Category: Food and Cooking

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Satsuma Season

The Louisiana satsuma crop ripens from October until late November, and they’re the sweetest citrus you’re going to get all winter. Use satsumas like oranges, and if you’re feeling really froggy, here’s an ambitious recipe from “Louisiana Cookin.”

Satsuma Upside-Down Cake

3¾ cups sugar, divided
4 cups water
24 (¼-inch-thick) sliced satsumas
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup yellow cornmeal
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup whole milk
1 teaspoon satsuma zest
½ cup fresh satsuma juice

Preheat oven to 350°. Line the bottom of a 9-inch spring-form pan with parchment paper, and prep with baking spray with flour. Sprinkle ¼ cup sugar in bottom of pan.

In a large skillet, stir together 1½ cups sugar and 4 cups water. Add satsuma slices, bring to a boil, then turn off heat. After 15 minutes, remove fruit with a slotted spoon, and place on a wire rack to drain. Reserve the syrup. After 30 minutes or so, place slices in prepared pan, overlapping slightly.

In a large bowl, beat butter and remaining 2 cups sugar with a mixer at medium speed until fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes, stopping to scrape sides of bowl. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt; in a small bowl, whisk together milk, zest, and juice. Gradually blend flour and butter mixtures alternately with milk, beginning and ending with flour, beating just until combined after each addition.

Gently spoon batter over satsuma slices, cover with foil, and bake until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Let cool in pan for 15 minutes. Loosen edges with a knife, invert cake onto a serving plate, and remove parchment paper. Drizzle with ¼ cup syrup before serving.

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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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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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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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The Imperiled Pea

Most of us know Mississippi silver hulls as a crowders, and y’all are probably as surprised as I was to find that they’re an endangered variety of field peas (Vigna unguiculata). Silver hulls thrive in the lower Mid-South; the 6″ pods carry blocky black or brown-eyed peas that “crowd” one another in the pod. Easy to shell, fresh seeds have a thin skin, giving them a cleaner flavor. Sad to say, field peas of any kind just aren’t grown much any more.

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The Colonel’s Secret Is Out

I once knew a woman who claimed to know the Sanders Original Recipe of “11 herbs and spices” because she had worked in a franchise outlet in Grenada, Mississippi for three months while her husband was in the local lock-up for beating up a used car salesman.

She didn’t really know the recipe, of course; her fried chicken tasted nothing like it, though it may have had to after her bottle of vodka. But Harlan Sanders’ original recipe was finally made public in August, 2016, when the Chicago Tribune reported that a nephew by marriage–by marriage, mind you–of Harland Sanders claimed to have found a copy of the original KFC fried chicken recipe on a handwritten piece of paper in an envelope–an envelope, no less–in a scrapbook of an assuredly familial nature .

As journalists of fortitude, integrity, and no small degree of puckish abandon, Tribune staffers tested the recipe before publication, and after “some trial and error” they decided that with the addition of an unspecified amount of MSG, the following seasoning mixture produced fried chicken “indistinguishable” from the fried chicken from a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise.

By way of covering their ass, they recommended that the chicken should be soaked in buttermilk, coated once, then fried in oil at 350 degrees until golden brown.

Mix with 2 cups white flour:

2/3 Ts (tablespoons) Salt
1/2 Ts Thyme
1/2 Ts Basil
1/3 Ts Oregano
1 Ts Celery salt
1 Ts Black pepper
1 Ts Dried mustard
4 Ts Paprika
2 Ts Garlic salt
1 Ts Ground ginger
3 Ts White pepper

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Brennan’s Eggs Chartres

Sauté a cup of finely chopped white onions in a stick of butter until clear; stir in 3 tablespoons flour. With grace and beauty, blend in a cup and a half of milk mixed with an egg yolk. Stir until smooth and thick. Remove from heat, add six sliced hard-boiled eggs, two tablespoons grated hard cheese, cayenne for heat, and paprika for color. Salt to taste. This recipe serves about eight people.

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Angel Food

You can find mixes for this old cake  in the store, but they cannot compare to scratch, and September’s hot, dry weather is the perfect time to make it. It’s tricky; the water and cream of tartar go a long way to make sure you get good results.

Preheat oven to 350. Separate a dozen eggs, using caution to ensure no yolks make it into the whites. Bring whites to room temperature and stir in a tablespoon of water. Sift a cup of cake flour with a half cup sugar until it’s very light, at least twice, thrice is better. Beat egg whites in a large, very clean, dry bowl until foamy and sprinkle in a half teaspoon of cream of tartar. Continue beating, and as the texture begins to even out, add a teaspoon or two of pure vanilla extract and–gradually mix in another cup of sugar. Keep beating at a medium speed until the whites form stiff peaks, then carefully fold in the flour while sifting it over the whites. Use a spatula, and turn the bowl; the key is not to deflate the bubbles, so don’t over-mix.

Gently pour the batter into a 10-in. ungreased tube pan; the cake has to cling to the sides as it rises to make it crusty. Bake until the top is browned and springy. Use a knife to separate the cake out, and cool on a rack.

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Quick Summer Pickles

Slice or cube young cucumbers, squash, or green tomatoes. Pack into jars. Mix water and vinegar 2:1 with a tablespoon each salt and sugar per cup of liquid. A little garlic is a nice touch. Heat and stir until dissolved, cool, and pour over vegetables, with enough liquid to cover. Seal and shake a time or two. Refrigerate overnight before serving.