Ga. chef celebrates Southern cooking

DECATUR, GA. — He almost could feel her fingers beside his, the way she crimped the edges of her fried pies — her seal of grace. He almost could see her, too, plucking boiled peanuts from a brown paper sack, eating barbecue beneath the canopy, savoring the autumn harvest.

Gracious, Miss Lewis would have loved it.

Scott Peacock, accomplished chef of The Watershed in Decatur, Ga., celebrates the Southern palate at his restaurant with country ham and red-eye gravy, fried catfish and hush puppies, roast duck breast and whipped potatoes, BLT salads and pimiento cheese.

The fare is inspired by his mother's table, and from Edna Lewis, the grande dame of Southern cooking, former consultant at Middleton Place restaurant, and forever "Miss Lewis" to Peacock. His departed mentor and friend died nearly 2 1/2 years ago at 89, but Lewis' lessons, memory and relevance abide.

"I wasn't interested at all in Southern food until I met her," Peacock says. "So I think that it's appropriate to see that it continues."

Last week, Peacock and his four partners, including the Indigo Girls' Emily Saliers, commemorated the 10th anniversary of their acclaimed restaurant with a gathering that harked back to Peacock's childhood in Hartford, Ala.

The restaurant, a converted service station decked in gentle tones of beige and blue, became grounds for a mini-carnival: hay scattered across the parking lot, a ring toss and old-fashioned cakewalk set up, bluegrass and square-dancing, oysters on the half-shell and bags of boiled peanuts.

The Watershed even called on Charleston pitmaster Jimmy Hagood and his BlackJack team to fix barbecue.

"I remember we would have these festivals where I grew up and the Lions Club or Jaycees would dig a trench on a lot downtown, and fill it with fire and burn the coals," says Peacock, a James Beard recipient for Best Southeast Chef. "It's sort of a re-creation."

No trench was needed this time, only a buffet line, and slow-roasted pork shoulders to accompany Peacock's victuals. Like a picnic, the Watershed's guests sat outside on hay bundles and inside at long communal tables.

Peacock and his staff stocked the buffet with red rice, collard greens, coleslaw, potato salad, baked beans, cornbread muffins and several desserts. The side dishes were unadorned, without effect and delicious, just simple, clean Southern representations.

"You don't think of potato salad as being necessarily a complex dish," Hagood says. "But the simplicity of his ... the textures and flavor were just amazing."

It was much like Lewis learned growing up in Freetown, Va., a settlement founded by her grandfather and other freed slaves. Her approach was pure, as she turned to the seasons and her family's backyard for flavor. Lewis' cookbook, "The Taste of Country Cooking," first published in 1976, is thought to be a classic study of Southern cooking.

She greatly influenced Peacock, who early on wanted to cook like Julia Child or become an Italian chef or learn French cuisine.

"It was Miss Lewis who said, 'That's great, but you should know about your own food first,' " Peacock recalls.

They made an unlikely pair: Peacock, an openly gay white man, and Lewis, an elderly black woman. The two penned a cookbook together, as she became his guide, and he her student, then later her caretaker.

As such, all proceeds from the anniversary party went to Plymouth Harbor, an Atlanta nonprofit ministry that helps senior citizens continue to live at home. Lewis participated in the program for about a year and a half.

"They were just tremendous to us," Peacock says.

Not to the same degree, but Hagood also found an improbable guide in an older, black woman named Mary Ruger. She cooked for his family at their hunting lodge in Colleton County, making tremendous breakfasts of fried chicken, biscuits and grits from artesian water on a wood-fired stove. As a child, it fell to Hagood to gather the wood and start the fire.

"It was etched in my being," Hagood says. "She was very important in my life."

Those experiences stirred Hagood's interest, but unlike Lewis, Ruger didn't care to share her secrets, and Hagood didn't push her. Ruger died about 15 years ago just as Hagood was beginning to dream up his Tidewater Catering and barbecue business.

"It's one of my biggest regrets," Hagood says. "She could have taught me so much."

At The Watershed, every note, every meal, seems a tribute to Lewis, from its farm-to-table approach to the tea olive trees, which, like Middleton Place, are planted outside the restaurant.

"(Lewis) would talk about the smell of the tea olives at Middleton when she walked past the kitchen windows in the afternoon," Peacock says.

He owes her so much, similar to Southern cuisine, and its revival and acknowledgement.

"People would say, 'You know, my mother, she was a good Southern cook,' " Peacock says, "as if they were qualifying it in a way. That it was good, but it wasn't really cooking.

"We're finally stepping outside of that."

Credit goes to Lewis and others as dogged as she.

"She had such a solid sense of who she was," says Peacock. "And that was such a powerful thing."

Reach Rob Young at 937-5518 and ryoung@postandcourier.com.