Category: Food and Cooking

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Yancy’s Carrot Cake

This recipe is the only one you’ll ever need. Many might consider the dark rum optional, but it’s essential; even if you’re a teetotaler, the alcohol burns off in the cooking, and good heavens, you’re bound to know someone with at least one bottle.

I like a mix of gold and dark raisins, and prefer salted pecans to walnuts. Like all great cakes, this one is best made the day before.

Mix thoroughly ¾ cup vegetable oil and ¾ cup warm buttermilk with ¾ cup white and ¾ cup light brown sugar (you don’t have to pack it). Set aside. Sift together 2 ½ cups plain flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 2 teaspoons each ground cinnamon and ground ginger, and a couple dashes of nutmeg.

Add half the dry ingredients to the oil/buttermilk mixture, and the rest alternately with 4 well-beaten eggs at room temperature. Add two cups grated carrots, about ¾ cup raisins, ¾ cup chopped nuts and a cup of drained crushed pineapple. Finish off with a tablespoon of vanilla extract and a generous slug of dark rum (okay, three ounces).

Pour batter into a Bundt or two 9 in. layer pans and bake at 375 until fragrant and springy. For the frosting, mix a pound of cream cheese and ½ stick butter at room temperature with powdered sugar to texture, a teaspoon almond extract and grated orange zests. Sprinkle with nuts.

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Ham of Dreams

In the 1930s, Harry J. Hoenselaar worked at a honey-glazed ham store in Detroit, handing out samples and teaching drugstore clerks how to slice hams for sandwiches. He had long since mastered knifing ham from the bone, but he knew there had to be a better way.

Then Harry had a dream, and with a tire jack, a pie tin, a washing machine motor, and a knife, he fashioned and patented the world’s first ham spiralizer. He later bought the Detroit store on Eight Mile Road in Detroit where he once worked from the owner’s widow in 1957.

This, the original Honey Baked Ham store,  eventually spawned a company with 417 stores, from Southern California to New Hampshire. The busiest is in a suburb of Birmingham, Ala. After decades of familial wrangling and consolidation, the entire operation has landed in the lap of Linda van Rees, a granddaughter, who moved the company headquarters to Alpharetta, Georgia, in 2015.

Many people will bake a spiral-sliced ham, but it’s best bring the ham to room temperature, twist a steak knife around the small center bone, and follow the natural lines of the meat to cut smaller pieces for the table.

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How to Fry Baloney

Cut slits in the slice, no less than four radiating from the middle, or it’ll buckle, and you don’t want that. Don’t use much grease in the skillet, either. Blister to singing; some people like slices blackened. If you don’t serve it on white bread, you’re going straight to hell.

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Egg Plates

Stuffed eggs are a necessary appurtenance to any holiday table in the Mid-South, so having an egg plate is a requirement in one’s arsenal of tableware.

Egg plates come in all sizes and shapes–they’re even making disposable ones now–and their selection for a given occasion provides a telling clue to the character of the bearer. If you bring a ceramic plate to a funeral, you’re going to be labeled white trash behind your back; if you if you bring a cut glass plate to a keg party, you’re going to be called a fucking idiot to your face.

The number of spaces most often found for egg halves remains a mystery to me. Given that eggs are sold by the dozen or in multiples or fractions thereof, you’d think that egg plates would adhere to that standard, but such is not the case. Of the two egg plates I own, the one of ceramic has twelve depressions, the other of glass has fifteen This gives me reason to believe that my glass plate is older than the egg industry, which makes me smile when I’m loading it for the table.

Such are the modest rewards of petty pride.

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How to Cook a Green Ham

Ham is the quintessential meat of the Southern table, either as main dish, or providing support in dozens of sides across the board.

But as a great many of those smart-ass hillbillies from Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky–the absolute worst–will tell you (in annoyingly nasal, condescendingly reverential tones), there are hams, and then there are hams.

The best hams are dry cured, usually with a mix of salt and sugar. These hams can be eaten very thinly sliced without cooking, but they need to be soaked in water for at least a day if baked for the table. These are often labeled country hams. So-called city hams, the kind you most often find in the supermarket, are wet-cured by brine injection. Smoked hams are usually a variant of both, with smoke and brine both providing preservation and flavor.

Then you have the green ham, which is what your old granny called a leg of pork. You’ll find it sold as a “fresh” ham. You may have to look for it, you may even have to order one, but a green ham is no more trouble than any other kind, and it’s a worthy option to the nitrate-infused clubs of meat you’ve been serving all these years.

A green ham will have a rind over a layer of fat. Score the rind in a tight crisscross pattern with a very sharp knife (honest to God, I use a box cutter), and coat with garlic, sage, a little brown sugar, coarsely-ground pepper, and sea salt. Put sprigs of rosemary and coarsely chopped white onions in the bottom of your roaster with enough water to cover them. Set the ham fatty side up on a rack.

Place in a hot oven, 450. After thirty minutes, lower to 350. For a ten-pound ham, give it three hours or until that little bone next to the big one wiggles freely. Add water to pan as needed to prevent scorching. Let sit for at least an hour before carving.

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Hangtown Fry

Crisp three slices thick bacon in a 8-in. skillet. Remove, drain and crumble. Beat four eggs very well, add a half dozen shucked, drained oysters with chopped onions and mild peppers. Helps to stir it a bit. Reheat skillet, and add another tablespoon or two of oil. When sizzling, add egg/oyster mix, and pop into a hot oven until lightly browned. Top with bacon, chopped scallions, and/or grated hard cheese. Serve with sourdough toast.

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Spatched Rock Cornish Hen

Rinse bird, pat dry, remove wing tips and backbone with shears or a knife then turn the hen breast side up, open it up like a book and then whack it a time or two with the heel of your hand (you can use your fist if you like) to crack the breastbone and flatten it out.

Tuck the wings under the thighs. Oil the hen, season with salt and pepper. Place rosemary, garlic and whatever other herbs you might like in the bottom of a skillet, lay the bird on top, and pop onto the top rack of a hot oven (400) until legs wiggle.

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Mock Oysters Rockefeller

Every recipe you’ll for this old buffet dish uses chopped frozen broccoli and cheddar, which makes you wonder why anyone would call it any kind of a Rockefeller in the first place, even a mock one.

While this version lacks the definitive Pernod/Ouzo/Anisette (nothing to keep you from adding a slash or so) it does have spinach and parsley, which seem to be the only ingredients that most deem essential for an honest oysters Rockefeller.

Sauté 4 cups chopped spinach with 1 bunch chopped green onions and a cup of chopped parsley in a stick of butter. Cool, add a cup of Parmesan, and about a half cup of crumbled bacon. Mix well, salt and pepper to taste.

Remove stems from portabella caps; you can mince these and add them to the spinach mix if you like. Brush caps with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and place on a baking sheet.

Spoon spinach mixture on caps, top with more crumbled bacon and Parmesan, and bake at 350 until cheese is toasted.

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Dixie Kim Chee

Wash fresh turnips with greens well and shake dry. Peel roots and cut into chunks or wedges. Chop leaves and stems  coarsely. Toss roots and greens with minced garlic, spring onions cut into 1 inch pieces on the bias, and a plenty of kosher salt.

Let this sit for about half an hour, then sprinkle with a heaping teaspoon of ground cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, or you can use chopped fresh hot peppers, enough for the pickle to pack a punch. Toss again.

Stuff this mixture into clean glass jars, topping off with liquid from the bowl. Seal jars tightly, and set them in a cool dark place. In a few days, check to see if it’s fermenting; look for bubbles.  If bubbling, open the jar very carefully over a sink to let a little bit of the gas escape; if you’re rash about opening the jar, you might just end up covered in kim chee juice. (This, children, is the the voice of experience.)

When gas has escaped, reseal the jar, and let it sit for another day or so. Repeat the gas release procedure and refrigerate for at least another week before serving.

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Potatoes Anna

A lighter, simpler version of what most of us know as scalloped potatoes, this recipe is also known as a potato cake.

Most versions involve peeled potatoes, but I don’t find this necessary, justifying my lassitude by presentation. The only trick to preparation is turning the cake to brown both sides. I’m certain some people have the strength and manual dexterity to flip the cake, but I’ve yet to master this technique. Instead, I find a lid that fits, flip it, and and slide the potatoes (brightly, and with beauty) back into the pan to brown evenly.

Slice small red potatoes very thinly (having a mandolin comes in handy) and–working quickly before the potatoes discolor–arrange in layers, sprinkling with salt and pepper in a well-oiled or buttered sauté pan. I do not like to add herbs in this recipe, nor garlic. Place in a hot oven—400 or so—until bubbling and lightly browned. Flip (however best you can) to brown evenly.

Serve hot with a hard grated cheese or cold with sour cream.