Author: Jesse Yancy

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Marchand de Vin

This smart-ass from New Orleans—they’re all over the place down there, trust me—once asked me in a job interview (in Oxford, Mississippi in 1990, no less) if I knew how to make marchand. When I said no, the bastard actually curled his upper lip in an unctuous, condescending sneer. If I’d 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 asshole from New Orleans got fired four months later for stealing from the payrole and selling coke under the bar. This version of Brennan’s batch recipe makes about a quart and refrigerates well.

In a stick of butter, lightly brown a quarter cup of flour. Add a minced clove of garlic  smashed and minced, three or four chopped green onions, and a cup of diced shallots. Alternately, whisk in beef stock and wine until smooth and somewhat on the thin side. Season with thyme, parsley, fresh black pepper, and reduce heat. Salt to taste before serving.

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Hot and Sour Pickled Eggs

Heat vinegar with pickling spices, salt (a teaspoon to a quart), and a dusting of cayenne. You can throw in a chopped jalapeno if you like. Let sit for two or three days before serving. These go best with a lot of light Pilsner. And I do mean a lot. A whole lot.

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Mississippi’s Antipodes

Breaking up a bed for onion sets wears me out, but if I were capable of digging a hole through the earth to the other side of the globe and was lucky enough to find an island in the south Indian Ocean, it would be Ile Amsterdam, situated in one of the most desolate stretches of ocean in the world.

The island was named by one of those intrepid Dutch explorers of the 17th century, van Diemen, who in 1633 named it after his ship, the Nieuw Amsterdam, which was (incredibile dictu) named after a Dutch settlement on the east coast of North America at the mouth of the Hudson River.

Now under French administration, Ile Amsterdam is 21 square miles of rugged terrain in a Mediterranean climate: warm, dry and sunny. La Roche Godon, the only settlement on the island, is home to about 30 non-permanent inhabitants involved in biological, meteorological and geomagnetic studies. Doubtless out of sheer coincidence, both Jackson and Ile Amsterdam have a volcanic presence, but while the mountain on the island is potentially active, I have every assurance that despite a considerable amount of shifting, the cone beneath Jackson is very much extinct.

The island was once home to one of the few species of flightless ducks in the world, the Amsterdam wigeon, which was of course quickly exterminated once discovered, but still has the Amsterdam albatross as well as Amsterdam fur seals, which bask in thousands on the rocky coastline.

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The Naked Quiche

At the old Bean Blossom in Oxford, we worked with a limited inventory and a short menu, but this was no ball-and-chain for our spontaneity. One morning we decided on quiches for lunch, and with no time to make crusts, we made beautiful naked quiches.

These are called frittatas. Most frittatas are just fried potatoes and eggs, the most basic dish imaginable. It’s also heavy; a little goes a long way. I always add cheese, usually that Italian blend, but anything will do in a pinch. This recipe is best made in a 9-in. skillet.

Peel and dice two waxy potatoes; you want about two cups. You can either pan fry these in hot olive oil with a minced clove of garlic or parboil, drain, and then fry. Either way, you want potato chunks that are cooked through and a bit crusty.

Beat four eggs quite well, add to oiled skillet, and when eggs begin to bubble, sprinkle in the potatoes, stirring gently. At this point, add the cheese. Keep fiddling about until everything is well mixed, then pop in a hot oven until browned.

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Crystal Wings

Disjoint wings, and unless you’re a compulsive chicken stock person (I used to be one; trust me: get therapy) compost tips. Pat dry and deep-fry until lightly browned.

Toss with sloshes of Crystal Hot Sauce and dashes of granulated garlic. Bake well separated on a rack in a moderate (350) oven until crisp. These refrigerate well, but not freeze.

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Jackson: The Way We Were . . .

In 1981, Forrest L. Cooper and Donald F. Garrett published a selection of old postcards of Jackson from about 1902 until the mid-1950s, with more than 90% prior to 1920. The text was written by Carl McIntire, a self-professed “reporter, not a historian,” who nonetheless spent an enormous amount of time on the project, doing extensive research and interviewing more than 300 people. McIntire admitted to a margin of error, but states that “for the most part, all the dates and places are correct.” The book had a very limited printing and has hitherto never been republished. The link below will take you to a digital version of this exquisitely nuanced, intricately informative, and infinitely beautiful labor of love.

Jackson: The Way We Were . . .

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Charley Pride’s Baked Beans

As DA of Lafayette County in October, 1962, my father refused to sign a subpoena on the federal officers who guarded James Meredith at Ole Miss issued by a local grand jury for “disturbing the civil peace.”

He loved country music. He was raised on the likes of Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, and Roy Acuff; by the time I was ten, I knew damn near every one of Hank William’s songs by heart, and plenty of Loretta and Ernest as well. He also came to like a young singer named “Country Charley Pride” after hearing Pride’s first release in January 1966, “The Snakes Crawl at Night”.

Country music in the mid-1960s was–and largely still is–very much a white venue, so when my mother bought him an 8-track tape of Charley’s songs for him to listen to while he roared around in his new Mustang, she replaced the cover with one she made herself, something he wouldn’t look to hard at, a picture of a cowboy hat or something.

Then there came a day when they were driving somewhere or the other, Daddy was singing along with Charley, and Momma  turned to him after the song was over and said, “Jess, did you know he’s black?” He snorted and said, “Oh, Barbara, don’t be silly. He’s a country boy from over in Quitman County.” Then she showed him the original label on the tape.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.

Soon after that, Charley made headlines as the first black entertainer on the Grand Ole Opry since DeFord Bailey in 1941, and of course, Jess Jr. told everybody he had been listening to him for years.

Here’s Charley’s’s recipe for Sweet and Sour Baked Beans, which he probably got from a roadie. I found this recipe in Mississippi’s VIP Recipes. This cookbook was published by Phillips Printing in the Jackson area to support a local school; there’s no date and no mention of the school’s name, but the other 42 contributors include John Grisham, Faith Hill, Archie Manning, Walter Peyton, Jimmy Buffet and Mary Ann Mobley.

It’s nice to know our people help one another out even when they’re not at home.

Charlie Pride’s Sweet and Sour Baked Beans

8 bacon slices, pan fried until crisp, drained and crumbled
4 large onions, peeled and cut in rings
½ to one cup brown sugar (more if you like beans on the sweet side)
1 teaspoon dried mustard
½ teaspoon garlic powder (optional)
1 teaspoons salt
½ cup cider vinegar
1 one pound can green lima beans, drained
1 one pound can dark red kidney beans, drained
1 one pound can New England-style baked beans, undrained

Place onions in skillet. Add sugar, mustard, garlic powder and vinegar. Cook 20 minutes, uncovered. Add onion mixture to beans. Add crumbled bacon. Pour into 3-quart casserole. Bake in moderate over at 350 for one hour. Makes 12 servings.

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Sardonic Sardines

Some years ago, an obscure editor at a well-known fashion magazine prevailed upon a famous food writer to come up with a piece on sardines. To say that coercion was involved over this story is an understatement of near biblical proportions; the poor writer’s feet were probably held to some hellish, check-denying fire until he came up with a printable essay on a subject far beneath his contempt.

The end product, a minor etude of culinary literature memorable primarily by its invective, was infused with caustic bemusement and only a very, very small degree of begrudging admiration for the fish itself. The subject took second place to the condescension that infused every sentence, each one a blazing example of scathing hauteur.

What the writer was trying to do (with limited success) was to raise the sardine to such a degree of sophistication that it fit seamlessly in between the inexplicably anorexic homoerotic fashions, the absolutely incomprehensible art, and exhausting columns of blithering prose. He began with an “imagine this” sort of scenario in which a thin, impeccably dressed Parisienne strolls into a bistro on the Champs E’lysee, orders a beer with sardines au plat, then squats and gobbles without getting so much as a spot on her duds.

(Possible, sure.)

Most people turn their noses up at sardines. They have a strong smell, for one thing, but that’s not the main reason; lots of people eat stuff that smells bad, especially when nutrition isn’t particularly a key consideration. No, the reason people don’t eat sardines is because in this neck of the woods they’re considered trashy, so trashy that you’ll not find a single sardine recipe in any of Jill Connor Browne’s otherwise excellent culinary compilations.

If you want to try sardines for the first time, get a can of Port Clydes (in oil) and drain them; use a colander if you feel the need, but do not rinse them with water. Instead, sprinkle them with a little freshly-squeezed lemon juice and just a bit of kosher salt, set them in a sealed container in the refrigerator until thoroughly chilled and eat them with sour gherkins, raw celery and onions, and have your favorite beer with them. Dill toast is wonderful alongside, but rye Melba will suffice and saltines of any sort will do any time at all.

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Bragging of Mrs. Byrne

Having a designer set of Jane Austen displayed with discreet prominence tags one just as soundly as a bedroom book rack of Louis L’Amour paperbacks.

If you pardon as understandable the inordinate number of books devoted to cooking, my library is eclectic enough to deflect instantaneous psychoanalysis. The glaring exception is my copy of Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary, which labels me as a pseudo-intellectual of the vilest sort.

I met a fellow the other day who told me that he had snagged a first edition of the OED for twenty bucks from a library that was cleaning its shelves, and I felt cheap and disgusted with myself for being jealous.

Therapy doesn’t help. No.

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The Peabody Hotel’s Vanilla Muffins

However far second to mallards, the Peabody’s muffins do command a select notoriety.

The recipe dates from well before the 1940s, when they were served as late-night snacks for audiences of the big band orchestras in the Peabody Skyway They’re still served at the hotel for breakfast. This is a scaled-down version of the “official” batch recipe at historichotels.org,.

Cream two cups of sugar with four eggs. Add four cups plain flour sifted with a tablespoon baking powder, a pint of whole milk, two ounces melted butter, and a tablespoon natural vanilla. Mix to make a sticky dough, spoon into greased muffin tins, and bake at 400 for about fifteen minutes.