By Jill Warren Lucas

Chef Jay Pierce has turned an old joke upside down at Lucky 32 Southern Kitchen.

Why did the customer cross the road?

To get the locally-sourced, deeply-seasoned, irresistibly lard-fried chicken served on the other side.

Crowds are beginning to gather at the Cary location on Wednesday nights, where the three-piece chicken dinner – served with tender collards, mashed potatoes and a hunk of cornbread – is featured for $17. It’s even more popular at the Greensboro location, where it’s sold on Tuesdays.

Pierce knows diners could get fried chicken elsewhere, and probably for less, but he’s confident that his is the best.

“You expect people to come in with some contempt,” he said with a bemused shrug. “When people ask why we charge so much, I tell them, ‘You probably wouldn’t like it.’”

Actually, Pierce is more likely to playfully poke at diners who aren’t yet under the addictive spell of the special. “Sometimes we cook up a big order of wings and I walk around putting just one on the plates of people who didn’t order it,” he said. “I love to see their faces when they try it. I really want them to come back and have it next time.”


Creating the perfect fried chicken became something of an obsession for Pierce when the restaurant gave up its global menu and added Southern Kitchen to its name last year. The owner wanted a dish that would stir fond memories of grandma’s skillet-fried chicken – even if they never had it before.

There are at least two problems with that, Pierce said. First, cooking in skillets is not efficient in a large commercial kitchen. Also, while he admits to the guilty pleasure of Chik-Fil-A sandwiches, fried chicken was not native to Pierce’s experience of growing up in New Orleans.

“I tried so many variations before I worked it out,” he said, ticking off a list of soaks ranging from buttermilk and iced tea to pickle juice. He finally settled on a variation of the late chef Austin Leslie’s recipe featured in “Fried Chicken: An American Story” by John T. Edge. It’s also been published in Food & Wine.

“We put our own spin on it, but it’s a revelation,” said Pierce, stressing that the ingredient he borrows most from the original is the technique. “I can’t imagine chicken getting any better than that.”

Lucky 32’s version starts by generously seasoning chicken from Hopkins Poultry of Browns Summit with salt, pepper and smoked paprika. The dry-rubbed pieces then air-dry in the refrigerator at least eight hours to ensure deeply-flavored meat and crisp skin.

Just before frying, chicken pieces are dunked in a bath of beaten eggs and buttermilk from Homeland Creamery of Greensboro and dredged in a tub of Creole spice-spiked, self-rising flour from Midstate Mills of Newton. Next stop is a Swiss Braiser, a tilt skillet as big as Grandma's old washtub, filled with 20 pounds of golden lard rendered by Cane Creek Farm of Snow Camp.

 “It’s all non-hydrogenated,” Pierce said, gazing at the glistening fat that boiled vigorously as he deftly placed a row of plump breasts. “It’s a lot better for you than Crisco.”

The braisier is key to what makes Lucky 32’s friend chicken special. Instead of floating in a deep fryer, the chicken sizzles on a heavy grill pad that Pierce can tilt to swirl fat where it’s needed, such as a thicker breast portions, while the thighs and wings stay lightly submerged.

“It’s easier than using your grandmother’s skillet,” Pierce said, noting how the vast surface and finely-tuned thermostat keep the oil at a consistent temperature. “I can load at least 10 three-piece dinners in here at once – and I can fit 13 at the one we have in Greensboro.”

Pierce takes the challenge of fixing chicken seriously as he knows so many Southerners consider it the measure of a good cook. “It’s not as easy as it looks. There’s a lot of technique involved with cooking Southern food – good Southern Food, I mean.

“For people who grew up with it, fried chicken is practically a Proustian dish,” he said. “There are so many memories tied to it. That’s why it has to be so good.”


(For the perfect companion to the fried chicken, check out Chef Jay's recipe for Sweet Potato Hushpuppies.)

Lucas blogs at Eating My Words. Follow her at @jwlucasnc.

See related story about Chef Jay Pierce and the Feb. 15 CHOP event at Lucky 32.

By Jill Warren Lucas
Like Jay Pierce’s journey to develop the ultimate fried chicken for Lucky 32, the sweet potato hushpuppies took several detours before landing on the appetizer menu.“The truth?” Pierce said with a born storyteller’s glint in his eyes. “They started out as pumpkin ravioli.”

Before Lucky 32 expanded its name last year to include Southern Kitchen, it reduced the scope of its former global-cuisine menu. One of Pierce’s first targets with the fated ravioli.

“Actually, it was summer and winter squash in the same dish. Blasphemous!” he said with a shudder. Pierce knew he wanted to modify the recipe to keep it seasonal, so he tweaked it several ways before he felt he’d found a tasty alternative: deep-fried pumpkin ravioli in a ham cream sauce. “Everyone loved it but the owner,” he recalled. “I mean, he liked it, but he said, ‘It’s not Southern.’ He told me, ‘You can do better.’”

Pierce went back to the drawing board and to his culinary awakenings in Florida and the Gulf Coast. There, he said, hushpuppies are big and fluffy -- “not the scrawny Civil War rations” found in some North Carolina eateries.

“Some people think they’re not really hushpuppies because they’re bigger and less sweet,” he said. “They taste like what they are: earthy sweet potatoes.”

The dark, crispy globes are served atop a pool of creamy ham sauce scattered with green onion. Light and savory, they are a perfect start for a fried chicken dinner.

by Matt Lardie


If there is one defining characteristic of the Southern culinarian that I most adore it is that she is an ardent proponent of pork. The pig is the mascot of the Southern kitchen, and every part of him is revered. Pork rinds, barbecue, ribs, chops, jowl, sausage gravy...all sing the praises of the mighty porker.

Growing up in Connecticut my exposure to the pig was mostly limited to pork chops, pork loin, and bacon. Ribs were mostly of the beef variety, and barbecue was a verb, not a noun. Don’t get me wrong, pork chops can be a revelation when they are done right, but when they are done wrong; let’s just say you’d be better off putting gravy on a football. It wasn’t until I moved to North Carolina that I fell under the spell of the pig, and now I’m addicted. I can make sausage gravy in my sleep, I have learned that bacon is a flavoring as well as a food, and if you need to find me at a pig pickin’, I’ll be the one finger-deep into the pork jowls, face dripping with fat. I’m not exaggerating when I say that a pig tattoo might be somewhere in my future.

Hams have always escaped me though. Buying a huge ham to cook for two people has always seemed like a waste, and I can never get the 1960’s ham-and-pineapple image out of my head. There just seemed to be so much more to pork than ham, so I generally left it alone.

And then I got a copy of the Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook. There, in the gravy chapter (a whole chapter on gravy!) was a recipe for Ham and Redeye Gravy. It called for coffee. Coffee! Who the heck ever heard of coffee and ham, together? I remain convinced that this recipe must have been the concoction of some hung-over, or possibly still drunk, cook who mistakenly poured his coffee into the skillet instead of something else.

Nevertheless, I’ve made a commitment to explore some of the South’s most famous recipes, and Redeye Gravy is surely up there at the top of the list. I picked up a ham steak (something else you’ll almost never find in a Northern grocery store) and got to work.

First of all, the recipe is deceptively simple. It is basically three ingredients - ham, coffee, and brown sugar. I cheated a bit and rendered the ham fat in my skillet with some leftover bacon fat, but I figure that only Southern-fied it even more. Once I got going the aroma was intoxicating. Now I’m an impatient cook, but I made myself follow the directions of waiting until you see the first wisp of steam before removing the lid from the skillet, and I’m glad I did. I was hit with a burst of sweet, caramely, hammy steam that almost made me drool right into the pan.

My only concern with the recipe is that it says to wait until the the ham browns before continuing on to make the gravy. Sounds easy enough, but I quickly realized that when you cook ham in a coffee gravy it pretty much turns everything brown. I decided to let it cook another five minutes just to be safe, and everything seemed to work out fine.


The recipe says to serve the ham with biscuits for sopping, but since my husband is in the midst of a gluten-free experiment I settled on mashed potatoes, but I would urge you to go with the biscuits. Everything is better with biscuits. And bacon. Heck, make an extra side of bacon to go with the biscuits and ham. Any way you approach it, things will taste delicious once smothered in Redeye gravy.

Country Ham with Redeye Gravy
Recipe by Allan Benton in the Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook

Makes 2 servings

Ingredients

• 2 slices country ham, about ¼-inch thick
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil, as needed
• ½ cup fresh, hot coffee, divided
• 1 tbsp packed light brown sugar

Directions

1. Trim the fat from the ham slices. Put the fat in a large cast-iron skillet and set the ham aside. Cook the fat over medium heat until it renders, about 3 minutes. (If there isn’t much rendered fat, add the vegetable oil. This is where I used bacon fat.)
2. Pour ¼ cup of the coffee into the skillet. Add the brown sugar and stir until melted. Place the ham slices on top and cover the skillet with a lid. Cook over medium heat until wisps of steam come out from under the lid (it took about 5 minutes), then uncover and cook the ham until it is lightly browned.
3. Transfer the ham to a warm plate and keep warm. Discard any remaining pieces of fat. Add the remaining ¼ cup of coffee. Increase the heat to medium-high, and cook, stirring up from the bottom, until the gravy comes together and cooks down a little, about 2 minutes.
4. Serve hot with the ham slices, as well as biscuits for sopping.

By Jill Warren Lucas

Shakespeare famously wrote that “if music be the food of love, play on.” But don’t try to pull that mess
on Virginia Willis.

“I once had a very romantic date with some chocolate,” said Willis with an amused sigh of
recollection. “Loving and kissing just comes to mind.”

Though she’s published recipes for some intoxicating sweets in Bon Appetit, Y’all: Recipes and Stories
from Three Generations of Southern Cooking and her new, much-praised Basic to Brilliant, Y’all: 150
Refined Southern Recipes and Ways to Dress Them Up for Company, Willis rarely swoons for cake or pie
– even if chocolate is a key ingredient.

For true romance, the sort she proposes as necessary for a proper Valentine, it’s got to be Chocolate
Pots de Crème, a decadent delight she first learned when studying culinary arts years ago at L'Academie
de Cuisine and Ecole de Cuisine LaVarenne in France.

“They are rich and indulgent, and certainly meant for special occasions,” Willis said during a recent
phone call from her Atlanta kitchen. “But the best part is they are dead easy. There’s no worrying about
curdling eggs or any of that. If you can melt chocolate, you can make pots de crème.”

Featured in her first book, and shared below, pots de crème may look complicated but are, she
said, “nothing more than French pudding cups.” Their simple ingredients and mostly hands-off
preparation allow plenty of time for what Willis deems the best part of any meal: the time spent with
your beloved.

“I definitely prefer to eat at home on Valentine’s Day,” she said, pairing it with New Year’s Eve as the No.
1 days to eat in. “Restaurants are crowded, everyone is busy. It’s all about turning the tables.

“Having said that, I love to share the cooking and make it an enjoyable experience for us both,” she
said. “But you don’t have to stress and do it all at once. This dessert, for example, can be made the day
before. All you have to do is whip some cream.”

Despite her mother’s devotion to Cool Whip, which is humorously detailed in an anecdote printed above
the recipe, Willis recommends that heavy cream to be whipped into a lush cloud, without sugar, just
before serving.

“A friend of mine who is very healthful chooses to use fat-free, non-dairy Cool Whip,” she said with a
distinct shudder. “To me, it’s just too sweet. I’d rather had a teaspoon of whipped cream then two cups
of Cool Whip.”

Willis also suggests Crisp Roasted Duck with Peach Barbecue Sauce from the new book for the main
course, and perhaps Apalachicola Oysters with Sauce Mignonette for a starter.

“It’s fairly typical, but it always makes people happy,” she said, acknowledging the mollusk’s MO as a
heady aphrodisiac. “It’s easy and it’s delicious.”

While Willis is thrilled that Basic to Brilliant, Y’All has earned critical acclaim and landed on several year-
ending best-of lists, she was less pleased that her name became entwined with Paula Deen’s recent
announcement that she was diagnosed three years ago with Type 2 diabetes.

Amid the whirlwind of media attention that followed the news – a private matter, to be sure, but one
revealed in connection to a lucrative pharmaceutical endorsement deal – New York Times writer Julia
Moskin picked Willis to represent purveyors of “new” Southern cuisine.

“It wasn’t that long ago that I as writing recipes for a PTA newsletter, so I’m always surprised when
anyone wants to talk to me about anything,” said Willis. “My position is that Southern cooking doesn’t
have to stay trapped in the past. In fact, a lot of what’s been promoted as ‘traditional’ really isn’t. I did
not grow up eating deep fried mac ‘n cheese wrapped in bacon, and neither did anyone I know.

“To think we are just fried chicken and overcooked greens is very one dimensional,” she said. “Also,
we’re not all working on the farm anymore. We don’t need a 1,200-calorie breakfast to sit at a desk.”

Willis noted with pride that she has taught and cooked her recipes at some of the nation’s best-known
spas “almost verbatim from my books.”

“There are a lot of problems with Southern food and big problems with obesity nationally. In a positive
light, (the attention) is helping people have a constructive dialogue about Southern food and how it can
be made delicious by using healthy, seasonal ingredients. For me, it’s all about fresh ingredients and not
doing too much with them.”

Willis will continue to offer insights on Southern fare in what has become her Y’all series.
She’s “noodling” on a theme now and hopes to have the next volume on book shelves within two years.
In the mean time, the chef is drafting a different sort of book, “a very personal culinary story” about a fifth-generation farmer.

“It will really stretch me as a writer,” she said. “It’s amazingly satisfying to hear that that people like the
stories in my books. People may be coming from a different place when they read me, but it’s all about
the community you build at the table.”

And if your community includes a beloved partner, so much the better.

Chocolate Pots de Crème

(Reprinted with permission from Bon Appétit, Y’all: Recipes and Stories from Three Generations of Southern
Cooking by Virginia Willis, copyright © 2008. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House.)

Undeniably creamy and indulgent, these are the French version of pudding cups. Pots de crème are traditionally baked and served in individual ceramic pots with lids, how they got their name.

Much to my consternation, Mama buys Cool Whip instead of using freshly whipped cream. She recycles the tubs for food storage and other uses. I think a pet hamster was once gently laid to rest in a Cool Whip coffin. Whipping real cream is easy, and my mother’s opinion aside, it really does taste better. The key is that everything must be well chilled: the heavy cream in the refrigerator, and the mixer beaters and bowl in the freezer until cold to the touch. I prefer not to add sugar or vanilla to the cream, as I think the dessert is quite often sweet enough and sweetened whipped cream is overpowering.

Serves 6

1 cup heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
5 ounces best-quality semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
5 large egg yolks
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pinch of fine sea salt
Whipped cream, for garnish

Position an oven rack in the lower third of the oven. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Place six 6-ounce
ramekins in a roasting pan.

In a saucepan, combine the cream, milk, and chocolate over medium heat. Bring almost to a simmer;
remove from the heat. Set aside, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate is completely melted.

In a large measuring cup, whisk together the egg yolks and the sugar. While whisking, add a little of
the hot milk mixture to the egg mixture to combine. (This technique is called tempering; it makes the
temperatures of two mixtures—one containing raw egg— more similar, so the egg won’t curdle in the
presence of heat.) Add the remaining milk mixture, and whisk to combine. Whisk in the vanilla and salt.

Pour approximately 1/2 cup of the egg mixture into each ramekin. Cover each ramekin tightly with
aluminum foil to prevent a skin from forming. Fill the roasting pan with enough boiling water to come

halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake until the custards are just set in the center, 35 to 40 minutes.

Remove the pots from the water, and place on a wire rack to cool, about 30 minutes. (I usually remove
the pots with tongs and leave the roasting pan of water in the oven. Turn the oven off and let the water
cool until it is safe to remove the pan.)

When the pots de crème have cooled completely, refrigerate to chill thoroughly, preferably overnight.
Just before serving, top with a dollop of whipped cream.

Lucas blogs at Eating My Words. Follow her at @jwlucasnc.

(Reprinted with permission from Basic to Brilliant, Y’all: 150 Refined Southern Recipes and Ways to Dress Them Up for Company by Virginia Willis, copyright © 2011. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House, Inc.)

Serves 2 to 4

There is no doubt a well-prepared, well-executed roast duck can be a bit of trouble for not a whole lot of meat. You will notice this recipe serves two to four, not the normal four to six. But, oh my, the flavor is worth every bit of effort.
Duck possesses a rich, red-meat flavor. Much in the way that pork has a natural affinity for sweet-tart barbecue sauce, so has duck. When peaches are not in season, you can substitute frozen peaches for the barbecue sauce.


Click 'read more' for the recipe.