Category: Food and Cooking

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Summer Vegetable Soup

The deli at our local grocery serves a wonderful vegetable soup that they discontinue for the summer, since “nobody eats soup when the weather is hot.” Well, you know what? Yes, they do. We’ve enjoyed summer vegetable soups for centuries in the South, and rightly so, since our gardens are the finest on the planet.

My recipe starts with two quarts diced canned tomatoes and juice. If you’re lucky, you’ll know an industrious gardener who cans summer tomatoes, and you will have their red gold in your larder. If not, Contadina will suffice. Sauté one large diced white onion with three or four diced ribs of celery and two cloves minced garlic in just enough vegetable oil to coat. Pour this into the tomato mix. To this add water to cover by an inch–I like to add V-8 as well–along with a cup or so of sliced, rinsed okra.

Find something industrious and enlightening to do for a half-hour or until the onions and okra have surrendered to the mélange. This is a savory base for beautiful vegetable soups throughout the season. Fresh peas and beans, even green beans, should be parboiled until tender, as should wax potatoes, but squash can be diced and added raw. As to herbs, I’m frugal; a pinch of thyme and a smidgen of basil do just fine. Add salt and pepper with care. And yes, you can serve this warm or chilled.

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Eggs Birmingham

This old egg-and-bread dish goes by many names. At my childhood table, it was known as eggs-in-a-basket. Later I found it was hens-in-a-nest, toad-in-the-hole by Brits, and one version simply called egg toast. But when I published a recipe for eggs-in-a-basket some time ago, Mississippi actress Susan McPhail pointed out that, “Tennessee Williams calls them ‘Eggs Birmingham’ in Baby Doll.”

Well, I’ll be damned (I thought). You’d think growing up less than 200 miles from Birmingham (Alabama), I’d know of eggs Birmingham; moreover, you’d think a Southern food writer with a degree in literature would have found this blip on his radar decades ago. But no. Fortunately, I happen to know a lot of people—like Susan—who are smarter than I am, which is bruising to my self-esteem, but provides me with some assurance of being well-informed, or at least the comforting illusion thereof.

Baby Doll (1956), produced and directed by Elia Kazan and starring Carroll Baker, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach, was shot on location at the Burrus House near Benoit, Mississippi, which at that time was in a state of considerable decay. Williams wrote the script, which was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay (Kazan claimed in his autobiography that Williams was only “half-heartedly” involved in the screenplay), drawing from his previous works 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, a 1946 one-act play that Williams referred to as “a Mississippi Delta comedy, and The Long Stay Cut Short, or, The Unsatisfactory Supper, a moving short drama about the turning out of an old servant, published in 1946 along with 4 other one-act plays in American Blues: Five Short Plays.

In 27 Wagons Full of Cotton, Jake, a middle-aged, shady cotton gin owner with antiquated equipment burns down the mill of the Syndicate Plantation, a rival in the cotton business where Silva Vicarro serves as Superintendent. Vicarro, who knows what happened but cannot prove it, gets revenge by raping Jake’s young and voluptuous but childlike and naïve wife Flora.

The Long Stay Cut Short, or, The Unsatisfactory Supper, depicts the story of Archie Lee and his Baby Doll Meighan (parallels of Jake and Flora in 27 Wagons Full of Cotton) who are reluctantly providing a home to Aunt Rose, an elderly relation who has been passed around among the family to house. An “unsatisfactory supper” cooked by Aunt Rose, who neglected to light the burner under the greens she’d put on the stove earlier. She offers to make eggs Birmingham to appease him.

ARCHIE LEE. What is eggs Birmingham?
 AUNT ROSE. Why, eggs Birmingham was Baby Doll’s daddy’s pet dish.
 ARCHIE LEE. That don’t answer my question.
 AUNT ROSE. (As though confiding a secret.) I’ll tell you how to pre- pare them.
 ARCHIE LEE. I don’t care how you prepare them, I just want to know what they are.
 AUNT ROSE. (Reasonably.) Well, Son, I can’t say what they are without telling how to prepare them. You cut some bread-slices and take the centers out of them. You put the bread-slices in a skillet with butter. Then into each cut-out center you drop one egg and on top of the eggs you put the cut-out centers.
 . . .
 ARCHIE LEE. (Roughly, his back still turned.) I don’t want Eggs Bir- mingham.
 BABY DOLL. He don’t want Eggs Birmingham and neither do I. But while we are talking, Aunt Rose-well-Archie Lee’s wondered and I’ve been wondering, too. . .
 AUNT ROSE. About what, Baby Doll?
 BABY DOLL. Well, as to whether or not you’ve—made any plans.
 AUNT ROSE. Plans?
 BABY DOLL. Yes, plans.
 AUNT ROSE. What kind of plans, Baby Doll?
 BABY DOLL. Why, plans for the future, Aunt Rose.

Rose, in despair, with characteristically Williamsian pathos, rushes to the yard to gather roses in an approaching storm: The blue dusk deepens to purpleand purple to black and the roar comes on with the force of a locomotive as AUNT ROSE’S figure is pushed toward the rose-bush.

In Baby Doll, “Aunt Rose Comfort” offers to make Archie Lee (Karl Malden) “my Eggs Birmingham” when he rejects her undercooked greens. Vaccaro (Wallach) offers to hire her to cook for him in her home and make eggs Birmingham for him there, a much more humane fate for Rose, but a move designed to needle Archie Lee, who asks, “Anything else around here you wanta take with yuh, Vacarro?” insinuating Baby Doll herself.

 

 

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Homemade Sno-Cones

Bring to boil one cup of water, stir in one and a half cups sugar and a package of Kool-Aid. I like banana. Cool and refrigerate. A few drops of vanilla or almond extract–depending on the flavor–and a jigger or so of rum are suggested options. The syrup will thicken as it cools. Pour over finely crushed or shaved ice. Serve immediately.

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Vanilla Lemonade

Juice and peel a lemon. Stir a cup of white sugar into a cup of water, add the lemon peel, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, add a tablespoon of vanilla extract or two vanilla beans, and simmer for a minute or two.  Stir into six cups of water with the strained lemon juice.  Chill before serving.

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Pork Keftes

To one pound lean ground pork, work in a tablespoon cinnamon, a teaspoon of cayenne, and a teaspoon each of salt and black pepper. Beat an egg with a heaping tablespoon of tomato paste, mix in a half cup of bread crumbs and a half cup of very finely chopped white onion. Mix eggs with meat, and refrigerate for an hour. Grease your hands, form  mix into balls, and cook in a light oil (you can use olive oil, but it’s not necessary) until browned and firm. Serve over rice or couscous sprinkled with chopped parsley and sesame seeds. These are great with Jezebel sauce. Here’s a recipe.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The Last Mississippi Spa

Almost twenty years after Allison’s Wells burned in 1963, O.C. McDavid, former managing editor of the Jackson Daily News and a noted sculpture artist, was approached by Hosford Fontaine to assist in a book with recipes. In turn, McDavid enlisted Marilyn Bonney, who owned Press & Palette in Canton Mart, to print the 68-page book. According to Marilyn, “I printed it using paper plates which were a one-time use. I don’t remember the exact number printed, but it was probably1,000. The plan was not to sell it, but O.C. and Hosford gave it to people they knew, and I did the same.” In a similar spirit, with hopes of perpetuating Hosford’s wonderful work, here’s Allison’s Wells: The Last Mississippi Spa by Hosford Latimer Fontaine.

The Last Mississippi Spa

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Sardine Salad

Take Port Clydes in oil, drain, drizzle with lemon juice and salt, and put them in the refrigerator to chill. Serve with gherkins, celery, onions, and boiled/pickled eggs. Dill toast is wonderful, but rye Melba will suffice, and saltines will do any time at all.