Category: Food and Cooking

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Marbled Sweet Potato Cheesecake

Sweet potatoes blended with a fool-proof New York-style cheesecake; fun to make, sumptuous results. The cheesecake filling is 16 oz. cream cheese, 2/3 cup sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla and two large eggs. The sweet potato filling is two cups of “candied” sweet potatoes pureed and mixed with 1/2 cup whole cream, 1/2 cup sugar, two eggs and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. The crust is a box of graham cracker crumbs–adding crushed pecans is a nice touch–mixed with a stick and a half of melted butter, a cup of brown sugar, packed into an 8″ spring-form pan and refrigerated until firm. Drop both filling mixtures alternately around the crust, then take a spoon and swirl it around a little bit. Be artistic; think about finger-painting a wet mud pie. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, lower heat and cool for an hour. Refrigerate or better yet, put it in the freezer for at least an hour before slicing.

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About Pepper Vinegar

Most other Americans seem to think that the quintessential Southern hot sauce is a Tabasco-type mash, but restaurants across the middle South usually offer pepper vinegar as well.

Many people find pepper vinegar essential for flavoring greens, and some—like me—like it on peas and beans. Any hot pepper can be used, but long cayennes and sports are most common. Make it in jars, and serve it in a shaker bottle. Prick the peppers; you don’t have to stem them. Pack the containers until the lid just mushes the fruit. Use white vinegar, full strength, salted, something like a tablespoon of salt per quart of liquid. Heat the vinegar until just simmering. Add a few drops of vegetable oil in with the peppers before pouring in the hot vinegar. This adds a little kick, and no, I don’t know the science behind it. Some people add sugar, but don’t.

Pepper vinegar ages well over several weeks and you can infuse the peppers with more vinegar–no heating required, but shake well–to stretch a jar.

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Idaho Peaches

The early October morning was warm; the afternoon was going to be hot. On the left of the produce stand piles of pumpkins, gourds, corn stalks and hay bales were somewhat artfully arranged in a semi-circle stretching across the parking lot. The bins were stocked full of peas, beans, squash, corn, and other fresh vegetables. People wandered to-and-fro, poking, picking, sacking, and asking questions of the woman in the center behind a register. When I reached the stand, my eye caught a basket of round, ruby-red, fuzzy fruit.

“Hey, Brenda!” I called out. “Where’d you get these late peaches?”

“Idaho!” She said. I couldn’t help staring.

“Don’t look at me like that!” she said. “I asked Rupert if he had any Carolina peaches left and he said, no, but I have some from Idaho, and I said I didn’t think they even knew what a peach is in Idaho and he just said take or leave, so I bought them because I wanted some peaches, and they’re better than nothing.”

“How are they?” I asked.

“Well, they’re peaches,” she said. “They ain’t the best I’ve had by far, but they’re probably not the worst. They’re peaches, take or leave.”

So I bought a half a dozen Idaho peaches, more for the sake of novelty than for any other reason. And they’re not the best, by any means, but firm and sweet nonetheless, with a deep yellow flesh around a blood-red center.

As I was checking out, Brenda pointed at a table of rattlesnake watermelons and said, “You’ll never guess where those are from”

“So tell me,” I said.

She rang up my total and said, “Nebraska.”

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Good Onion Soup

Unless you live in some eco-friendly urban area with paradisical market enclaves, you’ll most likely find only four kinds of onions for sale: red, yellow, white, and green. I almost never cook red onions, reserving them for salads and toppings, but you’ll find me using all others liberally in damn near anything I cook.

A word about yellow onions, however; nowadays they are almost always sweet. Not all of them are as cloyingly sweet as the Vidalia, which has been beatified by zealous regional journalists who equate eating a Vidalia onion sandwich at the office for lunch with that of hunkering down around the `fahr’ with a mason ‘jahr’ of `shahn’ listening to the dawgs tree a coon, an experience just rife with Southern machismo, derring-do, and chauvinism, but these onions smother the flavor of an honest onion soup, which should have a mellow savoriness that comes only from time and care.

Mince six medium-size white onions. In a large skillet, melt 1/2 cup of butter. Heat to medium and add two cloves minced garlic to brown.  Add onions, cook down, then add about six cups of beef stock and a cup of dried onions. Reduce heat to simmer and cook uncovered (what a wonderful smell this makes, too) until the onions are soft and clear. Add salt, pepper and thyme to taste; some like rosemary. A slash of sherry at the last minute is a nice touch. Serve piping hot with well-buttered, crusty bread.

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How to Make Cornbread

Pour about an eighth of an inch of oil, corn or vegetable, in the bottom of an eight inch skillet; doesn’t have to be cast iron, but it helps. Stick it in the oven on a high rack at about 425. Mix three cups of white self-rising corn meal with about half a cup self-rising flour, mix in a bowl with a scant teaspoon baking soda and a dash or so of salt. Add about 1/3 cup of corn or vegetable oil and mix until about the consistency of rice. Add one large beaten egg and mix well. Add enough buttermilk with a splash of water to make a thick batter. Spoon batter into the hot skillet, shake to level, and bake until golden brown. Invert skillet to remove bread. Serve warm with butter and rejoice.

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Brabant Potatoes

This old New Orleans side dish is different from most pan potato recipes such as hash or fritters which usually call for waxy potatoes. This one uses starchy white/baking potatoes, and the result is a pan full of golden cubes with a crunchy crust and a fluffy center.

The recipe for Brabant potatoes in The Picayune’s Creole Cookbook (1901) doesn’t include garlic, but most contemporary recipes do. And by the way, Brabant is a region in the Low Countries; how this Crescent City side came by the name is unknown. New Orleans is city of mystery.

For four servings, peel and dice two large russet potatoes. Place in a colander and rinse until the water runs clear to get rid of the surface starch. Dry thoroughly between paper towels. Heat about a half inch of vegetable oil in a skillet. I don’t recommend olive oil because it has a lower burn, and you want the oil hot to fry the cubes. Vigorously shake and the toss potatoes until cubes are uniformly brown, then drain the oil, add about a quarter stick butter and two finely minced cloves of garlic, and stir potatoes to coat. Salt and pepper to taste.

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Buttermilk Spread

At the Warehouse in Oxford, we had this prep guy who was from the outlaw boonies way out toward Tula; total stoner with a hot car and a girlfriend with a great rack and a space between her teeth. He used to sell homegrown in the parking lot.

He mopped the floor, proofed the bread, switched out the soda canisters, and made a whipped spread with buttermilk and margarine. I loved watching him do it. He’d crank up our big-ass Hobart with a perforated blade the size of a hubcap and start throwing one-pound blocks of margarine straight out of the cooler into the barrel-size bowl. The chunks made a whomp-bump racket until they began to soften. Then he’d start pouring in buttermilk, and the noise became a sliding hiss as the margarine and milk began to meld. The final product was a creamy, fluffy, flavorful spread the waiters served with warm loaves of bread on cute little wooden paddles.

We used margarine and low fat buttermilk for economy, but butter and whole milk buttermilk are worth the expense. Set your mixer on low speed; use the whip attachment. Begin adding softened butter one stick at a time. After the second stick is creamy, slowly begin adding buttermilk in a dribble. You should be able to incorporate about a little over a half cup of buttermilk to a pound of butter. As the mixture begins to meld, put your mixer on high and toss in about a teaspoon of salt.  Whip until nice and fluffy. Refrigerate immediately; bring to room temperature before serving.

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Howard’s Creole Jambalaya

This text and recipe is from Howard Mitcham’s magical Creole, Gumbo, and All That Jazz.

After gumbo, the most famous Creole-Cajun dish is jambalaya. The word is probably derived from “Jambon,” which means am in both Spanish and French. The “a la ya” is probably an African expletive which can be interpreted as either acclaim or derision. Jambalaya was a well-known dish even before Hank Williams’s Hit Parade song came along and made it nationally famous. Millions have sung the song without knowing anything about what the dish was like. The recipes herewith will give you a chance to really get on the bandwagon. Jambalaya started out as a poor man’s catch-all, utilizing any leftover meats, sausages, shrimp, or fish that might be lying around, and stretching them a long, long way with plenty of rice. If a poor Cajun family had five or six kids, it’s a safe bet they ate jambalaya several times a week. Like red beans and rice, it kept people from starving during depressions and recessions.

But the consummate artistry of Creole and Cajun cooks has lifted jambalaya above its humble beginnings to a higher plateau, and it is now served with pride and joy in the mansions of the wealthy and in high-toned restaurants. This dish is a close cousin of the Spanish paella, and it probably originated down around New Iberia, which, as its name suggests, was originally a Spanish settlement. However, there’s another town with a Spanish name, Gonzales, up near Baton Rouge, that calls itself the Jambalaya Capital of the World. Its citizens hold a jambalaya festival every year. They cook big black iron wash pots full of the stuff, and people come from all over to sample the rich and redolent fare. A real Gonzales jambalaya is so peppery hot, spicy, and rich that the uninitiated can barely cope with it, but an aficionado of the art can consume a half gallon of it and ask for more. The version of Creole Jambalaya here is lighter fare than the Gonzales product.

Melt a half stick butter in a thick-bottomed pot or Dutch oven, cook 1 pound andouille or smoked sausage (or both) until lightly browned. Stir in a heaping quarter cup of plain flour, add 3 medium white onions, chopped finely, 4 minced cloves of garlic, 6 whole scallions, chopped. Cook until onions soft and clear. Add a 16 ounce can diced tomatoes, drained, along with a bay leaf, and a teaspoon each thyme, cayenne, cumin, and black pepper. Add 4 cups broth (chicken or beef), a cup of cooked chicken, and a cup of diced ham. The liquid should cover the ingredients. Bring to a rolling boil and stir in 2 cups raw rice (let me recommend Zatarain’s long grain, jly). Cover, boil for about 5 minutes, then reduce heat and cook until rice is done. Remove lid to cook off excess liquid; “a jambalaya should be moist, but not soupy.” Salt to taste.

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Tía Jesé’s Chicken Enchiladas

Poach boneless breasts of chicken in lightly salted water until tender. Shred, mince, and add to each pound of meat a four-oz. can chopped chilies (with liquid), juice of one lime, and enough sour cream to bind. You can add grated jack cheese if you like. Season with equal parts cumin, chili powder, and granulated garlic. Salt to taste. Roll in warm tortillas brushed with corn oil. Top with a rich queso.

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Jo Haxton’s Cheese Böreks

The recipe n the author’s handwriting, courtesy of Emily Haxton.

This recipe from Greenville novelist Ellen Douglas (Josephine Ayres Haxton) makes dozens, depending on the size. Take a half pound each grated mozzarella and feta cheese, mix well with a pint of cottage cheese, two large well-beaten eggs, and a tablespoon or so of chopped parsley. Brush phyllo with melted butter. Cut into strips an inch or so wide, and three or four inches long. Place a spoonful of the cheese filling at the top edge of the strip and fold “like you fold a flag” into triangles or flip into squares. Pinch the edges and brush with an egg white beaten in a half cup of water. Sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds and bake twenty minutes or so at 375.

Photo by Emily Haxton