This labor-intensive recipe works well on those occasions when you can commandeer others to help.
For the filling use about a pound of frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed. With fresh spinach, use two pounds blanched, drained, and chopped.
Sauté in olive oil a large, finely-chopped onion and a cup of chopped scallions. Cool and add a half-cup chopped parsley. Season with dill, nutmeg, and lemon juice. Mix in a cup of crumbled feta and a half cup of a hard grated cheese such as Parmesan. Combine with spinach, salt to taste, and fold in four well-beaten eggs. Refrigerate.
Place filo sheets between slightly damp paper towels before use. Spread a single sheet across a lightly-oiled sheet pan–I use the bottom–brush with oil, fold in half, oil and fold again into a strip.
Have you ever folded a flag? The procedure here is the same. Fold a corner over about 1/4 cup of filling, flip, and keep flipping to the end of the sheet. Refrigerate pastries before cooking.
Mexico has almost six thousand miles of coastline—about half of the estimated total for the U.S.—but mollusks don’t seem to play a proportionate role in Mexican cuisine.
Kennedy includes a scallop cebiche in Cuisines of Mexico, but not a one for oysters. This is not to say that oysters and scallops aren’t eaten in the country, simply that you’ll not find them in cookbooks. Recipes for salt-water fish abound, and red snapper Veracruz (huachinango a la Veracruzana), a rich, colorful dish with tomatoes and chilies, is one of the most distinguished. This scallop recipe is a riff on that, lighter and more intense.
Thaw frozen scallops, squeeze and drain. Even fresh scallops are too watery for this dish, so sauté lightly until firm. Then drain, toss with pepper, a bit of salt and a light dusting of plain flour. Brown in the least bit of oil possible, then add by spoonfuls a pungent, piquant, and aromatic tomato salsa. Cook until scallops are well-coated.
Vienna sausages—along with (it must be said) potted meat—are the South’s signature blue-collar noshes, indispensable companions to the purple worms and Little Rebels in your tackle box, but it’s the rare household of any ilk in this part of the country that doesn’t have one or two pop-top cans of these little meaty treats stashed somewhere.
Like most iconic American foods, Vienna sausages were brought to America by immigrants, and it should come as no surprise that they hail from German-speaking Europe. Sometime around the turn of the last century, “wiener”—from Wien, the German spelling of Vienna—came to be used interchangeably with sausages like hot dogs and frankfurters. Properly speaking, the Vienna or Vienna-style sausage (Wienerwurst) is a frankfurter-style mixture of meats sold in braided links, but in America it transformed into a canned sausage, becoming an early example of convenience food.
Commercial canning of sausage came about in the mid-19th century and became mechanized in the 1860s. At the turn of the century Chicago-based Armour, Swift, and Libby, along with Hormel in Minnesota, dominated the market. The term “Vienna” or “Vienna-style” referring to a canned sausage—skinless after the 1950s—cut into two-inch lengths, appeared around 1900. In the South, where canned meats appeared in the 1890s, the first commercial meat processor in Mississippi, Bryan Packing Company of West Point, unlike northern companies, began canning sausages in oil. It wasn’t long before Bryan “vy-ennas” became legendary.
Vienna consumption has declined since its heyday in the middle of the 20th century; Armour, which introduced the pop-top aluminum can, remains the industry sales leader. Viennas—like Spam—seeped into international cuisines through U.S. military bases. The sausages are used in Filipino pancits, and a popular Cuban dish consisting of Viennas cooked with yellow rice (arroz amarillo con salchichas) no doubt came about courtesy of Guantánamo Bay.
Over time many dishes have been needlessly–and recklessly–consigned to specific holidays. How often do you roast a turkey, stuff eggs, or make a fruitcake? What’s sad and paradoxical about this occasional consignment is that many dishes we prepare only for the holidays are those that bring us the most comfort, that make us feel most at home and closest to the heart of our lives.
Gingerbread is an extreme example of this culinary exile, particularly because when gingerbread is prepared even for the holidays it’s most often make into cookies. Instead, let’s make loaves any day of the year, any time of the day. Many recipes employ equal measures of cinnamon, cloves, and allspice as well as ginger–almost as an afterthought–but ginger should shine.
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 have the willpower, cool before slicing. I never do.
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 the 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.
Quarter, parboil, and drain small red potatoes. Blanch fresh or frozen peas; you want them al dente. Mix with potatoes, diced scallions, chopped parsley, and toss in a vinaigrette made with vegetable oil, cup white vinegar, brown or creole mustard, and black pepper.. Chill thoroughly. Top with a squeeze of lemon before serving.
Pasta salads seem to 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 will embrace many types of additions.
Simple 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 exceptional as well as spectacular. The recipe is also easily doubled, tripled or whatnot. For an evening meal make it in the morning, and for lunch the night before, but mind you this dish doesn’t keep well at all, not more than a weekend, less if it’s handled or kept out very much at all.
Cook 16 oz. large elbow macaroni. Add a cup of mayonnaise, the mashed yolks of a half dozen boiled eggs, and a quarter cup of prepared mustard. Stir in a finely-grated carrot, a half-cup of sliced/diced black olives, and a cup each of finely-diced onion celery, and raw broccoli. Diced meats and pickle relish are an options.
In 1967, Louisiana’s Pelican Press acquired the rights to Lafcadio Hearne’s classic work on New Orleans cookery, La Cuisine Creole, first published by Will Coleman in Cincinnati in 1885. The new edition featured the addition of a collection of drawings and other writings by Hearne during his sojourn in New Orleans from 1877 to 1887 as well as a forward by Louisiana native Hodding Carter, publisher of the Greenville (Mississippi) Delta Democrat-Times, author of The Lower Mississippi (1942) in the distinguished Rivers of America series, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1946.
His name was Lafcadio Hearn. He was bulbous eyed and myopic to the point of blindness and all his life he knew a waif’s sense of insecurity and often the hunger that is frequently a waif’s lot.
Of all places on this earth of his loneliness he loved New Orleans most, and there is irony in his creation of this classic, which has to do with the food and drink and some of the foibles of his beloved adopted city, for it can be said that it was written by a hungry man out of hunger, a physical hunger that seldom was far away.
He was at home with the Creole city’s food from the day he stepped off the Thompson Dean as she landed at New Orleans in November 1877 but frequently he could afford barely enough of such food to keep himself alive.
He found his way to the boarding house of Mary Bustillos, 228 Baronne Street and paid over to her his small amount of cash for several weeks room and board. For several months he wandered in the New Orleans streets, often near starving, as the Cincinnati Commercial did not pay him for his articles on New Orleans.
Eventually he found work with the Democrat and made the acquaintance of Major William M. Robinson, editor of the New Orleans Republican. He was welcomed in the Robinsons’ home and perhaps here began his acquaintance with better New Orleans American and Creole cooking. He also developed a lasting friendship with Dr. Rudolph Matas and his family. Hearn said Mrs. Matas supplied a good deal of the material for his cookbook.
After his first six lean months, Major Robertson introduced Hearn to Mark Bigney who together with Edwin L. Jewel had started a modest newspaper called the Item. He became a member of their staff-an assistant editor with a salary of $10.00 a week. Hearn’s contributions to the Item were to make him a noted regional literary figure of his day. His descriptions of the New Or- leans scene, his broad literary interest and criticisms and his advanced ideas on psychology and the creative instinct were a sensation in his day. The self- taught little literary figure developed for himself during this period a polished writing style.
In 1879 Hearn learned that the Item was in precarious financial circum- stances. In this extremity he suggested that illustrations on the front page of the Item might increase its circulation. Wandering through the Vieux Carre, he sketched the Negro vendors, tramps, gentlemen and dozens of other habitants. Each day a wooden block cut was fixed at the head of an article. The paper was printed directly from this combination of metal type and wood blocks. All in all, Hearn published about 175 cartoons in two years, 1879 and 1880. Taken as a whole, the columns and pictures present a sensitive illustrated description of life in New Orleans in 1880.
In the meantime, Hearn had moved to the French Quarter where he lived in a number of houses, always seeking cleanliness and comfort. For a while he lived at 105 Bourbon Street (now 516). This almost faced the old French Opera. For a while he lived in a particularly shabby room in the northern end of the French Quarter where by doing his own cooking he could cut down his food expense to $2.00 a week.
He was saving his money for the special purpose of starting a cheap restaurant. He wrote to his friend Henry Watkins in Cincinnatti in June of 1778, saying “Money can be made here out of the poor. The people are so poor nothing pays except that which appeals to poverty-now one can make 30 milk bisquits for 5¢ and 8 cups of coffee for 54.” He horded $100.00 and opened a little restaurant in a sordid back street building at 160 Dryades. Yellow hand bills were printed which read:
“THE 5-CENT RESTAURANT, 160 DRYADES This is the cheapest eating house in the South. It is neat, orderly and respectable as any other in New Orleans. You can get a good meal for a couple of nickels. All dishes 5 cents. Everything half the price of the markets.”
This name did not appeal to him, so he changed to an even stranger one. On the 2nd of March 1879 The Hard Times opened for business and a little advertisement appeared in the Item. In spite of advertising in the Item full of the flavor and quaintness of Hearn’s style, his business hopes collapsed on March the 22nd. His “partner” disappeared with the little cash and the cook, leaving Hearn to shoulder the debts.
His most comfortable period during his New Orleans days came when he began to take his meals at the boarding house 68 Gasquet Street of Mrs. Courtney, a genial Irishwoman. She and her family adopted Hearn, nursed and fed him for a number of years, and his grateful letters reflect his appreciation of their kindness.
In 1881 Hearn went to work for the Times-Democrat under its new editor, Page Baker. Very probably many of the recipes Hearn used in this book came from the Baker family and those of others he visited. He was viewed with mixed feelings because of his strange and exotic tastes in literature. He had an intense interest in the Negro lore in the Creole countries of the world, and his notebooks were full of quaint Negro proverbs in Gombo French. These he arranged and translated first into correct French and then into English.
He persuaded his friend, William H. Coleman who had opened a second- hand book shop in the old Astor Hotel in New York to publish this book of sayings by offering to submit a second book of the Creole recipes he had gathered in the many New Orleans homes in which he visited. He had already said in the columns of the Item that he would like to edit a cookbook. Coleman published these two works-Gombo Zhèbes and La Cuisine Creole -and a third book, the Historical Sketch Book and Guide to New Orleans to which Hearn also contributed.
The books were to be on the market by the time of the Cotton Centennial Exposition which opened in 1884 and were to attract a sale among the hordes of tourists expected to attend. But printing delays occurred, and they did not appear until April 1885 and the books sold badly. However, La Cuisine Creole did better than either of the others.
This Pelican edition of La Cuisine Creole is a reproduction of the original by photo offset process, including the original cover-to which we have added, for the first time, the name of the author. We have also added other Hearn material. The original numbering of the pages persists. We have inserted sketches reproduced from Hearn’s cartoons in the Item, among the first used by a Southern newspaper, some of Hearn’s other work in the Item, and selections from Gombo Zhèbes.
For much of the information used in this sketch of Hearn I am indebted to the pioneer research of Edward Larocque Tinker whose Lafcadio Hearn’s American Days published by Dodd, Mead and Co. in 1924 is the basic Hearn bibliography of that period in his life. Our thanks to the staff of the Lafcadio Hearn Collection of Tulane University for their invaluable assistance.
The raven we have used on the end sheets was the symbol Hearn often used as a rebus in letters to friends.
Watergate seems in retrospect a Laurel and Hardy skit in political ambition, yet Nixon’s intrigues came to frame the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity rulings. Follow for my January 6 cake.
BATTER 1 box white cake mix 1 cup oil 1 pkg. instant pistachio pudding 1 cup lemon-lime soda 3 eggs 1/2 cup chopped pistachios 1/2 cup shredded coconut
Bake batter in two greased and dusted 9-inch round baking pans. Whip Dream Whip and milk into peaks, gradually add pudding mix and keep beating into a fluff. Assemble cooled cake, frosting between layers, then frost completely. Refrigerate overnight, and top with crushed pistachios and grated coconut. before serving.
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 dozens of others.
Many commercial dessert recipes include the word “magic,” as if merely waving your hands over the ingredients would produce a cake, pie, or cookie. 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 freezer one hour before serving.
