the honeymoon, one for the first anniversary. Williams-Sonoma’s Web site is also a useful tool for brides-to-be to create a registry and for their guests to shop. Brides can manage their registry once it’s created, and guests can easily browse by item number or key word. Or perhaps your bride didn’t register anywhere, and you’re in a panic as to where to go. Williams-Sonoma can help here too with its Gift Ideas menu. Shop by recipient, occasion or price to find the perfect gift for that special couple. Visit www.williams-sonoma.com for more information. MEDIA GENERAL SYNDICATION SERVICES Darden sisters were the first to mix family history and recipes in cookbook ‘Spoonbread & Strawberry Wine’ Branchingg Out By Michael Hastings MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE It may not seem unusual these days to see a cookbook like “Spoonbread & Strawberry Wine: Recipes and Reminiscences of a Family,” which traces the family roots of authors Norma Jean and Carole Darden. But back in 1978, the Dardens’ family project stood alone among the competition. “There weren’t any cookbooks with stories and family photos,” Norma Jean Darden said recently. “It started a whole new genre.” One could say that the 25th-anniversary edition of Spoonbread & Strawberry Wine (Harlem Moon, $18.95) still stands alone because of the wealth of character — and characters — that the Darden sisters infused into every page, as well as a brief encyclopedia of the cooking of black Americans. Barbecued Spareribs, Collard Greens, Sweet Potato Pie, Southern Fried Corn and Candied Yams are just a few of the classic recipes that fill these pages. With its sometimes touching, sometimes amusing and always interesting stories of Papa Darden, Uncle Clyde, Aunt Norma and others, and its mouth-watering recipes, Spoonbread & Strawberry Wine became a hit, at least among those in the know. It also forever altered the lives of its authors. Norma Jean Darden was an actress and model in New York City in the 1970s. Her sister, Carole Darden (now Darden-Lloyd) was a child therapist. After the success of the book, the sisters began a catering company, Spoonbread Inc., which is still in operation. Norma Jean has two Manhattan restaurants, Miss Maude’s in Harlem and Miss Mamie’s Spoonbread Too in Morningside Heights, and she has toured the country performing a one-woman stage presentation of the book. “All this spun out of the book,” Norma Jean said. “If anyone had told me in college I would end up in the food business, I’d have laughed.” The effects have been personal as well as professional. “We met family members we didn’t even know about,” Norma Jean said. “We discovered a cousin. We found a whole new branch of Dardens.” They even discovered a few skeletons in the closet. Norma Jean in particular was shocked to discover that the woman she knew as Grandmother Corine was in fact her mother’s older sister, who had taken in her younger sister and brother after their mother’s untimely death. “When you do this sort of thing, you have to be prepared for surprises,” Norma Jean said. Norma Jean grew up in New Jersey, and her family often would take summer visits to relatives in Alabama and North Carolina. A whole chapter is devoted to food that the family would pack for those train and car trips, including Fried Chicken, Deviled Eggs and a Thermos of Lemonade. The chapter also includes memorable foods eaten at the homes of relatives they visited. “People made all these long trips to get together, and at the end of the trip was a pot of food,” Norma Jean said. “In those days, there was a lot of entertaining in the South, because there weren’t many restaurants, or you couldn’t go to many restaurants, so you entertained at home. “Traveling was precarious. Going from town to town, you didn’t know where you could sleep, even,” because so many hotels and other establishments denied business to blacks. Such cultural and historical insights appear throughout the book, and Norma Jean credits its success at least partly to them. “In using my family … I managed to capture a lot of black families at the turn of the century,” she said. Norma Jean said that many younger people don’t know a lot of the history woven into her family’s story in the book. “Hopefully, this book will teach them,” she said. “The sense of charm, the sense of dignity, the great quest for education, and the fact that they were all pulling together. “And against such great adversity, they managed to live their lives with a great deal of finesse.” Michael Hastings is a staff writer for the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina. Collard Greens 11/2 quarts water 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper 11/4 pounds pork neck bones, or 2 ham hocks About 8 pounds collards Fried Chicken for 4 1 small onion, coarsely chopped or grated 1 /2 cup diced celery 1 /2 cup mayonnaise 1 tablespoon prepared mustard 1 tablespoon pickle relish 1 teaspoon or more celery salt Pimento, stuffed olives, green-pepper rings for garnish Boil potatoes in their skins until tender. Cool, peel, and cut into coarse chunks. In a small bowl, mix the salt, paprika, dry mustard, oil and vinegar. Stir this into the potatoes, mixing lightly. Chill for several hours. Add chopped eggs, onion and celery. Stir in mayonnaise, prepared mustard and pickle relish. Season liberally with celery salt. Garnish with pimento, stuffed olives, and green-pepper rings. Makes 6 servings. — Adapted from Spoonbread & Strawberry Wine CYANMAGENTAYELLOWBLACK 2 teaspoons sugar 1 /2 cup cider or white vinegar Salt and pepper to taste Place water in a large pot. Add red pepper and bones or hocks and simmer for about 1 hour while preparing greens. To prepare greens, discard damaged or yellow parts of leaves. Cut away tough stems from each leaf and wash collards thoroughly until clear of dirt and grit. Collard leaves are large and usually require cutting before cooking. To do so, fold each leaf in half at its center vein, fold over once or twice, then cut in half with scissors or a knife. Add sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper to bones in boiling water, then add the greens. Cover and cook rapidly for about 30 minutes or until greens are tender but firm. Best served with diced raw onions and additional vinegar. Makes 16 servings. Note: The liquid in which greens have been cooked is called “pot liquor.” It is renowned for its nutritional value and can be used as an excellent vegetable stock for soups, as soup in its own right, or, traditionally, to dunk corn bread. — Adapted from Spoonbread & Strawberry Wine Potato Salad 6 medium potatoes 2 teaspoons salt 1 /4 teaspoon paprika 1 /4 teaspoon dry mustard 5 tablespoons salad (vegetable) oil 2 tablespoons apple-cider vinegar 2 eggs, hard-cooked, peeled and chopped Photo courtesy of Harlem Moon/Broadway Books Norma Jean Darden (left) and Carole Darden-Lloyd are having a 25th-anniversary reissue of their book “Spoonbread & Strawberry Wine.” 1 21/2- to 3-pound chicken, cut into serving pieces Salt and pepper to taste 1 3-pound can vegetable shortening 1 cup plain flour 1 teaspoon paprika 1 teaspoon dry mustard 3 /4 teaspoon grated nutmeg 1 /2 teaspoon garlic powder 1 /2 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste Wash chicken pieces in cold water, leaving some moisture. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. In a plastic or brown paper bag, place flour, paprika, mustard, nutmeg, garlic powder, cayenne and salt. Place a few pieces of chicken in the bag at a time and shake until evenly coated. Melt shortening in a Dutch oven or large skillet. If fat sizzles when a drop of water hits it, drop in the coated chicken pieces. (Be careful to only place one drop of water in fat; a larger amount of water could cause dangerous splattering of oil.) Place chicken pieces in hot oil, making sure not to crowd the pan. If necessary, cook chicken in two batches. Fry pieces until golden brown on both sides, then drain on paper towels. — Adapted from Spoonbread & Strawberry Wine