Free The Pat Conroy Cookbook by Pat Conroy

brought a rock band from Birmingham to our home on Fripp Island. I walked out from my bedroom and found six young men sleeping in various stages of undress. I counted nine tattoos, but those were only the visible ones. We went to Gay’s shrimp dock to buy seven pounds of shrimp. We doubled the recipe for corn pudding. The band was a hungry one, and we remember those young men for their unappeasable appetites, not their tattoos.
    • SERVES 6
    8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
    ¼ cup sugar
    3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
    ½ cup evaporated milk
    2 large eggs, lightly beaten
    1½ teaspoons baking powder
    Two 10-ounce boxes frozen white corn, thawed and kernels blotted dry
    1. Place a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350°F.
    2. Butter a 2-quart casserole and set aside.
    3. In a medium saucepan over low heat, melt the butter. Mix together the sugar and flour and stir into the butter. Stir in the milk, eggs, and baking powder.
    4. Add the corn and pour into the prepared casserole. Bake until lightly firm, about 45 minutes.
    You can also add sautéed green onions, blooming chive blossoms, or a pinch of cayenne pepper
.

    COCONUT CAKE I cannot say “coconut cake” without conjuring the beloved image of my beautiful aunt Helen Harper. Every time I saw her during my boyhood, I would ask her to bake me a coconut cake, and she never let me down, not once. To the Conroy children, the Harper household was a basin of permanence and stability as we rambled from base to base up and down the Southern seacoast. The Conroy family could walk into the Harper house at 945 North Hyer Street in Orlando, Florida, and nothing would have changed since the last time we had visited. The same five buck heads would stare down from the wall of the den, the same
Book of Knowledge
would be on the bookshelf in cousin Russ and Bobby’s room, on the kitchen table the pepper shaker was a rooster and the saltshaker was a hen, the same unused piano stood at attention in the living room, and at seven every evening Aunt Helen would conduct a Bible reading.
    On my tenth birthday, Aunt Helen made me a coconut cake and made me part of the process by having me break open a coconut with a hatchet. She invited Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Joe down from Jacksonville, and they brought the three Gillespie cousins. (Cousin Johnny had not been born yet.) It would mark the only time in my life that family members other than my own would attend one of my birthday parties. It was a joyous day, and I got to cut the cake because, as Aunt Helen said, “It’s Pat’s day.” The coconut cake was perfect, always perfect.      • SERVES 8
    FOR THE RUM SYRUP
    ⅓ cup sugar
    ¼ cup coconut or plain rum
    FOR THE TOASTED COCONUT
    1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut (available at health food stores)
    FOR THE CAKE
    2 cups cake flour
    ½ teaspoon baking powder
    1 cup sugar
    1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
    2 large eggs
    1 cup canned coconut milk (Goya brand if possible, Leche de Coco), well shaken
    ½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
    1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (1 large lemon)
    ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
    FOR THE FROSTING
    2 cups chilled heavy cream
    2 teaspoons sugar
    1 cup untoasted unsweetened shredded coconut
    1. To make the syrup: In a small saucepan, combine the sugar, ⅓ cup water, and the rum and heat over medium until the mixture comes to a slow boil. Continue boiling for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and set aside until the cake is baked. (The syrup can be made one day in advance. Refrigerate until needed and reheat until almost boiling to use.)
    2. To toast the coconut: Preheat the oven to 350°F. Spread the coconut on a baking sheet and toast until edges turn a light brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Toasted yet still pale shredded coconut will add another layer of flavor and a slight crunch to the frosting. Check it carefully during the toasting; coconut can burn quickly. Total toasting time should not exceed 4 minutes. Remove