Purple hull pea hulls give a grape-flavored jelly, white crowder hulls a honey-flavored jelly, lady pea hulls an apple-flavored jelly, and if you mix the hulls of crowder, purple, whippoorwill, and lady peas, you get a for a plum-flavored jelly.
Wash 1 gallon pea hulls thoroughly, at least twice, then bring to boil in a heavy pan with enough water to cover hulls. Boil over low heat for 8 to 10 minutes. Save the juice, approximately 8 cups, and discard hulls. Combine juice with 2 pkgs. Sure-Jell in heavy saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for 2 minutes. Add 8 cups of sugar and boil an additional minute. Pour mixture into glass jars and seal.
Willadeen Monahan and her sister Geraldeen used to sing on the local radio shows in north Mississippi back in the 1950s. They were pretty and could sing up a storm, but the act never went anywhere. In time they both married and settled down, Geraldeen in Kosciusko and Willadeen in Como, where I became her neighbor.
Panola County gets mighty cold in the deep Delta winter, and when the north wind came whipping down on us like a blue devil, Willadeen would call us up and say, “Y’all come on over and get some of this spoon bread to keep you warm. You know I make the best in the world!” And she did. Here’s her recipe.
Preheat oven to 400. Sift 1 cup cornmeal into 2 cups of lightly salted boiling water. Lower the heat and stir vigorously to a stiff gruel. Remove from heat and mix in a cup of cold milk or cream–this is best done with a whip.
Add 2 well-beaten eggs and 2 tablespoons melted butter. Blend until very smooth and ladle into a heated, well-oiled 8-in. baking dish. Willadeen used a skillet, which gives a nice crust. Bake until firm in the middle and nicely browned, about 40 minutes, less if you’re using cast iron. Serve hot from the oven with molasses or honey.
In my book, which got another rejection this month –“Your approach to cooking is mind-numbingly academic and 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, Waters never had a song written about her, much less an anthem.
Alice 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 moose/mooses/meece 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 in a bowl.
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.
Our grocery deli serves these potatoes—along with two kinds of grits and rice—as sides on its breakfast buffet. Cube red potatoes and parboil until just firm. Drain, season with salt and pepper, then pan fry until done through and crusty.
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.
Way back when, die-hard home cooks would sniff and curl a lip at a newlywed or (worse) single parent who brought a sheet cake to a bake sale. THEY, of course, brought an heirloom 8-layer caramel/German chocolate in a handmade paper mache decoupage box.
Even worse, those die-hards naturally felt compelled to extract a timorous confession from the donor that a boxed cake mix was involved. Canned frosting was the coup de grace; admission to the bridge club would be ever afterwards inconceivable.
Granted, homemade cakes are a certified source of pride and satisfaction; given the time, they’re worth the effort. But if you’re losing you mind over at least a half dozen over things like the rest of us, use a boxed mix with homemade frosting.
Combine 1 box Pillsbury White Supreme cake mix, 8 oz. sour cream, ¼ cup melted butter, 3 large eggs at room temperature, half of an 8-oz. can of crushed pineapple (drained and squeezed), and a can of cream of coconut (Coco Lopez).
Mix on medium speed until smooth. Pour batter into a 9×13-inch pan greased with butter and lined with parchment paper. Place in a preheated 350 oven until toothpick-clean and firm in the middle, about 30 mins. Cool on a rack.
Blend 8 oz. softened cream cheese with two cups confectioner’s sugar, (the other 4 ounces of crushed, drained, and squeezed pineapple, and a tablespoon coconut extract. If needed, thin to spreading consistency with milk, top cake, and sprinkle with 2 cups toasted shredded coconut or coconut chips.
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.
I recommend 21/25 ct. shrimp. Boil, peel, and if you’re the persnickety type, devein. For five pounds of shrimp, mix well 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. Red pepper flakes are an option. Add with two small white onions, very thinly sliced, two fresh bay leaves, and a cup of diced sweet peppers. Toss until shrimp are coated, cover and chill overnight, stirring occasionally. In season, add diced ripe summer tomatoes before spooning over leaf greens and drizzling with marinade.
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.
This recipe comes from an article in The New York Times by Joan Nathan, “East Meets South at a Delta Table” (June, 2003) profiling the Sino-Southern cooking of the Chow family in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Wash and trim three bunches of collards and cut into more or less bite-size pieces. Heat wok or a very large skillet, brown a teaspoon of salt, and add about a quarter cup of canola or peanut oil. When oil is hot, add 6 sliced cloves of garlic and stir until lightly toasted.
Add greens and a dash of pepper, stir constantly until wilted and tender, then blend in 2 tablespoons oyster sauce and a scant teaspoon of sugar. Taste and adjust seasoning. Serve immediately.
