Category: Food and Cooking

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Blackberry Ice Cream

Macerate 4 cups fresh or frozen blackberries with 1 cup sugar; mash and strain. This will yield about 3 cups of syrup. Sift together 1 cup sugar with a tablespoon of cornstarch. Drizzle this mix into a quart of warm half-and-half, add 2 eggs well beaten and a tablespoon of vanilla extract. Simmer until thickened, remove from heat, add 2 cups whole cream, another teaspoon of vanilla, and the blackberry syrup. Whisk until smooth. Refrigerate for at least an hour before processing in the ice cream freezer with a squeeze of lemon. This recipe works well with any berry or stone fruit.

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Yellow-Meated Watermelons

While working in a Florida restaurant, I kept having trouble ordering a yellow-meated watermelon from my produce guy. He said he could never find one, even though I’d seen them in local markets. Finally it came out that with my heavy hill country Mississippi accent he thought I was ordering a melon from some mythical specialty locale in California: “Jala Meadad”.

He even wrote it down that way on his order forms.

Here in the Deep South yellow-meated season is short; you’ll rarely find them marketed before July or after August, and you’ll almost never find them sold in supermarkets, usually only at roadside produce stands.

The variety of yellow meats I find most often here in central Mississippi has broad dark green and light green stripes, though over in Clay County, Alabama, where they have the Clay County Yellow Meated Watermelon Festival, the eponymous variety is an almost uniform light green.

The flesh can range from pale yellow to deep gold. The best contain large brownish black seeds, seeds being an essential ripening agent for the fruit, whose flavor I find sweeter than the reds, offering notes of honey, apricot, and vanilla.

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Cavegirl Popsicles

Toss chicken legs in vegetable oil seasoned in equal amounts with black pepper, paprika, sage, and salt. Cook on a rack at 300 for about an hour, turning to brown evenly.

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Yam Not

Okay, let’s straighten this out once and for all. Those big orange roots you find in the grocery store are not yams. Got that? As a matter of fact, it’s a good bet that most of the people who just read that have never even seen a yam.

Sweet potatoes came to be called yams because they’re kind of/sort of similar, both starchy/sweet root vegetables, but they’re quite distinct; a sweet potato is far sweeter and much smoother than a yam. The most important distinction is that yams don’t grow in the South, but sweet potatoes do, in glorious profusion.

Sweet potatoes have always been a staple of Southern tables as well as a reliable source of income. The sweet potato is the state vegetable of North Carolina, and the Sweet Potato Capitol of the World is Vardaman, Mississippi. (If tells you any different, they’re a double-dog liar who needs a solid ass-kicking.

Still and all, you’re bound to find cans of yams in many local grocers, but due to USDA requirements, you’ll find “sweet potatoes” somewhere on the label.

So there.

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About Boiling Shrimp

In my experience, the best procedure for boiling shrimp does not involve a rolling boil, which will shrink and toughen the meat. Instead, raw shrimp are dropped into lightly boiling water to cover and stirred until the water comes back to a shimmer. At that point, the meat is cooked through, ready to drain, cool, and serve.

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Potato Candy

Soften a stick of butter and eight ounces of cream cheese (don’t use the low-fat), mix with a tablespoon pure vanilla extract, four cups confectioner’s sugar, and a cup of grated coconut. Chill mixture for about an hour or until very firm. Dust your hands with powdered sugar and form into irregularly-shaped balls.  Roll in or dust with cocoa (nothing’s keeping you from using paprika), stud the surface with nuts of some kind (of course I use pecan pieces) and  freeze before serving.

 

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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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Love a Duck

If you don’t know a duck hunter, befriend one; they always seem to have an extra fowl in the freezer, and will invariably tell you how to how to cook them.

After all, they shot the damn things.

Hunters and fishermen who cook really well – like Billy Joe Cross, bless his soul – should be designated national treasures. Heck, if Japan can give a tofu maker a house, we ought to be able to buy people like Billy Joe a Cadillac.

Like many if not most game recipes, this one involves a marinade. Acidic marinades tenderize, and as a general rule are for larger game, but with duck breasts, the marinade is for flavor. For every pound of boned duck breast, use a mix of a quarter cup of soy sauce, two tablespoons each brown sugar and olive oil, a couple of cloves of minced garlic, and a dash or two of black pepper.

Marinate for three hours. Stuff each breast with sliced onion and jalapeno, wrap in bacon, and spear. Grill or broil.

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Banana Pepper Relish

Seed and dice a pound of sweet banana peppers (throw a hot one in if you like), a white onion, mix with a cup of shredded cabbage, a grated carrot, and two finely-minced cloves of garlic. Dust with salt and sugar (about 2:1), toss to mix well, pack into jars, and cover with hot white vinegar. Seal and store for a week before serving. This is great with grilled meats–particularly sausages–and spicy beans.

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Culinary Jackson

Does Jackson, Mississippi have a distinct culinary signature?

The short answer is no. Even the city’s–somewhat recently distinguished–signature recipe, comeback dressing, has its roots not so much in restaurants here, but in diners across the South for the simple, practical reason that it’s easily made from on-hand commercial ingredients–ketchup, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce and pepper–easily stored, and versatile.

So as to a distinct culinary presence, well, no. What we have in Jackson is a cuisine typical of cities throughout the Mid-South: Herculean breakfasts featuring lard biscuits, grits and rice, eggs and pork, meals of meats, starches, and vegetables stewed in fats.

These are the foods you’ll find all over Jackson, in restaurants and supermarket deli buffets for breakfasts and “meat-and-three’ (more often meat-and-two) lunches, dishes adopted from the home table that speak of place and past.