Thursday, December 3, 2009

The Dillard House



"Yeah, it's that good." An unidentified diner makes a dive for the roastingears at the Dillard House in Dillard Ga.






Do this: Rent a copy of the movie Deliverance. Fast forward to the final scenes, when Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty and Jon Voight walk into an old inn by the river and are met by an ample woman who feeds them home cooking and puts then up for the night. That woman was Nancy Dillard and her inn was a way station for river rats along the Chattooga in North Georgia for many years. It was her nephew Billy who played the part of the banjo picker in the movie.
The Dillards have had a long tradition of feeding the hungry in the Northeast corner of Georgia, along the Chattooga and the Stekoa. My wife and I find an excuse at least once a year to make the three hour (one way) trip to this picturesque part of the country where the peaks of the Blue Ridge seem to be melting into blue-green lumps and there is still breathing room between the conglomeration of strip malls and fast food joints that has polluted even the smallest of small towns in America.

Our excuse this time was the annual Foxfire Festival that is held on the grounds of an old Rabun school in Dillard Georgia. The Foxfire story deserves a column in its own right. The brainchild of Elliot Wigginton, who received a McArthur Fellowship for his work, Foxfire began as a small magazine written and edited by Wigginton’s Rabun High School English classes. His mission was to record the fading traditions, folklore and ingenuity of the old mountain folk so that it would be preserved for future generations. Forty-three years after its inception, the idea has become a movement, with the magazine still going strong and 14 volumes of The Foxfire Book in print. I stumbled across the first volume of the Foxfire book in a mall bookstore shortly after it was published in 1972. Printed on the cover was a short list of the topics covered: Hog dressing, Log Cabin Building, Mountain crafts and foods, Planting by the signs, Snake lore, Hunting tales, Faith healing, Moon shining. It was all the stuff of stories, some told to me directly, some learned by eavesdropping, that I had heard from the people of my grandfather’s generation since I was a small child. My grandfather, who was a Constable, made extra money busting moon shine still in the foothills of the Blue Ridge during the depression. He fed his family through hard times by hunting in the hills and raising crops and meat on a small holding in northern Greenville County, SC.

One of the stars of the first volume of The Foxfire Book is Aunt Arie, a widower in her eighties at the time of publication who lived in alone a small cabin in the mountains She was immortalized by Jessica Tandy in the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie Foxfire not too many years ago.
Many of the books have old time recipes, including the recipe for Brunswick Stew my wife and I use today. These recipes were most likely repeated from memory into a tape recorder. The measurements are often spotty, and since much of the cooking was done on wood stoves, cook times and temperatures are often only a guess.

Next door to the old Rabun school is the Dillard House, founded by another member of the Dillard family many years ago. The Dillard house is a family style restaurant, meaning you don’t get to pick and choose from a menu, the entire menu is brought to your table in bowls and on plates and you can eat all you want and more. The rustic dining room looks out across the Stekoa valley to the bucolic campus of the Nagoochee school.

It was a chilly, wet afternoon when we stomped the rain off our shoes at the door to the lobby. We had arrived between the breakfast and lunch hours and were given a number. We browsed the gift shop until our number was called and then we were led to a table by the window which gave us a panoramic view of the valley. On the table were a Waldorf salad, a bowl of slaw and a salad of fresh tomatoes, onions and cucumbers in a vinaigrette. It wasn’t long until the rest of the food arrived, and the table top was covered in dishes, bowls and plates. Meats included country ham, barbecued pork ribs, and fried and baked chicken and roast beef. Sides included collards, braised potatoes, cabbage, their marvelous acorn squash souffle, fried apples, green beans, field peas and corn on the cob. Seconds were offered whenever the waitress noticed we had emptied a serving vessel. I took her up on several items including two refills of collards. Dessert was coffee and apple pie a’ la mode.

It’s easy to forgive a restaurant that provides this amount of food for skimping here and there on quality, but at the Dillard House everything is perfectly seasoned. It’s as if a squadron of grandmothers is scurrying around the kitchen putting their best Sunday Dinner efforts into the victuals. More than a meal, this is an experience to be savored. This is not a quick bite. This is slow food, to luxuriate in, taking time to enjoy every morsel. This is food that relaxes, that unleashes brain chemicals usually known only to long distance runners or Alpinists. This food gives you a natural high.

The Dillard house has become my gold standard for good, simple food. It’s about the best use of a twenty dollar bill I can think of.

Diner rating: 5

Brunswick Stew
2 pounds cooked ground beef
1 pound cooked lean ground pork
1 small cooked chicken, chopped
3-4 diced potatoes
1 pint whole kernel corn
1 cup lima beans
2-3 chopped onions
1 pint tomatoes or tomato juice
catsup
chile powder
salt
black and red pepper
worcestershire sauce

The directions say,"Put all ingredients in a big pot and cook for a long time."

From The Foxfire Book, edited by Elliot Wigginton, New York, Random House, 1972

You can almost hear an old mountain woman rattling off the ingredients while tapping her fingers and gazing off into the distance. We substitute boneless skinless chicken breasts, which we boil, then cut into pieces, for the cooked chicken, and we add frozen green peas and a couple of bay leaves. We serve it over rice. The recipe calls for a “pint” of tomatoes and corn because the mountain people preserved their own vegetables in pint or quart canning jars. Of course now you get your tomatoes off the grocery store shelf. Use a 14.5 ounce can of diced tomatoes and frozen corn. This makes a hearty, highly caloric dish. It is designed for people who spend their days chopping wood, herding cattle or hoeing corn, not sitting at a desk punching buttons. Use your own judgment on the spices and condiments. This dish freezes well.

The Dillard House Acorn Squash Souffle

1½ cups mashed acorn squash
½ cup mashed butternut squash
¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs separated
½ cup heavy cream
¼ cup butter, melted
½ cup flaked sweetened coconut

Halve the squash and remove the seeds. Boil the squash until tender. Let cool and remove the pulp and puree in a blender or food processor.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Lightly grease a 2-quart casserole dish and set aside. Beat the squash well in an electric mixer. Add the sugar, salt, ginger and vanilla and beat well. Mix in the cream and melted butter. In a separate bowl beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold the egg whites into the squash mixture. Pour into the casserole and sprinkle with the coconut. Bake 30-40 minutes until puffed and lightly browned.

(from www. projects.eveningedge.com/recipes)