Saltbox Seafood Joint Cookbook

By Ricky Moore

Ricky Moore was born and reared in the North Carolina coastal town of New Bern, where catching and eating fresh fish and shellfish is what people do. Today, Moore is one of the most widely admired chefs to come out of the region. In this cookbook, he tells the story of how he started his wildly popular Saltbox Seafood Joint® restaurants and food truck in Durham, North Carolina. Moore, a formally trained chef, was led by a culinary epiphany in the famous wet markets of Singapore to start a restaurant focused purely on the food inspired by the Carolina coast and its traditional roadside fish shacks and camps. Saltbox Seafood Joint's success is a testament to Moore's devotion to selecting the freshest seasonal ingredients every day and preparing them perfectly.

In sixty recipes that celebrate his coastal culinary heritage, Moore instructs cooks how to prepare Saltbox Seafood Joint dishes. This cookbook, written with K. C. Hysmith, explains how to pan-fry and deep-fry, grill and smoke, and cook up soups, chowders, stews, and grits and seafood. Moore has taken pity on us and even included the recipe for his famous Hush-Honeys®, an especially addictive hushpuppy. Charts and illustrations in the book explain the featured types, availability, and cuts of fish and shellfish used in the recipes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Aug 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781469653549

Ricky Moore

James Beard Award winner Ricky Moore is the founder, proprietor, and chef of Saltbox Seafood Joint in Durham, North Carolina. He is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and served in the U.S. Army as a military cook.

Book preview

PRAISE FOR

SALTBOX SEAFOOD JOINT® COOKBOOK

"Saltbox Seafood Joint Cookbook speaks to that classic coastal cookery that resonates with folks young and old. Chef Ricky Moore educates us about food and waterways in North Carolina while offering us the best damn chowder you’ll ever eat!"

—MASHAMA BAILEY, executive chef, The Grey, and James Beard Award winner for Best Chef Southeast

"Even if Aquaman went to culinary school, he couldn’t have written a finer seafood cookbook than Saltbox Seafood Joint Cookbook. Chef Ricky Moore’s deep knowledge of—and love for—seafood shines on every page. This cookbook is hotter than fish grease!"

—ADRIAN MILLER, author of The President’s Kitchen Cabinet

"A marvelously big-hearted cookbook that feels like it was written by a friend who happens to run a great seafood joint (and who happens to be a classically trained chef). Introducing readers to the eastern North Carolina specialties Ricky Moore grew up learning to cook, Saltbox Seafood Joint Cookbook is refreshing and necessary for anyone who wants to cook fish at home."

—KELLY ALEXANDER, author of Smokin’ with Myron Mixon

Ricky Moore has captured the heart and soul of the North Carolina coast like no other chef ever has—a tremendous accomplishment. I have been waiting all my life for this cookbook!

—DAVID CECELSKI, author of The Waterman’s Song

"Chef Ricky’s recipes are secular and sacred. They exist between the soul of a Friday night fish fry and the gospel of a Sunday afternoon fish stew. Saltbox Seafood Joint Cookbook captures the rhythm where the Neuse and Trent Rivers meet with recipes that call for extended dinner tables and multiple second helpings."

—SHIRLETTE AMMONS, writer, producer, and musician whose albums include Language Barrier and Spectacles

Ricky Moore should be named a STATE TREASURE for his indescribably delicious work and passion that allows us to savor the distinctive seafood of North Carolina and the coastal South. Here he teaches us that good fish—anywhere—is local, seasonal, fresh, and simply prepared.

—MARCIE COHEN FERRIS, author of The Edible South

A cookbook that puts seafood up front, demystifying the process of selecting, prepping, and then frying, broiling, and grilling to perfection. Ricky Moore traces his evolution from the New Bern fishing hole to his military service, culinary school training, and experiences working as a chef at top restaurants—and then he recounts the wonderful story of how he started his restaurants in Durham, North Carolina. And I really savored the explanation behind his Hush-Honeys.

—BRIDGETTE A. LACY, author of Sunday Dinner: A Savor the South Cookbook

"Saltbox Seafood Joint Cookbook is a treasure that will be savored and read cover to cover by seafood lovers. Ricky Moore has focused his eye, from childhood to the present, on fish—catching, cooking, and eating it. His mantra is simplicity, breathtaking simplicity, and doing one thing well. He is the acknowledged master of cooking seafood."

—WILLIAM FERRIS, author of The South in Color: A Visual Journal

Saltbox Seafood Joint® Cookbook

Seasonal Seafood Freshly Cooked, Good Fish That’s the Hook®

SALTBOX SEAFOOD JOINT®

COOKBOOK

Ricky Moore

Written with K. C. Hysmith

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

CHAPEL HILL

This book was published with the assistance of the Blythe Family Fund of the University of North Carolina Press.

© 2019 Ricky V. Moore

Saltbox Seafood Joint® and Hush-Honeys® are registered trademarks of Ricky V. Moore.

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Designed by Kimberly Bryant and set in Whitman by Rebecca Evans

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Cover photograph courtesy of Briana Brough.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Moore, Ricky, author. | Hysmith, K. C. (Katherine C.)

Title: Saltbox Seafood Joint cookbook / Ricky Moore; written with K. C. Hysmith.

Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2019] | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019011821| ISBN 9781469653532 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469653549 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Saltbox Seafood Joint. | Cooking (Seafood)—North Carolina. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.

Classification: LCC TX747 .M774 2019 | DDC 641.6/92—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019011821

To my wife, Norma, for asking the question, Where can I get a good fish sandwich? and for all her wonderful support over the years. Being the spouse of a chef takes a special kind of person.

.....

Big shout out, high-five, and salute to my daughter, Hunter Johanna, and my son, Greyson Beckham, for always being my inspiration.

.....

And, finally, to all the hardworking fishermen, crabbers, and oystermen in North Carolina; without them, Saltbox Seafood Joint would not be.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION The Story of Saltbox Seafood

THE FISH KITCHEN RULES

School Lessons: Fish Varieties

Knife Work: Cuts

What’s Running When: Seasonality

Helpful Kitchen Equipment

Sources for Fish and Know-How

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE Stocks, Seasonings, and Sauces

FRIED AND JOY Pan-Frying and Deep-Frying

INTO THE COALS Grilling, Smoking, and Charcoaling

ONE-POTS Soups, Chowders, and Stews

PERFECT HOMINY Grits and Seafood

THE SPREAD Hot and Cold Sides

MENUS

Line Drawing Credits

Index

SIDEBARS

Fish Grease versus Other Grease

Freeman’s Beach / Seabreeze

Definition—Calabash

Definition—Fried Hard

A Bake Is Really a Boil

Smoked Fish

Please Don’t Say Trashfish/Uglyfish

White Bread Bone Cushion

Grits, Shrimp, Pork, and Gravy

No Such Thing as North Carolina Dinner Grits

West Indies Salad Mythology

Church Spreads and Cucumber and Onion Salad

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With gratitude, I would like to thank everyone who has supported the start-up and growth of a little 205-square-foot space located on Mangum Street in the Old Five Points neighborhood in Durham.

Special thanks to Dock to Door, Locals Seafood, Murray L. Nixon Fishery, Salty Catch Seafood, and Washington Crab & Oyster Company. Thanks also to NC Catch, the North Carolina Fisheries Association, and the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum & Heritage Center.

Saltbox Seafood Joint® Cookbook

Chef Ricky seasoning his Country Fried Potatoes with Onions and Green Peppers. Author’s collection.

INTRODUCTION

The Story of Saltbox Seafood

Growing Up in New Bern

Local seafood is my gospel and always has been. My mother’s side of the family came from a community called Riverdale, situated between New Bern and Havelock. My father was from Harlowe, halfway between Beaufort and New Bern. You crossed waters whichever way you went. I grew up along the Neuse and Trent Rivers and spent plenty of my childhood fishing those waters, but I don’t want this to sound as though we were eating fish all the time. We ate it whenever we could get it, whenever it was available, or whenever somebody went out fishing. This was real life, so we ate standard eastern North Carolina stuff, too, like greens with white cornmeal dumplings and salted pig tails, collard sandwiches, tender flat biscuits, fried chicken, and iceberg lettuce covered with thick salad dressing. It was never all fish.

A lot of people in my area didn’t have traditional families or upbringings where the mother or grandmother stayed home and cooked everything from scratch. They had jobs, too. My mother worked at the local hospital for a long time. She was incredibly busy, but when she had time to cook she always did it in a very organized way. At no point in her process was the kitchen ever a mess—she kept things clean and neat, and made things like priddy fried chicken, clean fried fish, and meatloaf with a tight and tidy ketchup glaze on top. My maternal grandmother, Bernice, worked in a Havelock school cafeteria and would bring home all sorts of extras from work. Hot, scratch-made dishes like lasagna, chicken tetrazzini, yeast rolls, and hamburger steak and gravy. Bernice had a close companion named James—we called him Tick—who learned to cook when he was stationed at Cherry Point. He was a kind of grandfather figure to me (and later married my grandmother Bernice) and was always cooking good food. Tick was known for his big breakfasts. They weren’t anything fancy—standard eggs and potatoes, fresh sausage, boiled and pan-fried ham, and bacon with a thick rind on it—but they were always done with precision.

Food and work were always tied up together. In the summertime, when we wanted some pocket money, all of us kids would get on our bikes and ride across the Bridgeton Bridge to go pick blueberries at Morris Blueberry Farm. The earlier you got there the sooner you could finish before it got too hot. The farm paid in crisp, clean dollars that stuck together when you first got them.