Category: Food and Cooking

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The World’s Oldest Potato Salad

Dr. Amalia Andres-Pizarro, associate professor of Indigenous Peoples Studies at the University of Lima–and, we must add, a namesake of the conquistador who almost single-handedly wiped out the Incan Empire–discovered the world’s oldest recipe for potato salad in a manuscript uncovered from ruins at Lactapata.

“It is an important discovery in terms of Incan culture because it sheds light on the daily lives of the Incan people,” Andres-Pizarro said. “We know that the Incas cultivated potatoes hundreds of different varieties of potatoes, cooked them in stews, baked them in coals, and prepared them for storage. The Incas also invented chuno, the first freeze dried potatoes, a precursor to instant mashed potatoes.”

The manuscript, written in Spanish, was probably set down by a priest who accompanied the conquistadores and was held captive by the puppet emperor Manco. The text describes various dishes prepared by the Incas as well as details of their dress, games they played, housing, and sexual mores.

Andres-Pizarro said what are most certainly the bones of a European were found in the tomb with the manuscript, which she somehow finds significant.

What’s most impressive about the recipe is that the Incans actually had invented an early form of mayonnaise. “The text describes an emulsion made from the eggs of the great curassow (Crax rubra) and maize (corn) oil, which is practically identical to what we know as mayonnaise. The writer describes its preparation as a highly-guarded secret with religious overtones,” Andres-Pizarro said. “The recipe also incorporated chilis of various kinds in different amounts and boiled curassow eggs as well.”

Andres-Pizarro said that she is adapting other Incan recipes from the manuscript for the modern-day kitchen as the basis of a forthcoming Incan cookbook called The Kitchens of Manchu Picchu.

1 pound red potatoes
3 hard-cooked eggs
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 poblano chili finely chopped
¼ cup kernel corn
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
½ cup mayonnaise
cayenne pepper and salt to taste

Peel potatoes, boil and cube, chop boiled eggs, add other ingredients, mix very well and chill overnight before serving.

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Broiled Catfish

This recipe works with not much less nor much more than a pound any small lean fish. Pat whole gutted, scaled or skinned fish dry–this is an important step–score, and slather with softened butter flavored with thyme, pepper, and paprika. Place in a well-oiled pan, add  lemons with juice, and place in a very hot oven until fish flakes to the bone. A final squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of oil before serving adds much to the dish.

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Fresh Peach Cobbler

For four cups of sliced fruit make two cups of simple syrup with a teaspoon of vanilla; a dust of nutmeg is a nice touch. Stew fruit in hot syrup just enough to color and flavor. Pour into a deep baking dish.

Make biscuit dough using sweet milk and sugar, knead lightly, and roll out to about a quarter inch. Cut into strips and drop by pieces into the hot fruit/syrup mixture. Spoon syrup over dropped dough. Bake in hot (350-400) oven until browned and bubbling.

If don’t serve this with a scoop of vanilla ice cream the devil will drag you to hell by your short hairs in a second flat.

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Stuffed Pork Loin

Remove sinews and fat from a whole loin of pork, butterfly, and brush with corn oil seasoned with black pepper, salt, and freshly-minced garlic.

For the stuffing, use day-old cornbread moistened with butter and chicken stock seasoned with fresh rosemary (not too much!), thyme, basil, salt and pepper, along with finely-minced onions.

Stuff loin, roll, truss, brush again with seasoned oil, and roast on medium heat (300) about an hour for a ten pound loin.

Serve with Jezebel sauce.

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Make Hash

I like corned beef hash for breakfast, chicken hash for lunch, and beef hash (without gravy) any time. Such are are the rules of the universe in this modest sphere.

My hash is made with leftover/canned meats. Sometimes I’ll use leftover roast potatoes, but for breakfast hash, I’ll dice a small red potato and cook in oil until browned and done through. Don’t ask me why; if we’re incapable of the inexplicable, then we are nothing.

Sometimes I’ll throw in some onion, but I don’t belong to the bell pepper crew. Basic seasonings: salt and pepper, paprika; a little dry mustard is a nice touch.

Keep it simple. Anyone who tries to gussy up hash needs therapy.

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The Existential Tomato

If you’ve never enjoyed the sensation of going out to the garden, picking a beautiful, ripe tomato (of whatever variety) and eating it right there on the spot atop of God’s good earth with the tang of that tomato plant in your nose and the warm sunshine on your face, then you’ve never had a tomato at it’s best. If you have, then you can truly say, “I know what a tomato is,” for then you have achieved an existential union with tomato-ness.

(Or maybe that’s an essential union; I forget the distinction. I think I flunked existentialism at Ole Miss, though I’m not really sure I took it in the first place, which means I might have passed the course after all.)

Vegetables prepared for the table straight from the soil are a hallmark of great Southern dinners; a luscious home-grown tomato, simply sliced and served on a plate, usually with a fragrant cantaloupe and maybe a good, dewy cucumber (all slightly chilled with a mint garnish) is a signature addition to any summer meal.

I consider a ripe tomato the crowning glory of Southern vegetables, but everybody has their own favorite; some advocate summer squash, others favor fresh beans and peas, and still others extol sweet corn. Some eccentric souls even champion okra or eggplant. But even back in the Bad Old Days when most of the country ate out of a can or from the frozen food section, people in the South knew to get their vegetables from gardens, and if they didn’t have a friend or relative they could help out by weeding and hoeing for some of the returns, they could get fine vegetables from the truck gardens and produce stands along the byways.

So when you’re out on the road this summer and you see little produce stands with signs written on brown cardboard with a magic marker, do yourself a favor by stopping by and spending a little time and a little money getting to know the foods of the South and the people who make them.

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Homemade Ice Cream Base

If you’re of a certain age, such custards as this were the beginning of that ice cream churned when you were growing up. This recipe makes a sumptuous base for any home freezer.

Combine 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon cornstarch and a scant teaspoon salt in a saucepan. Gradually stir in a quart of half-and-half and place over low heat. In a large bowl beat together 2 large eggs and a tablespoon of pure vanilla extract until whites and yolks are thoroughly blended.

Slowly add eggs to the cream, stirring constantly and gradually increasing heat until thickened. It should have the consistency of eggnog. Stir in a pint of whipping cream and remove from heat.

Refrigerate for 45 minutes to cool, then add fruit, nuts and/or flavorings, place in freezer, and help make people happy.

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Hurricane Punch

Mix a fifth of light rum with a fifth of dark rum, 2 cups lime juice, 2 cups orange juice, 1 quart passion fruit juice, and a cup of simple syrup. Serve over crushed ice.  Keep a pour spout bottle of grenadine near the ice bucket, and don’t even worry about garnishes unless you want to pick orange rinds and toothpicks out of the couch cushions.

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Salisbury Steak and the Winds of Change

When I was growing up in small-town Mississippi in the 1960s, TV dinners were a treat, something different from home-cooked, not better, by any means, just exotic, some indication that change was possible in the stagnant backwater of Bruce, Mississippi, if only by way of convenience foods.

Frozen pizza held a similar glamour.

For a little over a dollar, we could buy fried chicken, meatloaf, or turkey and dressing with a puddle of piped-in potatoes and neon peas in a space-age metal container, heat it in the oven, and eat them on the sheet-pan fold-away TV tables that became available simultaneously.

I remember eating one the first time I saw “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” I was eight.

My favorite was the fried chicken, but brother Tom’s was Salisbury steak (as close as he could get to a hamburger). It’s named for James Salisbury, one of those impressive food faddists of the late 19th century whose ranks include Kellogg, Post, and Mary Grove Nichols (by far the coolest of the three.)

Salisbury advocated the same low-carb diet as Tarnower and Atkins (known now as paleo), his being very much meat-centered. Salisbury’s version of a “lean beef cake,” calls for meat “from the centre of the round” procured from “well-fatted animals that are from four to six years old,” but any lean is good.

For a pound of lean ground beef, add a quarter cup bread crumbs, and if you don’t have any of those little-bitty cans of tomato sauce, work in a generous squirt or two of ketchup along with a good dusting of black pepper. Don’t over-work the meat. Form into no more than four cakes about an inch thick. Cook in a low oven to medium well.

While this recommendation doesn’t fit the doctor’s diet, my optimal serving of Salisbury steak requires mushroom gravy (a light one), creamed potatoes with a little pitty-pat of butter, and green peas, just like Mother Swanson served.