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Nancy Reagan’s Viennese Chocolate Bar Recipe

Ronald Reagan appeared at the Neshoba County Fair in August, 1980. Many—including me—consider Reagan’s choice of an appearance in a locale with a bloody and brutal history in the struggle for civil rights as well as his speech, in which he stated, “I support states’ rights,” and promised to “restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them” perpetuated Richard Nixon’s “Southern strategy,” a game plan that eventually made the Old Confederacy the Republican party’s home field.

Reagan defeated Carter by a landslide, winning every Southern state except Georgia, ushering in an era of tax cuts that enriched corporate interests and decimated the middle class with a profound recession, reduced wages, and the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression. I seriously doubt if Nancy Reagan ever saw the inside of an oven in her life—more the pity—and this marginally homespun recipe most likely was fabricated by a giggly public relations intern. Mrs. Reagan, like her husband, had no interest in the public weal.

This recipes comes from the signature Giant Houseparty Cookbook put out by the Philadelphia-Neshoba County Mississippi Chamber of Commerce in 1981.

Cream 2 sticks softened butter with two egg yolks and a half cup sugar. Add 2 ½ cups flour to make a soft dough, and pat out to about a half inch on a buttered cookie sheet or baking pan. Bake at 350 until lightly browned. Remove from oven, cool, and top with a 10-oz jar of raspberry jelly or apricot preserves and a cup of semi-sweet chocolate bits. Top with a meringue made with 4 egg whites. Bake for another 20 minutes or until lightly browned.

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Ars Voces: Thomas Wilson

I was always interested in art, but it wasn’t until 2000, when I was in my mid-thirties that I began going to galleries and taking a serious interest in painting. When I was living in Monroe, La., a local college was offering a painting class through their community enrichment program, so I signed up for a course, six hour-long sessions, and I became hooked at that point. I completed one painting in that course, and after that put it down for a while. Not long after that I was driving through my neighborhood there and saw an easel set up in a window. I found out a lady was teaching a class there, so I took that. We painted from photographs of old masters and I didn’t like painting from a photograph even back then. I learned how to mix paints, some composition, and basic things.

Shortly after that, I moved back to Jackson, this was 2007, I was painting on my own, improving basically by trial and error, still painting from images and still life, but I wanted to be legit, I didn’t want to be just basically copying somebody else. My uncle, who had taken art from Bob Tompkins, saw my paintings and said I should go see Tompkins. He was very helpful; he just didn’t go as far as I wanted to go. I wanted to paint the landscape. I asked him about that once, and he said that he was a studio painter.

But I wanted to paint outside; the artists I was drawn to painted on location from life. So I took a workshop from Roger Dale Brown in Nashville, who is a very well-known plein air painter, and I learned a ton from him about painting outside. After that, I struck out on my own and simply painted what I saw. My still lifes were very tight, very realistic; but when you’re painting outside, you don’t have a lot of time to fuss around because you only have like an hour or an hour and a half before the light changes. The painting of Fenian’s was different for me. I wanted to try painting at night, which has never really worked out well, but I was riding around, saw the rain, found a good place to stand, and really the subject isn’t so much Fenian’s as it is the atmosphere, the feel of the street, the clouds, the telephone poles.

The one in Vicksburg is different because it’s earlier in the day than I usually paint; I rarely paint in the middle of the day. It was also cloudy, and I couldn’t find a sunny spot to paint, and I like to paint when there’s a lot of sun. I like light and dark and shadow. I wanted to paint with the sky as the subject, the main part of the painting. The sun had come out a bit, but the light wasn’t as intense as what I normally paint. I visited Wyatt Waters recently, and I asked him about painting things that don’t really inspire me. I asked him if he had a hard time finding something to paint when he’s not inspired, and he said, “Inspiration is for amateurs; you’ve got to get out there and start painting and the inspiration will come.” So I’ve been trying to make myself paint even when I’m really uninspired.

When I moved to Belhaven, I wasn’t impressed and thought about leaving, but I kept putting it off. Then I started painting outside, and I fell in love with it. When I first moved here, I was thinking I simply wanted to paint landscapes. I didn’t want any man-made structures in a painting. I wanted it to look like an old master painting with nothing modern in it at all. There’s a dictum in art about not painting anything that’s beautiful, that you really can’t improve on it, and I think there’s something to that. I like stuff that’s funky and gritty. Now I really don’t want to paint anything unless it has a city street or a sidewalk or a telephone pole in it. It all kind of came together moving here. Being immersed in a locale, you see more.

I’m not much for change, and I’ve stuck with the same basic palette Bob Tompkins taught me; I even still set it up the same way he showed me. But Jarrod Partridge was a big help to me developing my palette because he studied under the colorists, like a of Mississippi painters. Sammy Britt, Richard Kelso, John Pat Marbury all studied under Henry Hensche, whose lineage goes back to William Merritt Chase. Jarrod helped me with my color, and I need good color because I want to make beautiful paintings, but still the most important elements to me are the light and dark, the contrast. I think someone would say I’m a tonalist, working with light and dark. I’ve heard it said that if the light and dark are correct, that the colors will work no matter what they are, but I consider myself just someone who paints what he sees.

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Shrimp Creole: Back to Basics

Make a roux with a quarter cup each of flour and oil—not butter, not olive oil, just a light vegetable oil will do fine. People from the boonies use a very dark roux for a Creole, but I prefer one two shades lighter than a Budweiser bottle. (They can talk about me if they want to.) To this, while still hot, add two cups finely chopped white onion, one cup finely chopped celery and a half cup finely diced bell pepper. Do not over-do the bell pepper! I firmly concur with Justin Wilson who said time and time again that bell pepper is “a taste killah”, and we both agree that you can never use too much onion. (Within reason.)

For a basic shrimp Creole to feed six people, sauté two pounds peeled shrimp–I recommend a 26-30 count–in a light oil with plenty of garlic, about four cloves crushed and minced, and a little pepper (do not salt). Add the shrimp (with the liquid) to the roux/vegetable mix, then immediately add two 14 ounce cans of diced tomatoes with juice. (In a perfect world, you’d use four cups of home-canned tomatoes, but I do not live in a perfect world, and I’ll bet you don’t, either.)

Add a little water to this if needed to give it the consistency of a thick soup, season with a two tablespoons dried basil, two teaspoons thyme and a teaspoon each of oregano and ground cumin. Understand please that these are relative ratios that you can adjust with neither guilt nor effort. When it comes to pepper, the best rule of thumb is to add just enough to make a statement and provide a good Louisiana hot sauce on the table. At this point, I put the mixture in a low oven (200) uncovered for about an hour to meld the flavors, stir it two or three times, then adjust the seasonings, particularly the salt and pepper before serving over  rice.

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A Mother and Child Reunion

When Paul Simon’s “Mother and Child Reunion” topped the charts in 1971, many people (me among them) assumed that he got the title from a chicken and egg sandwich—which in diner lingo is known as a Mother and Child reunion, but the title came from a meal he had at the Say Eng Look Restaurant in New York City. In a 1972 Rolling Stone interview, Simon said, “There was a dish called ‘Mother and Child Reunion.’ It’s chicken and eggs.”

Known as “mother/child/daughter,” variations of this combination  are common menu items at Asian restaurants. Another version—oyakodon: mother/daughter bowl—has been described as Japanese “soul food.” As with any basic dish, the reunion is made in as many ways as there are cooks to make it. Here’s my version, which varies with available ingredients.

Cube a boneless breast of chicken, dust with fresh pepper, and fry in vegetable oil with a a clove of garlic until browned. Poach  in chicken broth until tender; doesn’t take long. Drain chicken, reserving the broth, and stir-fry/saute with sliced onions, and whatever else you’re adding. I’ll throw in things like thinly sliced mushrooms, celery, carrots, and cabbage or kale of some kind cut in some form or fashion.

Add enough broth to cover the chicken by half, bring to a simmer, and dribble in two or three beaten eggs in sort of a figure 8. Stir gently, cover, and steam until the eggs have firmed and blossomed. Thicken slightly with a thin slurry of water and corn starch. Serve with rice and chopped onions.

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On Love and Food

Love is fraught with pitfalls, and food has the potential to be a more fundamental source of friction than ugly underwear or nasal hair.

For those among us with discriminating dietary habits, it’s a safe bet that if you meet someone special in a natural foods dive, they’ll feel much the same way about pork roast as you do (which is not to say that soy products might not eventually become a bone of contention). But if you meet a mate in a bar that serves hamburgers and patriot fries, well, you’re just wide open for surprises, and if simply adjusting to eating together isn’t enough, learning to cook in the same place can be heart-breaking as well: formerly favored cookware might be set aside to make room for an exceedingly exotic batterie. That rooster roaster you were once so proud of might find itself set so far back in a cabinet that you might never lay eyes on it again.

Be advised that condiments are highly controversial.

You might also, as I did, find your palate challenged in totally unexpected ways, as when a date sought to seduce me with something novel and exciting in the form of a carrot omelet. Fortunately, omelets are quite versatile; you can put damn near anything in them, though I will admit that carrots initially struck me as an unlikely ingredient. After all, most omelets are served as savory rather than as sweet dishes, and carrots are among those vegetables I place on the sweet side.

Now, you can make a carrot omelet such as I was served, where the shredded carrots were sautéed in a little butter with green onions and a hint of garlic before being added to the egg mixture, and it would be (marginally) edible. But if I had been told that carrots were the only ingredient we had for an omelet (as it turned out, they weren’t; I later discovered a bar of cheddar in the butter tray), I might have suggested another method of preparation.

Dessert omelets are novelties nowadays, but anyone who has poured syrup over scrambled eggs can attest to their appeal. Sugar (a little less than two tablespoons) is added to two large beaten eggs and a teaspoon of water. While a bit of water is standard for most omelets, the added sugar makes for a nice caramel-type crust. Separate one egg white and whip to foam before folding it into the mix, but before you make your omelet á la Crécy, make candied carrots.

For two people: trim, scrub and peel two large carrots, slice on the bias, barely cover in simple syrup made with honey or brown sugar, simmer with three cloves and a pat of butter until the liquid is reduced and the carrots are done through. Remove the cloves and use carrots as you would any omelet filling; a classicist would julienne them, but I don’t. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, serve with a tempest in a teapot.

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Heart of Cream

For years I’ve been making a coeur a la crème using cottage cheese for convenience, but this year I’ve upped my game and made crème fraiche, which is not difficult, a little goes a long way, and keeps quite well. Now, you can make a simple crème fraiche by adding a packet of culture to store-bought dairy, but that’s a slacker’s option. Me, I trotted down to the Mississippi Farmer’s Market and bought lightly pasteurized  buttermilk and whole milk that retained enough lactic bacteria for the process. I mixed a cup of milk and a quarter cup of buttermilk along with a heaping tablespoon of (admittedly store-bought) sour cream for a bit of a bite.

I kept the starter out overnight. By morning, it had thickened to a dense slurry. I added a half cup or so of this culture to a quart of whole cream from the supermarket, and it worked like a charm, producing a thick, tart crème. If you’re so inclined, the culture can be tended as you would a sourdough, and in time will mellow and deepen, but such a commitment is rarely practical for most home cooks.

As to the heart form itself, if you happen to frequent the kinds of stores that sell such things as stainless steel strawberry stem removers,  chromium banana slicers, and cast-iron hot dog toasters, then you’re likely to run into these cute little ceramic heart molds with holes that are made specifically for a coeur a le crème. Since I am most assuredly not the Williams-Sonoma-type, I went to the Dollar Store and found a purple plastic, heart-shaped container with Ninja Turtles embossed on the front (“Be My Bodacious Valentine!”). It was just the right size, about a pint.

I burned holes in the plastic with a hot nail, and lined the mold—for that’s what it had become—with damp cheesecloth, mixed one cup of the crème fraiche with six ounces of cream cheese, blended in two stiffly-beaten egg whites and a tablespoon of confectioner’s sugar. After filling the mold, I placed it uncovered on a plate in the coldest part of the refrigerator for several hours.

I inverted the mold onto a plate into a puddle of pureed raspberries, though any kind of berry would have been good, depending on your mood, even a stone fruit such as cherries. Be advised that bananas are tricky.

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Savory Oyster Soup

This light soup is good cool on a warm afternoon or warm on a cool evening. Add three cups chopped fresh or two cups well-drained frozen spinach and a cup of quartered artichoke hearts to about a quart of broth seasoned with thyme, parsley, chives, and a bit of garlic. Add a half quart of drained oysters dusted with pepper. Bring to a simmer, and hold on heat for a quarter hour or so.

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Claiborne Peeled

Craig Claiborne, a culinary icon of his day and an avatar of ours, now seems overshadowed by his contemporaries, James Beard and Julia Child. Though described by Betty Fussell as more “accessible” than the vivacious Child or jolly Beard, by comparison the enigmatic, complex Claiborne remains now more than ever a shadowy–albeit Olympian–figure.

When it boils down to it, Claiborne might best be described as the right man in the right place at the right time. His hiring as the first male food editor of a major newspaper came about as the result of crass opportunism if not (as is hinted) outright chicanery, but The New York Times provided Craig Claiborne with the preeminent platform to fulfill his mission, which one authority (McNamee) describes as nothing less than “advancing the nation’s culinary culture”.

Claiborne’s trumpet for reform in his April 1959 column “Elegance of Cuisine is on the Wane in U.S.,” came at a time when the nation was ripe for unabashedly elitist change; within a year, Jackie Kennedy, designer clothing and a French chef were in the White House. Claiborne, with lavish finesse and training he received in Switzerland, set the tone of American culinary culture.

By the mid-Sixties Claiborne had become America’s unquestioned authority on the full culinary spectrum of foods and restaurants, chefs and cookbooks His columns went directly to print. His pervasive influence extended into the Reagan administration. In retrospect, his detractors–including John and Karen Hess, who wrote the seminal The Taste of America–seem nitpickers.

Claiborne wrote and co-wrote many best-sellers, first and foremost The New York Times Cookbook, to which he acquired rights while the Times editorial board was asleep at the wheel. More significantly, while he held the pulpit, he discovered and promoted chefs as cultural and media personalities – Jacques Pépin, Alice Waters, and Paul Prudhomme among many others – helped publicize the West Coast/James Beard movement and introduced Americans to nouvelle cuisine. Claiborne also reveled in a “pan-global eclecticism”, promoting the cuisines of China, Mexico and Vietnam (during that war), among others, and lived to celebrate a resurgence of great American home cooking.

Though McDonald’s Ray Kroc and other fast-food titans have influenced America’s diet far more than Claiborne, he established food as media culture, and his sheer adventurism still informs our attitude towards food and cooking. Yet for all that, while Claiborne’s ill-advised 1982 autobiography, A Feast Made for Laughter (Henry Holt: 1983), provides copious evidence that his personal life does not bear up well under scrutiny, he remains something of a sacred cow, so I wouldn’t expect a biopic or a Netflix series any time soon.

 

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Dixie’s Blue Cheese Dressing

Chef and author Dixie Grimes lives in Water Valley, Mississippi.

This sinfully delicious and beautifully iconic blue cheese dressing will make your mouth water and your taste buds sing: silky and salty with a hint of sweetness, a perfect showcase for your favorite Maytag or Stilton. It is a beautiful thing; that is, until you have had to make it for a fine dining restaurant on the fly.

This recipe is by far one of the most temperamental that I have ever used. Everything has to be just right, including proper alignment of the stars and planets, and even then it might not work. However, I highly recommend giving it a whirl. The depth and flavor of this dressing is not like anything I have had before or since I worked at the Downtown Grill. We eventually retired it, and I came up with an easier alternative for the prep cooks to make; it would do, but it’s nowhere near as good as this one.

I started my professional culinary career at the Downtown Bar and Grill. I was a prep cook which meant I was the low man on the totem pole, the grunt; it was my job to do whatever the chefs needed me to do and get yelled at constantly for either not doing it properly or quick enough or both. That being said, I could hold my own and for the most part the guys gave me as much respect as a chef will give a prep cook (which ain’t much). I was allowed and expected to make everything and anything the guys needed for service, except of course the blue cheese dressing. Why would they not let me make it? And why did I never see it being made and why was only one person allowed to handle this recipe?

I would soon find out when I saw my name on the prep sheet aside the blue cheese dressing on a football Friday of an Ole Miss home game, in other words no room for error. Had I finally moved up to the upper echelon and was so bad ass that I was going to be allowed to make the sacred and secret blue cheese recipe that only Alison Wilkes was allowed to make? Alison was the Queen of the Downtown Grill and the most difficult recipes were given to her and her alone. It was at that moment I realized that for the first time during my shift Alison was off that night; she had worked earlier in the day and during the chaos the blue cheese was overlooked. The chef forgot to put it on the prep sheet! It was not the call to greatness I thought I had earned, it was out of pure necessity that I was allowed to make this recipe for the first time, much to the trepidation of the chefs as well as me.

There was really no room for failure now, all eyes were on me. I had no idea of the tediousness of executing this recipe, how everything has to be perfect: the measurements, the order of the ingredients as you add them, the temperature of the kitchen and the weather (not even kidding). I had no idea that this recipe had a 99% failure rate for anyone who tried to make it besides Alison. As I was reading through the recipe I remembered two things that Alison had told me prior to my employment at the Downtown Grill when we were just lifetime buddies. I remembered Alison talking about this recipe and that it gave her great pleasure basking in the joy of being only 1 of 20 people in a professional kitchen who could make this dressing that the Grill was so famous for; I also remembered her telling two key pieces of information as to why her always turns out, two things that were NOT written in the recipe. One, that there are three separate ingredients which are incorporated in one at a time, and they have to be added in alphabetical order: EOV; eggs, oil and vinegar. Two, everything has to be basically the same temperature, the bowls for the mixtures, the ingredients, air temp, all the same. Again, these instructions were not included in the recipe, so who knew? Well, Alison, of course.

So armed with this key information, I started the process, praying the whole time; please God let the dressing turn out. As I added the final mixture of vinegar the angels started to sing. ‘Holy crap!’ it’s working, I thought. I could see it coming together. To my surprise, I had done it, but instead of jumping up and down and screaming, which is what I wanted to do, I quietly tucked into my corner, not saying a peep, just getting the sacred dressing ready for service and storage. Then I casually walked up to the chef, container in hand. “Here you go chef. Do you need any on the line?”

Y’all, his jaw literally dropped. “What the hell!” he said. “You actually got it to turn out! We were planning on cussing at you for your futile attempt to make something that couldn’t be made.”

“Guess I just got lucky chef!” I said, remembering something else I learned from Alison: “Never tell the bastards anything.”

Downtown Grill Blue Cheese Dressing

2 eggs, whole
2 cups vegetable oil
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon dried mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon white wine
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
a generous slash of Tabasco
6-8 ounces blue cheese

Using a blender, whip eggs for a minute, then slowly pour in the vegetable oil, a teaspoon at a time, until it starts to come together, then trickle in to consistency. Add a vinaigrette made with all the other ingredients. Mix for a minute. Pour dressing in a bowl, stir in crumbled blue cheese, and refrigerate.

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Coconut Macaroons

Sift 3 cups flour with 1 teaspoon baking powder. Mix in 2 cups light brown sugar (it doesn’t have to be packed, for Pete’s sake) and work in a cup of cold butter. Stir in 2 well-beaten eggs with a teaspoon each vanilla and almond extract. Add 2 cups grated coconut, and mix well; you’ll get a better form if you chill the dough. Drop by spoonfuls onto a lightly oiled sheet pan, and bake at 350 until tops are toasted and bottoms browned.