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Oven Ribs

For one full rack or three baby backs, make a rub of: 1 cup light brown sugar and a quarter cup of paprika with a tablespoon each of cumin, granulated garlic, black pepper, and salt. Some people like cayenne. Cut ribs to fit roasting pan, pat dry, oil, and coat with rub. Place pan in middle oven with a quart container of water on the bottom. Set oven at 350 for first hour, then turn the ribs and reduce heat to 225. Turn in another hour, then cook until meat is tender, about 2 1/2 to 3 hours for full racks, half that for baby backs.

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Galactic Rebel

Lieutenant Commander (later Admiral) Leonard H. McCoy, M.D, chief medical officer aboard the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701), was born in Atlanta, Georgia, Earth, in 2227 to Mr. and Mrs. David McCoy. He enrolled at the University of Mississippi in 2245. That year, an interplanetary gymnastics competition was hosted by the University of Mississippi and held at the Menlo T. Hodgkiss Memorial Gymnasium on the Oxford campus, where he met the Tr’i’ll Emony Dax, who was visiting Earth to judge the competition. According to Dax, McCoy “had the hands of a surgeon.”

McCoy enrolled at the University of Mississippi Medical School in 2249. While in medical school, McCoy and his friends often substituted real drinking glasses with tricklers at parties. (What fun.) He graduated in 2253. McCoy met his future wife Pamela Branch at Ole Miss when she suffered brain-freeze from an ice cream cone. Branch wore white at the wedding ceremony and adopted the last name McCoy. She divorced him in 2255 because their professions kept them apart. In the divorce, she acquired a house on Mars, six cars, and a valuable Vulcan painting along with custody of their daughter, Joanna. McCoy told Kirk that the divorce left him nothing but bones. Shortly afterwards, McCoy enrolled in Starfleet Academy.

The rest, as they say, is history.

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Jello Spaghetti-Os

Some people take themselves far too seriously. If you look around the internet for postings of this dish—I assure you there are many—you’ll find reactions bespeaking of ponderous gravitas: “disgusting” they exclaim; “incomprehensible” they bemoan.

Others possessing a lighter heart and more expansive philosophy—among whom naturally I number myself—recognize this recipe for what it is, a work of sheer, unadulterated genius. Many err in crediting this dish to Ernest Mickler, specifically citing his enduring epic White Trash Cooking as the source. Not so; Ernie (as well as his correspondents) was a more traditional sort. No, this concoction is the fabrication of some double-wide Warhol who set his hat to come up with an iconic work of art for those of us who think Martha Stewart should still be wearing that ankle bracelet.

Dissolve two envelopes unflavored gelatin in a quarter cup of water. When gelatin has bloomed, add a half can condensed tomato soup, heat and add two cans Spaghetti-Os. Stir until well-blended, cool, pour into a ring mold and chill until firm. Vienna sausages (admittedly Freudian) are sine qua non for the presentation, and those of a particularly refined bent top them with a curl of Cheese Whiz.

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Prudhomme’s Blackened Seasoning

When Paul Prudhomme came barreling out of the bayous in the early 80’s, his cuisine had an enormous impact on the restaurant industry. The Cajun rage prompted restaurants as far away as Seattle to place jambalayas, gumbos, and etouffees on their menus. But the one dish that inspired a genuine craze was his blackened redfish.

Prudhomme first served blackened redfish at K-Paul’s in March, 1980, serving 30 or 40 people. It was an immediate hit; within days the restaurant was full, and within weeks, there were long lines. The dish became so popular that redfish (aka red drum, Sciaenops ocellatus) populations in the Gulf were severely impacted. The fish were sucked up in nets by the truckload in the bays, passes, and inlets from the Florida Keys to Brownsville, Texas, nearly wiping out the overall redfish stock. Fortunately, intensive conservation efforts were put in place—one of them being the founding of the Gulf Coast Conservation Association—and the redfish rebounded.

Blackening is an ideal cooking method for fish, but you can also blacken meats and shellfish, even squash and eggplant. Foods to be blackened are dredged in melted butter, coated in the following seasoning mix, then seared in a super-heated skillet. Do not try blackening inside unless you have a commercial vent hood, and if outside you must use a gas flame. Prudhomme’s herbal measurements are excruciatingly precise, so make a lot at one time and store.

1 tablespoon sweet paprika
2 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground red pepper (preferably cayenne)
¾ teaspoon white pepper
¾ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon dried thyme leaves
½ teaspoon dried oregano leaves

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Roots Remoulade

The Larousse Gastronomique recipe for remoulade calls for a cup of mayonnaise with two tablespoons mixed herbs (parsley, chives, chervil and tarragon), one tablespoon drained capers, two finely diced cornichons and a few drops of anchovy essence (optional). Now, the Éditions Larousse is a Parisian publishing house specializing in encyclopedias and dictionaries, and as a battle-scarred veteran of Dr. Joe Ray’s brutal etymology classes at Ole Miss, I find it odd that this recipe skips over the roots of the word “rémoulade,” derived from the dialectal French, rémola, with origins in the Latin word for horseradish, armoracea. Given this precedent, I find it altogether appropriate if not requisite that any recipe for a remoulade should include horseradish, and yes, anchovies are nice, too.

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Our Summer Salad

Within living memory this simple dish was a staple throughout the rural South, a mild fresh summer vegetable laden vinaigrette that goes well with most meats, beans, and fresh greens. Use the freshest produce you can find. Cut into bite-sized pieces, place in a glass or ceramic bowl, and toss with salt and fresh ground black pepper. Resist the temptation to use garlic and/or herbs. Add enough white vinegar to cover the vegetables a quarter way and half that amount of corn oil. Toss and refrigerate before serving. Refresh the mix with vegetables, seasonings, and liquids as needed.

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Fresh Peach Cobbler

For four cups of sliced fruit make six cups of simple syrup with a teaspoon of vanilla; a dust of nutmeg is a nice touch. Stew fruit in hot syrup just enough to color and flavor. Pour into a deep baking dish. Make biscuit dough using sweet milk and sugar, knead lightly, and roll out to about a quarter inch. Cut into strips and drop by pieces into the hot fruit/syrup mixture. Spoon syrup over dropped dough. Bake in hot (350-400) oven until browned and bubbling. Cool before, and if don’t serve this with a scoop of vanilla ice cream the devil will drag you to hell by your short hairs in a second flat.

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Ode to Salisbury Steak

When I was growing up in small-town Mississippi in the 1960s, TV dinners were a treat, something different from home-cooked, not better, by any means, just exotic, some indication that change was possible in the stagnant backwater of Bruce, Mississippi, if only by way of convenience foods. Frozen pizza held a similar glamour. For a little over a dollar, we could buy fried chicken, meatloaf, or turkey and dressing with a puddle of piped-in potatoes and neon peas in a space-age metal container, heat it in the oven, and eat them on the sheet-pan fold-away TV tables that became available simultaneously. I remember eating a turkey and dressing version the first time I saw “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” I was eight.

My favorite was the fried chicken, but brother Tom’s was Salisbury steak (as close as he could get to a hamburger). It’s named for James Salisbury, one of those impressive food faddists of the late 19th century whose ranks include Kellogg, Post, and Mary Grove Nichols (by far the coolest of the three.) Salisbury advocated the same low-carb diet as Tarnower and Atkins (known now as paleo), his being very much meat-centered. Salisbury’s version of a “lean beef cake,” calls for meat “from the centre of the round” procured from “well-fatted animals that are from four to six years old,” but there’s really no rationale for being so specific.

For a pound of lean ground beef, add a quarter cup bread crumbs, and if you don’t have any of those little-bitty cans of tomato sauce, work in a generous squirt or two of ketchup along with a good dusting of black pepper. Don’t over-work the meat. Form into no more than four cakes about an inch thick. Cook in a low oven to medium well.While this recommendation doesn’t fit the doctor’s diet, my optimal serving of Salisbury steak requires mushroom gravy (a light one), creamed potatoes with a little pitty-pat of butter, and green peas, just like Mother Swanson served.

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Stuffed Pork Loin

Remove sinews and fat from loin, butterfly, and brush with corn oil seasoned with black pepper, salt, and freshly-minced garlic. For the stuffing, use day-old cornbread moistened with butter and chicken stock seasoned with fresh rosemary (not too much!), thyme, basil, salt and pepper, along with finely-minced onions. Stuff loin, roll, truss, brush again with seasoned oil, and roast on medium heat (300) about an hour for a ten pound loin. Serve with Jezebel sauce.

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Yellow Meats

While working in a Florida restaurant, I kept having trouble ordering a yellow-meated watermelon from my produce guy. He said he could never find one, even though I’d seen them in local markets. Finally it came out that with my heavy hill country Mississippi accent he thought I was ordering a melon from some mythical specialty locale in California: “Jala Meadad”. He even wrote it down that way.

Here in the Deep South yellow-meated season is short; you’ll rarely find them marketed before late June or after early August, and you’ll almost never find them sold in supermarkets, usually only at roadside produce stands. The variety of yellow meats I find most often here in central Mississippi has broad dark green and light green stripes, though over in Clay County, Alabama, where they have the Clay County Yellow Meated Watermelon Festival, the eponymous variety is an almost uniform light green.

The flesh can range from pale yellow to deep gold. The best contain large brownish black seeds, seeds being an essential ripening agent for the fruit, whose flavor I find sweeter than the reds, offering notes of honey, apricot, and vanilla.