Category: Food and Cooking

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Jello Spaghetti-Os

Some people take themselves far too seriously. If you look around the internet for postings of this dish—I assure you there are many—you’ll find reactions bespeaking of ponderous gravitas: “disgusting” they exclaim; “incomprehensible” they bemoan.

Others possessing a lighter heart and more expansive philosophy—among whom naturally I number myself—recognize this recipe for what it is, a work of sheer, unadulterated genius. Many err in crediting this dish to Ernest Mickler, specifically citing his enduring epic White Trash Cooking as the source. Not so; Ernie (as well as his correspondents) was a more discerning sort. No, this concoction is the fabrication of some double-wide Warhol who set his hat to come up with an iconic work of art for those of us who think Martha Stewart should still be wearing that ankle bracelet.

Dissolve two envelopes unflavored gelatin in a quarter cup of water. When gelatin has bloomed, add a half can condensed tomato soup, heat and add two cans Spaghetti-Os. Stir until well-blended, cool, pour into a ring mold and chill until firm. Vienna sausages (admittedly Freudian) are sine qua non for the presentation, and those of a particularly refined bent top them with a curl of Cheese Whiz.

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Window Cookies

What I call window cookies have a glassy, transparent candy center. Some people call these stained glass cookies. In the Midwest, they make what are called cathedral (window) cookies made with chopped mini-marshmallows baked in rolled cocoa cookie dough. Then you have what are called thumbprint cookies, dimple cookies, or jelly cookies, which I’ve heard referred to as window cookies as well.

The most essential ingredient for what I consider proper window cookies is a translucent hard candy like Jolly Ranchers or Life Savers. Coarsely crush the candy, and use a basic cookie dough. I use cocoa for color, chopped nuts for texture, and if I’m really froggy, almonds for tiles or bricks.

Roll out dough to a half inch thickness and cut to shape. Take care not to overfill the centers with candy; it’ll spill over and look sloppy. Cook in a low oven on lightly oiled parchment paper at 300 until the dough firms and the candy melts. Cool thoroughly on rack.

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Cooking with Booze

It’s not about the buzz; it’s about flavor. Alcohol brings out flavor compounds not soluble by water or heat. That’s exactly what happens in this recipe; the sweet, mellow bourbon just snuggles up with the brown sugar and pecans.

Alcohol also boils at a much lower temperature than water, so even a simmer will cause the alcohol in any dish to evaporate. Then, of course, alcohol is diluted by whatever else you use in the recipe. Even if you’re just dousing a cake with bourbon overnight–which any biddy will tell you is the way to macerate a fruitcake–that too will evaporate.

Beat together ¾ cup Karo Light, ¾ cup packed light brown sugar, 3 large eggs (at room temperature), a tablespoon of corn starch or arrowroot mixed with a tablespoon of water, 2 tablespoons melted butter, a teaspoon salt, a tablespoon vanilla extract, and 2 shots (1/4 cup) good bourbon. I use Southern Comfort because it’s sweet. Add a cup of chopped pecans and mix very well.

This is your filling Melt a quarter cup butter, add a half cup brown sugar, stir in a cup and a half pecan halves, cook for a few minutes, drain and cool. Pour filling into a 9-inch pie crust. Top with pecans, and place on the center rack of 350 oven. After 30 minutes, cover loosely with foil and cook until set, another 15 minutes or so. Cool before serving.

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Herb-Roasted Rutabagas

This simple recipe is a wonderful alternative to the usual mashed swedes with enough butter to gag Paula you’ll find on a lot of cool-weather tables.

One large rutabaga, peeled and cubed into more or less bite-sized pieces, will serve four people easily. Coat the pieces in oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper and granulated garlic, and bake them at 350 in a well-oiled pan, tossing or turning occasionally to brown evenly.

When they’re just tende, dust with dried herbs—sage, rosemary, marjoram, basil, rosemary, or a combination—and continue tossing and turning on heat until done through.

These are even more delicious the day after.

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It Just Stuck

The Atkinson Candy Company was founded in the east Texas town of Lufkin by B.E. Atkinson, Sr., and his wife, Mabel in the desperate days of 1932, when it was getting hard for anybody to make a living.

The company currently operates out of a 100,000 square feet facility and is led by siblings Eric and Amy Atkinson, grandchildren of the founders. The company specializes in peanut butter and peppermint-flavored candies; the current product line includes Coconut Long Boys, Gemstone Candies, Black Cow, Slo Poke, and Chick-O-Stick.

Chick-O-Stick is a round bar dusted with ground coconut, the interior honeycombed with peanut butter and the orange hardened syrup/sugar mixture that also forms the shell. When eaten fresh, the candy is dry and brittle, but it has a tendency to draw moisture and become hard and chewy on the shelf. Chick-O-Stick is available in 0.36-ounce (10 g), 0.70-ounce (20 g), 1.0-ounce (28 g), and 2.0-ounce (57 g) sizes, as well as bags of individually wrapped bite-sized pieces.

The original wrapper featured a stylized cartoon of a chicken wearing a cowboy hat and a badge in the shape of the Atkinson logo. The chicken is absent from the more recent wrapper, since it understandably created some confusion over whether Chick-O-Stick was candy or a chicken-flavored cracker.

One of their sales guys just “came up with the name one day, and well, it just stuck.”

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Odom’s Redfish on the Half Shell

It’s hard to imagine the redfish that currently swim in bountiful numbers among our coastal waters going the way of the dodo and the mastodon, but it almost did, and it wasn’t seafaring Neanderthals with primitive Shimanos that nearly caused their extinction.

It was Paul Prudhomme.

Prudhomme created a recipe that was so obnoxious and novel with over-the-top flavors and clouds of noxious smoke that it had to be cooked outside. But for all that, blackened redfish became so popular that redfish was actually threatened with extinction, and the federal government was forced to step in and invoke catch limits before we could make a salad to accompany the very last of its kind.

But be at ease. This prized game fish is back and has been back. In fact, the local anglers in Destin, Florida call the huge “bull reds” a nuisance fish. I myself saw tens of thousands of them attacking bait fish in one football field-sized school near Ship Island, off the coast of Mississippi .

Folks who don’t saltwater fish only assume that an angler like me would surely target a redfish to throw on ice, but to their dismay I tell them I don’t fish them intentionally for the table. There are a couple good reasons for this: when you clean a redfish, the filet yield seems oddly low for such a large fish to be culled, and secondly it’s about as easy to clean a redfish as it is to filet an armadillo.

But as all starving anglers do we develop a plan: Instead of filleting the meat clean off the fish why don’t we just cut off one side of the red’s body, lay it scales down over a charcoal grill, drench the meat side with garlic butter and slam the lid till it’s done?

This technique accomplishes a couple of things and one by default. First, it ensures all the fresh fish meat is fully eaten. Secondly, you don’t wind up in the ER getting stitches fooling around trying to fillet an armadillo and by default this recipe is far more delicious than blackened redfish simply because it’s about the fresh fish and not spices.

The dicta of “Gulf to ice to knife to fire to plate” for this recipe in particular has anxious dinner guests staring in amazement at the cooking process. Redfish on the half shell, as this technique is called, is  the best way in my opinion to pay homage to this beautiful bronze resident in our coastal waters. Next time you have a chance to eat fresh redfish, try this particular preparation.

Heat your gas grill or charcoal grill to a medium high heat. In a saucepan heat a stick of butter, juice of a lemon, minced garlic and Tony Chachere’s to taste for a drenching baste.

Grease the grill a bit; lay on the redfish halves scales down and apply your drench liberally. Close the lid, but reapply the drench a couple of times in the cooking process. Remove when the meat is firm to the touch, add more fresh lemon and serve immediately.

David and Kim Odom are anglers par excellance along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

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Rumaki

Rumaki are easy to make, but instead of using raw ginger root or (worse) ginger powder, I urge you to use ginger oil for a marinade with the soy, which should be lite soy.

To make ginger oil, grate about a half cup of raw ginger, place in a cup of vegetable oil, and heat until the ginger just begins to bubble. Heat for about five minutes, cool thoroughly, drain and save the oil and discard the ginger. Use this oil, mixed with soy 1:2 and brown sugar to taste for the marinade.

Slice the livers, depending on size, into thirds; remember that the livers will have a tough connective membrane that must be removed. Slice small whole water chestnuts into halves add them to the marinade. Marinate both for at least an hour.

Skewer livers and chestnuts in bacon sliced to size and place in a hot oven (425) until bacon has crisped.

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Cable Car Fare

One of the most iconic television commercials of my generation featured a cable car with its bell dinging climbing up a hill with San Francisco Bay in the background while a cheery chorus sang:

“Rrrrice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat! (ding, ding!)
Rice-a-Roni, everybody’s got the beat! (clap, clap!)
Started out where cable cars play this song,
Now it’s right at home before very long,
Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco treat!”

(You can see a 1962 version, probably the one I first saw, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzOR_Fal_SY)

What we know as Rice-a-Roni had its origins in a produce store established by Italian-born immigrant Domenico (“Charlie”) DeDomenico who moved to California in 1895. His wife Maria was from Salerno, Italy where her family owned a pasta factory, and in 1912, she persuaded him to set up a similar business in the Mission District of San Francisco. The business, Gragnano Products, Inc., delivered pasta to Italian stores and restaurants. DeDomenico’s sons, Paskey, Vince (1915–2007), Tom, and Anthony, worked with him.

In 1934, Paskey changed the name to Golden Grain Macaroni Company. Tom’s wife, Lois, was inspired by the pilaf recipe she received from Armenian immigrant Mrs. Pailadzo Captanian, to create a dish of rice and macaroni, which she served at a family dinner. In 1958, Vince invented Rice-A-Roni by adding a dry chicken soup mix to rice and macaroni.

In 1958, Vince DeDomenico decided to take this recipe and produce it for sale in grocery stores. He placed the rice and pasta in a box, and added a dry seasoning mix in place of the liquid chicken broth. Because this product was made up of half rice and half pasta, he decided to call it Rice-a-Roni.

“There were not many packaged side dishes in the market in 1955,” said Dennis DeDomenico, Tom and Lois’ son. “Everything was being geared toward less time in the kitchen. Major appliances like dishwashers and garbage disposals were starting to come in. The convenience factor was everything.” All that was missing was a name.

“We said, ‘Well, what is the product? The product is rice and macaroni. Why don’t we call it Rice-A-Roni?’ Didn’t quite sound right. Who’d ever heard of rice and macaroni being together? Still, the name had a ring to it.”

Chicken Rice-a-Roni was first introduced in the Northwestern states in 1958. With it came the first Rice-a-Roni commercial, featuring San Francisco’s Cable Cars and the now famous jingle.

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No-Fail French Toast

This simple recipe is very old and known by many names, most famously French toast, egg toast, or pain perdu, Often served as a sweet dish, I prefer mine simply seasoned with salt and pepper.

Beat three eggs in a cup of milk or half-and-half. Season with salt and pepper. Add a little vanilla if you plan to serve it sweet. Sop dried bread–I use a light wheat cut on the thick side–in egg/milk mixture, and pan-fry in butter until nicely browned.