Southern dressings tend to employ more wheat the closer you get to the Gulf Coast, and oyster dressings are no exception. Most Louisiana recipes call solely for a stale French loaf of some kind, but Mid-South recipes–as well as older ones, since wheat breads are new to the inland South–most call for cornbread. This recipe, involving both, is typical of central Mississippi.
(A note: do not use green pepper in this recipe; I’m a devotee of the gentle bonhomie wisdom of Justin Wilson, who maintained that bell peppers are “taste-killers.”
Sauté two cups each diced white onion and celery in a stick butter until tender. Bring to heat a pint of oysters with liquid in a half stick butter until oysters are beginning to curl. Combine three cups crumbled cornbread and three cups crumbled bread crumbs in a large bowl with a tablespoon dried thyme, a tablespoon dried basil, and a tablespoon rubbed sage. Add cooked onion, celery, and butter along with three well-beaten eggs. Mix well while adding enough stock to make a thick slurry. Add oysters, blend well, and spoon into a lightly-buttered baking pan. Bake at 350 until center is firm, about an hour.
Mix well one cup light corn syrup with 3 well-beaten eggs, a cup of sugar, a half stick of melted butter, and a tablespoon of pure vanilla extract. Stir in a cup and a half of chopped pecans. Pour filling into an unbaked 8-in. pie crust. I always top it with pecan halves and lightly cover the pie with foil to prevent scorching. Place pie on a rimmed baking sheet in the center rack of a 350 oven. Bake for at least an hour, until center is firm and springy. Cool very well before serving.
People who are paid to postulate upon such matters have theorized that the reason we don’t have herds of brontosauri stomping around in our bayous is due not just to the Alvarez event, but also to dinosaur egg-eating possums.
You’d think we’d be grateful for this service to our fellow mammals, but as in the case of the dove (which brought Noah the most significant tidal measurements in the history of mankind) possum has been served without apology at meals throughout the South since mankind came down from Canada.
Southern culinary icons tend to be traditional and domestic, the comforting products of home gardens and kitchens. Those game dishes brought in from the woods and fields have in recent years come to play a strikingly diminished role on our tables because fewer people are hunting these days, particularly for sustenance, and while most if not all of you might consider having possum on the table a revolting prospect at best, the simple fact of the matter remains that possums have long been esteemed for their porcine flavor.
One early recommendation comes from John Boynton, a New Englander who came to Mississippi (near Vicksburg) to teach in 1836. Boynton was amazed at the “Old Southwest”, writing to his father, “It would take more than 19 letters to tell you the half of what I’ve seen in one week.” He hunted turkey and deer as well as an exotic animal: “(o)possums by the scores. Had one for dinner today—first rate.”
Faulkner included possum on the Thanksgiving table of the Sartoris family in Flags in the Dust, his first novel to be set in Yoknapatawpha County (called “Yocona”). Written in 1927, the novel is set just after World War I and focuses on the once-powerful, influential and aristocratic Sartoris family contending with decline, but still clinging to the vestiges of affluence.
. . . Simon appeared again, with Isom in procession now, and for the next five minutes they moved steadily between kitchen and dining room with a roast turkey and a cured ham and a dish of quail and another of squirrel, and a baked ‘possum in a bed of sweet potatoes; and Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes, and squash and pickled beets and rice and hominy, and hot biscuits and beaten biscuits and long thin sticks of cornbread and strawberry and pear preserves, and quince and apple jelly, and blackberry jam and stewed cranberries.
By far the most solid contemporary recommendation for possum comes from Bill Neal, who is widely considered by many to be the dean of Southern cooking, the man who played a key role in raising Southern foods to national prominence and continues to influence new generations of Southern culinarians. In his authoritative Southern Cooking, Neal begins his entry on possum by stating, “All southerners—black, white, or native—who know game relish possum roasted with sweet potatoes. The two components are inseparable; the dish is practically a cultural symbol of regional pride in the Piedmont and mountain areas.”
He continues with a recipe from Horace Kephart’s Camp Cookery (1910) that beings: “To call our possum an opossum, outside of a scientific treatise, is an affectation. Possum is his name wherever he is known and hunted, this country over. He is not good until you have freezing weather; nor is he to be served without sweet potatoes, except in desperate extremity.” (The possum season in Mississippi is from October to February.)
The recipe reproduced here comes from another authority, Erma Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking (13th edition, 1975). Note that the recipe recommends “feeding it out” (i.e. capturing the animal before slaughter and feeding it with bland foods not just to provide the meat with a less gamey flavor but purging the possum, which is a notorious scavenger). And while a good Southerner will always serve possum with sweet potatoes, the Rombauers were from St. Louis, which is only marginally Southern and decidedly urban, so perhaps in their minds greens seemed appropriate.
Some may say the family is a nest of humanity that nurtures civility and tolerance, but you know just as well as I do that families are more often roiling hotbeds of strife and contention. If you’re lucky and manage to stay out of court most of the time, the drama is petty, like this genetic tempest in a teapot over–-of all things–-pickled peaches.
We’d been having a carefree back-and-forth online discussion on our family website about a traditional holiday meal when I oh-so-casually mentioned that a cold plate featuring stuffed celery, trimmed green onions, black olives, and pickled peaches always appeared on our table. The pit hit the fan when a younger relative professed that she had no idea what pickled peaches were, much less what they taste like, to which I expressed what they obviously considered an excessive degree of shock and dismay.
Before I could sit sideways to assess my position, I was in a pickle myself. Another young cousin called “Mr. High-and-Mighty,” another chimed in with “a snooty old fart”, and after that it was a “jump on Jesse” free-for-all. Confident in my legendary modesty and self-effacement, I managed to remain calm for about 30 seconds before surrendering to my base nature and giving them a generous piece of my mind peppered with cussing.
Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
Pickled peaches are perfect for any holiday table or used as you might any canned peach in cobblers, cakes or for ice cream. Select the smallest fresh cling peaches you can find. It doesn’t matter if they’re a little bit green; in fact, you shouldn’t use peaches that are soft and ripe enough to eat out of hand because they tend to fall apart when moved.
Blanch and peel whole peaches. For every four pounds of peaches, combine 3 cups sugar and 2 cups vinegar, add two pieces of stick cinnamon broken into 2-inch pieces and two teaspoons whole cloves. Heat to bubbling. Pack peaches into sterilized quart jars, add hot spiced syrup (with water if needed) seal tightly, and process for 10 minutes. Wait a week before serving.
The Hoka had two signature desserts: the New York-style cheesecake made by the Freer sisters, and a hot fudge pie made by Jani Mae Locke Collier. Jani Mae is a native of Oxford. She and my sister Cindy lived together at a big house at the end of North 14th in the mid-1970s when the Hoka started. Jani brought this recipe to the Moonlight when Betty Blair got it going. Jani Mae is married to Emmett Collier, who makes beautiful pottery in Brandon, Mississippi. It’s a very simple recipe, easily made, and best served à la mode.
Jani Mae’s Hot Fudge Pie
1 cup sugar 1 stick butter ½ c. plain flour 5 tablespoons cocoa 2 eggs beaten
Cream butter and sugar, mix well with flour, cocoa and eggs. Spoon into a toasted pie crust. Place in middle rack of oven at 350 until firm in the middle, about 20 minutes or so. Serves four.
Slit bread, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with an Italian herbal blend, and layer with mozzarella, black olives, and finely-minced shallots. Assemble, brush with more oil, and bake in a moderate oven (300) until crisp. Cut into sticks.
Most people claim I’m an old ass who’s quick to fuss about any damned thing in the world. Let me confirm that accusation by pointing out that when cooking New Orleans-style red beans most people insist on using the wrong beans.
Yes, that’s right. Instead of honest-to-goodness red beans, most people—even most vendors—use kidney beans, which are—yes—red, but they aren’t the right red. You’ll see small kidney beans marketed as red beans all the time; even the Camilla brand red beans are kidneys, as are those used by the Blue Runner people.
However, most markets in the mid-South will have honest-to-goodness red beans sold simply as red beans. If you look at the ingredients, you’ll find “small red beans,” not kidneys as you’ll find on the Camilla package or on the Blue Runner label.
Wave me off and say there’s only a whisker’s difference between the two, but it’s crucial; a matter of veracity.
One of our most enduring social mechanisms is that by which elitism becomes more ostensibly manifest in people who come from humble backgrounds.
Take for example any given one of those Upper East Side hipsters who infest the trendier corners of New York City and act as if they’re the apex of the social universe when in fact most if not all of them grew up in a fly-over state and moved to the city in hopes of sharing a line of coke with Ivanka Trump.
A less current but perhaps more familiar example would be Craig Claiborne, who grew up in a boarding house in Indianola, Mississippi, and eventually became the arbiter of culinary taste for the nation. Claiborne’s excesses in his disregard for the “little people” were such that he was chastised by Pope Paul VI for a $4000 dinner for two in Paris he enjoyed with his partner Pierre Franey in 1975.
L’Osservatore Romano deplored the swinish display while millions were starving, the French press noted that the price of the meal represented a year’s wages for most workers, and American columnist Harriet Van Horne wrote–no doubt with some degree of smugness–“This calculated evening of high-class piggery offends an average American’s sense of decency. It seems wrong morally, aesthetically and in every other way”.
Claiborne was nonplussed, which is the typical reaction of the wealthy to their extravagant indulgences. “Let them eat cake,” indeed.
Given this display of culinary snootery, it’s somewhat of a surprise that we find on page 312 of Claiborne’s The New York Times Cookbook–after a whole slew of soufflés and between two egg curries–a recipe for pickled eggs, which are to most people the least sophisticated dish in the world. Is this a chink in Claiborne’s Tiffany armor?
Perhaps, but then again perhaps not; one recipe I have from a Junior League-type cookbook published in the 1930’s claims that they’re “ever so good chopped into hash, and provide just the right touch bedded on greens with a dressing of sharp, spicy goodness.” Maybe pickled eggs acquired the blue-collar brush after they became a snack staple in Southern pool halls and honky-tonks; then again, maybe that’s where they got their start.
For every half dozen boiled eggs, bring to heat 1 cup water, 1/2 cup vinegar, 1 tablespoon mixed pickling spices, 2 slices ginger root, a crushed clove of garlic, and a tablespoon salt. Mull, cover eggs with spiced vinegar water, seal and set aside for at least 2 days.
The culinary history of Jackson, Mississippi is filled with colorful characters, including one who exemplifies the genteel aspects of any Southern city in the early decades of the last century.
Winifred Green Cheney was born into a very old Jackson family; originally from Maryland, the Greens moved to Jackson in the early 19th century. Winifred was born in the second family home at 647 North State Street in 1913. She graduated magna cum laude from Millsaps with a bachelor of arts in Latin in 1933, and on October 25, 1934 (after a 7-year engagement) she married Reynolds Cheney, who became one of the city’s most prominent attorneys.
While Winifred, in almost every respect, was a model for a well-to-do woman of social standing in the mid-century South (active in her church and in social charities, etc.), in another she was not: Winifred was a writer. In the course of her life, she wrote (about cooking, mainly) for such well-known publications as The National Observer, The Rotarian, Southern World and, of course, Southern Living. She published two cookbooks (both by Oxmoor House), Cooking for Company (1985) The Southern Hospitality Cookbook (1976).
Winifred’s Southern Hospitality Cookbook is not only a treasure-trove of splendid recipes, but as a whole is a tutorial of upper-class cooking in the mid-20th century South. The recipes are rich and varied; the ingredients are often expensive, and the times for preparation are usually considerable. Indeed, one of the most frequent critiques of the book is how complicated, indeed “fussy” the recipes are, many often calling for minute amounts of several various ingredients and elaborate stage-by-stage instructions on their preparation. But this is the way Winifred and the women of her generation cooked; they had plenty of time on their hands, and more often than not enough money to spend on costly and hard-to-find ingredients.
Many of the recipes are heirlooms from Virginia and the Eastern Seaboard, as well as many from “my great-grandmother … from Lone Star Plantation in the Mississippi Delta, written in her fine Spencerian hand.” (“But there were no directions,” Winifred adds. “I found this to be true with most of the old ‘receipts’ in her walnut escritoire papeterie.”) She also includes recipes from dozens and dozens of friends and neighbors: Odel Herbert’s Carrot Casserole, Vivienne Wilson’s Asparagus and Carrot Escallop, Claudia Whitney’s Meat Spaghetti, Zollie Kimbrough’s Shrimp Casserole, Linda Lacefield’s Apricot Stuffing for Duck, Becky Voght’s Caramel Icing; and many, many more.
The Southern Hospitality Cookbook is a milestone in the culinary history of Jackson as well as the Middle South, but what takes it to a higher level is a short essay by her editor at The National Observer, David W. Hacker (“Savoring Miss Welty’s Wit at a Special Seafood Lunch”), and a preface by Eudora herself, “A Note on the Cook” in which she writes:
“The original Lady Bountiful was the invention of an Irish dramatist in 1707. Winifred exists as her own version. She makes her rounds with baskets and trays as a simple extension of her natural hospitality.In good weather, but especially in bad, splashing forth in raincoat and tennis shoes, carrying a warm cake straight from her oven, she sympathizes with you or celebrates with you by sharing her table with you.
When Jane Austen’s Miss Bates, attending Mr. Weston’s ball, is seated at the supper, she surveys the table with a cry, ‘How shall we ever recollect half these dishes?’ When I sit down to Sunday dinner at Winifred’s, I feel just like Miss Bates. What guest could not? But it now becomes possible for us to recollect the dishes we’ve dined on there. The cook herself has recollected the recipes for them in her own cookbook. It’s like another extension of Winifred Cheney’s gracious hospitality; she has added another leaf to her table.”
