Scenes from Sweet Auburn Curb Market



Sweet Auburn Curb Market/Photo by Atlanta Culinary Tours

by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to tour Atlanta's oldest farmer's market, the Sweet Auburn Curb Market, which has been feeding Atlantans since 1918. My new friends at Atlanta Culinary Tours, Beth and David, guided a group of about a dozen culinary tourists through the market, admiring produce and sampling goodies along the way.




Collards at Sweet Auburn Curb Market/Photo by Atlanta Culinary Tours

 One of my favorite reasons to shop the curb market is collard greens. You can buy them whole and process them yourself, a labor and sink full of love, or buy them bagged and chopped, ready for the pot.

Produce like these turnips is fresh from the farm at the Sweet Auburn Curb Market. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Ciao Boca meatball sandwich by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

One of the first bites of the day was this delicious meatball sandwich made by Deborah, owner of  Ciao Boca, an Italian eatery inside the market.

One of my favorite signs at the market. by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

In these days of nose to tail cooking, the market is the place to get every porcine part, possibly even the oink. Other critter parts are available at the market, signs that I just don't see at my neighborhood Kroger. Not to be missed: a product new to me, rank meat, which is aged salted pork fatback, used for seasoning with Southern vegetables. That's right, a meat product marketed as "rank."

Signs at Sweet Auburn Curb Market by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

The Curb Market is a great place for ingredients and a meal. The market is set up food court style, with restaurants including Tilapia Express Seafood, home of outstanding fried fish. Metro Deli & Soul Food is home to exactly that - soul food specialties such as spicy, tender greens, the mac and cheese my kids wish I knew how to make; and crispy, juicy fried chicken. If you're near downtown Atlanta, pull into the parking lot adjacent to the market and be sure to get your parking ticket validated by a vendor. The first 90 minutes are free - probably the best parking deal in downtown.

Tilapia Express Seafood at Sweet Auburn Curb Market by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Get a plate of Southern goodness at Metro Deli and Soul Food. By Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Barbecue fans take note: Sweet Auburn Barbecue just opened in the market.

Sweet Auburn Barbecue by Lucy MercerA A Cook and Her Books

After your soul food cravings are satisfied, check out some of the quirkier items at the market, folk remedies such as this Georgia specialty: white dirt.

White dirt, a.k.a. kaolin, available at Sweet Auburn Curb Market. By Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

White dirt is kaolin, a clay mined in South Georgia that has commercial applications in the paper, paint and rubber industries. It's also consumed as kind of an earthy antacid. If you've ever heard the expression "clay-eater," this is where it comes from. And if you're wearing your smarty pants, you already know that clay-eating is a form of geophagy ("earth eating") and pica (eating of non-food items).

Which brings us to another popular folk remedy, the golden elixir known as Wild Bill's Yellow Root Tea, a tonic used to lower blood pressure and treat diabetes.

Wild Bill's Yellow Root Tea by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Wild Bill's is a convenience product, you may prefer to make your own, using freshly harvested yellow root, also available at the market. I love the homemade signs!



Yellow root at Sweet Auburn Curb Market by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books



There's plenty more at the market, including the best pralines I ever ate, made by Louisianan Dionne Gant at Miss D's New Orleans Pralines. I didn't realize how grainy my homemade pralines were until I tasted hers - smooth, creamy, sweet-but-not-too, featuring Georgia grown pecans. (I'll return there during Christmastime for sweet stocking stuffers.)



Miss D's New Orleans Pralines/Sweet Auburn Curb Market

 Start your day at Cafe Campesino, just inside Sweet Auburn Curb Market. We sampled hummingbird scones, a novel take on the Southern banana cake with pineapple and pecans, and some bracing brews from the selection of fair trade beans.



Cafe Campesino/Sweet Auburn Curb Market



Sweet Auburn Bakery by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 The sweet stuff is abundant at the Curb Market. Sweet Auburn Bakery is justifiably famous for its sweet potato cheesecake.

Time to disclose that Atlanta Culinary Tours allowed me (and my mom!) to take the tour gratis. If you're looking for a weekend activity, check out their list of tours. For $32 a person, you fill your brain and belly with Sweet Auburn lore and love. An excellent date, with a special someone, or your mom (we had a blast!).

Sweet Auburn Curb Market is located at 209 Edgewood Ave. SE near downtown Atlanta and is easily reached from the connector. Pull into the parking lot and get your parking ticket validated - the first 90 minutes are free.

Tyler Florence on Southern Food

Tyler Florence takes a question from the audience at the Macy's Culinary Council event at Lenox Square.

Food Network chef Tyler Florence visited Atlanta in July and I'm recounting a few of the wide-ranging subjects he discussed. As just about every Southern knows, Tyler is a South Carolina native and grew up in Greenville. These are his favorite Southern foods:

For aroma, "hands down, collard greens" for the "mustard aroma and salt pork. In two seconds, I'm back to Grandma's kitchen." For taste, black pepper fried chicken. For mouthfeel, peach pie. "Southern regional cooking is the most important cooking right now. The most important historical heritage cooking is Southern. It translates coast to coast, it permeates the senses. You've got to pass it on to your kids." Amen, Brother Tyler.

More from Tyler:

1. Tyler Florence on his mission.

2. Tyler on why he won't be your Facebook friend.

3. Tyler on his new book coming out in October.

4. Tyler on dining out in America today


Many thanks for Macy's for the terrific pictures from the Culinary Council event.

New Year, New Hope

I feel the truth of what older friends and family have been telling me -- the years speed up as you go along. It seems like last month, I swear, that we welcomed 2009 with the prayer that it be a better, more stable and peaceful year for our families, our jobs, our country. Many feel like that hasn't happened. Yet there remains, as always, hope, and that's why today I'm eating black-eyed peas, soaked overnight and braised in the oven; and collard greens, this year the pre-chopped kind in the 2 lb. plastic bag, so much easier than rinsing fresh greens, cooked with a smoked turkey leg and served with red wine vinegar and coarse black pepper; cornbread baked in my cast-iron skillet; and homemade buttermilk-brined fried chicken.

I will take a moment to express sorrow for those non-Southerners without the grand tradition of this humble feast. The black-eyed peas are for good luck and the greens for lots of "greenbacks" during the year. The fried chicken and cornbread are because I can and I will.

So, I raise a fried chicken leg to my friends and family and readers and wish all of you health and happiness in 2010. May at least some of our wishes come true this year. And no matter what the year brings, may we still be able to afford black-eyed peas and greens when we welcome the new decade January 1, 2011.

Abundance of Riches

(Above) A sink of pure green: collards.

I was seduced by something green this week. Not a winning lottery ticket, sadly, but a 2 for $5 special on collard greens at the market. Big, fat bundles of the most perfect, clean greens I've ever seen. No slime, no grit, no half-eaten yellow leaves, just beautiful, cabbage-y collards ready to take home.

Here's a fact: you will never find recipes for collards in a Rachael Ray 30-minute meal cookbook. Cooking greens from scratch is a labor of love, which as another way of saying, a boatload of tedious work. But it is love for me, because, just like changing a newborn's nappies, cleaning and chopping collards, is a way to show your family you love them. That is, if your family likes greens, which mine don't. But someday they will, I just know it, which is why I bought the two humongoid bundles of drab green love and brought them home.

Not only are Rach's cookbooks devoid of greens recipes, so is my other fave ckbk, America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. I forged ahead with making standard Southern-style greens in smoked pork stock, a la Gift of Southern Cooking. Only after I cooked the greens did I think to look in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and where I spied a half-dozen collard recipes, all of them worthy of trying. Maybe next time.

This is what I did:

1. I pulled out my two largest pots and filled them half-full with water. Into each, I chunked a smoked turkey leg. I buy these in the supermarket, in the shrink-wrapped packages, and keep them in the freezer. (A good Southern cook should never be without porky or smoky seasoning, so, so I also buy smoked turkey wings, and country ham scraps or seasoning cubes, and freeze those, also.). I let the turkey legs boil while I washed and trimmed the collards.

2. In my vegetable sink filled 3/4 with water, I rinsed the collard leaves then began pulling off the stems. This is the tedious part, but a child can be taught to help, all you do is fold the leaf in half and pull out the tough stem, which should then go in your compost bowl. As Elle says, Rinse and Repeat with the remaining collards.

3. I took the clean greens and bundled them, something like a cigar of basil to be chiffonaded (is that a word?), and then sliced them into inch-wide ribbons. I let the chopped greens boil for at least an hour, covered for most of the time. When I left the house for the afternoon carpool run, I covered the pots with foil and placed them in the convection oven on 200 for about two hours.

Notice that I have not seasoned these greens yet. In my mind, greens take much less salt than you would imagine, and I never know how much they're going to cook down and how salty the seasoning meat is, so I wait until the end to sprinkle with a bit of kosher salt.

Now, to serve the greens. Some folks use pepper vinegar, and I always keep a bottle on hand, but I personally like red wine vinegar, just a splash. A perfect autumn supper would be a big bowl of collard greens, swimming in pot liquor, a wedge of warm buttermilk cornbread and a side of fresh black-eyed peas. My kids would take one look at that meal and request cornflakes, the if-you-don't-like-the-meal default, so here's the rest of the menu:

Autumn Menu

Roasted Cajun-Spiced Turkey Breast

Southern-style Collard Greens

Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Macaroni and Cheese