This recipe is a riff on a dish served at Pere Antoine in the Vieux Carré. There, mushroom caps are stuffed with a creamed spinach-mushroom-crab mixture, then breaded and deep-fried. Here the stuffing is served en casserole, a superb addition to any event buffet.
Sauté a half pound of thinly-sliced fresh mushrooms in a stick of butter. Stir in two cups chopped spinach and a half pound lump crab meat (picked through!). Make a quart of cream sauce–use half-and-half–and add to spinach/crab mix along with a cup of freshly grated hard/sharp cheese. Work in a finely julienned sweet red pepper, a few tablespoons of grated onion, and a minced clove of garlic (or two).
Season to your taste; I like a good slash of white pepper and a teaspoon or so of dried thyme. Mix very well, pour into an oiled casserole, and top with a freshly-grated hard cheese. Bake at 350 until browned and bubbling. Serve with dry toast and fresh lemons.
Mix well a cup of white corn meal with a cup 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 a little more meal (another tablespoon or two) for a thick batter. Drop by spoonfuls onto a well-oiled sheet pan, and bake at 350 until edges are crisp and centers firm, right at 15 minutes. These are best right out of the oven, but reheat beautifully. The recipe makes about 10 3-in. cakes.
This old buffet dish is perfect for a tailgate brunch . Most recipes call for white hominy, but yellow or a blend is pretty.
To four cups drained and rinsed hominy, add a small jar of pimentos, a chopped mild banana pepper or green chilies, and two cups mild cheddar cheese sauce. Make your own; you can do it. Some people add sausage, bacon, or ham, but that’s totally superfluous; likewise with jalapenos. Season with salt and white pepper. Bake at 300 for about 20 mins.
My Aunt Jett learned to cook from her mother, whose people settled a wilderness.
Food was their only pleasure not subject to religion. They sustained themselves and their families on corn and pork with whatever else they could grow or kill. They planted and picked, cooked and baked, dried and canned what they could, making the most of what they had season to season, year to year, generation to generation.
Jett always had something fixed for whatever company might drop in: stewed greens, limas, black-eyed peas, or snap beans, new or creamed potatoes, fried chicken, pork chops, or breaded steak. If it were summer, she’d have fresh sliced tomatoes, fried okra, or corn on the cob.She served her meals with sliced onion, cornbread or biscuits, and sawmill gravy with sweetened tea to drink; she seasoned with streak-o’-lean, salt, black pepper (maybe a little cayenne) and sage.
Jet’s cooking was simple, but not coarse; it had a balance and symmetry all its own, dictated by long-ago voices set in concert with the seasons. Jett thanked God before we ate, and that, too is elemental of our sustenance.
Aunt Jett (left) with her sisters Maude and Virgie.
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.
Cafe Olé on University Avenue in Oxford was a popular eatery in the 1990s. I worked there briefly after I returned to Oxford after several years in Florida, and before I went into rehab.
Man, was I a mess.
The dip, served as a complimentary side with a basket of warm tortilla chips, is typical of most good Mexican restaurants. We made gallons and gallons of it.
Converting a restaurant recipe to one easily made at home presents problems both with the scaling-down process and the ingredients. Bear in mind also that this recipe is my adaptation of the one I copied down some twenty years ago.
So make a batch according to these directions and then modify it as you see fit. I have scaled down the more distinctive ingredients (lime juice, vinegar, jalapeno “juice”, onion, garlic, and cilantro) in this version, because once these are added, you can’t very well remove them. If you want more, you can add it later.
The dip should be on the thin side, very sharp, redolent of garlic, cilantro, and lime.
1 12-oz. can tomato puree 1 cup water 1 12-oz. can whole tomatoes (with juice) 1/2 cup lime juice 1/2 cup white vinegar 1/2 cup canned jalapeno juice (or any hot pepper vinegar) 1 cup jalapenos (half that if you’re using fresh) 1 large white onion, chopped 1/4 cup granulated garlic (I recommend dried/minced as a substitute) 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro Process until smooth
You don’t see many Southern recipes for apple cookies. Apples simply don’t do well in the South, and those that do are usually made into sauces, pies, or cakes.
A quick scan of Southern Sideboards, Bayou Cuisine, River Road Recipes, Vintage Vicksburg, Gourmet of the Delta, The Jackson Cookbook, and The Mississippi Cookbook turned up nary a one, but I did find an apple cookie recipe in Hosford Fontaine’s Allison’s Wells: The Last Mississippi Spa.
You can’t get any more Southern than that.
3 cups of unpeeled diced apples (I use Galas) 2 sticks butter, softened ¾ cup sugar ¾ cup brown sugar 3 eggs, lightly beaten 2 cups flour 1 tablespoon grated orange peel 2 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon cinnamon A half teaspoon each ground cloves, nutmeg, and salt 2 cups rolled oats ¼ cup white raisins ¼ cup chopped pecans
Cream butter and sugars well, add eggs and flour mixed and sifted with spices and baking powder, then stir in apples, oats and nuts. Refrigerate dough for about 30 minutes, stirring once. Form dough into ping pong balls, and bake on a lightly oiled cookie sheet with parchment paper at 350 or until lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack. This recipe makes about two dozen wonderful, chewy, cookies.
“I grew up poor! We were so poor! Rupert, tell them!”
“They were so poor they had to piss in a bucket a block away!” Rupert said from the back porch, where he was working on the lawn mower.
“But we were proud!” Lucretia said. “My mother, she was the old Creole blood. She sold the calas on Dauphine, her apron white as an old nun, stiff as a young priest, and she’d go, “Belles calas! Mo gaignin calas, guaranti vous ve bons! Belles calas, belles calas!” And all the girls who worked up in their rooms, they’d come down to get Mama Diart’s cakes for their gentlemen who were sleeping it off in the beds like they’d get the strong coffee from Monsoir’s. The bottle they had already.”
“We ate the rouge ser riz, all the time! If we were lucky, Mama would get the ham joint that Hector Monsoir had saved for her because you see he was secretly in love with Mama from a long time ago when she was so beautiful and slender like a dancer with her laughing eyes.”
“They were so poor, she had to share her brassiere with her sisters!” Rupert tried to crank the lawnmower, but failed and he cussed.
“But not like those beans they make now!” Lucretia shouted. “Pah! Those beans they make now they taste like those little wads of dough the Italians boil to put in that red gravy they make. Beans that have no bones, no flesh, no . . . spirit. They use those big long-nosed beans, those . . . what do they call them, yes, them kidney beans, the light-colored ones like a bean the white people in the country use to put on their meal bread.” She made a face like spitting. “And they should be pissed on! No, she used the little red beans she bought from old Helene on Magazine.”
“They were so poor, if her brothers didn’t wake up with bones, they didn’t have anything to play with!” Rupert pulled the cord and the mower cranked, coughing and spitting. He pushed it into the yard and began mowing.
“She would bring the beans home when she sold her cakes, put them in the big pot on the back of the stove with water enough over the joint and start the laundry for the ladies in the Quarter. All afternoon they’d soak, and she’d start the fire. She had the herbs, too, from the market on Decatur, and pepper.
When we all got home she made the rice, and we would eat while all around us we could hear music play and see shadows dancing in the pretty rooms where the ladies sprayed perfumes on the pink lampshades.”
Snapper en Mornay was one of the most popular dishes at the old Warehouse in Oxford. We broiled snapper fillets with a rich in-house sauce, and served them with a dusting of paprika, a sprinkling of sliced almonds, and our house bread.
Make a blond roux using a half cup each butter and flour. Add two cups whole milk, a splash of good sherry, a teaspoon of salt, and a cup of grated cheese (Parmesan, Romano, or a dry Swiss). This makes a very thick, rich white sauce to which you can add picked lump crab meat or chopped cooked shrimp/green onions.
Mix well, and chill thoroughly. This makes a little over three cups of sauce, enough for five, maybe six 8-ounce fillets of snapper, flounder, red fish, catfish, or another lean white fish. Score fillets on the bone side (this is important). Place in a lightly oiled sizzle platter, cover with (cold) sauce, and place in a very hot (450) oven–I don’t recommend broiling–until fish flakes, about 7 or 8 minutes.
Sauté a cup of finely chopped white onions in a stick of butter until clear; stir in 3 tablespoons flour. With grace and beauty, blend in a cup and a half of milk mixed with an egg yolk. Stir until smooth and thick. Remove from heat, add six sliced hard-boiled eggs, two tablespoons grated hard cheese, cayenne for heat, and paprika for color. Salt to taste. This recipe serves about eight people.
