from the Charleston Academy of Domestic Pursuits
by Francine Maroukian & Suzanne Pollak
Before Amazon and international shipping, certain foods used to exist in only one part of the country and you had totravel there to eat them, like fried clams in Connecticut or Lobster rolls in Maine. REAL Americana food, totally nostalgic and stupidly good. Often there was a small window for their appearance, and other foods became so part of place they were elevated to the official snack food of the state...
Zitner’s Chocolate Covered Eggs - Francine Every year about this time, an old-fashioned candy shows up in the Philadelphia area for a short time: Zitner’s Chocolate Covered Eggs. Since moving here from NYC over a decade ago, I’ve learned to embrace them as a true and delicious harbinger of Spring. There are tiny little food moments like this all over the country; small local items that may have escaped the voracious hunger of online availability, and are known mostly to the area residents. You probably have some in your hometown.
Although I learned this year that Zitner’s is now available via the inevitable, I feel okay because it’s impossible to deliver the same seasonal appreciation and anticipation. Made in Philadelphia since 1922, I will even be serving an assortment of Zitner’s—Coconut Crème, Peanut Butter and the iconic Butter Krak (butter cream with toasted coconut in dark chocolate crust)—as dessert after my annual lamb dinner this week. And just like every other year, there will be no complaints.
Boiled Peanuts - Suzanne
Boiled peanuts are a specific taste that defines place but when I first moved to the South, I didn’t get that. I needed to expand my opinions and Hominy Grill* was the spot that made that happen. This restaurant was so rooted in place that Chef Robert Stehling's** cooking sort of defined Charleston, especially in the early days before thecity became a culinary capital. Hominy Grill presented boiled peanuts to every patron like little gifts, a casual multi-bite version of amuse-bouche. When I lived in Nigeria and Ghana as a child, we ate groundnut stew and saw boiled peanuts for sale on the street. Certainly, enslaved people brought peanuts and ways to cook with them from Africa to America.
With time, I came to adore the official snack of South Carolina. Aversion turned into a craving because of repetition, brought about by my wanting to start every day at Hominy Grill. Along with other devoted locals, the restaurant became our habit, THE place for a meeting. One well-known local chef met there every Thursday with his sous; three priests gathered at the same table after morning mass across the street; doctors and residents ended their night shifts with breakfast and a cocktail if they so desired (the cocktail menu started at 7:00am.)
The weekend was for tourists, but the rest of us came Monday through Friday if we could, before the days of serious coffee shops on every corner. No fancy coffee or lattes, soy or frothy milk at Hominy...just the biggest baddest biscuits (the "Big Nasty"), delicious long-cooked plain or cheese grits, and especially those little rectangular cardboard containers full of boiled peanuts plopped on the table as soon as you sat down. Everyone started with peeling the warm salty peanuts, which might be one of the world’s best appetizer enhancers and drink accompaniments.
One morning Danny Meyer ate breakfast next to me. The wait staff left him alone and so did everybody else. Maybe they did not recognize him but more likely they were doing what we all did: minding our own and getting right down to businesseating, meeting, and peeling peanuts.
In this unnerving time, people are reimagining how they engage with the world. Now it seems especially appropriate to eat the food made in our hometowns. It's fantastic, and local businesses need the boost.
* Hominy Grill was open for 24 years. Talk about "site specific," patrons came from all over thecountry and mourned the restaurant’s closing in 2019.
** It can take a 2008 James Beard Award-winning chef like Stehling to make sure boiled peanuts don’t turn icky, slimy and tasteless, but rather into tasty treasures.
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Home School is a publication of the Charleston Academy of Domestic Pursuits.
