By popular demand we've restarted our Sunday brunch ... but, alas, only for the month leading up to Christmas. In the interest of venturing from our daily cafe menu, we've taken inspiration from Hugh Acheson's charming cookbook, A New Turn in the South.
Acheson is a native Canadian who has been cooking most of his life. He also spent many of his formative years in the South and remains devoted to using local ingredients in his dressed-up dishes. Like Birmingham's Frank Stitt and many other star cooks popping up around the region, this long-view of local food has produced an intriguing and eclectic new Southern cuisine. Acheson's singular mix of Southern ingredients with European style is exhibited in several restaurants in Athens (Five & Ten, The National) and Atlanta (Empire State South), Georgia. The recipient of numerous cooking honors, Acheson may be most familiar to viewers of Bravo's Top Chef, including a recent stint as guest judge and a contestant in Top Chef Masters season 3.
We began studying A New Turn in the South in preparation for Acheson's visit to Greenwood this Wednesday, December 7, and discovered several impressive variations on old favorites that we adapted in our small, ovenless kitchen where we prepare lunch throughout the week.
Our first week's feature was Chicken Bog, a delicious chicken concoction ladled over rice. Some diners looked askew at the name until they smelled the essence of concentrated poultry wafting up from this dish, which is like a comforting mix of chicken stew and gumbo. It's a real crowd-pleaser that we've already made several times.
We also tried Acheson's spinach salad with pecans toasted in butter, salt and sugar and cayenne pepper. These spicy pecans were amazing, and we popped so many samples that we had to cook more to keep from depleting the stock for the salads, which were rounded out with blue cheese and pear slices. Toss it in a nice shallot-thyme vinaigrette or really any of the great dressings he features in the book.
The recipes were such a success that for this past weekend's brunch, looking ahead to New Year's, we made a batch of Hugh's zesty Hoppin' John, the basmati rice worked in with the black-eyed peas and poblano and pepper vinegar. The results were a real uplifter on a dreary day.
We're still working out of this book and will dish out a few new samples for Acheson's appearance here at Turnrow on Wednesday. Make a point to be here anytime from 5 to 6:30 p.m. to meet Chef Acheson, and please consider signing up for the Viking Cooking Class to follow. If you can't be here and would like a signed copy of A New Turn in the South (one of the season's top cookbooks), reserve a signed copy at our website.
And by all means, stop in one of the next two Sundays and enjoy brunch with us, a rare treat in a town starved of Sunday restaurant-eating options.
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