Category: Food and Cooking

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Kool-Aid Pickles

So I’m checking out at the store, and I hold up a jar of pickles and two packs of cherry Kool-Aid to my girls Meshaun and Lorita who are sitting in the motorized shopping carts up next to the front door with their phones and say, “Guess what I’m making?” They look at one another like, “This fool don’t know what he’s doing,” and tell me first that I should’na bought cherry, you gotta use Tropical Punch, and you dump that pickle juice out and make a quart of that punch with two packs of mix and one cup of sugar, and you shouldna’ bought whole pickles cause now you gotta slice them in half and no, you do not need to heat it up, just pour the Kool-Aid in there and put it in the refrigerator for about a day. That’s all you gotta do, and what are you doin’ tryin’ to cook, you big dummy.

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Daffodil Cake

Of course daffodil cake doesn’t have daffodils in it any more than a hummingbird cake has hummingbirds or Girl Scout cookies have Girl Scouts. It just so happens that daffodils–unlike hummingbirds or Girl Scouts–are poisonous. Daffodil cake is a combination sponge and angel food recipe, both made with a meringue, but the yellow parts of a daffodil cake contain egg yolks—as does a sponge cake—and the white parts do not—as does an angel food.

12 large egg whites
1 cup sifted cake flour or sifted all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar (total)
2 teaspoons vanilla
11/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 egg yolks
3/4 teaspoon lemon or orange extract
Finely grated lemon peel

Preheat oven to 350. Bring egg whites to room temperature for 30 minutes. Sift together flour and 3/4 cup sugar 3 times and set aside. Add vanilla, cream of tartar and salt to egg whites. Beat with electric mixer on medium to high speed, gradually adding 3/4 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons at a time, until stiff peaks form. Sift one-fourth of the flour mixture over egg white mixture and fold in gently. Repeat using one-fourth of the flour mixture with each fold.

Transfer half of batter to another bowl. Beat egg yolks on high speed until thick and lemon-colored. Add lemon extract, mix and gently fold yolk mixture into half of egg whites. Alternately spoon yellow batter and white batter into a very lightly oiled 10-inch tube pan (NOT a bundt). You can work the batter with the handle of a spoon to refine the marbling, but in my experience, the meringue cake batter inevitably rises. Bake on a middle rack for 40 to 45 minutes or until top springs back when lightly touched. Immediately invert onto a plate and refrigerate. Top with lemon zest and powdered sugar before serving.

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The Original, Definitive, and Incontestable Stage Planks Recipe

This recipe for “Gingerbread Without Butter or Eggs” was first published in The Picayune Creole Cookbook, c. 1901. Please note that I did not write this recipe. It was written by Lafcadio Hearn sometime in the 1890s. Racist epithets are, sadly, enmeshed in the American vocabulary, as they are in most others, but as a journalist, I’m obligated to accurately reproduce citations. My apologies to anyone who takes offense.

“1 cup molasses, 1 cup sour milk, 1 tablespoon ground ginger, 8 tablespoons shortening, 3 cups flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda.

Melt the molasses, shortening and ginger together and blend well. When thoroughly melted and warmed, beat for 10 minutes. (While the original recipe as printed omits the use of the sour milk, let’s assume it’s added before the flour.) Dissolve the soda in 1 tablespoon boiling water and add to the molasses mix. Then add just enough of the sifted flour to make a stiff batter, beating thoroughly and vigorously. Pour into several greased shallow pans and bake for ten minutes in a quick oven.

This bread makes the famous “Stage Planks”, or ginger cakes, sold by the old darkies around New Orleans in old Creole days, to those of their own race and to little white children. The ancient Creoles, fond of giving nick-names, gave to this stiff ginger cake the name of “Estomac Mulâtre”, or “The Mulatto’s Stomach”, meaning that it was only fit for the stomach of a mulatto to digest.”

The cookbook does not include an icing recipe, but I’d suggest a royal icing. Pink, of course.

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Nancy Reagan’s Viennese Chocolate Bar Recipe

Ronald Reagan appeared at the Neshoba County Fair in August, 1980. Many—including me—consider Reagan’s choice of an appearance in a locale with a bloody and brutal history in the struggle for civil rights as well as his speech, in which he stated, “I support states’ rights,” and promised to “restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them” perpetuated Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy,” a game plan that eventually made the Old Confederacy the Republican party’s home field.

Reagan defeated Carter by a landslide, winning every Southern state except Georgia, ushering in an era of tax cuts that enriched corporate interests and decimated the middle class with a profound recession, reduced wages, and the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression. I seriously doubt if Nancy Reagan ever saw the inside of an oven in her life—more the pity—and this marginally homespun recipe most likely was fabricated by a giggly public relations intern. Mrs. Reagan, like her husband, had no interest in the public weal.

This recipes comes from the signature Giant Houseparty Cookbook put out by the Philadelphia-Neshoba County Mississippi Chamber of Commerce in 1981.

Cream 2 sticks softened butter with two egg yolks and a half cup sugar. Add 2 ½ cups flour to make a soft dough, and pat out to about a half inch on a buttered cookie sheet or baking pan. Bake at 350 until lightly browned. Remove from oven, cool, and top with a 10-oz jar of raspberry jelly or apricot preserves and a cup of semi-sweet chocolate bits. Top with a meringue made with 4 egg whites. Bake for another 20 minutes or until lightly browned.

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Shrimp Creole: Back to Basics

Make a roux with a quarter cup each of flour and oil—not butter, not olive oil, just a light vegetable oil will do fine. People from the boonies use a very dark roux for a Creole, but I prefer one two shades lighter than a Budweiser bottle. (They can talk about me if they want to.) To this, while still hot, add two cups finely chopped white onion, one cup finely chopped celery and a half cup finely diced bell pepper. Do not over-do the bell pepper! I firmly concur with Justin Wilson who said time and time again that bell pepper is “a taste killah”, and we both agree that you can never use too much onion. (Within reason.)

For a basic shrimp Creole to feed six people, sauté two pounds peeled shrimp–I recommend a 26-30 count–in a light oil with plenty of garlic, about four cloves crushed and minced, and a little pepper (do not salt). Add the shrimp (with the liquid) to the roux/vegetable mix, then immediately add two 14 ounce cans of diced tomatoes with juice. (In a perfect world, you’d use four cups of home-canned tomatoes, but I do not live in a perfect world, and I’ll bet you don’t, either.)

Add a little water to this if needed to give it the consistency of a thick soup, season with a two tablespoons dried basil, two teaspoons thyme and a teaspoon each of oregano and ground cumin. Understand please that these are relative ratios that you can adjust with neither guilt nor effort. When it comes to pepper, the best rule of thumb is to add just enough to make a statement and provide a good Louisiana hot sauce on the table. At this point, I put the mixture in a low oven (200) uncovered for about an hour to meld the flavors, stir it two or three times, then adjust the seasonings, particularly the salt and pepper before serving over  rice.

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A Mother and Child Reunion

When Paul Simon’s “Mother and Child Reunion” topped the charts in 1971, many people (me among them) assumed that he got the title from a chicken and egg sandwich—which in diner lingo is known as a Mother and Child reunion, but the title came from a meal he had at the Say Eng Look Restaurant in New York City. In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview, Simon said, “There was a dish called ‘Mother and Child Reunion.’ It’s chicken and eggs.”

Known as “mother/child/daughter,” variations of this combination  are common menu items at Asian restaurants. Another version—oyakodon: mother/daughter bowl—has been described as Japanese “soul food.” As with any basic dish, the reunion is made in as many ways as there are cooks to make it. Here’s my version, which varies with available ingredients.

Cube a boneless breast of chicken, dust with fresh pepper, and fry in vegetable oil with a a clove of garlic until browned. Poach  in chicken broth until tender; doesn’t take long. Drain chicken, reserving the broth, and stir-fry/saute with sliced onions, and whatever else you’re adding. I’ll throw in things like thinly sliced mushrooms, celery, carrots, and cabbage or kale of some kind cut in some form or fashion.

Add enough broth to cover the chicken by half, bring to a simmer, and dribble in two or three beaten eggs in sort of a figure 8. Stir gently, cover, and steam until the eggs have firmed and blossomed. Thicken slightly with a thin slurry of water and corn starch. Serve with rice and chopped onions.

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On Love and Food

Love is fraught with pitfalls, and food has the potential to be a more fundamental source of friction than ugly underwear or nasal hair.

For those among us with discriminating dietary habits, it’s a safe bet that if you meet someone special in a natural foods dive, they’ll feel much the same way about pork roast as you do (which is not to say that soy products might not eventually become a bone of contention). But if you meet a mate in a bar that serves hamburgers and patriot fries, well, you’re just wide open for surprises, and if simply adjusting to eating together isn’t enough, learning to cook in the same place can be heart-breaking as well: formerly favored cookware might be set aside to make room for an exceedingly exotic batterie. That rooster roaster you were once so proud of might find itself set so far back in a cabinet that you might never lay eyes on it again.

Be advised that condiments are highly controversial.

You might also, as I did, find your palate challenged in totally unexpected ways, as when a date sought to seduce me with something novel and exciting in the form of a carrot omelet. Fortunately, omelets are quite versatile; you can put damn near anything in them, though I will admit that carrots initially struck me as an unlikely ingredient. After all, most omelets are served as savory rather than as sweet dishes, and carrots are among those vegetables I place on the sweet side.

Now, you can make a carrot omelet such as I was served, where the shredded carrots were sautéed in a little butter with green onions and a hint of garlic before being added to the egg mixture, and it would be (marginally) edible. But if I had been told that carrots were the only ingredient we had for an omelet (as it turned out, they weren’t; I later discovered a bar of cheddar in the butter tray), I might have suggested another method of preparation.

Dessert omelets are novelties nowadays, but anyone who has poured syrup over scrambled eggs can attest to their appeal. Sugar (a little less than two tablespoons) is added to two large beaten eggs and a teaspoon of water. While a bit of water is standard for most omelets, the added sugar makes for a nice caramel-type crust. Separate one egg white and whip to foam before folding it into the mix, but before you make your omelet á la Crécy, make candied carrots.

For two people: trim, scrub and peel two large carrots, slice on the bias, barely cover in simple syrup made with honey or brown sugar, simmer with three cloves and a pat of butter until the liquid is reduced and the carrots are done through. Remove the cloves and use carrots as you would any omelet filling; a classicist would julienne them, but I don’t. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, serve with a tempest in a teapot.

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Heart of Cream

For years I’ve been making a coeur a la crème using cottage cheese for convenience, but this year I’ve upped my game and made crème fraiche, which is not difficult, a little goes a long way, and keeps quite well. Now, you can make a simple crème fraiche by adding a packet of culture to store-bought dairy, but that’s a slacker’s option. Me, I trotted down to the Mississippi Farmer’s Market and bought lightly pasteurized  buttermilk and whole milk that retained enough lactic bacteria for the process. I mixed a cup of milk and a quarter cup of buttermilk along with a heaping tablespoon of (admittedly store-bought) sour cream for a bit of a bite.

I kept the starter out overnight. By morning, it had thickened to a dense slurry. I added a half cup or so of this culture to a quart of whole cream from the supermarket, and it worked like a charm, producing a thick, tart crème. If you’re so inclined, the culture can be tended as you would a sourdough, and in time will mellow and deepen, but such a commitment is rarely practical for most home cooks.

As to the heart form itself, if you happen to frequent the kinds of stores that sell such things as stainless steel strawberry stem removers,  chromium banana slicers, and cast-iron hot dog toasters, then you’re likely to run into these cute little ceramic heart molds with holes that are made specifically for a coeur a le crème. Since I am most assuredly not the Williams-Sonoma-type, I went to the Dollar Store and found a purple plastic, heart-shaped container with Ninja Turtles embossed on the front (“Be My Bodacious Valentine!”). It was just the right size, about a pint.

I burned holes in the plastic with a hot nail, and lined the mold—for that’s what it had become—with damp cheesecloth, mixed one cup of the crème fraiche with six ounces of cream cheese, blended in two stiffly-beaten egg whites and a tablespoon of confectioner’s sugar. After filling the mold, I placed it uncovered on a plate in the coldest part of the refrigerator for several hours.

I inverted the mold onto a plate into a puddle of pureed raspberries, though any kind of berry would have been good, depending on your mood, even a stone fruit such as cherries. Be advised that bananas are tricky.

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Savory Oyster Soup

This light soup is good cool on a warm afternoon or warm on a cool evening. Add three cups chopped fresh or two cups well-drained frozen spinach and a cup of quartered artichoke hearts to about a quart of broth seasoned with thyme, parsley, chives, and a bit of garlic. Add a half quart of drained oysters dusted with pepper. Bring to a simmer, and hold on heat for a quarter hour or so.

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Claiborne Peeled

Craig Claiborne, a culinary icon of his day and an avatar of ours, now seems overshadowed by his contemporaries, James Beard and Julia Child. Though described by Betty Fussell as more “accessible” than the vivacious Child or jolly Beard, by comparison the enigmatic, complex Claiborne remains now more than ever a shadowy–albeit Olympian–figure.

When it boils down to it, Claiborne might best be described as the right man in the right place at the right time. His hiring as the first male food editor of a major newspaper came about as the result of crass opportunism if not (as is hinted) outright chicanery, but The New York Times provided Craig Claiborne with the preeminent platform to fulfill his mission, which one authority (McNamee) describes as nothing less than “advancing the nation’s culinary culture”.

Claiborne’s trumpet for reform in his April 1959 column “Elegance of Cuisine is on the Wane in U.S.,” came at a time when the nation was ripe for unabashedly elitist change; within a year, Jackie Kennedy, designer clothing and a French chef were in the White House. Claiborne, with lavish finesse and training he received in Switzerland, set the tone of American culinary culture.

By the mid-Sixties Claiborne had become America’s unquestioned authority on the full culinary spectrum of foods and restaurants, chefs and cookbooks His columns went directly to print. His pervasive influence extended into the Reagan administration. In retrospect, his detractors–including John and Karen Hess, who wrote the seminal The Taste of America–seem nitpickers.

Claiborne wrote and co-wrote many best-sellers, first and foremost The New York Times Cookbook, to which he acquired rights while the Times editorial board was asleep at the wheel. More significantly, while he held the pulpit, he discovered and promoted chefs as cultural and media personalities – Jacques Pépin, Alice Waters, and Paul Prudhomme among many others – helped publicize the West Coast/James Beard movement and introduced Americans to nouvelle cuisine. Claiborne also reveled in a “pan-global eclecticism”, promoting the cuisines of China, Mexico and Vietnam (during that war), among others, and lived to celebrate a resurgence of great American home cooking.

Though McDonald’s Ray Kroc and other fast-food titans have influenced America’s diet far more than Claiborne, he established food as media culture, and his sheer adventurism still informs our attitude towards food and cooking. Yet for all that, while Claiborne’s ill-advised 1982 autobiography, A Feast Made for Laughter (Henry Holt: 1983), provides copious evidence that his personal life does not bear up well under scrutiny, he remains something of a sacred cow, so I wouldn’t expect a biopic or a Netflix series any time soon.