A Southern Gallimaufry
Fry to a crisp, drain and crumble 1 pound bacon. Mix with a cup and a half (or so) of Blue Plate mayonnaise, and 2 bunches minced green onions. Season with a teaspoon (or more) Tony Cachere’s and black pepper to taste. Spread on 2 inch rounds of bread, top with drained and lightly-salted Roma tomato slices. Dill is a nice touch. This recipe makes about 35.
You’ll often find classic recipes caught in a backwater eddy rotting into poor, grotesque things far removed from former splendor, like a fading star of stage and screen who’s reduced to dinner theater, falling subject to farce for the same reason: their name is a draw. So you’ll find prima vera with frozen vegetables, for instance, or steak Diane with condensed cream of mushroom soup.
I worked in a restaurant where the house recipe for scampi consisted of garlic powder, a commercial oil product (Whirl), and the remnants of whatever open bottle of white wine the bartender had. That’s it. This concoction was poured over a dozen medium-sized shrimp arranged in a small circular metal dish and placed in a salamander.
The results were dry and chewy; had our customers been (in the least bit) savvy, no doubt they would have complained with vigor and frequency, but the very fact that they didn’t led to the recipe becoming entrenched on our menu and–what’s even more tragic–likely defining this travesty as scampi for hundreds of people who’d never eaten at a restaurant with tablecloths.
To make a good scampi, sauté the best shrimp available in a really good butter with a slash of olive oil, plenty of fresh, finely-minced garlic, a fruity white wine, salt and white pepper. Before serving, add a jolt of lemon juice and a sprinkling of parsley. Some thicken the sauce with starch or lightly bread the shrimp, add scallions, or even chopped drained tomatoes, but I don’t. Scampi can be served as an appetizer with bread or over pasta as an entree.
Back in the ’50s and ’60s, the country was overrun with “Continental-style” restaurants offering Naugahyde banquettes, white table cloths, and tony, bastardzied Euro/American menus. One of these retro-glam dishes was steak Diane, a wonderful dish for two.
Use 2 6 oz. slices of tender beef, season with a smidgen of salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper, dust with flour, and sauté in butter with two finely-diced shallots and a small clove of garlic to taste. Set the meat aside.
Working quickly, add a half stick butter to the pan, a hefty tablespoon of prepared mustard, and 2 cups sliced mushrooms. When cooked down, add heavy cream, reduce, and stir in enough stock to make a smooth sauce. Spoon over beef, and serve with a love.
I like corned beef hash for breakfast, chicken hash for lunch, and beef hash (without gravy) any time. Such are are the rules of the universe in this modest sphere.
My hash is made with leftover/canned meats. Sometimes I’ll use leftover roast potatoes, but for breakfast hash, I’ll dice a small red potato and cook in oil until browned and done through. Don’t ask me why; if we’re incapable of the inexplicable, then we are nothing.
Sometimes I’ll throw in some onion, but I don’t belong to the bell pepper crew. Basic seasonings: salt and pepper, paprika; a little dry mustard is a nice touch.
Keep it simple. Anyone who tries to gussy up hash needs therapy.
Mix a fifth of light rum with a fifth of dark rum, 2 cups lime juice, 2 cups orange juice, 1 quart passion fruit juice, and a cup of simple syrup. Serve over crushed ice. Keep a pour spout bottle of grenadine near the ice bucket, and don’t even worry about garnishes unless you want to pick orange rinds and toothpicks out of the couch cushions.
Deep-fried stuffed crab shells were once a staple side in fish shacks throughout the lower South. You’ll still find frozen stuffed shells as well as 1-quart bags of stuffing in markets all across the region.
With more crab meat (or shrimp), brushed with butter and baked, this recipe works as a stand-alone buffet dish. It also makes great hush puppies.
Combine two cups crumbled stale cornbread with a cup of coarse bread crumbs and a half cup grated Parmesan. Set aside. Dice finely white onion and enough celery to make 2 cups. Sauté in a stick of butter with a clove of minced garlic until soft. Add to crumbs with a slosh of white wine and enough water to make a thick batter.
Mix thoroughly with a pound of clean lump crab meat. I throw in a few minced cooked shrimp for color. Stir in two or three tablespoons of Creole mustard, and a bit more melted butter. Pepper and salt to fit you. Roll in corn meal if making puppies.
Most of you will recognize this snack food as the mini/mobile version of that Frito pie you’re no doubt familiar with, but made in a single-serving bag of corn chips–I prefer good old Fritos, but some people will use a variety of Doritos–with chili or taco meat, topped off with shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, onions, and peppers, grated cheese, and sour cream.
Okay, let’s straighten this out once and for all. Those big orange roots you find in the grocery store are not yams. Got that? As a matter of fact, it’s a good bet that most of the people who just read that have never even seen a yam.
Sweet potatoes came to be called yams because they’re kind of/sort of similar, both starchy/sweet root vegetables, but they’re quite distinct; a sweet potato is far sweeter and much smoother than a yam. The most important distinction is that yams don’t grow in the South, but sweet potatoes do, in glorious profusion.
Sweet potatoes have always been a staple of Southern tables as well as a reliable source of income. The sweet potato is the state vegetable of North Carolina, and the Sweet Potato Capitol of the World is Vardaman, Mississippi. (If tells you any different, they’re a double-dog liar who needs a solid ass-kicking.
Still and all, you’re bound to find cans of yams in many local grocers, but due to USDA requirements, you’ll find “sweet potatoes” somewhere on the label.
So there.
Does Jackson, Mississippi have a distinct culinary signature?
The short answer is no. Even the city’s–somewhat recently distinguished–signature recipe, comeback dressing, has its roots not so much in restaurants here, but in diners across the South for the simple, practical reason that it’s easily made from on-hand commercial ingredients–ketchup, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce and pepper–easily stored, and versatile.
So as to a distinct culinary presence, well, no. What we have in Jackson is a cuisine typical of cities throughout the Mid-South: Herculean breakfasts featuring lard biscuits, grits and rice, eggs and pork, meals of meats, starches, and vegetables stewed in fats.
These are the foods you’ll find all over Jackson, in restaurants and supermarket deli buffets for breakfasts and “meat-and-three’ (more often meat-and-two) lunches, dishes adopted from the home table that speak of place and past.
