Sausage yeast rolls

I am so sorry at this moment that some of you reading this don’t live in or near Nashville. Because, unfortunately for you, that means that you cannot find your way to Fox’s Donut Den in Green Hills.

Most people would think that a trip to the Donut Den, as it is more simply called by the regulars, would involve doughnuts of some sort. But not for me. I will drive the 10 miles or so from my house in Brentwood just to get the sausage roll. The sausage rolls reside, without benefit of refrigeration, in the same glass cases containing the doughnuts. It is not uncommon in the South to find what someone from another part of the country might consider slightly lax food safety practices. We, of course, don’t see it that way. And nobody’s died yet.

In any event, I made a pilgrimage to the Donut Den yesterday for my beloved sausage roll, which is a giant disk of spicy sausage encased in a large yeasty potato roll. But when I walked in, there were none. None!

“Did you sell out?” I asked the woman behind the counter feverishly. “No,” she said, “The health department came by and we have to keep them in the refrigerator now.” Relief.

I order my roll. They are not inexpensive at $2.50 each. But they are worth every cent.

These things are about the size of a McDonald’s hamburger. I cannot emphasize enough how good they are. It amazes me that on the Donut Den’s own website they are not even mentioned. I am sad to say there’s no way to even get close to this at home, but if you want to get a fleeting idea of how good these sausage rolls are, try this. Get a bag of Sister Schubert’s Dinner Yeast Rolls. Then get a pound of Tennessee Pride Hot Sausage (or if you cannot obtain Tennessee Pride then any hot bulk sausage). Fry up some patties approximately the same size as the yeast rolls and give it a whirl. It won’t be a Donut Den sausage roll. But it will be mighty good.

Butter-topped yeast rolls

I got you there, didn’t I? Rolls. Butter. Oh, yes.

So I am over at Miss Wanda Woolen’s house last Sunday with the other English Tea people celebrating yet another triumphant event. On the dining room table, right next to the beautifully smoked shredded pork butt are these rolls. Big huge yeast rolls. They look homemade and they taste unbelievably good with the pulled pork and – I would never have thought of this but I now heartily endorse it – ranch dressing! I intend to have only one, since I have already consumed a plateful of cocktail weenies and two big wedges of blue cheese drizzled with honey and walnuts. However, my mental alertness slips away with the first yeasty bite and I have four. I am absolutely sure Wanda has made these ethereal rolls but when I ask her she says, “Heck no, I buy them in the frozen bread section at Kroger.”

Really? I practically trample the last of the guests to get out the door and over to Kroger. I am all about bread and I need some more of these rolls. The package looks unpromising. If you look at the photo on the front, the rolls look nothing like Wanda’s giant gems. However. Wanda has already provided me with the secret that I will now pass on to you. You nestle those frozen nubs nine to a 9-inch by 9-inch pan and you let them rise not the 3-5 hours the package suggests but 6 hours.

After that, you bake them and then brush the tops with melted butter. I will guarantee you that if you don’t want to be completely honest about their origins, nobody will guess these came from the grocery store freezer section. I am slightly embarrassed to report that between the two of us, Mark and I hate seven rolls. And then Mark snuck back into the fridge and ate the other two an hour later. We will not be making these rolls every day for obvious reasons. But I consider this one of the major food finds of 2011 and it’s only February.

Liquid smoke

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cash the check and it didn’t bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.” Stephen King wrote that. I am now going to relate it to BBQ.

As one of the Chicks In Charge competition BBQ team, Stephen King would consider me talented. I have, indeed, won money for my BBQ, the checks didn’t bounce and I did pay a bill or two with the proceeds. Modest proceeds. Very modest. But I know enough about BBQ to tell you that what I am about to write will immediately send several of my BBQ friends into cardiac arrest. I tried liquid smoke.

It is 20 degrees here in the sunny South, I could not pass up the pork butt at the Publix for 78 cents a pound and Cook’s Illustrated had an article on indoor pulled pork using liquid smoke. And I thought…what if? What if liquid smoke really works? It is all natural. Kind of.

The recipe calls for cutting the pork butt in half, which you could never do in a competition but I was going to worry about that little detail later. Then you make a brine with water, salt, sugar and liquid smoke and brine the butt for two hours. You rub it with mustard, more liquid smoke and a rub that has smoked paprika in it for even more “smoky” flavor.  After that you put it on a sheet pan with a rim, cover it with parchment paper and then with foil. Into the oven at 325 degrees for three hours. Then you uncover it and let it finish cooking to 200 degrees internal temperature for another hour and a half.

This is what it looked like when it was done. Not bad. I was beginning to get encouraged. Let’s see. I somehow figure out how to cut a pork butt almost in half at a competition so that it’s legal. Then instead of cooking the butt for 15 hours like normal, I get some shuteye and show up at the cook site at about 5 in the morning with my bottle of liquid smoke carefully concealed in my bag of wine (for later, of course). This could work.

My fellow competitors might wonder why there is no smoke coming from my cooker, like there was actually real wood in there, but I would make up a clever lie to conceal the truth. Here’s what the pork looked like after it was pulled. Nice and pink. Juicy. I was almost giddy with excitement! Until I tasted it. It was…well, it was not at all smoky.

Well, the whole day was not lost. I also did an experiment with cole slaw. Everyone in the South loves cole slaw on their pulled pork sandwiches. But there’s two kinds – Carolina slaw, which is vinegar-based, and regular slaw, which is mayonnaise based. So I made both kinds. You can figure out which is which.

I have to say I loved them both.

I made cute little sandwiches with Sister Schubert yeast rolls and some barbecue sauce I’ve had in the icebox for over a year (didn’t you know that barbecue sauce never goes bad?). Very tasty, if I do say so.

Here’s the recipe for the Carolina slaw. It’s worth the effort.

Carolina Slaw

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

6 tablespoons sugar

6 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 1/2 teaspoons dry mustard

1 teaspoon celery seed

2 bags slaw mix

1/2 minced green pepper

1/2  minced sweet onion

Combine the first five ingredients and whisk thoroughly. Chop up the slaw mix until it is in small pieces and add the green pepper, onion and dressing. Let sit in the icebox for at least two hours.

Things I Can’t Make Better

There are some things I just can’t make better. I am almost always in favor of scratch cooking over opening a box or a jar, but there are a few things that I can’t do as well as Mr. Pillsbury or Sister Schubert and I’m here to admit it. For instance, look at those cookies above. Aren’t they just scrumptious?

Well, this is where they came from. These are Pillsbury Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. I have cleverly hid the evidence in the trash. I cannot make them any better than some automated line of machines in a factory, probably somewhere in the North. I just don’t even want to know. But they’re terrific. They take 12 minutes to bake and clean up is a snap.

Here are some other things I can’t make better. Sister Schubert yeast rolls. I don’t know if everyone in the country has access to these but they’re absolutely wonderful. Do you know how long it takes to make yeast rolls. Mark remembers his Granny Belle making them from scratch. It took forever. Of course she didn’t use a recipe and of course Mark never stood over her shoulder to watch how she made them. But he is extremely fond of Sister Schubert’s yeast rolls and declares them just about as good as Granny Belle’s were.

Here’s another one. That rotisserie chicken you can get at the Publix or any other grocery store for that matter? Can you make it better? I don’t think so! It’s always moist and tender and the skin is just delicious. And you bring it home in a paper container. Here’s the deal, though. I do save the carcass and make chicken stock. So that’s kind of homemade.

The last two are just guilty pleasures in the Mayhew homestead. Manwich Sloppy Joes and Tater Tots. I am here to tell you I can’t make a Sloppy Joe from scratch that’s better than Manwich. This is our go-to meal on busy nights. And Tater Tots? Well, a classic and that can’t be argued with. How would you make those from scratch anyway?

So here’s the leftover Manwich and Tots tonight. Mark had court in Murfreesboro today and came home starving. Dancing With The Stars starts in nine minutes so I didn’t have a lot of time to cook (I am so rooting for the Iron Chef America guy who does that karate thing when the show starts!). And Noah had choir practice where he had to dress up in some Beauty and the Beast Disney costume. I had to make a costume for my 17-year-old senior in high school. I truly thought those days were over. At any rate, Noah’s in the kitchen now eating leftover Manwich and Tots. And I’m about to head off to the bedroom to watch Dancing.

There are times when I can’t make things better or faster. Tonight’s one of those nights.

Barbara’s Home Cooking

Now who doesn’t want some fried chicken, mashed potatoes and field peas after looking at this! Every other Friday from September to June, the P.E.O. Sisterhood meets to conduct its business, which is helping fund scholarships for deserving women. We meet in members’ homes, nosh on tea bread and mixed nuts, do our business, have a lot of laughs and then go to lunch. There are P.E.O. chapters all over the country, but there aren’t many chapters within driving distance of Barbara’s Home Cooking, the first stop on the lunch train to flavor town this year.

Pretty much every Southern town has an equivalent of what we in Middle Tennessee call “meat ‘n threes” – invariably humble establishments that serve a selection of meats and vegetables. It’s a standard joke that macaroni and cheese is considered a vegetable around here.

The thing about Barbara’s is that it’s really got a Barbara. She doesn’t come around to the tables to chat. She doesn’t check you out. She’s actually in the kitchen cooking. And while everything at Barbara’s is really tasty, the biggest draw are her yeast rolls. Served with real butter, just to gild the lily. When you sit down at the table, the first thing to arrive is a big basket of those yeast rolls. They are the size of a softball. And if you eat just one you’re not sane.

So our P.E.O. sisters all gathered around the table for lunch after our meeting. The truly inspired sisters got fried okra and baked apples and crab cakes and pimento cheese sandwiches. A couple of us attempted virtue by ordering spinach salads with poppyseed dressing and a scoop of chicken salad. We reasoned that by ingesting raw greens we could mitigate the effects of two or three yeast rolls slathered in butter.

And I want to tell you one more thing. At Barbara’s you pay on the honor system! You just go up to the cash register after you’re done and tell the nice young lady at the register what you had to eat. That is Southern hospitality at its finest.

One of the lost arts of the South is yeast rolls. Everyone’s granny made the best ones without consulting a single line of a recipe. Nowadays, Sister Schubert’s has cornered the market on mass-produced yeast rolls and they are utterly delicious. You won’t find an Episcopalian reception without Sister Schubert’s rolls encasing shaved ham.

But as long as Barbara is in the kitchen, you can always sample the real deal. I almost stuffed a couple of rolls in my purse before I left but I thought that would be crass. And no Southern woman wants to be considered crass.