This simple recipe is a wonderful alternative to the usual mashed swedes with enough butter to gag Paula you’ll find on a lot of cool-weather tables.
One large rutabaga, peeled and cubed into more or less bite-sized pieces, will serve four people easily. Coat the pieces in oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper and granulated garlic, and bake them at 350 in a well-oiled pan, tossing or turning occasionally to brown evenly.
When they’re just tende, dust with dried herbs—sage, rosemary, marjoram, basil, rosemary, or a combination—and continue tossing and turning on heat until done through.
The Atkinson Candy Company was founded in the east Texas town of Lufkin by B.E. Atkinson, Sr., and his wife, Mabel in the desperate days of 1932, when it was getting hard for anybody to make a living.
The company currently operates out of a 100,000 square feet facility and is led by siblings Eric and Amy Atkinson, grandchildren of the founders. The company specializes in peanut butter and peppermint-flavored candies; the current product line includes Coconut Long Boys, Gemstone Candies, Black Cow, Slo Poke, and Chick-O-Stick.
Chick-O-Stick is a round bar dusted with ground coconut, the interior honeycombed with peanut butter and the orange hardened syrup/sugar mixture that also forms the shell. When eaten fresh, the candy is dry and brittle, but it has a tendency to draw moisture and become hard and chewy on the shelf. Chick-O-Stick is available in 0.36-ounce (10 g), 0.70-ounce (20 g), 1.0-ounce (28 g), and 2.0-ounce (57 g) sizes, as well as bags of individually wrapped bite-sized pieces.
The original wrapper featured a stylized cartoon of a chicken wearing a cowboy hat and a badge in the shape of the Atkinson logo. The chicken is absent from the more recent wrapper, since it understandably created some confusion over whether Chick-O-Stick was candy or a chicken-flavored cracker.
One of their sales guys just “came up with the name one day, and well, it just stuck.”
Here’s a recipe from Linda Bolton who for many years ran the Good Food Store when it was on Jackson Avenue in Oxford.
Back when I was writing a food column for The Oxford Times, I published a really basic potato soup recipe, and at happy hour the next day as I was headed for the Rose, Linda stuck her head out of the store and yelled across the street at me: “Come here and let me tell you what all you left out of your `tater soup recipe, Yancy!” So I damn sure did, and here’s the modified recipe:
For each serving (@ a cup and a half), take a large starchy potato, wash, peel and dice, making sure to take out all discolorations. Boil in enough water to cover, adding a vegetable bouillon cube. When almost tender through, reduce heat, sauté for each of two servings one small white onion and two cloves of garlic, both finely minced, in about two tablespoons sweet butter.
To this, add liquid from the potatoes and low boil until onions have broken down. Pour this mixture back on the potatoes, simmer and stir until the soup has a creamy, chunky consistency. Season with crushed dill seed, just a little bit of dried rosemary, and black pepper before salting to taste.
You can add a little heavy cream and another tablespoon of butter to make a more substantial soup, in which case you might also want to add a little grated hard cheese. Good hot or cold.
It’s hard to imagine the redfish that currently swim in bountiful numbers among our coastal waters going the way of the dodo and the mastodon, but it almost did, and it wasn’t seafaring Neanderthals with primitive Shimanos that nearly caused their extinction.
It was Paul Prudhomme.
Prudhomme created a recipe that was so obnoxious and novel with over-the-top flavors and clouds of noxious smoke that it had to be cooked outside. But for all that, blackened redfish became so popular that redfish was actually threatened with extinction, and the federal government was forced to step in and invoke catch limits before we could make a salad to accompany the very last of its kind.
But be at ease. This prized game fish is back and has been back. In fact, the local anglers in Destin, Florida call the huge “bull reds” a nuisance fish. I myself saw tens of thousands of them attacking bait fish in one football field-sized school near Ship Island, off the coast of Mississippi .
Folks who don’t saltwater fish only assume that an angler like me would surely target a redfish to throw on ice, but to their dismay I tell them I don’t fish them intentionally for the table. There are a couple good reasons for this: when you clean a redfish, the filet yield seems oddly low for such a large fish to be culled, and secondly it’s about as easy to clean a redfish as it is to filet an armadillo.
But as all starving anglers do we develop a plan: Instead of filleting the meat clean off the fish why don’t we just cut off one side of the red’s body, lay it scales down over a charcoal grill, drench the meat side with garlic butter and slam the lid till it’s done?
This technique accomplishes a couple of things and one by default. First, it ensures all the fresh fish meat is fully eaten. Secondly, you don’t wind up in the ER getting stitches fooling around trying to fillet an armadillo and by default this recipe is far more delicious than blackened redfish simply because it’s about the fresh fish and not spices.
The dicta of “Gulf to ice to knife to fire to plate” for this recipe in particular has anxious dinner guests staring in amazement at the cooking process. Redfish on the half shell, as this technique is called, is the best way in my opinion to pay homage to this beautiful bronze resident in our coastal waters. Next time you have a chance to eat fresh redfish, try this particular preparation.
Heat your gas grill or charcoal grill to a medium high heat. In a saucepan heat a stick of butter, juice of a lemon, minced garlic and Tony Chachere’s to taste for a drenching baste.
Grease the grill a bit; lay on the redfish halves scales down and apply your drench liberally. Close the lid, but reapply the drench a couple of times in the cooking process. Remove when the meat is firm to the touch, add more fresh lemon and serve immediately.
David and Kim Odom are anglers par excellance along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
“When were Jackson’s historic neighborhoods developed?” “How did the city grow during different historic periods?” “What did Jackson look like as it evolved from the nineteenth to the twentieth century?”
The answers to these and thousands of other questions are found here, in From Frontier Capital to Modern City: A History of Jackson, Mississippi’s 1 Built Environment, 1865-1950. While the document is not dated, it was likely published sometime in 2000.
This project must have taken several years, drawing upon the resources of the Mississippi State Archives, Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH); the Records Management Division of the City of Jackson; and private collections of photographs from local citizens.
A key player in this effort was Helene Ascher Rotwein—whose job in Jackson’s Department of Planning and Development was no doubt instrumental—and other members of the LeFleur’s Bluff Historic Foundation.
Though there is no index, the table of contents is incredibly detailed, as are the references cited, and the voluminous footnotes are incredibly precise. Click on the map below to access the work.
Rumaki are easy to make, but instead of using raw ginger root or (worse) ginger powder, I urge you to use ginger oil for a marinade with the soy, which should be lite soy.
To make ginger oil, grate about a half cup of raw ginger, place in a cup of vegetable oil, and heat until the ginger just begins to bubble. Heat for about five minutes, cool thoroughly, drain and save the oil and discard the ginger. Use this oil, mixed with soy 1:2 and brown sugar to taste for the marinade.
Slice the livers, depending on size, into thirds; remember that the livers will have a tough connective membrane that must be removed. Slice small whole water chestnuts into halves add them to the marinade. Marinate both for at least an hour.
Skewer livers and chestnuts in bacon sliced to size and place in a hot oven (425) until bacon has crisped.
One of the most iconic television commercials of my generation featured a cable car with its bell dinging climbing up a hill with San Francisco Bay in the background while a cheery chorus sang:
“Rrrrice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat! (ding, ding!) Rice-a-Roni, everybody’s got the beat! (clap, clap!) Started out where cable cars play this song, Now it’s right at home before very long, Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat!”
What we know as Rice-a-Roni had its origins in a produce store established by Italian-born immigrant Domenico (“Charlie”) DeDomenico who moved to California in 1895. His wife Maria was from Salerno, Italy where her family owned a pasta factory, and in 1912, she persuaded him to set up a similar business in the Mission District of San Francisco. The business, Gragnano Products, Inc., delivered pasta to Italian stores and restaurants. DeDomenico’s sons, Paskey, Vince (1915–2007), Tom, and Anthony, worked with him.
In 1934, Paskey changed the name to Golden Grain Macaroni Company. Tom’s wife, Lois, was inspired by the pilaf recipe she received from Armenian immigrant Mrs. Pailadzo Captanian, to create a dish of rice and macaroni, which she served at a family dinner. In 1958, Vince invented Rice-A-Roni by adding a dry chicken soup mix to rice and macaroni.
In 1958, Vince DeDomenico decided to take this recipe and produce it for sale in grocery stores. He placed the rice and pasta in a box, and added a dry seasoning mix in place of the liquid chicken broth. Because this product was made up of half rice and half pasta, he decided to call it Rice-a-Roni.
“There were not many packaged side dishes in the market in 1955,” said Dennis DeDomenico, Tom and Lois’ son. “Everything was being geared toward less time in the kitchen. Major appliances like dishwashers and garbage disposals were starting to come in. The convenience factor was everything.” All that was missing was a name.
“We said, ‘Well, what is the product? The product is rice and macaroni. Why don’t we call it Rice-A-Roni?’ Didn’t quite sound right. Who’d ever heard of rice and macaroni being together? Still, the name had a ring to it.”
Chicken Rice-a-Roni was first introduced in the Northwestern states in 1958. With it came the first Rice-a-Roni commercial, featuring San Francisco’s Cable Cars and the now famous jingle.
Use russets. Peel if you must, slice them on the thin side, rinse and drain thoroughly. Blanch in oil (peanut is good, tallow is best) at a simmering boil until soft, then drain and set aside. You can refrigerate them for cooking later.
Heat oil until close to smoking. Quickly add the potatoes in small batches; the oil will roil furiously and can easily boil over. When potatoes are buoyant and crisp, drain, salt, and serve.
This simple recipe is very old and known by many names, most famously French toast, egg toast, or pain perdu, Often served as a sweet dish, I prefer mine simply seasoned with salt and pepper.
Beat three eggs in a cup of milk or half-and-half. Season with salt and pepper. Add a little vanilla if you plan to serve it sweet. Sop dried bread–I use a light wheat cut on the thick side–in egg/milk mixture, and pan-fry in butter until nicely browned.
In a glass or ceramic baking dish, layer 1 (16-ounce) can refried beans (Blue Runner cream-style red beans are also great to use), 2 cups guacamole with the juice of two limes, 2 cups shredded sharp cheddar or a taco cheese blend, 1 finely-chopped raw red onion, 2 cups of sour cream seasoned with a packet of taco seasoning, 2 cups pico de gallo (recommended) or a very chunky salsa drained, 2 small ripe tomatoes diced, and 1 small can of sliced or diced black olives (optional, at least in my game).
Refrigerate—covered with foil or plastic wrap—for at least an hour. Top with finely-shredded lettuce, and serve with corn tortilla chips. This is the most basic recipe; feel free to improvise and revise. I like to add a little garlic to the beans, and if I add ground beef—which I rarely do, since the dish is quite substantial as is—it’s layered between the beans and guac. If you use a store-bought salsa, it’s important to drain it in a sieve beforehand, else it will make the mixture quite soupy. I also add minced jalapenos to the beans rather than sliced japs in the tomato/onion layer. Chopped green onions mixed with the lettuce adds more texture and zing.
