My recipe is a riff on that of fellow Calhoun Countian April McGregor, who knowingly writes that kneading makes biscuits heavy.
To 3 cups soft flour sifted with two teaspoons baking powder, cut in a cup of cold cooked sweet potatoes, one stick cold butter sliced into pats. You can add chopped pecans if you like. Combine and quickly mix by hand to a rice-like consistency. Add enough cold buttermilk to make a sticky dough.
Pat out on a floured surface, cut with a sharp edge, and place in a lightly oiled skillet. Don’t use a cake tin, or you’ll burn the bottoms. Place on an upper rack in a hot oven, and bake for about 15 minutes.
Mix a cup of molasses with a quarter cup water in a small saucepan; add a few slices of ginger and simmer until thickened.
God bless Uncle Daniel! If anyone can be generous to a fault it’s him, though Grandpa called it an open disposition and claimed that within the realm of reason there were people who would take advantage of such, which is how Uncle Daniel, attracting love and friendship with the best will and the lightest heart in the world, ended up with Grandpa in his new Studebaker sitting with old Judge Tip Calahan driving through the country on his way to the asylum in Jackson. From the word go Uncle Daniel got more vacations than anyone because they couldn’t find a thing in the world wrong with him, and he was so precious all he had to do was ask and he’d be on the branch-line train headed back to Clay County. Everybody missed Uncle Daniel so bad when he was gone that they spent all their time at the post office sending him things to eat. Divinity travels perfectly, if you ever need to know.
Pecan Divinity
It’s important to know that divinity, as with all recipes using whipped egg whites, is best made in dry weather. Having said that, boil three cups of sugar, one-half cup of Karo corn syrup, three-fourths cup of water to the hard ball stage. Beat the whites of two eggs with a teaspoon each salt and vanilla until stiff. Pour the warm syrup over the whites and blend in chopped pecans. When it begins to harden drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper or spread in a oiled pan and cut to shape.
1 cup unsalted butter 14 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped ½ cup packed dark brown sugar ½ cup packed light brown sugar ½ cup granulated sugar 5 large eggs, lightly beaten 1 tablespoon vanilla extract ¼ cup milk 1½ cups unbleached, all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1½ cups coarsely chopped walnuts, toasted
Chocolate Drizzle
1/3 cup heavy (whipping) cream 3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped 2 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Combine the butter and chocolates in a large saucepan over low heat, stirring until mixture is melted and smooth. Whisk in sugars, eggs, vanilla extract and milk, blending until smooth. Add flour and salt just until mixture is combined, stir in nuts and spread into 13 x 9-inch baking pan lined with greased parchment paper. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or so. Cool pan completely on a wire rack. Top with crushed Oreos.
For the drizzle, bring cream to a simmer in a medium saucepan. Remove pan from heat and add chocolates, whisk until smooth and cool until thickened. Pour over brownies, and cool in the refrigerator until firm before cutting into bars.
This old bake-off recipe from the “Ice Box Pie” category is a Southern favorite. It’s basically a chocolate mousse in a crust, and it’s an absolute bitch to make, but so damn worth it.
Use an oiled glass pie pan. Drape crust over a rolling pin and ease it into the pan without stretching. Gradually work the crust firmly against the sides and bottom. Moisten your fingers and fill in the cracks. It helps to pop it into the freezer for five minutes or so to keep it from slumping down the sides. Generously prick the crust on the bottom and sides to prevent bubbling, and line the inner edges with heavy-duty aluminum foil. Bake the crust for 10 minutes at 300 with the foil, remove the foil and return to the oven to brown.
Whip a cup of heavy cream to stiff peaks, cover, and chill. Melt 8 oz. chopped bittersweet chocolate (I use a glass bowl in the microwave). Stir until smooth and set aside. Add 3 eggs, ¾ cup sugar, and a couple of tablespoons of water to glass bowl. Beat with an electric mixer 5 minutes, until pale yellow and thick. Place this bowl over a smaller pot of simmering water and cook, whisking continually, until the mixture is hot through and through. Remove from heat and continue beating until cooled and fluffy. (This might take up to 10 minutes because you want some serious fluff.) Add the melted chocolate, 2 teaspoons vanilla, a stick of very soft butter, and beat until very smooth. Now carefully blend in the whipped cream, just until you have a more or less even color; don’t over-mix.
Pour mixture into crust and spread evenly. Top with a half cup of whipped cream sweetened with a quarter cup powdered sugar and a teaspoon vanilla (or almond) extract. Some people add a little mocha powder. Spread over filling and chill well before serving.
Light in August is in many if not most ways Faulkner’s darkest work, dealing with madness, alienation, miscegenation, murder, and sexual mutilation.
The title has inspired a great deal of speculation. Some consider it simply a reference to the distinctly onerous nature of sunlight in a Mississippi August; others would have us understand that the title refers to the light cast by Joanna Burden’s burning house.
Then there are careful readers who point to Reverend Hightower’s observation of “how that fading copper light would seem almost audible, like a dying yellow fall of trumpets dying into an interval of silence and waiting” while scholars with a regional bent so note that the phrase “(to be) light in August” is a Southern slang term for pregnancy, concentrating on Lena Grove.
The story that would eventually become the novel, started by Faulkner in 1931, was originally titled “Dark House” and began with Hightower sitting at a dark window in his home. But after a casual remark by his wife Estelle on the quality of the light in August, Faulkner changed the title, and later affirmed this inspiration:
“…in August in Mississippi there’s a few days somewhere about the middle of the month when suddenly there’s a foretaste of fall, it’s cool, there’s a lambence, a soft, a luminous quality to the light, as though it came not from just today but from back in the old classic times. It might have fauns and satyrs and the gods and—from Greece, from Olympus in it somewhere.
It lasts just for a day or two, then it’s gone…the title reminded me of that time, of a luminosity older than our Christian civilization.”
The deli at our local grocery serves a wonderful vegetable soup that they discontinue for the summer, since “nobody eats soup when the weather is hot.”
Well, you know what? Yes, they do. We’ve enjoyed fresh vegetable soups for centuries in the South, and rightly so, since our gardens are the finest on the planet.
My recipe starts with two quarts diced canned tomatoes and juice. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a talented, industrious gardener who cans, and you will have their red gold in your larder. If not, Contadina will suffice. Sauté one large diced white onion with three or four diced ribs of celery and two cloves minced garlic in just enough vegetable oil to coat. Pour this into the tomato mix.To this add two cups water along with a cup or so of diced, rinsed okra; I like to add a little V-8.
Find something industrious or enlightening to do for a half-hour or until the onions and okra have surrendered to the mélange. This is a savory base for beautiful vegetable soups throughout the season. Fresh peas and beans, even green beans, should be parboiled until tender, but squash can be diced and added raw. I don’t use fresh corn at all, but that makes me an exception.
As to herbs, I’m frugal; a pinch of thyme and a smidgen of basil do just fine. Add salt and pepper with care. And yes, you can serve this warm or chilled.
These spuds are hard to beat for serving with grilled meats. Parboil potatoes until just done, pat dry, and toss in oil with black pepper, minced garlic, and salt. Bake at 350 in a heavy pan, tossing occasionally, until coated and tender through.
Everyone should grow pimentos. These beautiful, thick-walled fruit carry a sting of goodness that works in dishes across the board.
For this recipe, we used both green and red fruit; the unripe peppers have a bit of astringency, but that’s undercut by blanching whole—ripe and unripe—in lightly salted water to cover until they are just soft, maybe 5 minutes.
Halve and seed peppers. If you’re not going to use them immediately, put them in a jar with a salty water. They’ll keep for a week or two like this, or you can put them in a jar with salt water and oil to keep longer.
For 2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese we used about a third of a cup of diced blanched peppers. We used just enough mayonnaise to moisten, but no cream cheese to keep the pimentos’ pinch.
A bit of granulated garlic and salt rounded out this batch, though chopped scallions or shallots wouldn’t be out of place.
According to my buddy Ernest who (God love him) lives in Yazoo City and keeps up with such things, though UFO activity has been suspiciously quiescent lately, crypto-hominoid sightings are on the rise in Mississippi.
Creatures have been reported as far north as Winona and as far south as Mount Olive, where one was caught on cam trying to make off with a dish antenna and a tackle box. Most sightings are very late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, but Ernest claims he has a video of one raiding a Frito-Lay van in Greenwood in broad daylight. I
haven’t seen it, but he says it looks like a bald orangutan in a Saints jersey throwing confetti.
These beings deserve our respect and compassion; let’s not endanger them by alerting law enforcement. We should encourage and support their presence in this world we share.
I keep a six-pack of Bud Light on the back porch, but I won’t have them in the house.
