Despite his penchant for dishes accustomed to white tablecloths and carefully arranged silverware, Jeremy Zabel prefers more common fare — catfish, hushpuppies, collard greens, grits, the product of a hardscrabble south.
“It’s French, it’s English, it’s native, it’s African, it’s everything all together,” he said, ticking off the influences that defined what was once considered a humble culinary region.
Across the old south people borrowed from the cultures that settled the region, even those shackled to the land, adapting with ingredients at hand. From cornbread crisped in lard to okra fried with a cornmeal batter to red beans and rice, the patchwork of southern cooking represents global fusion born of necessity and limited means.
That makes it attractive to the general manager and chef — along with Francisco Cervantes — at Lakeport’s Park Place Restaurant. Zabel even keeps a can of bacon drippings in his home pantry.
So shrimp and grits was a natural addition to the menu. For decades a mundane breakfast dish little known outside the low country along the inlets and marshes from South Carolina to Georgia, the dish gained prominence in the 1980s when an upscale chef in Chapel Hill, North Carolina dared serve it to guests and a traveling. New York Times writer happened upon it.
The combination allowed creative chefs to play with flavors, to convince diners more familiar with polenta to accept a pile of grits topped with sweet shrimp, tasso and other ingredients. By 2006, Nathalie Dupree was able to dedicate an entire cookbook to shrimp and grits.
Because of the newfound reverence, Zabel points out, “that’s one of those dishes you want to do right.”
Zabel, Cervantes and crew start by preparing a compound butter of Worcestershire sauce, paprika, smoked paprika and other spices more closely associated with Cajun cooking. In this they saute the shrimp — large, wild caught shellfish — and sausage, deglazing with white wine.
The treatment lends a rich, earthy tone to the beautifully firm shrimp that mutes the natural sweetness. Just a hint remains, tracing around a huskier savor.
The resulting broth also gains, developing a sunset hue and layers each seemingly more resplendent than the last. The range of this broth is extraordinary — a top note tangy and sweet, wavering between light balsamic and aged rice wine vinegar; a raspy echo of herbs and a rumble of spicy heat that blends nicely with Andouille sausage. There is also a baritone lifted from the pan, grounded with a bitter trace.
While the Andouille sparks to life when touched by the broth, this bottom note burrows into a second addition of sausage, this time a rustic pork grind.
“It’s definitely a good balance,” Zabel said.
All of this is calmed by a mound of grits, stone ground for a more notable texture. The grits slow the passing of day to night, allowing the colors of sunset to linger. The leisurely stroll of grits into the broth lends a tranquility that affects even the gruff heat of the Andouille.
It is simply captivating.
“Those are old school grits,” Zabel explained — organic and milled with weathered stone. “It has a creamy taste, almost vanilla.”
Zabel is right to favor dishes from the backroads and low lands of the old south. Sometimes in the commonplace, in shrimp and grits, one finds bliss.
Dave Faries can be reached at 900-2016
