A Southern Gallimaufry
Blend a cup of coarsely-chopped pitted dates with a ¾ cup brown sugar and a stick of soft butter. Sift in a cup of all-purpose flour, a teaspoon baking soda, and a teaspoon salt. Add a lightly beaten egg, a teaspoon vanilla, whatever spices fit your groove (clove and ginger are mine), and a cup and a half of quick-cooking oats. Mix until moist through. Spoon onto a lightly oiled baking sheet and bake on the middle rack of a preheated 350 oven for about 20 minutes.
Select peppers without bruising, mold, or tears. Wash, drain, and remove stems and husks. Spread in a single layer on a sheet pan and place in a very low oven. In most ovens, this is the “warm” setting, about 170 degrees. Vent slightly (I use a wooden spoon.) Toss and turn every half hour or so until thoroughly dry. Store in a vented container for a day or so before crushing. This process works for most thin-skinned peppers.
This old egg-and-bread dish goes by many names. At my childhood table, it was known as eggs-in-a-basket. Later I found it was hens-in-a-nest, toad-in-the-hole by Brits, and one version simply called egg toast. But when I published a recipe for eggs-in-a-basket some time ago, Mississippi actress Susan McPhail pointed out that, “Tennessee Williams calls them ‘Eggs Birmingham’ in Baby Doll.”
Well, I’ll be damned (I thought). You’d think growing up less than 200 miles from Birmingham (Alabama), I’d know of eggs Birmingham; moreover, you’d think a Southern food writer with a degree in literature would have found this blip on his radar decades ago. But no. Fortunately, I happen to know a lot of people—like Susan—who are smarter than I am, which is bruising to my self-esteem, but provides me with some assurance of being well-informed, or at least the comforting illusion thereof.
Baby Doll (1956), produced and directed by Elia Kazan and starring Carroll Baker, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach, was shot on location at the Burrus House near Benoit, Mississippi, which at that time was in a state of considerable decay. Williams wrote the script, which was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay (Kazan claimed in his autobiography that Williams was only “half-heartedly” involved in the screenplay), drawing from his previous works 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, a 1946 one-act play that Williams referred to as “a Mississippi Delta comedy, and The Long Stay Cut Short, or, The Unsatisfactory Supper, a moving short drama about the turning out of an old servant, published in 1946 along with 4 other one-act plays in American Blues: Five Short Plays.
In 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, Jake, a middle-aged, shady cotton gin owner with antiquated equipment burns down the mill of the Syndicate Plantation, a rival in the cotton business where Silva Vicarro serves as Superintendent. Vicarro, who knows what happened but cannot prove it, gets revenge by raping Jake’s young and voluptuous but childlike and naïve wife Flora.
The Long Stay Cut Short, or, The Unsatisfactory Supper, depicts the story of Archie Lee and his Baby Doll Meighan (parallels of Jake and Flora in 27 Wagons Full of Cotton) who are reluctantly providing a home to Aunt Rose, an elderly relation who has been passed around among the family to house. An “unsatisfactory supper” cooked by Aunt Rose, who neglected to light the burner under the greens she’d put on the stove earlier. She offers to make eggs Birmingham to appease him.
ARCHIE LEE. What is eggs Birmingham?
AUNT ROSE. Why, eggs Birmingham was Baby Doll’s daddy’s pet dish.
ARCHIE LEE. That don’t answer my question.
AUNT ROSE. (As though confiding a secret.) I’ll tell you how to pre- pare them.
ARCHIE LEE. I don’t care how you prepare them, I just want to know what they are.
AUNT ROSE. (Reasonably.) Well, Son, I can’t say what they are without telling how to prepare them. You cut some bread-slices and take the centers out of them. You put the bread-slices in a skillet with butter. Then into each cut-out center you drop one egg and on top of the eggs you put the cut-out centers.
. . .
ARCHIE LEE. (Roughly, his back still turned.) I don’t want Eggs Bir- mingham.
BABY DOLL. He don’t want Eggs Birmingham and neither do I. But while we are talking, Aunt Rose-well-Archie Lee’s wondered and I’ve been wondering, too. . .
AUNT ROSE. About what, Baby Doll?
BABY DOLL. Well, as to whether or not you’ve—made any plans.
AUNT ROSE. Plans?
BABY DOLL. Yes, plans.
AUNT ROSE. What kind of plans, Baby Doll?
BABY DOLL. Why, plans for the future, Aunt Rose.
Rose, in despair, with characteristically Williamsian pathos, rushes to the yard to gather roses in an approaching storm: The blue dusk deepens to purpleand purple to black and the roar comes on with the force of a locomotive as AUNT ROSE’S figure is pushed toward the rose-bush.
In Baby Doll, “Aunt Rose Comfort” offers to make Archie Lee (Karl Malden) “my Eggs Birmingham” when he rejects her undercooked greens. Vaccaro (Wallach) offers to hire her to cook for him in her home and make eggs Birmingham for him there, a much more humane fate for Rose, but a move designed to needle Archie Lee, who asks, “Anything else around here you wanta take with yuh, Vacarro?”
Pat dry split whole breasts of chicken. Brush with light vegetable oil infused with granulated garlic, dried minced onions, rubbed sage, black pepper and salt in a roughly 2:2:1:1:1 ratio. Arrange loosely on a baking sheet or in a large skillet and bake at 350 until the skin is crisp and juices run clear.
Making quick breads is such a basic culinary skill that at one time those persistent legions of people who spend their time minding other people’s business sniffed their disapproval of a newly-wed husband’s wife by saying, “He married a woman who can’t even make biscuits.” Those were more genteel times. Nowadays, of course, those same people would just say he hooked up with a tramp and be done with it. For all you floozies out there who need a bonus the morning after–like a reputation–here’s how to make biscuits. And if you don’t carry a skillet with you, well, you’re on your own.
Like many short bread recipes, the one for biscuits is more technique than ingredients. Getting the biscuits to rise well is key, and if you don’t follow a reasonable procedure, you’re going to end up throwing away a pan of hockey pucks. Your ingredients work best if chilled. Biscuits shouldn’t be worked a lot; excess kneading makes the dough so dense that it won’t rise. Biscuits should also be cut out quickly while the dough is cool, and with a clean, sharp edge that will not pinch. Crowding the biscuits a bit also helps them to rise, but if you get them too close together the centers won’t bake through. Also make sure the oven is hot (450/475) before you put them on a rack in the upper third of the oven.
Buttermilk Biscuits
Take two cups of self-rising flour (I use Martha White) and sift in dry a scant teaspoon of baking soda; activated by the buttermilk, this helps the rise. Work thoroughly into this about 1/3 a cup of cold vegetable shortening or butter; shortening gives a lighter texture, butter a better flavor. Mix with the fingers until it has an almost granular texture. Then, working quickly, stir in enough cold buttermilk to make a sticky dough, about 3/4 cup. Throw this dough out on a generously-floured surface, sprinkle with a scant more flour and knead a couple of times, enough to coat the dough with flour. Roll out to about a half-inch and cut into rounds. You can make them as big or small as you like, just be sure to cut them with a sharp edge: a Mason jar just won’t work. Again, work quickly so that the dough doesn’t get warm. Place biscuits just touching in a lightly greased skillet and pop them into a hot oven for about a quarter an hour. You want them golden-brown and fragrant; brush lightly with butter while hot.
For six hard-boiled eggs, mix the yolks with 4 ounces of minced smoked oysters and a tablespoon of the oil in the can. Add a tablespoon each of brown mustard and chopped canned pimentos along with enough mayonnaise to cream Season with white pepper and thyme. Sprinkle with salt before serving.
Pasta salads come and go, but they’re always here, and the best ones are robust, the pasta providing a springboard for any number of wonders. This recipe has enough and to spare, since the rich and textured binding embraces additions. Elbow macaroni makes a great salad because it’s fluffier than other hollow pasta, and you can’t beat it for economy and availability. The other ingredients are just as familiar, and the combination is savory and attractive. The recipe is easily doubled, tripled or whatnot. For an evening meal make it in the morning, for lunch the night before, but this dish doesn’t keep well at all, no more than a day.
16 oz. large elbow macaroni, cooked
2 cups ham diced sautéed
1 cup diced raw bell pepper or pimento (better)
1 cup diced white onion (half green is great, too)
1 cup diced celery
1/2 cup sliced-diced black bottled olives
6 egg yolks mashed
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup small raw broccoli florets
2 tbs. yellow and 1 tbs. spicy brown mustard
2 tbs. dill/sweet relish*
*There’s a bone of contention with the relish, so take your pick; likewise with the granulated garlic, which we add when we’re making it for home, but it doesn’t travel well.
The Southern boomer table—for which, I might add, I barely qualify—is peppered with dishes fabricated in company test kitchens. Green bean casserole is likely the most conspicuous example, but there are hundreds of others. Many vintage commercial dessert recipes include the word “magic,” which evokes the thrill of discovery with whiff of Disney. This recipe is from The Country Gourmet, distributed by the Mississippi Animal Rescue League in 1983. The book features a short forward by Eudora Welty, who writes, “Guarding and protecting, trying to save, all life on earth is a need we all alike share.”
Beat six ounces of whipped topping with a thawed can of lemonade concentrate and a can of condensed milk. Pour into a graham cracker pie crust and freeze, recommending at least one hour before serving, but I make and freeze it a day ahead.
It’s late summer. The exhausting heat endures, and September’s sure to extend the drought, but on a (rather singular) bright note, muscadines are beginning to appear in markets.
North America has two native grape species, Vitis labrusa, often called the fox or possum grape, which has several cultivars, and the more popular Vitis roundifolia, which most people call a muscadine. Muscadines have a thick skin and rind–they’re actually chewy; when you bit into them, you get an explosion of sweet, sharp flavor, and of course that essential hint of musk. They’re a little bit pricey, but to me, they’re worth it. Naturally, both species are widely used for making wines, which are most often cloyingly sweet, the sort of thing a little old lady would poison, pour into cut crystal aperitifs, and serve to a middle-aged rogue she’d discovered was cheating on her with the choir director.
The name muscadine comes from its similarity to early settlers with the Muscat grape, a Mediterranean type used in making muscatel, both words deriving from the Sanskrit muska-s (testicle,) in reference to the musky scent of the fruit. (Never underestimate etymology.) Muscadines come in a variety of colors, but there are two basic color types: the black/purple and the white/bronze. The white/bronze type is called a scuppernong because of a natural cultivar discovered on the Scuppernong River in North Carolina. Because this plant is such an early variety, any ”white” muscadine is called a scuppernong.
Use muscadines as you might any berry: in pies and cobblers, muffins, jams and jellies as well as the aforementioned wines, but the fresh fruit is incredibly wonderful, so keep a bowl out to nibble on.
Over time many dishes have been recklessly and needlessly consigned to holidays. What’s sad and paradoxical about this consignment is that many dishes we prepare only for the holidays are those that bring us the greatest comfort, that make us feel most at home and closest to the hearts of our lives. Let’s make gingerbread any day of the year.
Cream a stick of unsalted butter with a half cup of light brown sugar, beat until fluffy, and mix well with two eggs and a half cup of sorghum molasses. Mix one and a half cups of flour with a half teaspoon of baking soda, a teaspoon each of cinnamon, ground cloves, and allspice along with a heaping tablespoon of ground ginger. Add two teaspoons vanilla and a half cup buttermilk. Pour batter into a buttered loaf pan and bake at 350 for about an hour.
If you can, cool before slicing. I never can.
