We are down South: biscuits, sausages and red eye gravy.

That'll be the Southern U.S. My husband is from Georgia and needs to be kept ticking along with soul food like cornbread and, for this dinner anyway, biscuits. I've been enoying the tour of Atlanta, Georgia over at Flickr. Here we have something dear to the heart of this household: cornbread (note the butter!) and a big glass of iced tea. Thank you to Jasonlai: I've been enjoying your pictures.

But back to the biscuits, sausages and red eye gravy.

Now, biscuits: not cookies, but something more like a scone, served with savoury food as an indispensible starch. If you care to go back through the blog, you'll find a biscuits recipe (courtesy of the Virginian mother in law -- although I've decided that you'll need a little more milk than is stipulated in this recipe). Just find the July the 4th section and you're away.

So, make your biscuits and, while the dough waits for a little while to one side, begin to cook your sausages. Really, I'd stipulate patty or bulk sausage, which is to say sausage meat shaped into a fat rissole. It's worth undressing some good sausages for this, if you cannot find decent sausagemeat. On this occasion, though, I used some sausages (as in links) from some proper outdoor piggies and they were just dandy.

Right: put your sausages on to cook. On the hob is best, but because I'm zealous about econonomy right now, I did them in the oven because it was going to be on for the biscuits. Cook your sausages for about twenty five minutes in a hot oven and then put the biscuits in the oven. (The biscuits will take ten to fifteen minutes.) When both are done, keep the biscuits warm under a tea towel and then drain off about half of the fat from the sausages and scrape at any tasty-looking residue left in the pan. If you cooked them in the sort of pan which can also go on the hob, great; if not, transfer this fat and all the juices to a small saucepan and then add a roux made from a tablespoon or two of the juices and a heaped tablespoon of plain flour. Heat it gently and then add --HERE COMES YOUR RED EYE GRAVY---- 120ml of water and 120ml of coffee. By coffee, I mean 120ml of water with about a teaspoon of instant coffee granules added to it (or the same volume of filter coffee). You can also use tea, made with a teaspoon of tea (strained) or one tea bag. So, stir well, bring the lot to the boil and check for seasoning. Then serve with your sausages, the biscuits and, if I were you, some well-cooked greens. We had spinach. I suspect the husband would  have preferred collard greens that I'd cooked with a ham hock for about three hours -- just like his granddaddy.

And the boy was happy. Have you met my husband, by the way? Bath City fan extroadinaire: you can find him at.
http://nedvedsnotes.blogspot.com/

FURTHER NOTES:

*Oh and the sauasges: never prick a sausage of note; just lay it down to lie in a dish or frying pan and cook it for longer than you would think. That's how you get a sausage with a perfectly sticky skin. I've said it before, I know: small but significant detail.

*Red eye gravy is also made with country ham, for which I refer you to Damon Lee Fowler's Classical Southern Cooking.  (Crown, New York, 1995.) Many more to enjoy from him, though. http://www.facebook.com/people/Damon-Lee-Fowler/729229387

And just one more: when the Georgian husband and I are in Atlanta, here is somewhere I always want to go: the Varsity. Elvis ate there once, you know. It's huge. I love it. http://www.thevarsity.com/

Sweetcorn: a feast.

I've had some lovely sweetcorn from an organic box. Riverford: to be recommended -- and they kindly gave me lots of vegetables as they left our food festival here in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire. Thank you. Here's a link -- they didn't ask me to do this, I should say! I'm just a customer. www.riverfordorganicveg.co.uk

Right: Here is what I did with my haul of corn -- plus another idea or two. By the way, the picture you see --it's elsewhere on the blog, too-- is of my favourite tin. This is for cooking the Southern cornbread to keep the Georgian husband in fine fettle and under the thumb. Ooops: I said that aloud, didn't I? This tin makes beautiful ears of cornbread. Courtesy of  Mom, latterly of Georgia, lately of Virginia.

Just cooked in water..

1. Choose plump ears in their rustling little jackets. Just undress them, bring them to the boil and then cook gently until toothsome -- which would be about fifteen minutes. All you need is butter. Some like to add salt and maybe even a little vinegar, but I just like them with the butter dripping down my chin. We do have some sweet little sweetcorn-shaped prongs to hold them, but usually, I just take a couple of napkins or bear the heat. They are a feast.

In the oven...

2. Corn roasted in the oven. Take as many ears of corn as you would like to eat. Now here is what I have seen in the Southern Unites States. Let the corn soak --in its jackets-- in cold water for ten minutes or so, then peel back the jacket without removing it. Pull out all those little wispy bits --those are the silks-- and put the jackets back. Then, twist the jacket at the top to seal in the corn. Nice touch, huh? Now roast the corn in a hot oven for about twenty minutes. Then just hand them over with a dish of decent butter.

On the barbeque or...

3. An autumn barbeque. Now, I have eaten roasted (some mght call it griddled) corn in a few parts of the world. Here is something I happen to love.

Undress the corn and then soak it for ten minutes or so. Dry it carefully. Now, take it up in your hands and massage it with a mixture of oil and butter (or just oil), salt, pepper, red chilli flakes and lime juice, whack it on a hot barbeque, under a hot grill or onto one of those heavy gridle pans. Allow it to sizzle away, making sure that it does not burn. This process will take about ten minutes. Keep turning. You may find that you have a few slightly charred bits and that some of the corn niblets are a little chewy -- but this is not corn as you may have had it before! Serve it with another helping of lime, salt, chilli and pepper. You will want to lick your fingers and, I would imagine, everyone else's too.And a top domestc tip for you is to serve this for your loved one when you have been squabbling -- you know, over the low-level domestic drudge stuff that must be dealt with.That kind of energy sapping thing. It will cheer you up, surprise you, it's messy and then you can do that thing with the fingers that I was just talking about.x