Mississippi Sideboard – A Southern Gallimaufry

July 7, 2026July 7, 2026

Of Fish and Fists

Grabbling is the most unsophisticated form of angling; fly fishing seems downright effete in comparison. Forget fussing with those artsy little hand-tied flies, forget about the L.L. Bean creel, forget about the custom-made rod, just stick your hand down in a hole under the water and drag out a fish. It’s breathtakingly fundamental.

When grabbling, it goes unsaid that you’re fishing for catfish, which tend to hole up in hollow logs or under stumps in the spring. Unlike suicidal salmon that exhaust themselves in long-distance spawning, the sensible Southern catfish conducts a more sedate courtship by making a bed and putting out a red light.

In the old days, grabblers used to sink hollow logs in selected places before the fish begin spawning in April in order to lure the catfish into them, but nowadays most folks use man-made beds. The location of these beds is a guarded secret among serious grabblers who sink them in the fall and come back when the water has warmed up in the spring.

Grabbling might well be the ultimate expression of angler machismo as well. It takes true grit to stick your bare hand in a hole under water. After all, there’s no guarantee that what you’re going to grab is a catfish. We grow some mighty big snapping turtles in Mississippi that can easily nip off a finger or two if tempted to do so, and it takes little to tempt a snapper, especially when he’s holed up in a sunken hollow log or a catfish box with minnows on his mind. We also have a nasty variety of pit viper here called a cottonmouth moccasin. I’ve heard it rumored all my life that grabblers aren’t afraid of cottonmouths because these snakes aren’t supposed to be able to open their mouths under water, but bear in mind their scientific name, piscivorus, means “fish-eating.”

Fortunately for those of us who simply lack the bravado to haul protesting fish out of the water with our bare hands, there are easier ways to get catfish. Mississippi is, after all, the buckle of the Catfish Belt. We can get fresh or “fresh frozen” (love that term) catfish in your local grocery any time.

Elitists deride catfish but, to quote Twain, “The catfish is a good enough fish for anybody,” and I fall back on that high word. In the South, catfish, like almost any other sort of meat, is most often fried, and there’s nothing better than a platter of fried catfish and a litter of hush puppies. But however rewarding, frying catfish is just as messy and time-consuming as frying chicken. So what I’m going to give you here is a simple sauce recipe for baked or broiled catfish that takes it to another level. Beurre blanc is a classic emulsion, as are mayonnaise and Hollandaise, but “white butter” is far less tricky and far more stable. It’s a cold emulsion, like mayo, but it doesn’t involve an agglutination of proteins. Buerre blanc is simply butter whipped with wine and herbs.

Catfish with beurre blanc

One 8-oz. fillet of catfish per person. Score the fillets lightly, brush with a bit of (unsalted) butter; bake in a hot oven until done through. Beforehand, reduce 1/2 cup good white wine and two tablespoons lemon juice by about half. Add three tablespoons of very,very finely minced shallots, a dash of white pepper and a pinch of salt. Then gradually whip in 1/4 pound of unsalted butter over very low heat until thoroughly incorporated. Tarragon and dill (though I don’t recommend using them together) are most often used for flavor, and parsley is always appropriate. Slather sauce on fish and serve.

July 6, 2026July 6, 2026

Pork Meatballs

To one pound lean ground pork, work in a teaspoon cinnamon, a teaspoon of cayenne, and a teaspoon each of salt and black pepper. Beat an egg with a heaping tablespoon of tomato paste, mix in a half cup of bread crumbs and a half cup of very finely chopped white onion. Mix with meat, form into balls, and refrigerate for an hour. Cook in a light oil until browned and firm. Serve over rice with Jezebel.

July 5, 2026July 5, 2026

Discworld Gumbo

In Sir Terry Pratchett’s Guard! Guards!,” which pits the stalwart Commnder Sam Vimes and his (at this point in the saga) rag-tag City Watch against a phantasmal dragon, an encroaching fog in Discworld’s largest (and least reputable) city is described as a “real Ankh-Morpork autumn gumbo.” In a considerate nod to his British readers, Sir Terry provides a somewhat less-than-helpful definition of gumbo as like a pea-soup, “only fishier, and with things in it you’d probably rather not know about,” which might be a slight to okra.

July 5, 2026July 5, 2026

Lemon Pecan Baklava

Mix a half cup light brown sugar with a teaspoon of cinnamon, a stick of melted butter, and 3 cups chopped pecans. Spread on a pound of buttered phyllo. Cover with another pound of buttered phyllo and bake until golden. Stir a cup of sugar into a cup of water. Add a half cup honey, a half cup corn syrup, and the juice of three lemons with zest. Bring to a low boil until slightly thickened. Pour evenly over pecan phyllo, and cool before slicing and serving.

July 5, 2026

Dog Days

At the height of our summer, the winter constellations begin to be seen in the eastern dusk, which at this latitude (Jackson, Mississippi is 32.2988° N) is between July 21 and August 3,. Among the brightest of these starry arrays is Orion, and close on the heels of the great hunter is his big dog, Canis Major, with the brightest star in the night sky, brilliant Sirius, the Dog Star. With the rise of Sirius our dog days begin, and for the next forty days or so, it’s just hot as hell all the damn time.

July 4, 2026July 4, 2026

How to Spike a Watermelon

Traditionalists insert a bottle, the fastidious a funnel, and I know one guy who marks out a grid with a surgical hammer to determine the proper places to plunge a turkey needle. Vodka is standard; hard-core types use Everclear. I’ve never spiked a melon with gin, but it might be wonderful. I recommend cutting a fist-sized crater about a quarter way into the flesh, making a small hole on the opposite side (bottom), pouring the booze in a cup at a time, and refilling it as the liquor is absorbed. A Charleston Gray takes all day, a Moon-and-Stars four hours, a Blacktail Mountain maybe two on the outside.

July 3, 2026July 3, 2026

Pea Hull Jelly

Purple hull pea hulls give a grape-flavored jelly, white crowder hulls a honey-flavored jelly, lady pea hulls an apple-flavored jelly, and if you mix the hulls of crowder, purple, whippoorwill, and lady peas, you get a rich jelly with notes of apricot, plum, and pear. Wash 1 gallon pea hulls thoroughly, at least twice, then bring to boil in a heavy pan with enough water to cover. Boil over low heat for 8 to 10 minutes. Save the juice, approximately 8 cups, and discard hulls. Combine juice with 2 pkgs. Sure-Jell in heavy saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for 2 minutes. Add 8 cups of sugar and boil an additional minute. Pour mixture into glass jars and seal.

July 3, 2026July 4, 2026

Eisenhower Conquers Vicksburg

It’s somewhat of an irony that Vicksburg, Mississippi, a city in rebellion against the United States, surrendered to Union forces under Grant on July 4, 1863, but the city’s citizens and defenders were simply exhausted to the point of desperation by a siege that had lasted forty-seven days, and Pemberton, commanding general of the Confederate forces—himself a native of Pennsylvania—hoped for sympathetic terms from Grant by surrendering on Independence Day. Grant paroled the captured military not because of the date, but because he never imagined that given their state of dejection any would ever fight again (many did, of course, in the coming years).

Thereafter for eighty-two years, until July 4, 1945, a scarce two months after Allied troops under Eisenhower accepted the surrender of the Axis forces in Europe, the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi held no public observance of Independence Day, and even then there were cries of “Sacrilege!” from older residents, and by all accounts the celebration was a muted affair. The following year some attempt was made to make the July 4^th celebration more overt, but even then opposition was offered by those who clung to the memory of that summer morning in 1863 when the hungry, weary city garrison of 30,000 laid down its arms and the city silently watched as Grant’s army occupied a city draped not in bunting but in mourning.

Two years later, in 1947, quite a different situation presented when General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and current chief of staff of the U.S. Army, accepted invitations from Senator James Eastland, Representative John Bell Williams, and Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi to make the Fourth of July address in Vicksburg. It’s conceivable that Eastland, Fielding, and Wright extended the invitation in hopes of luring Eisenhower to run on the Democratic ticket, though it’s more likely that the three simply intended to make political hay out of the general’s visit. Ike, on the other hand, a committed scholar of history, was eager to see the military park, which for the record had been established in 1899.

To be sure, Ike had likely been apprised of the holiday’s history in the city, but he was also already treading turbid political waters. Later that month, on July 11, President Truman offered to run as Ike’s running mate on the Democratic ticket if Douglas MacArthur won the Republican nomination, but Eisenhower was still struggling to stay above politics, as had William T. Sherman had upon learning that he was being considered as a possible Republican candidate for the presidential election of 1884. (Sherman declined, saying, “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.”)

Eisenhower had not announced any party affiliation and cited Army regulation 600-10.18.i forbidding partisan political activity by serving officers. Eisenhower eventually defeated Robert Taft for the Republication nomination in 1952 and won in a landslide that excluded the Democratic Solid South. His running-mate Richard Nixon was to flip affiliation that thirty years later. It must be said that Southern patriotism was certainly well-established long before Ike came to Vicksburg in 1947. Florence King states that the rest of the nation was surprised at the numbers of Southerners who flocked to recruiting stations during the Spanish-American War (1898), but then Havana is on our doorstep, as was dramatically brought back home in October, 1962.

Spanish-American War vet Teddy Roosevelt—whose mother was a Georgia belle—built the biggest navy in the world and expanded U.S. influence over the globe, and Southerners were conspicuous participants in the various chauvinistic, jingoistic isolationist movements that swept the country in the periods leading up to the two world wars, but it wasn’t until after the Allied victory in World War II, and the return of Southern G.I.s from far-flung corners of the earth, that memories Vicksburg and Pickett’s Charge failed, and a new patriotism became entrenched in the Southern Zeitgeist. Vicksburg’s surrender to Eisenhower stands as a watershed for that mindset.

So it was that on July 4, 1947, the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi, instead of laying down its arms, opened them for another U.S. general. An estimated 50,000 people attended the festivities, which included picnic lunches spread in public parks, plenty of florid speeches, miles of bunting, and fireworks over the broad waters of the Mississippi River. The celebration also included a solemn noon-day salute to honor the memory of the Confederate casualties of the siege; the city had forgiven, but not forgotten.

July 3, 2026

Parmesan Eggs

To the yolks of 6 soft-boiled eggs, add a half cup of grated hard cheese, a tablespoon of dry mustard, and mayonnaise to texture, usually a quarter cup or so. Top with smoky paprika.