"Homesick" for the Low Country.

This weekend I had planned to visit family on the South Carolina coast. Unfortunately, I was unable to get there due to flight cancellations.
The southern branch of my family is a very wonderful, warm bunch and I was very disappointed about missing the opportunity to spend time with them. Additionally, they feed me very well when I visit and I was pretty bummed about missing the chance to eat lots of fresh seafood and low country dishes. To console myself, I decided to cook up a couple of southern specialties for my family here. Yet again, this forum really came through for me--I was able to track down fresh green peanuts on Argyle, very good shrimp at Hagen's and kielbasa from Kurowki's deli.

Boiled peanuts:
I think boiled peanuts may be an aquired taste. I only know one person who really likes them who didn't eat them growing up. In fact, someone on this board admitted to throwing out a bag of them after their first sample (which, I think, should be a felony punishable by hard labor camps). Boiled peanuts are made by boiling raw/green peanuts in salted water for about 4 hours. I added some Old Bay seasoning as well. After reviewing posts on this board, I decided to make two batches--one boiled in beer, one in water. I have to say, I didn't think the beer added anything (although I lean towards being a bit of a purist and maybe this just didn't jive with my childhood memories). I will agree that beer is the perfect accompaniment to a brown paper bag full of b.p.s.





Frogmore Stew:
I'm not sure why this is called "stew"--it's really more of a shrimp boil which calls for unpeeled shrimp, onions, corn, kielbasa, +/-potatoes (I omitted them) with some Old Bay seasoning and a bay leaf or two.
This is one of those simple dishes that depends almost entirely on the quality of the ingredients. It is an absolute truth that the South Carolina coast has the best shrimp in the universe (O.k., at least in the world, I've only had shrimp on this planet). I realize some may perceive this to be a somewhat biased/subjective statement but noone will ever be able to convince me otherwise. As I didn't have South Carolina shrimp available, I headed to Hagen's for fresh "gulf of Mexico" shrimp--an acceptable Midwestern substitute. I got kielbasa swojska (I have no idea exactly what this is--I purchased this after an iffy Polish-English exchange and it turned out to be a nice, mild garlicky smoked sausage). The corn came from the small farmers market on the 4100 block of Irving and was quite good.


Consumed with some sweet tea and a slice of key lime pie for dessert, this made for a very nice midwestern substitute for low country cooking. Still, I'm hoping to make a trip south for "the real deal" this fall...

Still, to this day, I absolutely, adore boiled peanuts. I know that I'm truly back home when I don't get a funny look when mentioning them. There's nothing better than a big bag of boiled peanuts and a few beers at a tailgate before a Carolina game (if you have to ask which Carolina, you don't know where boiled peanuts come from).

A while back, I wrote a tribute on this site to my grandmother and one of my favorite dishes that she made, a true low country treasure, Red Rice. We ate this pretty much every Sunday after church at her house on James Island when we would visit from the family vacation house on Edisto.

They say your memories of food you ate as a child are really your memories of happy times with the ones you love(d). My memories of red rice are definitely memories of love and wonderful long summer days in the lowcountry with warm loving family members.

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.ph ... ight=parry