A Southern Gallimaufry
For six servings, pour a quart of cooked grits seasoned and flavored as you see fit into an oiled casserole or skillet to cool until just warm. Then make six deep depressions in the grits with the back of an oiled spoon, and ease an egg into each hole. Bake at 350 uncovered until eggs have firmed, a good ten minutes for soft-cooked.
This wonderful old recipe is from Creole Gumbo, and All That Jazz, written by a Mississippi boy, Howard Mitcham, who became a chef of national repute. Cover the bottom of a 10-in. gratin with finely-crumbed saltines mixed with pepper, paprika, chopped shallots, and parsley. Add a layer of oysters that have been rolled in the crumb mixture, then top with another layer of crumbs and grated Parmesan. Drizzle with only enough melted butter to moisten, then slowly pour heavy cream into the edge of the dish until oysters are just covered. Place in a very hot (400 or so) oven until bubbling and browned. These are even good cold.
This recipe from Greenville novelist Ellen Douglas (Josephine Ayres Haxton) makes dozens, depending on the size.
Take a half pound each grated mozzarella and feta cheese, mix well with a pint of cottage cheese, two large well-beaten eggs, and a tablespoon or so of chopped parsley. Brush phyllo with melted butter. Cut into strips an inch or so wide, and three or four inches long. Place a spoonful of the cheese filling at the top edge of the strip and fold “like you fold a flag” into triangles or flip into squares. Pinch the edges and brush with an egg white beaten in a half cup of water. Sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds and bake twenty minutes or so at 375.
Emily Haxton notes that she and Jo “Started using half butter/ half evoo for brushing these. Once rolled up, brush with the same butter/evoo, not egg wash. Each “spoonful” should be about golf ball sized. I used ricotta instead of cottage cheese for the ones pictured.”
All of my life, I’ve heard sorghum syrup called molasses, so it came as something of a shock when I read recently that sorghum molasses is not considered a “true” molasses by certain authorities. These same people will tell you that the only real molasses comes from sugar cane and beets, though in the same breath they will also say it can be made from grapes, dates, pomegranates, mulberries, and carob, which certainly muddles the definition. Thoreau, in one of his more superfluous tangents, claims he made “excellent molasses from pumpkins”, exhibiting an appealing disregard for the fine line between molasses and syrup.
The process for making what passes as true molasses seems complicated, since once the canes (or beets) are crushed (or mashed), the juice is boiled to concentrate and crystallize the sugar. This stage produces the “first molasses” which has the highest sugar content. Boiling the cane/beet juice again produces “second molasses” (!), and the third boiling produces blackstrap. This is a simple process of reduction identical to the one used to make sorghum molasses which even Harold McGee, the genius who wrote the authoritative On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, claims is a syrup. What it boils down to (sorry) is a matter of terms; if I want to call sorghum syrup a molasses, then I will and have.
Like any sugar in solution (i.e. a syrup), sorghum molasses differs in taste and texture depending on the length of time it’s reduced, resulting in varying degrees of caramelization. I’ve seen swamp-dark blackstrap sorghum as well as sorghum pale as honey. Me, I prefer it light, retaining just a shadow of the golden-green color I remember from my childhood dripping from a paddle over a simmering pan of syrup, in Ellard, Mississippi, a memory I’m more likely to realize now since rural family-run sorghum cane mills are making a comeback.
Be advised that the production of sorghum molasses remains a largely commercial enterprise, and there are dozens of brands on the shelves throughout the region, but most of these are not pure sorghum molasses; if you read the ingredients, corn syrup will likely be the first ingredient listed. Unadulterated sorghum can always be found in autumn at roadside stands and farmers’ markets. Find it.
Versions of this recipe have been bouncing around a lot recently, most of them praising its fool-proof simplicity, but as with these simple recipes—and those with two ingredients are about as basic as they come—the devil is in the details. Most versions call for 1 ½ cups of hot rise flour and a pint of melted ice cream that makes a soft, sticky dough rather than a batter baked in a standard 8×5 loaf pan at 350 for 45 minutes. I’ve found the recipe works best when baked in a 5×3 (16 oz.) loaf or a similarly-sized spring-form pan at 350 for only 35 minutes. I’ve also found that you must use a very rich ice cream such as a French vanilla or (as in this case) a butter pecan and that LuVel works just as well if not better than Ben & Jerry’s, but you must let the ice cream melt slowly on the kitchen counter or in the refrigerator. I’m unsure of the science behind this, but microwaving the ice cream will make for a dense, pudding-y cake. Though for many a dollop of whipped cream might seem less excessive, I don’t find a scoop of ice cream redundant at all.
Unless you live in some eco-friendly urban area with paradisical market enclaves, you’ll most likely find only four kinds of onions for sale: red, yellow, white, and green. I almost never cook red onions, reserving them for salads and toppings, but you’ll find me using all others liberally in damn near anything I cook.
A word about yellow onions, however; nowadays they are almost always sweet. Not all of them are as cloyingly sweet as the Vidalia, which has been beatified by zealous regional journalists who equate eating a Vidalia onion sandwich at the office for lunch with that of hunkering down around the `fahr’ with a mason ‘jahr’ of `shahn’ listening to the dawgs tree a coon, an experience just rife with Southern machismo, derring-do, and chauvinism, but these onions smother the flavor of an honest onion soup, which should have a mellow savoriness that comes only from time and care.
Mince six medium-size white onions. In a large skillet, melt 1/2 cup of butter. Heat to medium and add two cloves minced garlic to brown. Add onions, cook down, then add about six cups of beef stock and a cup of dried onions. Reduce heat to simmer and cook uncovered (what a wonderful smell this makes, too) until the onions are soft and clear. Add salt, pepper and thyme to taste; some like rosemary. A slash of sherry at the last minute is a nice touch. Serve piping hot with well-buttered, crusty bread.
This recipe comes from the Ringling Estate in Sarasota, Florida. Whisk together 2/3 a cup of cocoa, 2 cups plain flour, 1 ¼ packed cup brown sugar, a teaspoon each of baking powder and soda, and dash or so of salt. Set aside. Beat 2 large eggs into ¾ cup milk. Add 2 teaspoons vanilla extract and a slash of vinegar along with a melted stick of butter. Mix dry and wet ingredients. Blend just enough to ensure the moisture is evenly mixed; muffins don’t need a lot of work. Bake in lined tins at 350 for about a half hour.
Dove as a dish came late to me because my father maintained that the bird that brought Noah the best tidal measurements in the history of the world deserved better than being shot at by a bunch of back-sliders wearing camo. For him, Biblical precedent reserved doves for a far more dignified fate than the inevitable end result of being cleaned, cooked and eaten, not to mention being shot in the first place.
But most of his friends, relatives, and other riff-raff considered this notion nothing more than posturing on his part and saw doves more as manna from heaven, ready to be plucked from the sky with birdshot and readied for the table. As a result, despite a boyhood devotion to avian evangelism, I have eaten dove prepared by the best cooks in Calhoun County, Mississippi, which is no small matter.
A supper of smothered dove came home from hunting camps all over Dixie and–like an amicable hound–settled complacently in the kitchen. Smothered dove takes many forms, usually according to who’s cooking it and when it’s to be served. The more robust methods, involving substantial breading and a very thick gravy, is a country dinner favorite, most often served with rice and biscuits. A lighter version is generally served as a brunch or buffet item with grits if in the morning, with rice later in the day.
For a dinner dish, soak your dove breasts for one hour in buttermilk. Drain, add one egg to a cup of milk, drench breasts in this mixture and toss with flour seasoned with salt, pepper and paprika. Brown in oil, then move the breasts to a baking dish. Add enough flour to the remaining oil to make a light brown roux, and enough stock (or 1:1 with milk) to make a light gravy. Salt to taste and season with a liberal sprinkling of black pepper. Ladle the gravy over the birds and bake in a medium oven (around 350), covered, until the birds are tender and the gravy reduced.
For the lighter version, brown the breasts in butter and set aside. Make a slightly darker roux, and add enough stock for a somewhat thinner gravy. Season lightly; salt and pepper, a little thyme, and a slosh of good sherry. (Not cooking sherry; no.) Spoon the sauce over the birds and bake in a medium oven until tender. Remove with a slotted spoon, arrange on a bed of rice, and coat with the remaining sauce.
Darling Julia,
I should soon come home to Carolina, to the house you love, to the deep old woods I love, and to loving you, forever. When I get back, I know you’ll ask me about Jackson, what it is like, what its people are like, how it looks, how they live, what makes the city what it is. I’m going to tell you now to clear my mind of it, leave it forever. Once home I do not want to think of it.
Jackson is a fractured collection of people in a city that has lost all sense of itself, a shattered glass best melt and recast. It’s an ugly place; there are few beautiful buildings, no streets of stately homes one expects to see in an old Southern city, just blocks upon broken blocks, mile upon miserable mile of buckling asphalt, weedy lots dotted with rubble, and buildings with broken teeth. The city lacks even faded grandeur in any degree. Its main street is blemished by vacant offices and shops with dusty, littered window fronts. The new roundabouts and verges can’t disguise the squalor.
Poverty and racial tension propel Jackson, a volatile combination that pulls back more than it pushes forward the social and economic interests of the city. The political landscape is dominated by self-serving personalities motivated solely by a desire to stay in office in order to further their own ends. Inevitably, the lion’s share Jackson’s–and for that matter, Mississippi’s–federal funding finds its way to empower political objectives. I can see you smiling as you read this, thinking, “You fool, it’s Mississippi; what did you expect?” Well, darling, I did expect more. I told you that before I came here. I expected to find people working together, a fellowship of stewards. Instead I found a pocket of fools.
Tell me that’s why you love me, because I am a dreamer, and every night here, I dreamed of you in that old house in the mountains under a million stars.
All my love, my being.
Tim
Red Rose imitation smoked sausage was originally produced by the Jackson Packing Company, which from 1945 to 1990 sold processed meats from their plant on South Gallatin Street. Red Rose was marketed under the company’s flagship “Magnolia” brand, which was purchased by Polk’s Meat Products in Magee. Red Rose at home is usually sliced into sections, split, fried or grilled and served with beans or potatoes. Two Jackson restaurants, the Beatty Street Grocery and the Big Apple Inn on Farish, feature Red Rose sandwiches.
This recipe comes via Thomas Price, a man of many parts and infinite goodwill. It’s a riff on the sausage sandwiches served at the Big Apple Inn on Farish Street, the innovation here is combining the coleslaw with the sausage stuffing, which works beautifully. Peel the casings from the sausages, break the filling into a heavy skillet—chopped onion would be a nice option—and cook until heated through, drain thoroughly and continue cooking until most of the grease is cooked out. Drain and add about 4 ounces of slaw, which works out to about half a large container from KFC, which is recommended. Serve warm with a sprinkling of black pepper, buns—Bunny burger or slider—with Crystal hot sauce.
