“You make cornbread for your husband, but biscuits for your
man…” – “Clifford Blake, Sr. Calls the Cotton
Press”. Louisiana Folklife Center. 1980
Nightly supper at Christian Fellowship Home in the early
90’s was a collective affair. An old cow bell clanged promptly at 5 PM to
announce it, and you had better show up for it, or at the least better had made
some previous arrangements with the house manager for a saved plate if you were
going to be home late from work, or you would miss it altogether.
In those days the house had to purchase all of its food, so
the menus were plain but plentiful. Chicken quarters, pork shoulders, and
hamburger meat were the usual staple main dish ingredients, with an occasional
ham or turkey showing their roasted carcasses around the holidays. And the
turkeys and hams were often as not donated. Meat and two vegetables, one of
which was usually inexpensive dried beans, were offered up on the daily buffet
table, accompanied by some kind of bread.
Our house manager had left the week before to take a better
paying job at the halfway house in Selma, and John – our tobacco chewing
ex-biker house cook -- had been promoted to manager. No new cook had been hired
yet, so he was doing double duty in the kitchen. John was a recovering biker
from the Outlaws club, and looked every bit the part. Every available inch of
his visible skin was covered with tattoos, and some of the more spectacular
“pieces” were on the parts normally covered by his clothes, like the picture of
the nude female in high heels and fishnet stockings chained to a post that went
from the base of his spine to up between his shoulder blades. He was a natural
leader. It took a while for anyone to discover that beneath that frightening exterior
was a noble and compassionate soul devoted to staying sober. Most of the men
liked and respected him. Most of the time, I was terrified of him.
Now, John had a way with outdoor cooking, and on festive
occasions when he would cook chicken or the occasional donated deer on the big
black grill in the backyard, no one could match him or his made from scratch
barbecue sauces. Inside the house kitchen it was another matter. His wild free spirit seemed to be a little
bit constrained between enclosed walls. He would grumble and fuss when things
boiled over or burned, but he took the cook’s responsibilities seriously, even
though he really didn’t enjoy it all that much, and he managed to produce a
tolerable supper.
Except for his biscuits. Light bread in the house was
reserved for the bologna sandwiches that we had every day for lunch. The cook
was expected to alternate between corn bread and biscuits for supper. John’s
cornbread was fair, but his biscuits were heavy, leaden, hockey puck like
objects, hard on the outside and soggy on the inside. They came out the oven pale and anemic looking, like Yankee
tourists on the North Carolina beach in winter. They were the butt of many a
house joke, and as they were passed around the dining room, many a resident shook
their head and took one only as an uneaten courtesy before passing them on
around, or declined them altogether.
“There’s something wrong with this stove,” John said to me
as I chatted with him while he cooked supper one evening, “No matter how long I
leave these biscuits in, they never get very brown.” One glance at the old
six-burner gas range’s oven thermostat was enough to see why; it was set far
too low. And the thirty minutes that John had spent with the rolling pin
thumping, rolling, and re-rolling the dough was enough to account for their
Playdoh brick like texture.
So one evening I decided to do him a favor. “Hey John,” I
said “How about letting me make the biscuits tonight?” “Okay, why not?” he
said. “Everything else is done and I’m ready for a break.” He went to the porch
for a chew and left me in the kitchen.
I knew how to make biscuits. An old woman in Louisiana had
taught me two valuable skills: how to drip chicory coffee and how to make
biscuits. Miz Coutzee brooked no foolishness in her Cane River kitchen. Weak
coffee was an anathema to her; she called it “merde d’hibou”, which was French
for “owl shit.” “Good coffee must coat the spoon, Robair! If you can see the
bottom of the cup it is not strong enough!” And poorly made biscuits were absolute
heresy, as she remonstrated when she slapped my hand away from the rolling pin
I was reaching for one day. “No, NO Robair! Rolling pins are for pie crust,
never for biscuits!”
Piled in the middle of the flour dusted wooden kitchen
worktable was her mound of soft, moist, slightly sticky dough. Formed from a
loose and very gently mixed aggregate of soft Southern wheat self-rising flour
– “ Only southern soft wheat, understand, Robair! The northern wheat is good
for bread but too hard for biscuits!” – shortening and milk, gently coaxed to
thickness with her flour covered fingers, and cut into rounds with an de-lidded
empty tin can, they were rested with sides touching in a pan for a short time
to rise, and then were put in a very hot oven for about 40 minutes.
Between Miz Coutzee’s kitchen mentoring and growing up on
Masonboro Sound, where homemade quick breads were a staple of daily eating, I
knew what a good biscuit was supposed to look like. Sadly, John’s fell far
short of the ideal.
So I made the biscuits just as the old lady had shown me,
cranked up the oven and just as the clock showed five, piled them, crusty and
brown on the outside and softly steamed on the inside, on a big plate and took
them into the dining room where John and the men were gathered. The snickering began almost immediately
“Well now,” Slim, the old painter said, putting two biscuits
on his plate. “What’s this? This
actually looks like a biscuit.”
“Yeah,” said Pops, the old high tider from Wanchese, “Think I can
actually chew these without breaking my plates! Pass the syrup, please.” In the
corner by the door, John was turning red. As the biscuit plate went around the
room the jibes got bolder and bolder, and the laughter got louder and louder.
“Call the Pope, it’s a miracle!” one man hollered. “It’s the miracle of recovery!” the man who got the last biscuit
cackled, and the room exploded in loud hilarity. John gave me a furious look,
got up and stormed out of the dining room.
New and insecure in my place at the home, I felt awful. I
hadn’t meant to show John up. Would he
kick me out over this? Where would I go? Leaving my supper plate untouched on
the table I went to find John.
John was sitting in the dark on the porch rocking
furiously. Afraid to get too near, I
called softly from the safety of the front door; “John, can I talk to you?”
“What is it?” he said sharply, not looking a bit in my
direction. I tentatively moved a little
closer.
“Well, John, I’m sorry, I was only trying to help.”
“No, you weren’t. You were showing off. You made me look
like a dam fool in there.”
The cannonball in the back of my throat dropped down into my
stomach. “I know I did John. Well, I…”
And then I had one of those intuitive flashes that would serve me as guideposts
in years of recovery to come.
Showboating was one of my major problems. Gifted by my Creator in a
number of ways, I had usually used those abilities to make myself look and feel
superior to others on many occasions. Not once did I pause to consider how John
might feel if my biscuits came out better than his. Not once had I ever used my
talents just to promote good and benefit others, it was always about me and how
good I would look. It was plain I had a prideful arrogant streak in me a mile
wide. So keenly did I regret at that moment the bonds of my customary arrogance
that I wanted to crawl under a rock. I
carefully slid down into the porch rocker next to John.
“Look, I’m sorry John. Please forgive me. I…well…I just hope
I can work on the arrogant attitude I’ve got. I’ve always had it. I can see
that now. I don’t want you to kick me out over this. John, I’ve got nowhere
else to go. Let me make it up to you. Whatever I can do to make it up to you,
I’ll do.”
John looked away in disgust and spat a stream of chewing
tobacco juice expertly over the front porch rail into the flowerbed. We sat in silence for a few long moments. I
fully expected to be told to pack up and leave.
“Waaaal,” he drawled, and eyed me critically up and down for
an instant. “I’ll tell you what. You’re a good cook, there’s no doubt, those
biscuits prove it, and with Jay gone, I got enough to do around here without
having to cook too. So here’s how you can make it up. You take the cook’s job.
It won’t pay much, but it’ll give you enough to pay your rent with a little
left over. And every meal you cook can be your amends, and that’ll be fine with
me. But…” and he leaned over and fixed me with his tough biker eyes so there
could be no mistake, “ if you ever show me up like that again in front of the
men, it’ll be your last day in this house.”
