A Southern Gallimaufry
Use the Martha White Buttermilk Mix. Add chopped chilies–hot, mild, or mixed, your preference–whole kernel corn–do NOT use creamed corn–a little minced onion, and a hefty sprinkling of diced tomato or pimento, . Season lightly with chili powder, cumin, and black pepper. Pour into a hot, well-oiled corn stick pan and bake in a very hot oven until toasty. Cool before turning out.
People just don’t make ham salad like they used to. At one time, you’d see it on just about any occasional buffet table, be it wedding, anniversary, or funeral, but nowadays it’s all pimento cheese and hummus. Maybe it’s because of that same room-temperature mayonnaise phobia that keeps tuna or chicken salad at bay, or simply a drift away from meats in general.
Still and all, ham salad is a beautiful option for holiday left-overs, and it’s a good nosh (sorry) whenever. Three ingredients are essential: a binding agent—it doesn’t have to be mayo; cream cheese or yogurt will do, too—finely diced or pureed lean ham—and a pickle or relish, or both. Me, I like a fine consistency with horseradish, mustard and a little grated onion, but, as Rombauer and Co. say, ham salad, “should be a matter of inspiration”.
Here’s an easy one: For a pound of finely-chopped ham, add about a quarter cup mayo, two tablespoons each of sweet relish and minced onions. Mix well with a tablespoon each of black pepper and dry mustard. Chill for at least an hour.
Preheat oven to 350, and line a lightly oiled baking sheet with parchment paper. Flip the paper to oil both sides.
Cream together 2 sticks softened unsalted butter with 1 cup sugar. Mix in one 1 large egg, beaten, and add a tablespoon vanilla extract. Set aside. Mix 2 ½ cups AP flour with 1/2 c. cocoa and 2 teaspoons baking powder. Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet ingredients until just combined.
On a clean floured surface, work the dough until smooth and roll out to about ¼ inch. Cut into “wookies” with a gingerbread man cookie cutter, place onto the parchment baking sheet, and use a fork to make fur.
Bake for about 10 minutes, remove from oven and cool thoroughly before decorating with frosting and sprinkles.
Homemade soups should grace our tables more often; they’ve fed body and soul long before canning came along, and a good soup made with stout stock and proper care is a measure of the cook.
Gazpacho is a king of cold soups, an easily-made, refreshing and to most minds somewhat novel way to serve fresh summer vegetables. Old recipes of this dish always include bread as one of the basic ingredients, usually melded early on with oil, salt and garlic into something resembling a paste. While my recipe does not include bread at that juncture–to me, it gums up the soup–take it from someone who crumbles cold cornbread over his, bread is a service requirement, and any well-textured bread will do.
This recipe is from my halcyon days in Oxford, which was an intoxicating environment, doubly augmented by the wine of youth itself. I was desultorily studying for a degree, diligently exploring my capacities for vice, and desolately working in a string of eateries, among them The Bean Blossom Bistro, by some reckoning the first health-food restaurant in Oxford. It was located on Jackson Avenue across from the old telephone exchange. The Good Food Store, Oxford’s first health-food store—then in its second incarnation—was on the corner next door. Carol Davis opened the Bean Blossom in 1978. We had worked together at the old Moonlight Café, which Betty Blair had opened up in the Hoka a couple of years earlier. Carol and I became fast friends during that time, and when she opened up her own place, she brought me with her.
The Bean Blossom, like so many small restaurants, was founded more on good intentions than experience. I don’t think we ever seated more than fifty people at one time, and usually far, far less. The kitchen could barely hold more than three people. Our menu changed daily, though we could always whip up a tofu burger, or a veggie stir-fry or a great salad any time you wanted it. Carol introduced me to a lot of new foods, including adzuki beans, which I cook like cowpeas, and tofu, which I of course deep-fry.
She also brought gazpacho into my world, and for that I am evermore grateful. I remember dipping the soup from a bucket in the bottom of our double-door refrigerator, a sheen of oil glistening atop the mixture. We served it with a variety of breads, and each bowl I eat now is a serving of nostalgia. Like memories themselves, this soup improves with age.
Bean Blossom Gazpacho
Take two or three cloves of garlic, mince very, very finely and mash in the bottom of a glass or enamel bowl with a teaspoon of salt and about a half a cup of olive oil. If you want to try adding bread, now is the time, but I can’t make a recommendation as to what kind. Add in fine dice one yellow onion, three very ripe summer tomatoes, two peeled cucumbers, two ribs celery (with leaves), and a sweet pepper if you like, though be careful, since the pepper can overpower the other vegetables; a sweet yellow banana pepper works well. If you want to add a hot pepper such as a jalapeno, fine, but I don’t recommend heat; this is a cooling dish, and should be refreshing rather than pungent. Likewise, starchy vegetables such as fresh corn or peas seem out-of-place to me as well, though there are countless variations.
Add another teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of cumin, a teaspoon of fresh basil, a heaping tablespoon of freshly-chopped parsley, a teaspoon of coarsely ground black pepper and a bit more olive oil, perhaps a tablespoon. Add a vegetable juice such as V8; tomato juice is too thick. Let this mixture sit for a couple of hours in the refrigerator in a sealed non-metallic container overnight. An hour before serving, add more juice if needed, a little fresh chopped parsley, adjust the salt and pepper and return to the refrigerator. Serve in chilled bowls (freshly chopped chives are a nice touch) with good crusty bread.
Bring shrimp to a short boil in water with a lemon and couple of bay leaves, 12 oz. beer, and a quarter cup of vinegar to a gallon. No need for salt.
Drain, cool, and peel; devein if you’re squeamish or just fastidious. Toss in one part mayonnaise to one part sour cream with fresh dill, horseradish (a hint!), and minced capers. Throw in a little white pepper for a bit of bite.
Serve over leaf greens with onion, toasted rye, pickled eggs, and sliced cucumbers. Beets are nice. Garnish with sour citrus.
It’s a jolt to find a recipe for what amounts to an oyster po-boy in Jane Grigons’s English Food, but even if we concede that anywhere there are oysters and mankind the oysters are bound to end up on someone’s table between two pieces of bread, Griegson’s foray into New Orleans cuisine is still nothing less than another British sally on the Crescent City.
Grigson’s recipe–“Oyster Loaf”–begins: “This is one of the best of eighteenth-century dishes,” she begins, adding, “It was taken to America, and became popular in New Orleans in the eighteenth century, where it acquired the endearing name médiatrice.”
In this simple statement Grigson covers a lot of ground with a host of erroneous assumptions, not the least of which is the po-boy’s English origins. To begin with, though the British made a heroic effort to capture New Orleans in the winter of 1814-15, the city was never under British rule. Granted, in the late 1800s oyster sandwiches on French loaves were known in New Orleans as well as San Francisco as “oyster loaves”, a term still used in San Francisco, but Grigson’s recipe calls for the oysters to be placed on a bun after being sautéed in butter and poached in sour cream as well as “double” cream, a uniquely British ingredient. It’s more stew in a bread bowl than a sandwich.
The earliest known account of what eventually came to be called a po-boy was published in The Daily Picayune on Dec. 7, 1851: “A big loaf of bread is ‘dug out’ – reserving a crust end as a stop – any quantity of delicious fried or broiled oysters is piled in; the top is neatly put on; and a gentleman can carry home his loaf and his ‘dozen’ – all hot – or have them brought home, for a lunch or a relish to dinner.”
The legend of what Grigson calls the médiatrice is fraught with confusion, involving even James Beard in the likely fanciful legend of a sandwich involving various ingredients brought home by a carousing husband to his irate wife—no doubt waiting up with a rolling pin—as a “peacemaker”. Such is the case with the name po-boy (and its various spellings) as well, with diverging claims of authenticity.
The Creole tomato has long enjoyed a storied reputation in the South. Here is a typical paean from Howard Mitcham’s Creole Gumbo and All That Jazz:
“The large, vine-ripened Creole tomato is one of the glories of Louisiana cooker. Creole tomatoes have a pronounced acid flavor and are used to make delicious sauces, stews, gumbos, and so on. In fact, the very term, “à la Creole” usually denotes a tomato sauce of some sort, and when it’s made with fresh Creole tomatoes, its flavor will be distinctive.”
In addition to a rich, distinctive flavor, the Creole tomato has a reputation for being able to produce fruit in the intense heat and humidity of summers in the Deep South, when nighttime temperatures in excess of 70 degrees make most tomato varieties subject to blossom drop and unable to bear fruit.
Traditionally, farmers in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes marketed their tomatoes as Creole, claiming that tomatoes grown in the rich alluvial soil created a unique flavor that et their tomatoes apart from others. But these farmers didn’t plant a single variety, and the seeds they saved and passed along to other gardeners as “Creole” were a mélange.
In 1969, LSU AgCenter researcher Teme Hernandez released a tomato variety named Creole, but it was not a variety commonly grown in St. Bernard and Plaquemines. Hernandez described his Creole tomato as having a medium-sized, deep red fruit with some resistance to fusarium wilt. But likely because of its poor production—less than six pounds per plant—the AgCenter did not maintain a seed stock of Hernandez’s Creole.
To demonstrate the variations in Creole tomatoes, LSU AgCenter researchers grew a demonstration plot of “Creole tomatoes” in spring 2015. Creole tomato seed was sourced from 11 companies. Only seed named “Creole” or described as the 1969-released Creole was purchased. Seed was sown on January 14, 2015. Seedlings were hardened off outdoors one week prior to transplanting.
On March 24, 2015, the Creole tomato seedlings were planted at the AgCenter Botanic Gardens at Burden. The plants continued to produce beyond July; however, data collection ended in late June in order to present information to the Louisiana Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association members at the annual field day. The top three producing Creole tomatoes were sourced from Organic Seeds Direct (Amazon), Naylor’s Hardware in Baton Rouge, and TomatoFest.
Seed sources had 88 percent, 74 percent and 82 percent marketable yields, respectively. Marketable tomatoes were free from cracks, bruises and evidence of disease, insect, or environmental injury. Individual fruit size ranged from 4.2- to 7.8-ounces. Yield per plant was poor, ranging from three to six pounds.
Though Creole has become a marketing term for any tomato grown in Louisiana as well as for many tomatoes that claim to be tolerant of high temperatures, tomatoes labeled Creole are not of the same variety, and almost certainly not sourced from St. Bernard, Plaquemines, or LSU for that matter.
For each quart cubed melon, add one cup sliced strawberries or pineapple, the juice of one lime, a cup of light rum, a tablespoon sugar, and a light sprinkling of salt. Chill thoroughly before serving.
Sooner or later, you’re bound to do something different and wonderful, and you owe it to yourself to write it down and pass it on.
Do this even though once you’ve got a dish the way you want, you’re likely to find that no one will be able to replicate it to your or even their satisfaction. The secret might very well prove to be your cooking container (especially if it’s seasoned; woks are said to have their own signature) or something as ineffable as your own special touch, which might prove to be nothing more than a particular cooking method you consider unimportant enough not to write down. But at least give other people a base opportunity by listing your ingredients and procedures.
By all means, include information apart from just the basics. For instance, mention if the dish was a favorite of a family member, or if you serve it every year on a particular holiday and garnish the dish with what other components were elemental, especially those involving heirlooms (your Uncle Earl’s china platter, or the centerpiece Millie made out of sewing scraps and pine cones), activities like having a breakfast on the morning presents were opened or memorable incidents (“Earl pulled a gun on Millie when she dropped the platter.”)
Such documentation not only enriches the book itself, but it also provides fodder for short stories, novels or off-Broadway plays.
Let me also encourage you to write recipes by hand. While this exercise might serve as an irritating reminder of how bad your handwriting actually is, it gives the recipe verisimilitude. Handwritten pages also aspire to art when splattered with slopped liquids; it’s so Pollock. You just don’t get that with a laptop. Writing recipes by hand does require some precision, but don’t let getting caught up in the heat of the moment stop you. Later you can find another pen, more red wine or chocolate syrup, and amend the entry.
As to what recipes to include, for once in your life, don’t worry about diversity. Put your best foot forward. If your forte is cakes, casseroles, or seafood, concentrate on those and don’t make any spurious attempt to fill in with recipes you simply copy from another place unless you actually try them out first. Bear in mind that this book should be as personal as you can make it, as reflective as possible of your personality and idiosyncrasies.
By all means, include recipes from friends and relatives as well, since those enrich your work by leaps and bounds, but always identify your contributor and provide details of them as well as a genealogy of the recipe itself. For instance, an entry in my book reveals that a recipe for chicken soup with corn and rivels came from a lady from Lancaster, Pa. who was 6’2”, a psychologist with a unibrow who got the recipe from her Quaker grandmother, the wife of a Lithuanian stockbroker.
Such seemingly irrelevant details make for richer reading than a dry recitation of ingredients and have the potential to approach the peripheries of art itself.
