NMissCommentor » Food

Wilted Lettuce Salad

NMC — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:16:09 +0000

A new grower at the MidTown Farmers Market yesterday, who is from Pea Ridge (I’m sorry I did not catch their name) had bundles of beautiful delicate lettuce that looked somewhat red-leaf like. I suspect this lettuce would not survive shipment.

Joyce immediately recognized it as the early Spring leaf lettuce used in her family’s wilted lettuce salad, which was a Spring ritual. “Her family” means here her father’s family in Pelahatchie and her mother’s from near Fayette, Alabama. Both of her grandmothers made this when she was growing up. It’s a great use of the lettuce. We had it with herb omlettes with herbs from my garden (chervil, parsley, tarragon, chives). We had green onions from Flora Farms at the MidTown Farmer’s Market.

Oh, and the market will be open for Wednesday this week!

Wilted Lettuce Salad

2-3 slices of bacon
1 or 2 (depending on size) heads of very fresh leaf lettuce
about 1/3 of the green part of a green onion, thinly sliced
salt and pepper
2 tbs white wine vinegar
3 tbs olive oil

1. Clean and trim the lettuce and break up into larger than bite sized pieces. Wrap in towels, gently, and put in refrigerator to crisp up.

2. Cook the bacon in a cast-iron skillet until well crisped then set aside.

3. While the bacon is cooking, put the lettuce in a large bowl. Add salt and pepper to taste and the green onion.

4. When the bacon is done, pour off all but a little of the bacon fat, leaving perhaps 2 tbs in the skillet. Crumble the bacon up into the lettuce. Add the olive oil to the skillet and give it a moment to heat up. Add the vinegar and stir around quickly with a wooden spatula, then pour over the greens and quickly mix and serve immediately.

MidTown Farmers Market is back in fine form

NMC — Sun, 06 May 2012 03:49:51 +0000

This was the best opening market I remember in a long time. One news bulletin: The Bosts are set up for accepting Food Stamps. I’m not sure how to spread the word, but the Bosts’ prices are very reasonable; any Food Stamp eligible family would do very well to check it out.

I saw a number of growers who had been there for years, and a few new ones, and at least one who was back after a hiatus. I came home with spinach, carrots, garlic, several varieties of lettuce, English peas, new potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cucumber. There were cabbage, beets, and a number of other things I didn’t grab.

Are we going to have blueberries in early May…

NMC — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 00:02:03 +0000

and figs in late May?

I took these pictures in my yard this afternoon. This seems extraordinarily early, by a month.

The mosquitoes this year are going to be epochal.

The Van Winkle whiskey Spring shipment has hit Mississippi

NMC — Sat, 07 Apr 2012 03:13:29 +0000

The folks who make Van Winkle bourbon release product in the Spring, just before Easter, and in the Fall, at Thanksgiving. The Mississippi release has apparently just happened, and Star Package in Oxford has a few bottles of the 12 year left.

If I were in Jackson and hoping for some, I’d go by Wine and Spirits in the Quarter on Lakeland. They’d be stocking it and they’d price it very fairly. Anderson: I’m talking to you.

Out on Highway 61

NMC — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:41:42 +0000

In Tunica for Chancery Court, we went by the Blue & White Restaurant for the lunch buffet.

The Blue & White was in downtown Tunica by the railroad tracks until 1937, when Highway 61 was upgraded on the edge of town. The Blue & White moved out to the highway, where it was a Pure gas station (thus establishing the color scheme) and the Greyhound bus station. It’s still there on the highway, and, according to their history printout, three generations (a grandmother, two daughters-in-law, and a granddaughter) are cooking in the kitchen. It’s a pleasant stop, and lots of southern vegetables and meat to choose from on the lunch buffet.

The stretch of Highway 61 from Tunica to Memphis was once remarkable (it’s pretty radically different since the advent of the casinos). According to my grandfather (a civil engineer) for a long time it held the longest stretch of highway without a change of grade or a curve in the US Highway system. That wasn’t repeated because it’s not safe– drivers zone out.

When I first read All the Kings Men, I was convinced that Robert Penn Warren must have encountered this stretch of road when he was working at Southwestern in Memphis and used it for the highway that’s at the start of that book:

Mason City. To get there you follow Highway 58 going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it. You look up the highway and it is straight for miles, coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at you and at you, black and slick and tarry-shining against the white of the slab, and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with the whine of the tires, and if you don’t quit staring at that line and don’t take a few deep breaths and slap yourself hard on the back of the neck you’ll hypnotize yourself and you’ll come to just at the moment when the right front wheel hooks over into the black dirt shoulder off the slab, and you’ll try to jerk her back on, but you can’t because the slab is high like a curb, and maybe you’ll try to turn off the ignition just as she starts to dive. But you won’t make it, of course. … Then a few days later the boys from the Highway Department will mark the spot with a little metal square on a metal rod stuck in the black dirt off the shoulder, the metal square painted white and on it in black a skull and crossbones. Later on love vine will climb up it, out of the weeds.

In the eastern suburb of Strayhorn on Highway 4 west of Senatobia, I encountered the sign in the picture below.

OKRA ATTACK!

NMC — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 22:00:12 +0000

While in Cleveland in the Delta last Saturday, I saw a small banner that suggested I be afraid.

I just encountered this video, which illustrates what folks are supposed to find fearful…

Click here to view the embedded video.

… and discover there’s a whole website devoted to Okra fearing at Delta State.

Marion Nestle on “pink slime”: It’s not so simple, folks.

NMC — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:50:39 +0000

Marion Nestle is a nutritionist and food writer who is definitely on the side the side of consumers and not “big food.” Yet her latest food column, which is about “lean finely textured beef,” popularly known as pink slime, sheds a fair amount of light and points out a lot of “on the other hand” issues about the stuff. For instance, since it began to be used in school lunches, the incidence of e. coli cropping up in school lunch meat has fallen greatly– “Since LFTB’s introduction, safety officials say they rarely find toxic E. coli in school hamburger.” She explains (and largely accepts) other arguments for it.

She doesn’t make me want to eat the stuff, though, or eat its chicken counterpart, which is the source of chicken nuggets.

Sam Sifton gets cornbread horribly wrong– almost as much sugar as cornmeal?!?

NMC — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 03:52:57 +0000

In the New York Times magazine, Sam Sifton writes about the cornbread recipe from Chris Schlesinger’s East Coast Grill in Cambridge, Mass. The recipe contains 2 parts flour to 1 part cornmeal, reversing the ratio I use (because, opines Sifton, if you don’t the cornbread will be “gritty.” Sifton must be using the wrong cornmeal, or, perhaps, doesn’t understand why folks down here use buttermilk and not milk), but more startlingly, adding almost as much (3/4s of a cup to 1 cup cornmeal) sugar as cornmeal (and then suggests pouring pepper flake infused honey over that. The man must have a sweet tooth). He also cooks it a long time (an hour) in a slow oven.

Yes, the degree to which cornbread from Northerners incorporates more sugar than Southerners (which frequently– I’d say usually– use none) has been much discussed. But 3/4 the amount of sugar as cornmeal? Are he and Schlesinger kidding?

And the recipe calls for whole milk instead of buttermilk, apparently unaware of the advantages the acid in the buttermilk provides in terms of tenderness-of-crumb and leavening.

As a corrective, I’ve decided to post a couple of cornbread recipes. Making cornbread is such commonplace that my grandmother, who had cornbread on the dinner table every night she cooked dinner, did not place a recipe in her extensive notecard folder of recipes– I was horrified to discover this when it was too late to document what she’d done, although I think I’m pretty close now except that I’m adding non-canonical thyme, red pepper, and garlic.

So, maybe we all know all of this and I’m not providing news to the readers of this blog.

First is the recipe I use for cornbread. It’s based on a recipe from Powell Hassel of Suwanee, Georgia, with a few touches of our own (“our” being my wife Joyce and me; we’ve spent a fair amount of time kicking this back and forth, and comparing notes on what we remember from our various families– her mom in Columbus/West Alabama, her dad in Pelahatchie, and my father’s family in Port Gibson and that area). The second recipe is from Joe York, who is from Alabama and published a description of his family recipe in the Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook.

Southern cornbread recipes pretty much agree on the use of white corn meal, buttermilk, and minimal if any sugar. There’s some debate about whether or not to use eggs. My recipe uses eggs, and Joe’s family recipe does not. Both require a well-seasoned cast iron skillet.

Cornbread at the Freeland’s house

either
1 1/3 cup self-rising white cornmeal
2/3 cup self-rising flour (for both, Martha White would be preferred in either group. It’s flour is softer)
1/4 tsp salt
or
1 1/6 cup white cornmeal
2/3 cup flour
4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt

plus
1/4 tsp finely chopped fresh or 1/8 tsp dried thyme
a large pinch of cayanne
2 eggs, beaten
1 3/4 cups buttermilk
1 clove garlic, mashed and very finely chopped (this is totally nonstandard but try it)
1/4 cup or a bit more canola oil

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Pre-heat the skillet (I’m using a 10 inch, roughly) on the stove over medium heat. You want the skillet good and hot, which takes a while. As it starts to get hot, add a good glug of canola oil, about half of what’s being used. The idea here is to basically start frying the cornbread in the skillet as soon as you put the batter in it.
3. Mix dry ingredients (the alternatives plus thyme and cayenne) then add eggs, buttermilk, and garlic. Mix to a batter and taste for salt. Add the other half of the oil, another good glug, and mix.
4. Tilt the skillet around to spread the oil evenly on the bottom and sides, then pour the batter in it. It should sizzle a lot–what you are doing here is fry the batter. Immediately put in the oven.
5. After 20 minutes, increase the oven temperature to 450 degrees to brown on top. When brown, take out of the oven and turn into a dish. Possibly out of superstition, I tend to wham the skillet on the stove, thinking I’ll loosen the bread so none of it sticks. This cornbread is great with or without butter or other possible additions.

Joe York’s Cornbread

This cornbread is from Joe’s family in Alabama, originating with his great-grandmother. He tells the story of it in the Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook, noting that he has an 8 inch skillet. I’ve never used the cornbread mix called for here, but wondered about the lack of added salt. I’d taste the batter when you make this one for salt before putting it in the skillet.

I’ve had this cornbread, and it’s excellent. You should obtain and read the recipe Joe’s description in the Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook

1/3 cup Crisco
2 1/2 cups Aunt Jemima White Cornmeal Mix
2 1/s cups buttermilk
1/2 cup White Lily Self Rising Flour
1/4 tsp baking powder

1. Preheat the oven to 480 degrees.
2 Put the Crisco in an 8 inch cast-iron skillet and put that into the oven.
3. Mix the cornmeal, flour, buttermilk, and baking powder.
4. Pull the skillet from the oven and pour about 1/3 of the crisco into the batter. If it doesn’t sizzle, you haven’t got the skillet hot enough. Sprinkle some flour into the remaining Crisco in the skillet (the idea is that it will make it less likely that the cornbread will stick. This is an idea I’ve seen in other recipes). Pour the batter into the skillet.
5. After you pour the batter into the skillet, shortening will come up the sides of the skillet and pool around the top of the batter. Take a spoon and fill with the shortening and spoon it evenly across the top of the batter, smoothing the surface as you go. The top should be “good and greasy.”
6. Put the skillet in the oven and cook for 25 minutes until nicely past golden brown. Take out of the oven and remove to a plate.

In his description in the Foodway’s cookbook, he says this recipe isn’t healthy. The only thing “unhealthy” is the Crisco– if he swapped that for canola oil, there’s nothing unhealthy about his recipe. It doesn’t even have eggs! But one thing I can guarantee is that either one of these is going to produce a better result than the one that ran in the Times today.

Something you may want to know if you like strawberry frappuccinos

NMC — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:53:02 +0000

Would you rather eat ground-up bugs or whale vomit? Fortunately, this bartender in Chicago is only suggesting you smell the whale vomit with his cocktail, while the folks at Starbucks and Kellogs are asking you to eat ground-up cochineal beetles. Mmmm. Strawberry frappuccino. Never had one. But I will say, from having read the standards on things like the number of allowed insect parts allowed in strawberry preserves, I’m sure I’ve eaten my share of ground up bugs.

Yes, I’ve categorized this post as “Food.”

Beard Nominees: Congrats to John T. Edge, Donald Link, etc.

NMC — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 02:09:51 +0000

The latest Beard Award nominations include a huge endorsement of New Orleans food right now, including a total of six chef nominations lead by Donald Link, who is nominated for the big award: Outstanding Chef, described as “A working chef in america whose career has set national industry standards and who has served as an inspiration to other food professionals. Candidates must have been working as chefs for at least the past 5 years.” He’s up against David Chang of Momofuku in New York, Gary Danko of Restaurant Gary Danko in San Francisco, Paul Kahan of Blackbird in Chicago, and Nancy Silverton of Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles. Donald has already won Beard Awards for Best Chef: South and regional cookbook.

Friend-of-the-blog John T. Edge got a Beard nomination that has to be a great nomination for a food writer: An award named after M.F.K. Fisher. He was nominated for the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award for his Saveur piece, “BBQ Nation,” up against Tamar Adler (writing in Gilt Taste) and Todd Kilman (writing in Lucky Peach).

Best Chef: South is a great group of chefs, at least based on the four whose food I’ve had: Justin Devillier La Petite Grocery New Orleans; John Harris Lilette New Orleans; Chris Hastings Hot and Hot Fish Club Birmingham, AL; Tory McPhail Commander’s Palace New Orleans; Alon Shaya Domenica New Orleans

Best Chef: Southeast includes Hugh Acheson at Five and Ten in Athens, who is also nominated for his recent cookbook, and Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta, along with Edward Lee of 640 Magnolia in Louisville and Joseph Lenn at Blackberry Farms.

Sue Zemanick at Gautreau’s in New Orleans is nominated for Rising Star Chef of the Year, along with chefs in Chicago, San Francisco, and New York.

Frank Stitt’s Highland Bar and Grill in Birmingham is nominated (again) for Outstanding Restaurant, up against Balthazar and Blue Hill in New York and Boulevard in San Francisco.