I just got off the phone with my grandmother. And let me say now, that she is an amazing cook. Her chitterlings rock almost as hard as her avgolemono. Well, her stove broke down and she’s been a few days without it, so, being the resourceful ninety-five-year-old she is, she’s returned to some of the recipes of her past. Now ... I learned years ago, that when my grandmother starts talking about dishes from when she was a child, I, well, have to take them with a grain of salt. This is probably good advice concerning anyone that’s lived through the Great Depression.
I was about sixteen years old and visiting her in her now ninety-year old home in Tarpon Springs, FL (sponge capital of the world, baby!) that was built by her grandfather. Well, she and my uncle were reminiscing, somewhat fondly I might add, about Depression-era life. They were going through all the foods they grew, trapped, and collected to get by. Robin, sweet potatoes grown in the back yard, raccoon, opossum, and chickens that she raised until well after I was born. The conversation worked its way around to the topic of pones and my ears perked up. Always excited about a new recipe (especially one worthy of the literary attention of Twain) and with the promise of old-timey flavors dancing through my head, I extracted the concept of sweet potato pone from the two of them and started setting up supplies.
Aside from the sheer labor involved in older recipes, the most difficult part about cooking from them is that well, there aren’t any. People back then cooked from instinct and habit and assumed everyone else did too. My mother has a cookbook from the ‘50s that’s a collection of recipes from the Gulf Coast of Florida. They list ingredients and not much else. Even for cakes ... you get a list of how many eggs to use, how much flour and sugar and that’s about it. Flavorings like vanilla and salt don’t list quantities and there are virtually no instructions for mixing or the application of heat. Fine for a sandwich, but difficult for a cake if you don’t understand the mechanics of baking.
Well, I made my way to the kitchen, peeled a few sweet potatoes, grabbed a grater, and headed back to the living room to get to work. Having peeled twenty-pound bags of white potatoes by hand for my father’s catering business, and having watched my grandmother sit and snap peas while watching television or chatting with friends, I knew that soul-food food prep was generally an intense process. Still, I was determined to make my pone. I sat ... for what must have been half an hour, running sweet potatoes across the fine, zesting side of the box grater. After about fifteen minutes, my delicate teenage hands were beginning to wonder if someone had played some cruel trick on them ... but I pressed on. Hands raw and exhausted, I mixed the mush of sweet potato, eggs, flour, and blackstrap molasses and put it into the gas stove to bake. It was hard, but it would be worth it. My labor would not be in vain.
An hour or so passed and I waited excitedly as the pone cooled. I dished up plates of pone, topped with whipped cream, and passed them out to my family. It so, totally, wasn’t worth it. The stuff tasted like the Depression...the whole thing ... the US Dust Bowl, Japan’s February 26th Incident, the rise of the German Nazi party ... all in one shallow, molassessy-bite. I immediately acquired a deeper appreciation for refined sugar and dairy.
With this in the back of my mind, I understood that, when my grandmother told me that her breakfast today consisted of refrigerated beef consomme, sliced and topped with lemon juice and pepper, I should let her keep that taste experience to herself.
