Almost twenty years after Allison’s Wells burned in 1963, O.C. McDavid, former managing editor of the Jackson Daily News and a noted sculpture artist, was approached by Hosford Fontaine to assist in a book with recipes. In turn, McDavid enlisted Marilyn Bonney, who owned Press & Palette in Canton Mart, to print the 68-page book. According to Marilyn, “I printed it using paper plates which were a one-time use. I don’t remember the exact number printed, but it was probably1,000. The plan was not to sell it, but O.C. and Hosford gave it to people they knew, and I did the same.” In a similar spirit, with hopes of perpetuating Hosford’s wonderful work, here’s Allison’s Wells: The Last Mississippi Spa by Hosford Latimer Fontaine.
In my book (which got another rejection this week: “Your approach to Southern cooking is disturbingly pugnacious.”) Alice Brock is a bazillion times cooler than Alice Waters. Brock’s humor and ill regard for bullshit establishes her biography, My Life as a Restaurant, as the hands-on-hips precursor to Bourdain’s somewhat more cantankerous Kitchen Confidential. Not only that, but Waters never had a decent song written about her, much less an anthem.
Alice Brock and her staff up in Massachusetts had a thing with mousses/mooses. The drawing with this recipe has antlers, and they include a story of a moose falling into a vat of cocoa for the chocolate version. This fixation seems to be prevalent in New England where mooses live, but in this culinary reference, the homonym proves emphatic. This salmon mousse is great hot weather nosh and can be served either from your great-grandmother’s fish mold or if you’re just totally white trash as a dip.
Put a quarter cup diced onion and lemon juice in a blender with an envelope of gelatin and a half cup hot water. Blend at high speed for one minute, then add a half cup of mayonnaise and 16 ounces of canned salmon. (Red is best, leftover homecooked is wonderful, and pink will do.) Blend/pulse this mixture until smooth. Add a tablespoon paprika and a cup of heavy cream. Blend for about a half minute, and cool for at least 6 hours before serving.
You don’t have to pay $5 a cup for good pickled mushrooms, and in time you can come up with specific recipes to use for any given occasion. In the meantime, here’s a good general-purpose recipe from an old friend of mine who ran a catering business in Oxford. He looked like a red-headed Rick Astley and used a cigarette holder.
Sauté in olive oil 1 pound of mushrooms, sliced or cut in quarters, with 1 large red pepper, cut into strips, one a large red onion, sliced, and 3 cloves garlic, minced. Cool, add balsamic vinegar, thyme, and fresh ground pepper. Salt to taste. Refrigerate before serving.
A smart-ass from New Orleans—they’re all over the place down there, trust me—once asked (in a job interview, no less) if I knew how to make marchand, and when I said no, the bastard actually curled his upper lip a definitively unctuous, condescending sneer. If I had heat vision, he’d have been char. I got the job anyway because the guy who asked me to apply owned the joint. The smart-ass from New Orleans got fired four months later for stealing and selling coke under the bar. We never did get eggs Hussard on the menu, but here’s how to make marchand de vin sauce This version of Brennan’s batch recipe makes about a quart and refrigerates well.
In a stick of butter, brown a half-cup flour. Add a clove of garlic smashed and minced, three or four chopped green onions, and a cup of diced fresh mushrooms. Working quickly, whisk in two cups of beef stock mixed with a cup of good red wine. Reduce heat and cook until smooth. The sauce should be somewhat on the thin side, and the wine shouldn’t be overpowering. Season with thyme, parsley, salt, and fresh black pepper.
This sumptuous brunch dish is a riff on eggs Florentine. In culinary parlance, “Florentine” indicates a recipe contains spinach, which in this instance is enriched with mushrooms, crab meat, and plenty of butter.
To poach eggs, heat water to a depth of about 2 inches in a in a saucepan or skillet. Some will tell you to add vinegar to keep the whites intact, but in my experience (which is vast and defining) it’s best to use the very freshest eggs possible and drain their excess liquid by breaking them into a tea strainer. Bring water to a to a simmer, then reduce the heat so that the surface of the liquid barely shimmers; in France, where of course they have terms for such things, they will say that the water is souriant: “smiling.” Gently pour the eggs into the water and, with a large spoon, ladle hot water over the yolk and repeat until the yolk whitens. Cook the egg for about 3 or 4 minutes until the whites are set and the yolks are still soft. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the eggs to a large bowl of lukewarm water. Drain on paper towels before serving.
For the sauce, add a quarter cup plain flour to a half stick of melted butter over medium heat and stir until the bubbling subsides Whisk in a pint of whole milk and cook over low heat until thickened and smooth. Stir in a half pound thawed frozen leaf spinach that’s been squeezed and coarsely chopped, along with a half-pound sauteed fresh mushrooms. Artichokes are a nice option. Add white pepper and salt to taste. Reduce heat to low and keep warm. Prepare a pound of picked lump crab meat by heating with butter, lemon juice and a little black pepper. To serve, place a Holland rusk or slice of thick toast on a large saucer. Cover with creamed spinach, add a heaping spoonful of buttered crab meat, and, with the back of the spoon, make a depression and add an egg.
I can just hear y’all: “Yancy’s click-baiting a recipe for squash fritters!” What I’m saying is these nuggets are great for any outside meal. Even a fish fry. Summer squash—yellow, white, or green—with chopped chiles and onions are go-to vegetables. Grate squash, and squeeze out the water. For one cup grated squash to two cups self-rising white corn meal, add a one large egg, well-beaten, about ¾ cup milk and ½ cup vegetable oil. Stir until just mixed and drop by spoonfuls into hot oil. The puppies should rise and turn as they cook and brown. Put pups on a pan with paper towels in a low oven to crisp. Serving with a citrus-y comeback or a thin salsa.
All butter beans are limas, but not all limas are butter beans. Got that?
Actually, it’s a lot more complicated. While lima beans and butter beans are usually thought of as two different types of beans, they are both varieties of Phaseolus lunatus (literally “moon bean”), which has a very complicated history of domestication in Meso- and South America. During the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru (16th-19th centuries), when limas were exported to North America and Europe, the boxes of beans were stamped with their place of origin (“Lima, Peru“), and the beans got named as such. But of course, when referring to the bean, the word is pronounced LY-mah, while the Peruvian capital is (as you all know) pronounced LEE-mah.
As a rule, large, yellow/white/speckled limas are generally known as butter beans, while the smaller, green varieties are called, well, limas. The smallest may even be called “baby” limas. However, I have been told that “they call butter beans limas up North,” which puts another spin on it. Among the most popular varieties grown in Mississippi are ‘Thorogreen’ and ‘Henderson,’ both small green bush types; ‘Jackson Wonder,’ also a bush variety, is small and brown or speckled; ‘Florida Speckled’ is a larger pole variety, and the hard-to-find ‘Willow Leaf,’ also a pole variety, has something of a cult following. Butterpeas are also a type of limas. Limas are a warm-weather crop and come into season sometime around mid-June and, with the planting of second crops in late July and early August, stay in season well into October.
Fresh beans should be smooth and plump, somewhat tacky to the touch. Limas have a low glycemic index, are rich in fiber, iron, protein and B vitamins. Fresh beans should be washed and picked over for damage, dirt, or detritus, washed, and set to cook in water 2:1; fresh beans don’t need as much water as dried, and they don’t need pre-soaking. As with most beans, hambone is a classic addition, but many people simply use stock. Bring beans to a boil, then lower heat to simmer and cover until beans are soft. I always use white pepper instead of black to season, and rarely use anything more until the beans are cooked, at which point they become the basis for any number of wonderful dishes.
Every summer I make baked limas in sour cream. For a pound of cooked limas with about a half cup of the liquid, add a quarter cup of brown sugar, and a cup of sour cream mixed with a teaspoon corn starch to keep it from separating. Flour will work in a pinch. Mix well. Bake in a low oven until set. This dish goes with anything at all but is open to any number of frivolous variations.
An easy, delightful recipe for a summer afternoon. Cream 2 sticks of softened butter with a cup of sugar. Mix in two large eggs, and beat until light. Sift three cups all-purpose flour with a teaspoon of baking soda and blend into the creamed mixture. Add a 6-oz. can of (thawed) lemonade concentrate. A tablespoon or so of lemon zest is a nice touch. Drop dough by spoonfuls on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 400 for about 8-10 mins. Cool and coat with icing made with confectioner’s sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Pink or yellow food coloring is pretty in dough and/or icing.
Not long ago a friend said that whoever ate the first eggplant was much more courageous than whoever ate the first oyster. I agreed with fervor. The eggplant, like Cher, must be gussied up quite a bit to be palatable. Eggplants have so little character that they’re a pliable basis for dozens of really good dishes such as caponata. This stewy concoction is good hot or cold, as a side or a spread. A friend makes vegetarian muffalettas with it, and while purists may wail, there’s nothing to stop you from using caponata instead of olive relish on a meat muffaletta. It’s simple to make, keeps well, and the flavor improves with age. This recipe makes about a quart.
Peel and cube one large eggplant, simmer in olive oil with a finely-minced clove of garlic and about half a cup each of chopped celery and sweet onion. This is one of the few recipes you’ll find me recommending a sweet onion; caponata is a sweet/sour concoction, and I prefer to use vegetables and dried fruit for the sweetness instead of sugar. You’ll add maybe a rind of smoked sweet red pepper (a ripe pickled cherry is a nice touch, too), a scant handful of chopped olives and a tablespoon or two of tomato paste to round out the (somewhat) savory elements along with a jolt of strong red wine for both you and the pan. For out-and-out sweetness, use a half cup of dried fruit, figs being excruciatingly appropriate, but don’t let that stop you from using whatever raisins, dates or apricots you have on hand. A heaping teaspoon of capers (the eponymous and ergo compulsory component) gives enough salt. and a measure of herbal vinegar will set the tartness. Season with a good Italian blend, but don’t overdo it; let the meld define the flavor.
Pickled shrimp are a Southern favorite for even the most modest alfresco summer occasion, a solid recommendation for your next kegger. Use nothing smaller than a 26/30 count shrimp, though 21/25 is ideal. Boil, peel, and if you’re the persnickety type, devein. For five pounds of shrimp, mix with two white onions (yellow are too sweet, and red will bleed) thinly sliced, a few fresh bay leaves, a cup of diced sweet pickled red peppers, a cup of rice vinegar, a cup of vegetable oil, a small jar of capers (with liquid), two tablespoons of good Italian herb blend, and a tablespoon of coarse black pepper. Toss until shrimp are coated, cover, and chill overnight. In season, add diced ripe summer tomatoes before spooning over leaf greens and drizzling with marinade.
