Lisa Barlow's Open Salon Blog

Crack Bacon

Sun, 3 Apr 2011 21:04:08 -0400

I have been told that the first sentence I ever strung together was a command, accompanied by a baby-fisted pound on my highchair tray. “MO BAKE!” I called out gleefully, but with all the authority of a general commanding his troops. “MO BAKE!” again when it didn’t yield quick enough results.

A half-century later, I am still asking for more bacon. If it is not with the same joyful certitude that it belongs on my plate at every meal, it is only because I have learned a bit of the addict’s shame.

Once when I was 12, my elderly neighbor asked me to keep an eye on her house while she was out of town. Along with her keys, came the invitation to make myself at home. I immediately did that by cooking the entire pound of Swift’s Premium Bacon I found in her fridge and eating it in one go. The lingering scent of unvented bacon smoke still emanated from her little lace kitchen curtains when she returned a week later. I was never asked to housesit again.

Truly, I would eat bacon at every meal if I could. And because I can’t, it has become a guilty pleasure to be indulged furtively by grabbing a few extra slices from the brunch buffet or eaten with excuses attached, as I explain to my un pork-frenzied family that a certain recipe just calls out for a little smoky flavor to kick things up a notch.

For many years I could keep the bacon thing in check with these moderate rewards. Even during those funky post college years of existentialist quandary, when eating potato chips and ice cream for dinner in search of succor and questionable sustenance, I didn’t overdo the bacon. But then one night I discovered Candied “Crack” Bacon, and it’s been an all out jones for my favorite food ever since.

It was the middle of the 1990’s when Martha Stewart was still Queen. I was working a party as the event photographer. As usual I parked my extra cameras with a brick of tri-x film under the bar where I could reload when I needed to. The caterers, Martha devotees, had prepared pretty little trays to serve the social X-rays I’d been hired to glamorize. On one tray sat a perfect grid of shimmering lacquered brown squares. “Taste this,” one of my favorite waiters whispered, allowing me to defile the perfect arrangement. And with my first mouthful of caramelized brown sugar amplifying the salty, fatty, bad boy goodness that is bacon, I was transported from being a mere bacon lover to a crazed bacon junkie.

I practically grabbed my friend’s lapel. “Where did this come from? And how do I make it?” He smiled knowingly. “It’s better than crack,” he said while artfully splaying crabmeat-filled snow peas on a platter. “Watch me pass the bacon,” he laughed. “Even Nan Kempner can’t say no.” Nan Kempner was the most elegant woman in the room, but she was almost invisible she was so thin. It was she, in fact, who inspired Tom Wolfe to coin the term “social X-ray” in his famous novel Bonfire of the Vanities. And yes, she did eat a piece of crack bacon. All of it! If I had listened very hard at that moment, over the tinkle of ice in glasses and the kiss kiss hellos and the click of my camera, I might have heard the little baby that was once Nan Kempner before she was too thin, the little ghost baby of a social x-ray, calling after a waiter with a tray “Mo Bake! I’m hungry!”

It took me a while to figure out how to replicate the recipe. But it’s so easy to make, I wonder why I never had it sooner. Martha Stewart’s hors d’oeuvres book contains her version. But a multitude of other cooks have also discovered candied bacon and shared their recipes on the internet. One of my favorite demonstrations is included in David Liebovitz’s recipe for candied bacon ice cream. That, I believe is the heroin of bacon. I’ll see you in rehab.

Candied Bacon

1 lb. thick cut bacon

1 cup brown sugar

Salt (optional)

Variations: Add cayenne pepper, Dijon mustard or fresh cracked black pepper to the sugar and salt if you want a bit more bite with your pig and sugar high.

There are a number of ways to candy bacon. You can use maple syrup instead of brown sugar. Regular sliced bacon rashers will yield a perfectly nice accompaniment to a plate of eggs, but a thicker slice is necessary if you are serving these as hors d’oeuvres. I also like the intensity of bacon flavor and chew that thick cut bacon gives.

Martha Stewart likes to flatten her bacon between parchment paper sandwiched by sheet pans. If you put a weight on the top pan, the bacon will be perfectly flat, easy to slice into squares and as meticulous as she is. In the above link to candied bacon ice cream, David Liebovitz cooks his on a baker’s silpat in the oven. Some folks like to lay bacon on a rack in the oven. The easiest way to candy bacon is in a skillet on the stove. Just cook a few pieces, drain, and then put cooked bacon back in the pan with a few tablespoons of brown sugar and cook over low heat until caramelized.

The recipe I am giving you is for an oven-cooked variation. I don’t use a rack, even if that makes the process a little less messy, because by immersing the bacon in the sugar and fat while it is cooking, you get a thicker glaze.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

2. Line a sheet pan with tin foil

3. Put brown sugar onto a plate

4. Coat bacon on both sides with sugar

5. Place bacon on sheet pan so that each piece is not overlapping

6. Cook for about 10 minutes until bacon is bubbling

7. Remove bacon to a plate, drain bacon grease from sheet pan and return bacon to pan.

8. Sprinkle more sugar onto bacon

9. Sprinkle a little kosher salt on bacon if you are adding it.

10. Cook in oven for another few minutes until sugar has caramelized and bacon is cooked.

11. Remove bacon to a plate to cool. It will crisp up a bit.

Cut in squares with a very sharp knife if you are serving as hors d’oeuvres. Or eat them all by yourself in your jammies. They keep well for a day in a Tupperware container in the fridge. Heat for a minute or two in the oven to freshen them up before serving.

The Elvis: Grilled Peanut Butter and Candied Bacon Sandwich

While I am happiest eating my candied bacon in its purest state, if it has been a particularly hard day, the addition of peanut butter is more comforting than a stiff drink. Grilled peanut butter and bacon sandwiches are unsung genius. Maybe even sung, as Elvis loved them and usually added a sliced banana to his. He might have even batter fried them after that. Please don’t go that far. I’ll worry about you. But you can add the banana if you wish.

2 slices sandwich bread

Peanut butter

Candied bacon

Butter at room temperature

Bananas (optional)

Spread peanut butter on a piece bread

Lay two slices candied bacon on top and sliced banana if you are using.

Cover with other piece of bread.

Slather butter on both sides of sandwich

Grill over medium heat until bread is brown and peanut butter is warm.

Candied Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Salad

Here’s a twist on my favorite lunch counter sandwich. It is basically a chopped-up BLT. I even included the mayo, which is an element I’d miss if it weren’t on the bread.

1 head Romaine lettuce

1 cup cherry tomatoes

4 strips candied bacon

2 pieces toast

Mayonnaise

Vinaigrette

You can mix this salad in a bowl, but it is pretty if you compose each portion on plates.

Wash and dry lettuce, chop into bite-size pieces.

Slice cherry tomatoes in half

Cut candied bacon into small pieces

Toast bread, spread mayonnaise on one side.

Cut bread into small squares.

Assemble salad on plate.

Dress with your favorite vinaigrette.

Note: Chipotle mayonnaise is a nice twist. If you don’t have a favorite vinaigrette recipe, here is a good start: Mix 1 part red wine vinegar, 3 parts olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, a bit of Dijon mustard and fresh garlic. Whisk and you’re there.

Photos and text Lisa Barlow 2011 except Nan Kempner (New York Times) and Martha Stewart (Martha Stewart Living) and Crown (random internet).

Playing Dress Up in Mexico

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 11:03:15 -0400

We are used to being surprised by the street life we see in the Mexican fishing village where we live on and off during the year. Sometimes it is just a man and his donkey riding slowly through town as he calls out “Honey for sale!” Sometimes it is a pretty girl dressed up in cupcake finery ready for her Quinceañera, or 15^th birthday party, that signals she is a young woman and no longer a child. Last week we just missed the sweet parade of children dressed as little spring animals and flowers that announced the arrival of spring. (See loveinmexico’s nice pictures). Today, it was something I had never seen before.

Long before I could see it, I could hear the cacophonous band of horns and drums as it blared down the street. Music is almost constant here. Tinny tunes play from a rack of pirate CD’s in the town square. A lone man with a guitar will appear seemingly out of nowhere to serenade you on the beach. A trio of musicians will add ambience to a restaurant meal. And sometimes a whole uniformed Mariachi band will commandeer the night with heart pounding love songs while the tequila flows and everyone is singing along to the ballads as if they knew the words.

But it wasn’t until I got closer that I knew who was playing in the street. It was the group that was started a few years ago by some boys in an afterschool program. Except these boys weren’t boys anymore. They were all dressed as girls in a riot of tube tops and spandex and glitter. One boy in fairy wings tottered down the street in high heels while another galumphed along beside him, hiking up his skirt, as he tooted on his tuba. There seemed to be a game being played. As cars passed by, if the driver was male, his door was yanked open and he was given a mock kiss.

“What’s going on?” I asked a shopkeeper.

“Could be anything,” she said with disinterest.

“What’s going on?” I asked my friend Cristina, who was busy clicking photos with her cell phone. I couldn’t hear a word she said over the music.

My friend Fred, who knows everything about everyone, said with authority “Today is Transvestite Day. Just like Secretary’s Day”

My friend Luigi skateboarded by with a surfboard under his arm. “Maybe somebody’s birthday,” was his answer. “Or maybe somebody died.”

Carlos said firmly, “They are celebrating spring.”

I’m not sure I’ll ever know the real reason a normally macho group of boys had thrown on their girlfriends’ clothes and makeup for the afternoon. It’s just one more little mystery I am trying to decode as I spend time here.

I wondered for a minute about whether this counteracted homophobia in a macho society and about men getting in touch with their feminine sides. But I can’t imagine that any of that was on these boys' minds. This parade was simply joyful, silly fun.

Cross-dressing as comedy and as tribute is pretty common here. In the Lucha Libre wrestling matches in our town square there is always a big guy dressed as a lipstick-smeared woman who emasculates his opponent by yanking down his pants. At Day of the Dead celebrations relatives dress up as their departed loved ones, often donning clothes of the opposite sex. My friend Mike was once thrilled to see a parade of transvestites during the extravagant celebration for Day of the Dead that takes place in Patzcuaro. But his elation was quickly deflated when he realized they were not his people and they might not take kindly to a little flirting.

Whatever the reason these boys in the band were playing dress up, the surprise of seeing them is one of the things I love about being here.

Pea shoots and the Promise of spring

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 16:03:34 -0400

The closest I’ve ever come to living on a farm was the month I spent working as an intern in the kitchen of a New York City restaurant. That’s because the farm came to us. Literally. Not only did the restaurant order fresh produce and humanely raised meat and poultry from local farms, the farmers themselves came to regular four-course “Meet the Farmer” dinners to talk about the food that was on diners’ plates. All we were missing was a few acres of dirt.

I know the whole Farm to Table movement is pretty trendy right now. Jaded restaurant reviewers have referred to this kind of cuisine as “haute barnyard” and the chefs who prepare it as “lettuce whisperers”. But it is trendy for a reason. Aside from all the political and ethical arguments for eating sustainably and locally, there is this: the food tastes good! I guess I went to work behind the scenes to find out why.

The answer turned out to be ridiculously simple. David Shea, the chef I worked for, was brilliant, but it wasn’t his ego that was center stage. It was his ingredients. There is an obvious difference between a generic box ripened tomato that grew a month earlier on another continent and a juicy red Brandywine straight off a vine in New Jersey. Grass-fed beef from a pasture in Vermont tastes a whole lot more flavorful than a corn-fed cow from a feedlot. Wild-caught salmon is another fish altogether from the insipid variety raised on a fish farm.

So many ingredients that I thought I knew by taste, took on a new dimension once I understood the depth of flavor they could achieve by being cultivated in a healthy, sustainably farmed environment. Though David and his wife Laura, who manages applewood, are too unpretentious to use this word, you could say that in their kitchen I learned about “terroir”.

I also learned that celebrating regional flavor in season is not always easy. March is a tricky month to be a locavore. Trickier still if you are running a restaurant with a menu that changes daily. In August when the peaches are ripe and the zucchini, eggplant, basil and tomatoes are practically jumping into the ratatouille pot and the corn is so tender and sweet you don’t need to cook it, life is as happy dance to the dinner table. But if it is March, after a long winter of cooking parsnips and potatoes a hundred different ways, being a chef can get a little trying.

Laura still laughs about the Meet the Farmer dinner she set up one winter evening when the guest speaker was one of her vegetable growers. “I think all he had was a box of garlic!” And so, the featured ingredient was garlic. Even the pastry chef rose to the occasion and everyone loved it.

When I showed up in my chef’s apron on the first day of March, my job was to peel a 10-pound box of Jerusalem artichokes. The next day I got to peel 10 pounds of potatoes. So it continued throughout the month with carrots, beets, rutabagas and celery root. Not a tomato or a piece of lettuce in sight.

“Huh” David or Daniel, his sous chef, would say as one of them approached the walk-in each the morning, ready to dream up his side of the menu. Each would survey the pallets of cabbages and winter greens, and the crates full of tap roots, shake his head, and then head back upstairs to seek inspiration. It always came quickly. If last night the celery root had been pureed with creamer potatoes, tonight it would be julienned into remoulade. Sweet potatoes that had recently been made into dumplings might get smoked in a homemade rig on the stove. Carrots that had pureed into last night’s soup now became a spicy slaw. But still there would be a wistful sigh and the expressed wish that spring be soon to arrive.

And then very modestly it did. There was a box of pea shoots in the walk-in. It was as if there was a celebrity in the room. For a salad starved group, it was hard not to give them top billing in every dish. They crunched like watercress, wilted gracefully and intensified in flavor when sautéed, and added a vivid green to any plate that needed a colorful accent. Best of all, they tasted like springtime.

Recipes

Wilted Pea Shoots, Caramelized Garlic and Diver Scallops

On a back burner at applewood, you can often find a bubbling pot of garlic cloves in olive oil. Chef David Shea uses caramelized garlic in many of his dishes. It has a sweet umami taste and a soft texture that adds character to a recipe. I love how it tastes with the earthy flavor of wilted pea shoots. You can serve it unadorned as a side dish, but because I wanted to serve it as an appetizer, I sautéed a few Diver Scallops and put them on top of the wilted greens. Delicious! One or two scallops make a nice appetizer. Three or four are right for a main course.

Ingredients

1 bunch pea shoots

Caramelized garlic

Garlic oil

Olive oil

Kosher Salt

6 sea scallops (optional)

Lemon zest (optional)

To make the Garlic and Garlic Oil:

Peeled garlic cloves

Olive oil

•Place as many peeled pieces of garlic as you wish in a saucepan. Cover with olive oil.

•Simmer on low heat until the garlic is a deep brown. Turn off heat.

•When the oil has cooled, separate garlic cloves and oil with a sieve, reserving both oil and garlic in separate containers.

To prepare the dish:

•Place two tablespoons of garlic oil in a hot pan over medium heat.

•Add a bunch of pea shoots. Sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Stir just until wilted.

•Toss in a handful of caramelized garlic cloves.

•Ready to serve as a side dish.

To add Sea Scallops:

There is a trick to making perfect scallops. It’s in the heat of the pan.

•Make sure you have washed the scallops and trimmed the little foot that is usually attached to them. Blot dry.

•Heat a skillet over a medium high flame. Add olive oil and continue heating until pan just begins to smoke.

•Sprinkle each scallop on both sides with salt

• Place scallops in pan, making sure there is space between each.

• When scallop is a deep brown on one side, quickly turn over, allowing it to barely “kiss” the pan. Remove from heat.

• Place scallops on top of pea shoots and garlic. Zest a little lemon on top of scallops. Serve.

Pea Shoots, Pickled Corn and Wild Salmon

David Shea’s recipe for pea shoot salad and pickled corn was recently published in the The New Brooklyn Cookbook. He serves it with a delicious coriander-cured salmon and lemon crème fraiche. You should look there to learn how to make the home-cured salmon, as the recipe printed here is a very loose adaptation of his. In deference to an early morning flight tomorrow, I skipped curing the salmon and made the dish with fresh salmon. Wild salmon in New York is hardly local, David Shea is quick to point out. But it is caught the right way and when it comes to eating fish, sustainability is the priority.

Ingredients

1 cup fresh corn

¼ cup sugar

¼ cup kosher salt

1 cup water

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

½ cup white wine vinegar

Olive oil

1 bunch pea shoots

2 wild-caught salmon filets

1/3 cup crème fraiche

2 teaspoons Lemon juice

More salt

To Pickle the Corn:

•Place sugar, salt, water, pepper flakes and vinegar in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil and stir until salt and sugar have dissolved.

•Pour hot liquid over corn.

•Cool mixture overnight. You can refrigerate for up to 3 days.

To prepare the dish:

•Strain corn from liquid, reserving a little bit of the liquid.

•Mix 1 teaspoon pickling liquid with some olive oil and whisk into a vinaigrette.

• In a separate bowl, mix crème fraiche, lemon juice and a tiny pinch of salt. Set aside.

•Heat skillet and add 4 Tablespoons olive oil. Bring to smoking point. Sprinkle both sides salmon filets with salt and place carefully skin side down in hot pan. When skin is brown and crisp but the middle of the salmon is still raw, flip to the other side. Cook quickly, just long enough to cook outside, but leave the inside of filet very pink. Remove from heat.

•Toss pea shoots in vinaigrette with ½ cup of corn, saving the rest as a condiment for another meal.

To assemble the dish:

•Place a dollop of crème fraiche on one side of the plate.

•Place pea shoot and corn salad next to it.

•Place salmon filet on top of crème fraiche. Sprinkle with a few flakes of salt.

•Serve either warm or at room temperature.

Happy (almost) spring!

Note: You can also find David Shea’s recipes featured in the cookbook Harvest to Heat. In addition, Melanie Rehak’s book Eating for Beginners is a great behind-the-scenes account of life in the applewood kitchen and on the farms that supply it.

The Sleigh Bed

Sun, 20 Mar 2011 14:03:23 -0400

When I was eight-years-old and still my grandmother’s only grandchild, I spent a lucky summer month in the Texas Hill Country where my grandmother kept a country home. The days were full and I was very happy doing everything I never got to do at home, I jumped off a rope swing into a river, collected tadpoles in jars, learned how to stretch taffy, milked a cow and gathered peaches from trees to hand crank into ice cream. I also learned a little bit about my people.

One evening, my grandmother and I sat side-by-side on the rusty bench swing next to her backyard shuffleboard court. We listened to the musical saw of the swing and the scuttle of crisp pecan leaves underfoot as we rocked back and forth in the balmy twilight. Cows lowed in the background and the air smelled like fresh rain. I could hear Willy Mae, our family cook, banging around in the kitchen as she readied the fry pot for chicken, stirred the bubbling black-eyed peas and slapped down biscuit dough to roll out and cut into circles.

My grandmother reached for my hand and squeezed. “I’m going to make you a very special gift,” she said with important conviction. “Some day you will have the sleigh bed.”

I knew with a sad premonition what “some day” meant. But, the sleigh bed! I was giddy the sense of grown-up responsibility that comes with caring for a legacy. Yet which one was the sleigh bed? It wasn’t the high throne-like double bed in her bedroom. My grandmother had been born in that bed and it she always referred to it as “Mother’s Bed”. You needed a footstool to climb up onto it. I loved falling asleep next to her there as she read aloud to me from her own childhood copy of Anne of Green Gables.

The next morning I walked throughout the house like Goldilocks, lying down on all the beds trying to imagine which one was to be mine. Sleepy and confused after a time, I approached her meekly, afraid that she would think I was hurrying the bestowal of the gift. “Exactly which one is the sleigh bed?”

“The sleigh bed?” It was my grandmother’s turn to be confused. “Oh, Darlin’!” she laughed after a minute. “It’s the slave bed!”

“The what?”

“The slave bed” she emphasized again. “Honey, it’s the pretty one with the spooled wood in the living room where you play with your dolls. The overseer used to rest on it for his nap.”

A queasy feeling overtook my body as I stood with my pigtailed head cocked to one side, contemplating the paradigm shift that had just occurred. The perception that at some point my family was actually evil has sat with me like a little stone ever since.

Imagine finding your great grandfather’s SS uniform in the attic, or your great grandmother’s Klu Klux Klan card. You know you come from good people, ministers and schoolteachers and farmers in Oklahoma, in my case. And yet, here was irrefutable evidence that they were not only quietly complicit in the misery of millions of people, they actively ruined their lives. I had written a report about Harriet Tubman for school. I understood who the heroes of the slave era were and who they were clearly not.

I’ll never know the hired man who lay on that bed 150 years ago, fanning himself on a hot day; or my great great grandparents whose cotton empire consisted of a few fields and the slaves who tended to them; nor will I ever know the men, women or children who were their sad chattel. I didn’t even inherit the bed. I was thirty-years-old when my grandmother died, and she had never dispersed her possessions in a written will.

“Mother promised a lot of things to a lot of people” my uncle said, turning away from me, when I reminded him of my grandmother’s gift. Just like that I was freed from the legacy of caring for the “sleigh bed”, if not the burdensome legacy of my connection to it.

What I did inherit from my grandmother was her box of recipes. Transcribed in her sure hand onto scraps of paper and envelope backs, they are for cakes and biscuits and dainties. They also spell out the wonderful dishes she grew up eating, and that the women she later employed, used to cook. Among them are some of my favorites: soupy greens and fatback, spoon bread, okra gumbo, fried grits, succotash, Hoppin’ John and pecan pie.

It was only upon reading High on the Hog, Jessica Harris’s tremendous investigation and celebration of the culinary traditions that date back to the African Diaspora, that I realized the inextricable connection between the recipes and the sorry history of the bed. Like most Southern fare, the inspiration for much of the food my grandmother served dates all the way back to the African villages where pots of similar ingredients were combined and stirred by future slaves.

As Americans, we love to refer to ourselves as the “Melting Pot”. Our ancestors come from all over, yet here we are in a synergistically happy stew. For me, does it really matter that my ancestors were slave owners? My mother-in-law, the family genealogist, says that I am also descended from the famous Civil War hero, Francis Barlow, who fought on the Union side. All I know is that I am lucky enough to be here now.

If I still feel a wince of shame when I think of my family’s dark chapter, I also have to remember that I am a steward of the only good to have come out of the slave trade, aside from generations of African Americans: its nourishing creativity.

_{I bought this tintype in an antique store. It is not a photograph of my family. Tintypes became popular during the Civil War and the black caregiver in this photo may very well have been a slave.}

The Recipes

Corn Oysters

While we ate real oysters in a saltine cracker-based casserole on Christmas, these oyster biscuits are made with fresh corn and must get their name from their shape. Dropped onto a hot griddle to cook, they look sort of like cornmeal-fried oysters. They are seriously delicious and if you try any of these recipes, you should start here.

Corn and cornmeal were culinary staples for slaves, who turned them into everything from molasses flavored porridge to cornbread and johnnycakes. In fact, cornmeal was such an unrelenting ingredient in the slave diet, it earned the nickname “Johnny Constant”.

I cup corn kernels

1 beaten egg

¼ teaspoon salt

A little pepper

2 tablespoons flour

1 tablespoon milk

¼ teaspoon baking powder

Directions

• Mix ingredients together

• Drop by spoonfuls onto a hot greased griddle

• Brown on both sides

• Sprinkle with a little salt and serve.

Okra Gumbo

Okra gets a bad rap from a lot of folks. When cooked in stews it can be very slimy. “Mucilaginous” is the word most often used to describe its viscosity. Maybe it’s because I grew up eating it, but I love not only the way it tastes, but the texture and body it gives to a dish like gumbo.

Okra originated in Abyssinia, an area that includes present-day Ethiopia, Eritrea and the highlands of Sudan. It is native to Egypt and grows wild by the Upper Nile. The word “okra” comes from “okuru” in the Igbo language of Nigeria. The word "gumbo” is from the Bantu words “ochingombo” or “guingombo”. Gumbo was most likely introduced to Americans via the Caribbean and became quickly popular in Louisiana and throughout the South.

If you are using fresh okra, be sure to buy small ones. Larger okra can be woody and tough. If you can’t find any fresh okra in the market, the frozen variety is fine. Likewise, unless it is August and the tomatoes are perfectly ripe, go ahead and use canned ones, which can be just as rich in flavor as their fresh counterparts when put in a stew.

Note that Texas okra gumbo is a much simpler affair than its Louisiana cousin. There are all kinds of recipes that include everything from chicken, seafood, sausage, corn and gumbo file spice, but the okra gumbo I grew up eating in Texas was extremely simple and highlighted the taste of the okra itself.

1 lb. okra sliced in ½ -inch pieces

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion diced

1 clove garlic minced

2 cups chopped tomatoes

Cayenne pepper to taste or ½ serrano pepper diced

Salt and Pepper

Directions

• Saute onion in olive oil until translucent and beginning to brown

• Add okra, tomatoes and garlic

• Add a dash of cayenne pepper or serrano pepper

• Add ½ teaspoon salt

• Cover and simmer for 25-30 minutes

• Adjust seasoning with more salt and black pepper to taste

Note: Okra is a natural thickener. Go ahead and add water to the gumbo while it is cooking if it is getting too dry.

Southern Fried Chicken

There was no recipe for this in my grandmother’s recipe box. Frying chicken, it seems, is something one just learns at the stove. My mother taught me how to do it when I was a little girl, old enough to know when to jump from the spattering grease of a hot stove. The recipe couldn’t be simpler, but there is some finesse in the frying. Use a cast iron skillet, if you have one, and get the frying oil very hot—just until it smokes—before you put the chicken in. Don’t crowd the pan, but fry the chicken in batches. My mother always uses Crisco vegetable oil, but my son insists that coconut oil is fine too.

1 fryer cut into pieces.

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon paprika

A shake of cayenne pepper

Salt and pepper

1 cup Crisco or other frying oil

Brown paper bag

Directions

• Take a clean paper bag from the grocery store

• Toss flour and spices inside

• Place a few pieces of chicken in the bag. Scrunch up the top and shake.

• Heat oil in skillet

• Add just enough chicken to the pan so that there is space around each piece

• Fry until golden on all sides

• Place cooked chicken on paper towels or another brown bag to drain

• Cook the rest of the chicken in batches

• Sprinkle with a little salt before serving

Pecan Divinity

Pecan trees grow beautifully in Texas and my family used to collect whole shoeboxes full of them. While pecans are native to the Americas, African cooks were familiar with peanuts and quickly took to the nuts they found in America. A former slave, known only as “Antoine”, is credited with the first successful grafting of a wild pecan with seedlings to initiate the commercial propagation of pecans.

I wish my grandmother had been here with me in my Brooklyn kitchen to help me make these candies. For one, she seemed to make them effortlessly. I, on the other hand, made such a big mess that I will be scraping hardened sugar off of the coffee maker and every other counter appliance for the next week.

The original recipe written faintly in the picture above was a little hard to interpret, so I turned to the internet. A candy thermometer is essential. My grandmother may have been able to cook the sugar until it reaches the hard crack stage, but unpracticed confectioners like myself will want a surer measurement. I’m still not sure I made it right.

2 egg whites

3 cups sugar

½ cup corn syrup

½ cup boiling water

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

Whole pecan halves for decoration

Directions

• Beat egg whites until stiff

• Cook sugar, corn syrup and water until it forms the “soft ball stage” . ie. 250 degrees.

• Slowly pour half of the sugar mixture into egg whites while beating

• Cook rest of the sugar until in reaches the “hard crack stage”, ie. 350 degrees

• Slowly add the rest of the sugar to egg white mixture

• Beat until shiny

• Quickly add vanilla and nuts

• Drop by spoonfuls onto wax paper

• Decorate each candy with a pecan half

• Remove from paper when candy has hardened.

Sources

Jessica Harris, 2011 High on the Hog, Bloomsbury

Crescent Dragonwagon, 2007, The Cornbread Gospels, , Workman Publishing

Aggie Horticulture webpage

National Pecan Sellers Association webpage

Our Immigrant and Native Ancestors, University of West Florida webpage

Irish Comfort Food for St. Patrick's Day

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:03:32 -0400

My grandmother’s Irish heritage showed up in her hilariously salty sense of humor and in her cooking. As prolific as the jokes were, however, she could only cook one thing: a baked potato. But it was irresistibly delicious. Her secret was simple. She just added half a stick of butter to each potato and mashed it in its skin. Next to the overcooked meat patty and the canned wax beans, the potato shone like a pot of gold.

It wasn’t until I went to Ireland that I celebrated my own connection to the country. As a child growing up in Manhattan, St. Patrick’s Day was a little scary. We lived at the end of the parade route and the trip home from school was an obstacle course of drunken merrymakers, regurgitated green beer and invitations to “Kiss Me, I’m Irish”.

But after my honeymoon at Ashford Castle, where The Quiet Man was filmed, I was a committed holiday celebrant. We mark the holiday with pints of Guinness and Colcannon, a delicious mixture of cabbage, leeks and potatoes.

The dish couldn’t be easier to make and is the perfect seasonal recipe. Colcannon is a favorite of locavore chefs, trying to adhere to the growing calendar. Just before the spring vegetables appear, when every root vegetable and hardy member of the cabbage family has been boiled, steamed, roasted or pureed, this is a delicious amalgamation of both categories.

Colcannon used to be served on Halloween when charms were hidden in large dishes of it, portending a marriage proposal to the lucky lass who found one in her bowl. Some desperate girls even put a spoonful in a sock to hang on the handle of the front door. Pity the poor eligible bachelor whose hand missed the knob and reached for the sock.

Forgoing charms and footwear, I recommend you serve your colcannon as a side dish or on its own with a green salad instead of green beer. And make it a Harp or a Guinness. With that tall glass, a Gaelic toast to your health this St. Patrick’s Day: “Sláinte!”

Colcannon

Ingredients

• 1 head green cabbage, quartered and sliced in ¼ inch pieces

• 1 lb potatoes (I prefer Yukon Gold)

• 2 leeks, washed and sliced in ¼ inch pieces

• 1 cup milk

• 5 Tbs. butter

• 2 scallions, sliced

• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Boil potatoes in salted water. I boil them whole and peel when they are cool enough to handle. (Salt the water until it tastes like the sea.)

2. Steam sliced cabbage until soft. You can use some of the potato water. Drain.

3. Slice leeks and gently sauté slowly in 1 Tablespoon butter until soft.

4. Add the rest of the butter and milk to the leeks. Gently heat until butter is melted and milk is warm.

5. Pass potatoes through a ricer or use a masher

6. Add hot milk, butter and leek mixture to potatoes

7. Stir in cabbage

8. Add sliced scallions

9. Season with salt and pepper

Note: Some chopped dill would be a nice addition, as would a half-cup of sautéed and crumbled bacon.