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JANET K. KEELERThe lessons that Scott Peacock has learned from his friend and co-author, Edna Lewis, extend far beyond Southern cooking.
Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock are proof that friendships take hold between the least likely people. And in rare cases, something tangible, like maybe a book, grows from that bond.
The authors of The Gift of Southern Cooking (Knopf, $29.95) couldn't appear more different, and yet each burrowed into the other's heart and now live in the same home.
Lewis is an 87-year-old black woman who grew up in Freetown, Va., a small town her grandfather founded after his emancipation from slavery. She lived much of her adult life in New York City, first as a chef at Cafe Nicholson, a favorite haunt of playwright Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. Later, she was the executive chef at Gage & Tollner, a century-old Brooklyn landmark.
Peacock is a 40-year-old white man raised in Hartford, Ala., an hour from the Gulf of Mexico and all the seafood fished there. He has been chef to two Georgia governors and is now the executive chef at Watershed in Decatur, Ga.
"The superficial differences are glaring," Peacock says by phone from Decatur. "But we're both quiet and shy and can be very pensive. . . . She's my best friend. The least of what I've learned from her has to do with cooking."
About five years ago, Peacock and Miss Lewis, as he calls her, moved in together. She needed someone to care for her, and Peacock so treasured his friend that he invited her into his apartment.
Miss Lewis' health doesn't permit her to travel, but she still boils her coffee every morning in a saucepan, heating milk in another. Her secret is a pinch of salt added with the sugar. In the days when they went on research trips, Peacock says, she'd show up with a "hobo bag with all her little coffee paraphernalia."
Forget Starbucks; Miss Lewis knows better.
And when it came to Southern cooking, Miss Lewis taught Peacock to embrace the cuisine he was overlooking in his rush to discover something new. When they met, he was plotting an escape to the Italian countryside to find himself, or at least learn to make perfect pasta.
"I had no particular interest in Southern food," he says. "But through Miss Lewis, I was able to see the uniqueness of what we have here."
He did make it to Italy, in 1993, with then-77-year-old Miss Lewis.
The Gift of Southern Cooking was born at Miss Lewis' 80th birthday party after a suggestion from Knopf editor Judith Jones. Miss Lewis had written The Taste of Country Cooking, In Pursuit of Flavor and The Edna Lewis Cookbook. Peacock is the main writer on the new cookbook, though he says the work didn't come easily despite his belief that Southerners are natural storytellers.
"It was painful," he says. "It took seven years to write the book. There was a lot of research and a lot of neurosis or being just completely overwhelmed."
His tribulations are not evident in the evocative tribute to the wide-ranging cuisine of the South. (Peacock credits Jones with smoothing the rough spots.)
Though corn bread, fried chicken and greens are certainly part of the cuisine, they do not represent the breadth of food found in Dixie. Southern cuisine, arguably the most storied regional food in the United States, grew from a society of leisure supported by slaves, many of whom taught white children how to cook. That has helped preserve recipes and traditions.
"And as Miss Lewis is quick to point out, even if you are an oppressed people, that doesn't mean you couldn't express joy in things such as cooking," Peacock says.
Peacock was raised on food fried in peanut oil, a product of the plentiful Alabama peanut crop. Miss Lewis was more familiar with butter and lard because her family raised livestock. He ate seafood; she didn't. She had many lettuces, from red leaf to butter, in her salads; he knew only iceberg.
More differences for sure, but more fodder for a cookbook that doubles as a tribute to friendship.
AT A GLANCE
Scott Peacock will appear at 10 a.m. in Dendy-McNair Auditorium.