Author: Jesse Yancy

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Muffaletta Relish

Drain and finely chop a cup of giardiniera; combine with a half-cup each of minced/diced pimento-stuffed green and pitted black olives. Add a quarter cup each chopped white onion, minced celery, and chopped parsley/green onions. Mix well. In a separate bowl mix vigorously a half cup of olive oil, with three finely minced  toes of garlic and a half cup of mild vinegar. (Don’t use use apple cider; it totally clashes with the vibe.) Add two tablespoons each of Italian seasoning, minced capers, and a heaping tablespoon of coarsely-ground black pepper. Pour this mix over the olives and giardiniera mix and blend well. Cool and rest for at least an hour. Stir well before use. This will keep for about two weeks in the fridge.

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Aunt Beck’s Chicken Pie

In Welty’s splendid Losing Battles, Beck Beecham brought this pie to Granny Vaughn’s 90th birthday gathering for her nephew, Jack, who’d escaped from Parchman to be at the celebration.

Aunt Beck climbed the steps in the wake of Uncle Curtis. Her pink, plain face was like a badge of safety. Over her pink scalp, tiny curls of a creamy color were scattered in crowds, like the stars of a clematis vine.
“You brought your chicken pie,” Miss Beulah said, relieving her of the apron-covered dishpan. “And Jack’s exactly who I made it for,” said Aunt Beck. “If I made my good chicken pie, he’ll come eat it, I thought, every dusty mile of the way.”

Welty claims it’s a Methodist dish.

1 young chicken (about 4 lbs.)
6 small white onions
2 ounces bacon, cut in small cubes
2 1/2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon parsley, finely chopped
1/2 cup celery, finely chopped
3 hard-cooked eggs, sliced
Salt and pepper to taste
Pastry to cover a 9-inch pie

Boil the chicken in highly seasoned water and allow to cool in its broth. Separate the meat from skin and bones, leaving the chicken in large pieces. Boil the onions in salted water until tender, but not mushy, and drain. Fry the bacon until tender, without browning; remove from frying pan and set aside. In the remaining fat, cook the flour over very low heat for 3 minutes, then gradually stir in 21/2 cups of the broth in which the chicken was cooked. Add parsley, celery, salt and pepper, simmer for 6 minutes.

Put half the quantity of bacon, half the chicken pieces, half the quantity of onions and half the quantity of eggs in the baking dish. Lay on the remaining pieces of chicken, add the rest of the other ingredients and pour the sauce over all. Cover with rich pie pastry, pressing down the edges with a fork. Brush with milk and make several slashes for the steam to escape. Bake in a hot oven (450° F) for 15 minutes, reduce heat to moderate (350° F) and bake 30 minutes longer. Serve at once with succotash. Serves 6.

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Two Potato Bake

Peel and slice on the thin side waxy white and sweet potatoes, layer in a lightly buttered casserole, gratin, or skillet–be artistic–with sprinklings of salt, pepper,  and thyme. Brush lavishly with melted butter and bake at 350 until the tops are crisped.

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Josephine’s Kettle-Fried Matzo Balls

The name beneath this recipe from Jackson’s New Stage Theatre’s Standing Room Only: Recipes for Entertaining (1983) is Ellen Douglas, the pen name for writer Josephine Ayers Haxton. Born in Natchez, she married composer Kenneth Haxton in 1945, and shortly afterwards moved to Haxton’s hometown of Greenville. There she befriended Shelby Foote, Hodding Carter, and other local literati.

According to the author, she entered into a wager with her husband and a mutual friend on who could finish a novel in the least amount of time. She won the bet by writing A Family’s Affairs (1962), which is largely autobiographical in nature, requiring her to get her family’s permission to publish the narrative and resulting in her adoption of the pen name Ellen Douglas. The book not only sold well, but it also won the Houghton Mifflin Esquire Fellowship Award for best new novel and was named as one the year’s ten best books by The New York Times. Her second work, Black Cloud, White Cloud (1963), a collection of short stories, also won the Houghton Mifflin Esquire Fellowship Award, and her 1973 novel Apostles of Light was a finalist for the National Book Award. Other works include The Rock Cried Out (1973) and A Lifetime Burning (1982). Haxton diedin 2012.

Though Ayers was not Jewish, her mother-in-law Ellise Blum Haxton was the daughter of Jewish merchant Aaron Blum of Nelms and Blum department store in Greenville, and this recipe may have come from her kitchen. From my (demonstrably non-Jewish) perspective, fried matzos seem like just another variety of hushpuppy, though serving them with catfish—which is decidedly non-kosher—might be a bit rude. These make a great side for any number of meat dishes—baked chicken or fish, beef roast, what have you—but they’re also a great buffet nosh served with a sauce made with one part each grated horseradish, sour cream and mayonnaise seasoned with salt and cayenne to taste.

Soak two matzo crackers in water; drain and squeeze dry. Heat 2 tablespoons chicken fat, and sauté ¼ medium onion until golden brown. Add soaked crackers and cook and stir until the mixture “clears” the skillet. Cool. Add a teaspoon chopped parsley, a teaspoon salt, a quarter teaspoon of ground ginger, an eighth teaspoon both ground pepper and nutmeg, two lightly beaten eggs and enough matzo meal (about a quarter cup) to make a soft dough. Let stand for several hours to swell. Shape into small balls. Fry in deep fat (assumedly not lard, jly) until golden brown. The balls can be formed and frozen before frying. (This recipe makes about 20 balls.)

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Cornmeal Butter Cakes

Mix well a cup of white corn meal with two cups of hot water, a teaspoon of salt, and a quarter cup melted butter. Herbs, spices, or seeds are appealing options, but I like to keep these simple. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes, then add meal or water as needed for a thick batter. Drop by spoonfuls onto a well-oiled sheet pan, and bake at 350 until edges are crisp and centers firm, around about 15 minutes. These are best right out of the oven, but reheat beautifully. The recipe makes about 10 3-in. cakes.

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My Rift with Rose Budd

Jerry Clower once declared (Jerry never simply “said” anything) that Rose Budd Stevens is a national treasure, and I agree with every piece of my heart.

If you are interested in the way Mississippians cooked and prepared foodstuffs in the first half of the 20th century, then you should get From Rose Budd’s Kitchen (University Press of Mississippi: 1988). For those Mississippi foodies who love the literature of the table, this is an essential addition to your bookshelf, a wonderful work written by a remarkable woman.

Mrs. Willoughby and I grew up in rural Mississippi at different times. Reading her reminds me of the words, phrases, and cadences I heard from my grandmothers and great aunts, a noisy, lively chatter from a kitchen long ago. Mamie resembles them when it comes to a lesson, too, as she sets forth–fists on hips–in this passage:

Let’s get this chicken stew, dumplings and chicken pie business straight right now. Chicken Stew: Roll thick dough, cut into strips, drop into boiling chicken broth, and cook uncovered. Chicken Dumplings: Drop spoonfuls of dough on top of boiling chicken and broth, cook with tight-fitting lid on, and don’t peek. Chicken Pie: Put layer of chicken and broth in large pan. Dot with butter and black pepper, then layer of rich dough. Bake until light brown; add another layer of chicken, broth, and dough, bake. Do this until pan is nearly full. Some hold with a cup of sweet milk added, then back 30 minutes. I like hard-boiled eggs and sweet cream in my pie. Last would be cups of cooked-down broth, tasty with floating eyes of chicken fat, all melded together, food fit for the gods, company or family. Remember this was before it was known you could eat yourself to death!

Here’s where Mamie and I part ways. My recipe for chicken and dumplings perfectly matches her chicken stew rather than her “Chicken Dumplings.” The difference might be simple semantics, and covering the dumplings as they cook is part of my process as well. But in the end, the dumplings are always folded into the broth. This is my recipe:

Poach a roasting hen with carrots, onions, celery, salt and pepper, a fresh bay leaf if you have one in water to cover by about an inch. Skin and debone chicken. Set meat aside, return bones to the pot, and reduce by about a third. Strain liquid and return to pot with about a tablespoon of bouillon paste. You want a gallon of good, rich broth. Make a stiff dough with 2 cups self-rising flour, butter, and sweet milk; roll it out to about an eighth of an inch, cut into strips and drop into boiling broth. Jiggle them around a bit to break them up and keep from sticking. As the broth begins to thicken, add the chicken, cover, and let boil for maybe another minute. Then reduce heat and let the pot sit for about another five minutes. You’ll have to adjust the salt, since dumplings, like any boiled starch (potatoes, rice, pasta, etc.) will absorb salt in cooking.

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Oven-Fried Oysters

Oven-fried anything will always be far inferior to anything flat-out fried, but these are awfully good on the fly when you don’t want to deal with a lot of hot oil.

Mix a cup of corn meal with a half cup of flour along with about a tablespoon of salt, black, and red pepper. Dip drained oysters in a wash made with one large egg whipped with a cup of water—you want it a little frothy. Dredge in meal/flour mixture, place in a well-oiled pan on the upper rack of a very hot oven. Spray with Pam. Flip two minutes after they begin sizzling, and continue cooking until plump and crisp.. These are actually pretty good cold.

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Creole Pecan Catfish

This dish was one of our more popular choices at the Downtown Grill in Oxford. Though a Creole mustard is used here, the recipe works well with brown, stone-ground, or Dijon.

Oil and line a skillet or sheet pan with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 400. Stir together 1 cup finely chopped pecans with about a quarter cup finely-crushed saltines; you can use Panko instead, but for some reason I never seem to have any Panko.

Mix ¼ cup mustard with 1 large egg and ¼ cup water. Beat very well. Dredge the fish through the mustard mixture and coat the tops of the fillets in crushed pecans. Bake at 400 for about 10-15 minutes, depending upon the size of the fillet.