A Southern Gallimaufry
While Shoney’s menu claims the pie is baked, only the pie shell is baked. The filling is cooked and cooled, the strawberries simply washed and sliced.
Combine 2 tablespoons of cornstarch with a cup of sugar and a half a package of strawberry gelatin. Mix in a cup of water and heat, stir until thick, and cool.
Bake a 9-inch pie crust until lightly browned. Cool, blend strawberries into the gelatin, spoon into pie shell, and refrigerate until firm. Overnight is best.
Like many towns in the upland South, Vardaman grew up around a timber railhead. Some of the lordliest white oaks that ever left the continent descended from the hills above Vardaman and were shipped across the Atlantic to construct the great barrels that held the finest wines of the 1925 Exposition of Paris. But after the lumber was gone, farmers in the area turned to the sweet potato and their intuitions were crowned with success. Vardaman is now the (admittedly self-proclaimed) Sweet Potato Capital of the World.
The distaff side of my family is from Vardaman, and I’ve been eating sweet potatoes my whole life, so for a long time I’ve been sailing along considering myself an expert on the subject. Then here comes this McGreger girl who blows my dinghy out of the water. April McGreger has chops; whereas my father was a lawyer from Sarepta (sue me), she is a sweet potato farmer’s daughter from Vardaman proper.
In her introduction to Sweet Potatoes, the tenth installment in the University of North Carolina Press’ “Savor the South” series, McGreger says, “By the time I was a teenager, I had worked at pulling slips, the shoots that densely bedded ‘seed’ sweet potatoes send up, and had spent a couple of summers riding the ‘setter’ that plants those sweet potato slips in expansive fields. I learned firsthand how eyes and ears and noses fill with dust from the warm, just-plowed earth and how the modern farmer’s schedule is set by nature and financial demands, often at odds with each other.”
People you have no idea how refreshing, how delightful it is to find a book about food written by a genuine human being who has a fundamental knowledge of “farm to table” and not by one of these pompous foodways pundits who don’t know a roux from a rutabaga or a kitchen flim-flam aristo whose closest connection to the earth is trying to grow weed on his daddy’s back forty before flunking out of college and entering culinary school. McGreger is a very fine writer (as we expect of Mississippi’s children) and a scholar to boot, so she takes an appropriately schoolmarmish tone when it comes to sweet potatoes. In her own rhetoric, she poses the question “Is there any food more central to our southern identity than sweet potatoes?”
The short answer is no, and perhaps for that very reason the sweet potato demands definition, particularly as a botanical and linguistic entity. I’ll leave that explanation to April, who does a thorough job of sorting out the Latin as well as the vernacular. She spends some time on the history of this important foodstuff, pointing out the antiquity of its use and cultivation in the New World as well as its introduction to the Old. Central to her narrative is the role of the sweet potato in the culinary history of the American South where it’s been keeping body and soul together throughout the region’s tumultuous history.
McGreger laments, “Once such a prominent food in the southern diet, the sweet potato is now eaten by many only on Thanksgiving in the form of sweet potato casserole or sweet potato pie”, and her selection of recipes is designed to illustrate the versatility of the sweet potato and to provide cooks at every level of proficiency with a means of making them more of a staple in the kitchen”, as well they should be. She chafes at being restricted to only fifty recipes, but to her credit she offers a spectacular variety “aimed to help you refine techniques to develop your own repertoire.” These are arranged in four categories: “Breakfast: Morning Pastries, Grits, Gravy, and Hash”; “Sides and Salads: Vintage Classics and Fresh, Modern Twists”; “Mains, Soups, Stews, and In-Betweens: A World of Flavor”; and “Desserts: A Little Something Sweet”.
Before getting to the recipes proper, McGreger includes a crucial section concerning the selection, storage and preparation of sweet potatoes as well as a description of a few of the most essential culinary varieties (some have been developed as a garden ornamental) and what sorts of dishes they are best suited. Granted most of us have access only to the traditional “moist, orange-fleshed, and sweet” types, but it’s worth knowing other varieties are out there, and if the trend to greater diversity in the marketplace and the proliferation of farmers’ markets continues, finding whites, yellows, purples and heirloom varieties is something to look forward to.
Equally important is her section on selection and storage, since while she recommends buying sweet potatoes “dirty by the bushel, directly from a farmer”, the roots must be cured in a warm, humid environment for a few weeks in order to fully develop their flavor. Most essential is McGreger’s advice on the preparation of sweet potatoes, and since she is clearly the final court of authority when it comes to cooking these vegetables (roots and leaves, it’s worth noting), this section is the heart of her work.
April wryly regrets never winning the Little Miss Sweet Potato crown, but a lot of thought, a lot of time, and a lot of love went into this wonderful work, and in my less-than-humble opinion it establishes April McGreger as not merely a Little Miss, nor even a Queen, but as the Empress of Sweet Potatoes.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
In a glass or ceramic baking dish, layer 1 (16-ounce) can refried beans (Blue Runner cream-style red beans are also great to use), 2 cups guacamole with the juice of two limes, 2 cups shredded sharp cheddar or a taco cheese blend, 1 finely-chopped raw red onion, 2 cups of sour cream seasoned with a packet of taco seasoning, 2 cups pico de gallo (recommended) or a very chunky salsa drained, 2 small ripe tomatoes diced, and 1 small can of sliced or diced black olives (optional, at least in my game).
Refrigerate—covered with foil or plastic wrap—for at least an hour. Top with finely-shredded lettuce, and serve with corn tortilla chips. This is the most basic recipe; feel free to improvise and revise. I like to add a little garlic to the beans, and if I add ground beef—which I rarely do, since the dish is quite substantial as is—it’s layered between the beans and guac. If you use a store-bought salsa, it’s important to drain it in a sieve beforehand, else it will make the mixture quite soupy. I also add minced jalapenos to the beans rather than sliced japs in the tomato/onion layer. Chopped green onions mixed with the lettuce adds more texture and zing.
