Sure, go ahead and buy one of those puffed-up cardboard glue-filled dyed-and-painted THINGS sold as king cakes. Hell, you’re just going to get drunk and (try to) get laid, and who eats the damn thing anyway, right?
But if you are properly inspired by the carnaval spirit of Shrovetide, then you would find fuller satisfaction in serving a work of your own hands, a creation invested with your love and care, the mirror in a minor way of the sacrifice around which the season is arraigned.
Finding a recipe for a Provençal Twelfth Night couronne briochée (crown brioche) was surprisingly problematic, and here is where I thank my friends the Bucklers for their cogent translation. The recipe may seem daunting at first, but it’s nothing more than a simple light bread, sweet-“ish” and rich with a dense texture, and as with all basic breads the emphasis is on procedure rather than ingredients.
Let me encourage you to make a test version some time before you plan to serve the cake to ensure a more perfect presentation. Also, instead of a plastic baby or some such nonsense, make the crowning ‘prize’ a piece of dried fruit—I use an apricot—and for goodness sakes just use a simple glaze such as a marmalade or a syrup—fig preserves are wonderful—with candied fruit for a topping instead of glitter and spray paint. Let the good times roll!
2 cups of well-sifted flour 1 packet active dry yeast 1/4 cup sugar Zest from 1/2 orange 1 egg 2/3 stick softened butter 1/4 cup warm orange flower water (optional) or water
Put the water and orange flower water into a bowl, add the yeast, stir until dissolved and set it to the side to bloom. In another bowl, whisk the egg with a fork. Pour the flour into a mixer bowl, making a well in the middle. Add the sugar, orange zest, the water/yeast mixture as well as the beaten egg into the well. Mix on low, adding the butter in pats and continue to mix for 5 minutes alternating between low and high speed. Scrape the dough—it should be very sticky—into a large oiled bowl, cover with a clean cloth and leave it to rise for 2 hours (no more than 3 or a crust will form).
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, dust lightly with flour and turn the dough out on this surface. Then sprinkling with more flour as needed to make the dough manageable, re-form the ball on the baking sheet and push your thumbs in the middle of the ball, all the way down to the baking sheet to form a crown. Turn the dough to widen hole, then cover with a cloth and let rise for another hour and a half or thereabouts. At this point, you can also refrigerate the covered dough overnight and bringit to room temperature before baking in the morning. The finished dough only takes 15-20 minutes to bake in a hot (400) oven until golden brown. Glaze, decorate and enjoy!
A recipe from my friend Ellen, who helps me keep up with my fines with the Jackson/Hinds Library System (no simple task, that). It’s beautifully succulent, with a sweet/savory tang, rather colorful—as roast meats go—and has a wonderful aroma. Doubtless more elaborate, “foodie-friendly” versions of this recipe exist, but—speaking strictly for myself—I stand with mouth agape in admiration for the sheer 60s-era simplicity of this version.
Ellen uses a 14-oz. can jellied cranberry sauce to a packet of Lipton Onion Soup Mix for each two pounds of untrimmed brisket. That’s it. She places the brisket in a lightly oiled baking pan, spreads the soup mix onto it, tops with slices of cranberry jelly, covers it, and cooks in a 275 oven an hour or so for each pound until meat is tender. Serve with onion rolls and red cabbage slaw.
This Mittel-european spread is rich, smoky, and piquant. Cream a stick of softened butter with 1 cup of drained cottage cheese. Blend until very smooth. Mix with a half cup sour cream, then add a tablespoon of sweet paprika, a tablespoon of drained, chopped capers, a tablespoon ground caraway seeds, 2 very finely minced green onions, and a teaspoon of dry mustard. Mix very well, mold, and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature before serving with crudites—radishes are traditional—and/or rye toast.
Use button or baby bellas, slice thickly or not, as you like. Heat good sweet butter in a sauté skillet with a hefty smidgeon of thyme. I don’t recommend garlic, but if you feel so compelled, I urge you not to overdo it. When butter is bubbling, add mushrooms, toss, and stir until just cooked through. Add a slosh or so of dry sherry. Reduce, salt to taste, and serve. This is a great side for roast meats.
Teaching kids how to cook is a multi-faceted experience; simply doing something together gives everyone a chance to talk about what’s going on.
Learning how to cook also helps make kids curious about foods in general, bearing potential to expand the palate of a picky child. It’s also a confidence-booster, as anyone who has pulled a beautifully-baked cake out of the oven can attest. Reading and interpreting a recipe trains reading comprehension and math skills, and it’s also the best introduction to chemistry and botany in the home.
Here’s how to make oven fries. Take a large baking potato and cut it into thick wedges or strips. Brush with oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, place on an oiled pan, and bake in a very hot oven. Stir once or twice to brown evenly.
Stocks are to cooking what Hank Williams is to country music: a source of basic, soulful satisfaction.
Back when people actually cooked as opposed to simply heating products as they do now, stock played an important role in the kitchen. Stockpots provided a sumptuous basis for an endless variety of dishes; sauces and gravies, soups, stews, and as a cooking medium for beans and grains. A good stock is a pillar upon which great meals are made. Sad to say, nowadays most people use canned broth or bouillon cubes instead, which is like listening to Reba because you have no Patsy.
If you really care about the quality of your cooking, you’ll want to make your own stock instead of having to resort to miserably bland and over-salted alternatives. Chicken stock is perhaps the easiest and cheapest to make and is good for general use. I use leg quarters, which make a very rich stock, and can be found in five-pound bags at a very low price in most supermarkets. If it’s during the holidays with company coming, you can of course use a whole stewing hen, since you can use the meat for any number of holiday dishes.
Put the chicken in your designated stockpot; whatever you use should be non-reactive, preferably stainless steel. Add enough water to cover by half, a couple of stalks of celery, at least six carrots, two onions with skin, all coarsely chopped, two bay leaves, a clove or so of garlic (smashed) and about a handful of roughly chopped parsley, stems and all. Cover, vent, and simmer this mixture until the liquid is reduced by at least a third, skimming the scruff off the top as it cooks.
In the meantime, have a beer or two, listen to some Jimmie Rodgers, and write Reba a fan letter. I’m sure she’d appreciate it.
After about an hour, remove chicken, cool, and debone. Return bones to pot, and save the meat for dressing or salad. Simmer the stock until it’s a rich color, strain, and cool before refrigerating. Once the stock chills, you’ll end up with a bottom layer of sediment and a layer of jellied stock covered by a layer of yellowish fat. Scrape off the fat with a spoon and save it to make matzos. Then carefully spoon out the gel, being careful to avoid as much as the sediment (which should be discarded) as you can, especially if you plan to clarify the stock for consommé or clear soups.
Stock keeps well in the refrigerator for a week or so, but its best just to go ahead and freeze it. Use whatever size container you find appropriate for storing your stock; I’ve heard that some people freeze stock in ice trays and store the cubes in plastic bags, but I suspect people who do this are annoyingly obsessive, since this is a troublesome endeavor, and besides, what if in a moment of absent-mindedness you happen to pop a cube of frozen stock out of the tray and into your scotch and soda? (You might hear the voice of experience speaking here.) Me, I store stock in whatever containers I’ve saved from supermarket products like yogurt and sour cream, pliable ones about pint size with a lid that seals well.
Use stock in soups and sauces, or to flavor beans or rice. You’ll notice a big difference.
This is good on ham, pork, and game. To a stick of melted butter, add two tablespoons of dry mustard and a 12 oz. jar of pineapple preserves. Whisk over medium heat until thoroughly mixed. Brush over meats while roasting and cooling for the table.
In the world I inhabit–which, quite arguably, might be yours–the more time-consuming a recipe, the more people it should feed, and this is such a one. Soak 5 lbs. halved 6 oz. catfish fillets in milk. To a cup of good brown roux add in dice 2 cloves garlic, 2 medium onions, 1 sweet pepper and 4 stalks celery. Mix with a 36-ounce can of diced tomatoes (with juice) and 2 cups water or so; you want it a little on the thin side. Add 2 tablespoons dried basil, 1 tablespoon dried thyme, and a teaspoon of dried oregano. Put on a low burner. Drain and bread catfish in finely-crumbled saltines well-seasoned with ground black pepper, some cayenne, if you like. Fry until golden; drain and layer fried fillets with sauce. Bake in a medium oven until just bubbling. Serve over rice.
In “A Note from Jill,” which serves as an introduction to her latest book, The Sweet Potato Queens’ Big-Ass Compendium of Fat and Happy: Recipes to Improve Your Disposition (Shelton House Press, $14.95), HRH the BOSS QUEEN HERSELF declares (Jill Conner Browne never really merely says anything), “There Are NO Funny Stories in This Book.” Well, perhaps not AS SUCH, but ANYTHING Ms. Browne puts her lacquered and bejeweled hand to is going to be smart, sassy, brassy, and, yes, funny.
The fun begins far before Jill’s “Note” (p. 11), with a lengthy disclaimer: WARNING AND HOLD HARMLESS: ALL OF THE RECIPES HEREIN ARE POISON! IF YOU EAT THIS STUFF ALL THE TIME, YOU WILL DIE- AND YOU WILL DIE WITH A HUGE BEE-HIND; HOWEVER, THEY ARE VERY GOOD FOR YOUR DISPOSITION. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. This elaborate salute to our litigious society goes on for another ninety words, followed by a declaration of LIMITS OF LIABILITY AND DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY, which includes such pettifoggery as THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY, APPLICABILITY, FITNESS OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS MATERIAL. What follows this delightfully dense froth of legalese is nothing less than a NOTE REGARDING FOOD ALLERGIES: in which Her Majesty avows that SHE HERSELF has no food allergies and furthermore hasn’t made ANY INGREDIENT ADJUSTMENTS, ALTERNATIVE RECOMMENDATIONS, OR CONSIDERATION WHATSOEVER FOR SUCH IN THIS MATERIAL, and if you have food allergies it’s your responsibility to deal with them. “Be particular,” she adds.
Back to the introduction, where Ms. Browne presents her two-fold purpose for this work. “First-fold” (secondary) is “to give YOU death-defying recipes from ALL of the Sweet Potato Queens® books (so far) in one convenient pile . . . with absolutely no entertaining embellishments whatsoever.” “Second-fold,” (primary) is to PREVENT you from e-mailing and Facebooking and Tweeting me that you “lost/loaned/gave away your book(s)” and you “MUST HAVE CHOCOLATE STUFF (or Whatever It Is You’re Currently Craving) RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND OR YOU WILL SURELY DIE” and would I please take the time out of MY day to go personally find which book of the NINE that your desired recipe is in (oddly enough, I do not know them all by heart) and would I furthermore then take the time out of MY day to sit down and RE-TYPE said recipe FOR YOU when AS WE ALL KNOW, I have ALREADY DONE THAT when I put them ALL into convenient BOOKS for you, but which YOU have somehow-through no fault or responsibility of MINE- not managed to hold onto.” So much for “no entertaining embellishments,” right? “I never intended to take y’all to raise,” she adds.
In two successive “folds,” Browne informs readers that the titles of books where the recipes were originally printed appear at the end of each recipe (the e-book contains links to purchase these works) as well as you will find links “to some ingredients and pots, pans, bowls, utensils, etc. that you might be lacking.” And, finally, “One More-Fold: I have also included 33 NEW recipes that will appear in the next SPQ” book as well – just to demonstrate what a Good Sport I am.” How sweet is that?
My hope-no, my prayer – is that y’all will also buy the printed copies and their electronic twins of all nine of my other books, and the audio versions of them as well BECAUSE I have, once again, massive plastic surgery needs and your purchases are simple ways that YOU can help!”
Browne also has a Kindle App for download (“so you can easily shop for the ingredients of your favorite SPQ recipes AND you’re not likely to be loaning out your PHONE, tablet, or Kindle then e-mailing me in tears for some recipe”.) Never let it be said that Jill Conner Browne is not au courant. Likewise, never let it be said that Ms. Browne doesn’t know her way around a kitchen. In her “Basic Stuff to Know Before You Begin Using These Recipes,” she makes several smart recommendations, among them using a “running over” teaspoon whenever one of vanilla needed, using salted butter, and to “be particular” when it comes to buying (DARK) brown sugar. Jill also provides this wonderful piece of don’t-be-a-dumb-ass/no-nonsense advice:
“If the recipe does not specifically state the size/type pan to be used, it doesn’t really matter. Look at how much is in the bowl and figure out which pan you have that will hold it. I am going out on a limb and assuming that you have sense enough to NOT try to cram a gallon of something into a quart pan-or try to make a quart of something cover the bottom of a gallon pan. Please tell me that my trust is not misplaced.”
The Sweet Potato Queens’ Bog-Ass Compendium of Fat and Happy contains 216 recipes; breads (18), breakfast (11), casseroles (17), chicken (7), dips and appetizers (23), drinks (9), meat (11), salads (10), “sammiches” (8), seafood (4), veggies (28), and sweets (69)(!). Nine other recipes fall into the category of “weird shit,” among them “Love Lard,” “Racoon Loaf,” and “Damon Lee Fowler’s Bacon Popcorn.” Stellar additions include: “Queen of the Night Salsa,” “Spinach Madeline.” “Bacon and Beagle Dicks (cocktail sausages),” “Olive Yum Yums,” and “Armadillo Hunter’s Shrimp.”
Sure, you’re not going to find many of these recipes on a keto sideboard, and you might want to double down up your Lipitor for any extended indulgence. Browne is a great cook, and she’s taken a lot of care with the recipes, which are well-written and quite easy to follow. This isn’t what I’d call a “family” cookbook, but if you do a lot of entertaining or have a lot of company over the holidays, it’s a wonderful thing to have on hand, and a TON of FUN!
