Monday, August 27, 2007
Food & Life More common than swee'tea
Posted by Cliff Bostock @cliffbostock on Mon, Aug 27, 2007 at 6:50 PM
Probably the only thing more common than a gigantic glass of ice-cold, syrupy "swee'tea" this time of year are the articles about the beverage. I know that sounds cranky, but let's have something new. My teeth hurt just reading the zillion articles published every summer about the sugary brew.
How about sassafras tea? When I was a kid, we'd dig the roots out of a creek bank and boil them. According to Wikipedia, sassafras is the main ingredient in root beer. In ground form, it's the filé powder used in Cajun cooking. And safrole, the main component of sassafras essential oil, is used to make MDA and MDMA (Ecstasy). It was sometimes added to moonshine, another popular Southern beverage.
Let's move on from swee'tea to home-brewed hallucinogens!
Anyway, Slate recently published an essay about sweet tea. My crankiness aside, it's a good read and includes input from Scott Peacock of Watershed, now officially the king of Southern cooking, thanks to his James Beard Foundation award. Writes author Jeffrey Klineman:
One chef I spoke with — Scott Peacock, who spent eight years bunking and writing with the Grand Dame of Southern cooking, the late Edna Lewis — suggested that Dixie's taste for sweet may have evolved from the use of sugar as a preservative. Peacock's dad grew up in a small Alabama town where they didn't have much refined sugar. In towns like that, he said, they grew cane, milled it, and put it in jars. People anticipated the crystallization of the cane sugar with great excitement, eager to stir it into their tea.
Check out the essay here.
Comments (1)
Showing 1-1 of 1
like
dislike
Latest in Omnivore
-
Local restaurants honor the late Warren Bruno
Percentage of sales will be donated in Warren Bruno's honor.
-
Weekend food events, May 25-27: 3B Fest, a patio party, and more
Weekend events for Friday May 25 to Sunday May 27.
-
Waiting on Shaun Doty's chicken at Ansley Mall
It's a game of retail dominoes
- More »
More by Author
-
Chicken mole: a reason to visit Mi Barrio 1
Dining in Grant Park
-
Oh, those evil children in restaurants 2
Grant Central still attracting international attention
- More »
