Category: Food and Cooking

Posted on

Tartar Sauce: Two Definitive Recipes

In his Creole Cook Book, the delightful, irrepressible Lafcadio Hearn provides two recipes for tartar sauce, one that hearkens back to the days when the soldiers of the Golden Horde cruised the ewes around the Great Gates of Kiev.

HOW TO MAKE TARTAR SAUCE

There are two good ways in which a Tartar sauce may be made. You can try whichever you please; but if you are in a hurry the second will suit your purpose better than the first.

1st: Catch a young Tartar: for the old ones are very tough and devoid of juice. To catch a Tartar is generally a very unpleasant and at all times a difficult undertaking. A young Tartar will probably cost you at least $10,000—and perhaps your life—before you get through with him: but if you must have Tartar sauce you must be ready to take all risks.

Having procured your Tartar you must kill him privately, taking care that the act shall escape the observation of the police authorities, who would probably in such a case be strongly prejudiced in favor of the Tartar. Having killed, skinned and cleaned the Tartar, cut off the tenderest part of the hams and thighs; boil three hours, and then hash up with Mexican pepper, aloes and spices. Add a quart of mulled wine and slowly boil to the consistency of honey.

You will probably find the Tartar sauce very palatable; and if hermetically sealed in bottles with the addition of a little Santa Cruz rum, will serve for a long time. The rest of the Tartar will not keep, and must be disposed of judiciously.

2nd: Take the yolk of a hard boiled egg, a teaspoonful of mustard, a tablespoonful of olive oil, a little vinegar, a little parsley and pickled cucumber, and hash up very fine.

Posted on

Banana Pudding Cookies

For best flavor, you must use bananas that are soft, aromatic, and with a light freckling. The vanilla wafers should just be broken up into small pieces, not reduced to crumbs. Some people top these with whipped cream and a banana slice, but that makes them soggy.

1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup cane sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 ripe banana mashed
1 package banana cream instant pudding mix
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup smashed vanilla wafers

Preheat oven to 350, and line baking pans with lightly oiled parchment paper. Combine flour and baking soda, then set aside. Cream butter and sugar thoroughly, add the banana, pudding mix, and eggs. Mix until smooth and slowly stir in the dry ingredients, then blend in the chips and wafers. Use about a tablespoon of dough for each cookie. Bake until lightly browned, about ten minutes.

Posted on

Lemon Pecan Baklava

Mix a half cup light brown sugar with a teaspoon of cinnamon, a stick of melted butter, and 3 cups chopped pecans. Spread on a pound of buttered phyllo. Cover with another pound of buttered phyllo and bake until golden. Stir a cup of sugar into a cup of water.  Add a half cup honey, a half cup corn syrup, and the juice of three lemons with zest. Bring to a boil until slightly thickened. Pour evenly over phyllo, and cool before slicing and serving.

Posted on

Cat Tongue Cookies

Cream one cup confectioner’s sugar with one cup softened butter and a teaspoon vanilla extract. Lightly whip 3 egg whites, room temperature; they just need to be a little frothy, not stiff at all. Fold half the egg whites into the sweet butter along with three tablespoons plain flour. Mix well, then blend in the rest of the egg whites with enough flour to make a soft dough. Pipe dough in 6-inch strips onto a baking sheet lined with lightly oiled parchment paper. Give them room to spread. Bake in a medium (350) oven until edges are browned. Cool on a rack. For black cat tongues, dip in melted chocolate.

Posted on

Discworld Gumbo

In Sir Terry Pratchett’s riotous Guard! Guards!,” which pits the stalwart Commnder Sam Vimes and his (at this point in the saga) rag-tag City Watch against a phantasmal dragon, an encroaching fog in Discworld’s largest (and least reputable) city is described as a “real Ankh-Morpork autumn gumbo.” In a considerate nod to his British readers, Sir Terry provides a somewhat less-than-helpful definition of gumbo as like a pea-soup, “only much thicker, fishier, and with things in it you’d probably rather not know about,” a definition that would work just as well for all others outside the American Gulf South who might likely be averse to, say, okra, filé, or crawfish.

Posted on

How to Spike a Watermelon

Traditionalists insert a bottle, the fastidious a funnel, and I know one guy who marks out a grid with a surgical hammer to determine the proper places to plunge a turkey needle. Vodka is standard; hard-core types use Everclear. I’ve never spiked a melon with gin, but it might be wonderful. I recommend cutting a fist-sized crater about a quarter way into the flesh, pouring the booze in a cup at a time, and refilling it as the liquor is absorbed. A Charleston Gray takes all day, a Moon-and-Stars four hours.

Posted on

Patio Puppies

Grate and squeeze yellow, white, or green squash. For one cup grated squash and a quarter cup each of diced onions and poblanos, mix with two cups self-rising white corn meal. Add a large egg, well-beaten, about ¾ cup whole milk, and ½ cup vegetable oil. Stir until just mixed and drop by spoonfuls into hot oil. Puppies rise and turn as they cook. When brown, put pups on paper towels in a skillet and set them in a warm oven to crisp. Serve with a citrus-y comeback or a thin salsa.

Posted on

Tomato Appetizers

These are ethereal, best assembled immediately before serving and do not keep at all. For thirty to forty people, fry to a crisp and crumble 1 pound bacon and mix with a cup each of mayo and finely-chopped green onion. Season with Tony’s, spread on rounds of bread and top with drained tomato slices dusted with salt and dill.

Posted on

Homemade Ice Cream Base

Combine 1 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon cornstarch and a scant teaspoon salt in a saucepan. Gradually stir in a quart of half-and-half and place over low heat. In a large bowl beat together 2 large eggs and a tablespoon of pure vanilla extract until whites and yolks are thoroughly blended. Slowly add eggs to the cream, stirring constantly and gradually increasing heat until thickened. It should have the consistency of eggnog. Stir in a pint of whipping cream and remove from heat. Refrigerate for 45 minutes to cool, then add fruit, nuts and/or flavorings, process in freezer, and make people happy.

Posted on

About Limas

All butter beans are limas, but not all limas are butter beans.

Actually, it’s a lot more complicated. While lima beans and butter beans are usually thought of as two different types of beans, they are both varieties of Phaseolus lunatus (literally “moon bean”), which has a very long and complicated history of domestication in Meso- and South America.

Limas are a warm-weather crop and come into season sometime around mid-June and with the planting of second crops in late July and early August, stay in season well into October. Among the most popular varieties grown in Mississippi are ‘Thorogreen’ and ‘Henderson,’ both small green bush types; ‘Jackson Wonder,’ also a bush variety, is small and brown or speckled; ‘Florida Speckled’ is a larger pole variety, and the hard-to-find ‘Willow Leaf,’ also a pole variety, has a cult following. Butterpeas are limas.

As a rule, large, yellow/white/speckled/purple limas are generally known as butter beans, while the smaller, green varieties are called, well, limas. The smallest may even be called “baby” limas. However, I have been told that “they call butter beans limas up North,” which shines a light on the Yankee mentality.

Fresh beans should be smooth and plump, somewhat tacky to the touch. Fresh beans should be washed and picked over for damage, dirt, or detritus, washed, and set to cook in water 2:1; fresh beans don’t need as much water as dried, and they don’t need pre-soaking. As with most American bean recipes, fatty pork is a classic addition. Bring beans to a boil, then lower heat to simmer and cover until beans are soft. I always use white pepper instead of black to season, and rarely use anything more until the beans are cooked, at which point they become the basis for any number of wonderful dishes.

Every summer I make baked limas in sour cream. For a pound of cooked limas with about a half cup of the liquid, add a quarter cup of brown sugar, and a cup of sour cream mixed with a teaspoon corn starch to keep it from separating. Flour will work in a pinch. Mix well. Bake in a low oven until set. This dish goes with anything at all.