Cracked and Blown

One of the things we miss most about Charlottesville is the yard at our old place. It was an acre with plenty of trees but enough open space for rambling, off-road games of bocce and giant cook-outs. More than that, though, it connected with three neighboring yards of equal size. In this case, no fences made good neighbors; this yard helped us make a little quasi-pastoral community. One neighbor planted potatoes he shared with us each Thanksgiving, another kept chickens, and still another, goats. Farm animals within a short walk are a boon to any parent of a toddler. And we had our fig tree. I feel OK saying “our” since, as far as I know, we were the first to harvest it. Each year we’d pick its brown turkey figs to make jam and this fabulous fig tart. Here in Tallahassee, we have a similar lack of fences and the neighborhood kids run free through all of the adjacent (though much smaller) yards. From kids of one kind to kids of another. We’ve really missed our neighbors and our figs. I’d hoped to have my very own orangerie, but we are a bit north of the citrus line, so my white eyelet dress will have to wait. For a while we despaired of our seemingly fruitless new home. Until, that is, we realized we had two perfectly productive pecan trees.

A major impediment to DIY, or I guess GIY pecans is the shelling issue. They are a bear. But a neighbor alerted us to the shelling capacities of Tomato Land. For a mere fifteen cents per pound you can have your pecans cracked. For fifteen cents more, you can have them cracked and blown. A tip to any future pecan growers: always have them cracked and blown. Cracked just means the shells have been cracked, leaving you the hard work of splitting the nut and digging out its meat. The blowing process, however that works, literally blows the nutshell apart letting the meats fall out.

 

We ended up with six pounds of pecans, so now I’m on the hunt for recipes. So far I’ve made these muffins. And these cookies are on-deck. Since fall is more a phenomenon of the calendar than of the weather here, I’ve been reduced to experiencing the season through glossy fall magazines. Sad. Happily, though, one of them had a special on pecans this month, so once we’ve had our  fill of muffins and cookies we still have plenty of uses for our first harvest.

Persimmons

“Eat like an apple.” So advised the sticker on each of my recently purchased Georgia-grown persimmons. I didn’t. But the comparison isn’t far off. On a spectrum of flavor, the quince and the persimmon sit to either side of the apple. The quince is dry, subtly floral, tart and even a bit astringent. The persimmon is also slightly floral, but more musky and quite moist. They do not so much ripen as they deliquesce, kind of like a fig. To eat a fruit the way one would eat an apple one has to, I think, know it well. The persimmon and I aren’t yet that well acquainted. But the fruit has made its first impressions. This past weekend I had thought to buy several and try making a persimmon pudding. But the recipes looked to be spiced like pumpkin or squash desserts and I didn’t want to feel I was using persimmons as mere stand-ins for other orange alternatives.

About the time I gave up on the pudding, we decided to have quite a few people over for some pre-trick-or-treating nibbles (our neighborhood, we only just discovered, is the epicenter of Tallahassee Halloween). I needed to pull together some savory snacks in a short amount of time. A quick search on Epicurious turned up a serendipitous recipe—persimmon salsa. The only change I made was to add a healthy pinch of salt. It was so satisfying to make a fall dish that evoked the best of summer. The weather is still fairly warm here, so one can only handle so much pumpkin bread and squash soup. The persimmon salsa felt like a fitting seasonal transition.

Mighty Mullets

The panhandle of Florida is far, far different from the usual image the Sunshine State conjures. The saying “the further north you go, the further south you get” is about right. This is by far the most rural place I’ve lived. And rural to the point that for long stretches of driving you might not even see a McDonalds. It’s interesting, without question. And a little unsettling. Fortunately, the unsettling moments often edge into humor. On a recent drive down the west coast of the state we went into a gas station that featured a) a refrigerator advertising “wigglers” with a sign promising to contact The Law should anyone be caught stealing said “wigglers” and b) a large photo album of local “kills” from wild hog to deer, most accompanied by proud hunters between the ages of 6 and 80.

Bitchin’ Camero and the backdoor to a bar advertising the “Mullet Shuffle: Cold Beer, Hot Music”

Aside from random roadside pit stops, we’ve been trying more intentionally to get a taste for the panhandle’s particular brand of Americana. We started out at the Panacea, FL Mighty Mullet Festival. Those of you who know what a mullet is probably think of it as a trash fish. Even having been to the festival, I’m kind of unclear on what one is. We had freshwater mullet at Wakulla Springs, but I have no idea if this is the same as the mullet the salt-water gulf town of Panacea was celebrating. Maybe an ichthyologist reader can enlighten us? Really, it’s no matter because the mullet festival (and yes, there is a crossover between a love for the fish and a love for the haircut) didn’t really include as many mullet as one might have expected. But we did have some darn good smoked mullet dip, and a free sample of some fine shrimp boil. Both were from a seafood store whose name I forget but whose building I’ll certainly remember if we make the solitary drive to Panacea again.

The only other anecdote from the day, and it’s one that doesn’t fit too easily with the rest, is that the MC inexplicably opened the festival by assuring those assembled that “For a woman, staying at home and raising her children is the most intellectually challenging thing God can call her to do.” Challenging? Yes, extremely. Intellectual? Not so much, unless other people’s two year olds are way smarter than mine.

After the scaly glimmer of the mullet festival faded and the temperature finally fell below 90, we were ready to make our way north to Havana, FL for their yearly pumpkin festival. Like the mullets of the mullet festival, pumpkins were in alarmingly short supply. The pumpkin patch was clearly a photo-op patch. But the event was still a lot of fun, with a petting zoo, stroller parade, and one entirely unanticipated treat—the Lion’s Club Chili Cook-Off. For one measly dollar each we got to try ten different chilis made by local folks. We learned a few things. Havana Pentacostals can’t cook chili worth a damn. No taste for spice, those folks. And the local funeral home’s chili just didn’t set right. But one gentleman, whose affiliation I forget, won us over by serving a very good chili made with a mix of venison and wild hog, both of which he’d shot himself.  I’m sure this man’s picture and the yet-to-be-butchered components of his chili grace an album in a Havana gas station.

Putting Up

We’ve been putting up with a lot lately. Incessant heat ergo constant AC, the plights and gripes that attend any move to a new place, and the slowly-revealed quirks of a new house. Things we’ll eventually stop noticing but which are annoying now. Mostly, though, my family has been putting up with me. The best euphemism for my moods might be “mercurial.” Other less charitable terms might include bitchy, short-fused, grumpy or misanthropic. Blame the hormones, blame the heat. It doesn’t matter. I’ve been a pain.

But last weekend we shifted the frame. Instead of putting up with me we put things up. In this case, dilly beans. I’d never made pickles before. This summer’s real pickle project was supposed to be watermelon rind. But these are much easier and can be tackled in part of a morning with little prep or clean-up. Plus they are ready to eat the next day. There are plenty of good recipes online. We used black peppercorns, red pepper, and fresh dill in ours and they came out really well. We served them on a cheese tray last night and managed to finish off a whole jar. And our beans came from a new find here in Tallahassee—Tomato Land. It’s a wonderful farmstand/ gourmet deli where you can get a fabulous BLT on homemade wheat bread for $4 and great produce for cheap as well. It’s a welcome refuge from the Publix.  Publix does not sell lime trees… Tomato Land does. But our baby steps towards large-scale citrus production are for another post.

A Little Bit Pregnant

“I think my mom’s a little pregnant.” Fateful words uttered by my mother when she was nine. Her parents had some points of friction in their marriage. Nana was always wont to say, solemnly, that she was part of a mixed marriage. Catholic and Lutheran. This twentieth century bridging of the schism had two major structural problems. First, Fridays. In the words of my nana’s mid-century East Coast ethnic prejudice, Catholics are “mackerel snappers” which means we eat fish on Fridays. She hated to be told what to do, especially in the kitchen. So, despite the fact that she was a wonderful cook, somehow broiled frozen “squarefish” or tuna casserole were the only dishes that made it to the dinner table on Fridays. Second, birth control. My grandfather didn’t believe in it. When she got pregnant with her third child family lore has it that nana didn’t talk to him for six months. And they certainly didn’t share the news with the kids. Mom was on her own and her naïve assessment, made to an inquiring neighbor, did not please her parents.

In fact, this inadvertent misstep may be second only to one that happened a year or two later. Mom was sitting on the couch reading a comic book she’d borrowed from a boy in the neighborhood while her parents had a “discussion” at the dining room table. During the course of their exchange she heard an unfamiliar word. Her bespectacled, slightly plump, studious self jotted in the margin of that comic book “Look up ‘F*CK.’” Unfortunately, her admirably inquisitive bit of marginalia was discovered by the parents of the boy who’d lent her the book. And in at least their second bout of 1950s parental projection, my grandparents meted out a harsh sentence. She could attest, I think, that Dial soap could keep one’s mouth fresh far longer than 24 hours.

Being a little bit pregnant is how I think of things during those first twelve weeks when the news is still under wraps. So I’ve been a little bit pregnant. And a lot sick. In woolly-damp Florida heat. Not cooking, eating endless variations on simple carbohydrates, and pondering how I could possibly make it through the first trimester. Hence my lack of enthusiasm for a blog whose mission has predictably slipped toward stories about food. And feeling pregnant casts me back to a very difficult time; the end of the first trimester of my first pregnancy coincided almost to the day with my mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis.

My body and I are slowly becoming simpatico again. Not too much cooking but more eating. I’ve lately been enjoying these wonderful sweet olive oil tortas. A friend gave me some last year. I had always meant to ask where she got them and just plum forgot. They’ve since turned up at a few specialty grocery stores, including our local co-op, New Leaf. A package isn’t cheap, but it’s totally worth it. Lightly flavored with sesame and anise and crusted over the top with sugar, they’re ideal for sensitive tummies, or just for days too hot for anything more substantial. Plus they come smartly wrapped in wax paper so you don’t even need to dirty your fingers. Or, in theory, so you can eat half and save the rest. Not that I’ve ever tried that.

Consider the Lobster Roll

So here it is. The first entry from this blog’s namesake. We’re here in Tallahasee and honestly I couldn’t have felt less like talking about it. It’s been a rough transition in ways I’m not quite ready to share with the interweb. But I’m slowly making a comeback. A brief exercise in regression and denial is just what’s needed to push things forward. So travel back with me, if you will, to a Fourth of July spent in Maine, my anti-Florida.

An interesting entrant in our small Maine town’s parade, and no doubt indicative of how most viewers felt about the weather: shitty.

This summer in Maine has been the rainiest on record and we were there for a full two weeks of daily precip. “Cats and dogs,” “like pouring piss out of a boot,” “comme vache qui pisse”—whatever colorful expression you have for a 336 hour downpour would probably be accurate to describe the weather during our vacation. But rain be damned, we cooked out on the Fourth. Just the usual American classics, though with the addition of the New England red hot—a fairly standard (but I’m told much tastier) hotdog in a ghoulish red casing. In a way, though, they’re truth in advertizing. After all, shouldn’t tube steak, that most unnatural of meat formations, look as freakish as it actually is? In the battle surf v. turf, surf was a clear winner on my (rain splattered) Fourth of July plate.

It took me a long time to come around to lobster. Too much like eating an overgrown bug. And too much disassembly required. But in time, taste and repetition won me over—a nibble of Newberg here, a sip of bisque there. A claw. And finally my own pound-and-a-quarter. What never really excited me, though, was the lobster roll. Then one day a friend’s mother served me a peekytoe crab roll. As a Marylander I’m used to my shellfish being highly seasoned. Or chased with a lot of beer. Preferably both. But Mainers like things plain. Just the slightly fibrous, sweet crabmeat with some mayo on a buttered New England hotdog bun. It was subtle and delicious. But why waste lobster on a roll? I’m still not sure I can answer that when the alternative is salty fresh, steaming hot and comes equipped with copious amounts of melted butter (with a slug of sherry added if you’re me).

But for lunch or for picnics a lobster roll is just so easy. And, in deference to this post’s gratuitous DFW reference, it also puts some distance between you and the recently living crustacean you’re about to devour (but not too distant, like the hotdog is from its allegedly bovine or porcine origins). I heed the counsel of most culinary mavens who warn against too much mayonnaise or shredding the lobster too fine or adding much seasoning (can’t resist a little shake of Old Bay). And I’m devoted to the New England hotdog bun as the perfect conveyance for what is basically a lobster salad. Buttered and grilled on both sides, its crispy saltiness is a great counterpoint to the mild sweetness of the lobster.

ME/MD Lobster Rolls (makes about eight)

3 1 ¼ lb. lobsters (hardshell), steamed and cracked, meat removed and torn into 1/2-1 inch chunks.

1 celery stalk strings removed (just use a veggie peeler) and finely diced

About 2 T. red onion chopped as finely as possible

2-3 T. full-fat mayonnaise

Dash of Old Bay (literally, just one shake)

Squeeze or two of lemon juice

Eight New England Style hotdog buns, buttered and grilled on both sides.

Fried Tomatoes Two Ways

Any southerner or person with aspirations of southern culinary credibility (like yours truly) knows about fried green tomatoes. Fewer people seem to know about fried red tomatoes. I’ve had the rare good fortune to know both. Maryland has absolutely excellent red tomatoes, especially in the tidewater areas. My Nana, an Annapolitan, used to make a wonderful summer meal of fried red tomatoes and corn fritters. They are so easy it’s almost criminal. The results are a peppery sweet, salty combination of buttery flour coating the savory but fruity warmth of a just-cooked slice of tomato. Serve them alongside golden-sweet corn fritters and you’ve pretty much got summer on a plate. We use the fritter recipe from the JOC. I think many recipes would work. The key is to grate the corn on a box grater so that you use only the inside of the kernels.

These tomatoes are best fried in cast iron. Since red tomatoes are much wetter and less firm than their green counterparts the coating won’t uniformly crisp and the more meaty tasting red tomato benefits from the flavors that inhere in a well-seasoned pan. The Lodge brand makes a very good pre-seasoned cast iron pan that is reasonably priced. You can also find good deals on collectible cast iron if you’re the type who enjoys flea markets or auctions. Friends once gave me my most cherished skillet, a #8 Griswold. It is lighter in weight and darker then my other skillets and cooks with very even heat. Plus it’s so well-seasoned that fried eggs slip easily across its surface.

Fried Red Tomatoes (serves 4 generously)

2 large, very ripe and in-season tomatoes

About ½ c. flour seasoned well with salt and pepper

Butter for frying (about 3- 4 T.)

1. Cut the tomatoes into thick (3/4 in.) slices.

2. Melt butter until sizzling in a cast iron skillet.

3. Place the seasoned flour on a plate or in a shallow pan.

4. Dredge each tomato slice in the flour to coat both sides and place in the hot butter.

5. Fry until browned on both sides. Serve immediately.

Green tomatoes are another story entirely. Citrusy and firm, they benefit from a bit more toothsome coating. One of our favorite brunch spots in Charleston, Poogan’s Porch, makes a bang-up BLT with fried green tomatoes and goat cheese. Or just eat them as a side dish with any meal. In my experience, you don’t need any complicated battering measures to achieve an excellent fried green tomato. These are easy enough for a weeknight supper.

Fried Green Tomatoes (serves 4 generously)

2 large green tomatoes

½ c. cornmeal (not stone ground)

Coarse salt

Hot sauce (we like Frank’s Red Hot—I think Tabasco is too hot for these)

Vegetable oil (about 3-4 T.)

1. Cut the tomatoes into 1/3 inch slices; lay them out on a tray and sprinkle one side well with salt.

2. Splash each slice with a drop or two of hot sauce.

3. Heat the oil in a nonstick skillet until a small drop of water sizzles in it.

4. Dredge each tomato slice in the cornmeal and place in frying pan.

5. Fry until slices are well browned on each side.

Note: If you need to work in batches, I like to place the finished slices on a wire cooling rack so that the bottom coating doesn’t get soggy (as it does if you use a paper towel).

We have been chalking up some miles on the car and tallying quite a few interstate crossings, visiting family and friends up and down the east coast before we head south. I plan to cling to the cool northeast by sharing a few Maine-ish recipes once we’re settled in the Sunshine State.

Chesapeake Bay Potatoes

During the summer of 1976 my family went, as they always did, downy o’, hon. I.e. “down to the ocean,” i.e. to Ocean City Maryland. This is no rarefied beach hideaway. It’s straight up kitsch, with a boardwalk featuring Thrashers French Fries, bins of saltwater taffy, fresh squeezed lemonade, sundry tchotchke shops, a wax museum and, of course, a roller coaster. You can still find some of the more dilapidated small condos that lined the beach in the ‘70s, but now it’s mostly big hotels. The beach is dredged which means the waves throw you right up on the sand. But it’s fun all the same. Our family usually stays on the Bay side of the island since it’s cheaper and quieter.

There are few things more maddening than having someone gripe at you about what you’re cooking or how you’re cooking it. I had a boyfriend who once used to come up to me as I was cooking x or y dish and say “Oh, you’re going to do it that way?” That has become a phrase we use in our house to mean “Butt out—you’ll eat what I cook you!” But honestly we rarely use it since we’re both usually so grateful to be cooked for we don’t really care about the particulars.

On this 1976 beach trip, which was the occasion of my first birthday, both my nana (herself a great cook, but one who felt all things must be done “according to Hoyle”) and my dad (whose signature dish remains “Eggs Velveeta,” which should give some sense of his utter lack of culinary credibility) were giving my mom a hard time about how she was fixing the potatoes for that evening’s meal. Who knows if she’d had one to many Natty Bohs, but she took those potatoes and threw them right over the deck and into the Bay. Voilà, Chesapeake Bay Potatoes. This story somehow came to be told to illustrate my mom’s temper, but I’ve always sided with her. Chesapeake Bay Potatoes may be my favorite of her recipes.

If you look closely you’ll see that they’re eating potato chips.

Low Country Boil

My dad is a man who likes shrimp. He also has the adorable quirk of not being able to pronounce the word—it always comes out as “srimp.” Despite many dinnertime clinics with his English teacher wife and English major daughter, he still ends up one H short. Pronunciation aside, my father loves shrimp so much that my mother once got him a pottery dish designed especially to hold his shrimp and cocktail sauce appetizer (he also has his own pottery brie baker, but our family’s obsession with nibbles and snacks is a subject for another entry). We had peel and eat shrimp with homemade cocktail sauce, (sometimes homemade) fries, and salad for dinner pretty frequently. We also loved to go get shrimp, fries and beers at Cross Street Market. The long market served all sorts of good things.

Utz Potato Chips sold small single bags of chips scooped warm out of the stall window. There were nameless (to me, at least) bakeries with the usual butter cookies topped with almost chalky, but oddly delicious, chocolate frosting. Not to mention produce stands and places selling sparkly trinkets of all kinds. And, of course, there was the iconic Cross Street cheese guy. I’m sure his stall had a better name, and in fact I’ve visited their outpost at the Baltimore Farmer’s Market. But this man no longer works there—I think he sold the place and retired. But he was tall, with a red face, extremely blond hair and an (at least to me) encyclopedic knowledge of cheese. Plus he was liberal about giving tastes to this cheese-loving kid. Beyond the cheese man was the fish market and beyond it, Nick’s Seafood.

I won’t claim to be a die-hard or a downtown insider, but we loved to go to Nick’s before it became the fratty happy hour destination for Federal Hill’s young professionals. Nick wore a bucket cap pierced with fish hooks. He’d shuck your oysters straight from ice-filled coolers under the bar and serve up quarts of cheap beer in open white tupperwares that barely held their shape when full. At an adjacent counter a woman used a counter-mounted potato slicer to make hand-cut fries. And, of course, they served steamed shrimp well seasoned with the only thing shrimp should be seasoned with—Old Bay.

My mother steamed shrimp one way and one way only: she’d dump a can of cheap beer into a pot, get it boiling, set in a steamer basket that fit the pot, dump in her shrimp, sprinkle them liberally with Old Bay, put on the top and let them cook until their tails curled and they were completely pink.

Now that I’m married to a Sandlapper, I’ve had to make room for some other takes on shrimp. One of my favorites is the Low Country Boil, which we’ve hybridized with my mom’s steamed shrimp method. It’s basically a hardier take on our family staple—adding in corn on the cob, smoky sausage, and red potatoes. The key is to get all the different ingredients done but not mushy. And, despite what any Low Country resident might say, to not boil the shrimp. In this version, the other ingredients make a platform on which the shrimp can steam and won’t get mushy.

Low Country Boil (serves 6-8)

2 t. olive oil (if using turkey kielbasa)

1 package kielbasa

12 small red potatoes (about 1.5 inches, or larger ones cut in half)

1 onion, sliced

1-2 cans cheap beer

2 bay leaves

2.5 pounds large shrimp (preferably domestic)

4 ears of corn, shucked and each ear cut into two or three pieces

2-3 t. of Old Bay or more

1. Cut the sausage into 1-2 inch chunks and sauté in the bottom of a large pot (8 qt.) until browned. Remove to a bowl.

2. Sauté the onion in the juices from the sausage. Pour in one beer and add the potatoes and bay leaves.

3. Put the lid on and simmer for 7 minutes, until potatoes are barely becoming tender.

4. Add the corn and mix with potatoes. Simmer about 3 minutes.

5. Stir in the sausage.

6. Scatter the raw shrimp (peels on!) on top of the corn, potatoes, and sausage. Add more beer if necessary (you should have an inch or two of liquid in the bottom of the pot).

7. Sprinkle with Old Bay. Put the lid on and steam about 5 more minutes, or until the shrimp are pink and their tails are curled. Watch carefully so they don’t overcook.

8. The finished dish looks impressive, so I like to carry the pot straight to the table and serve family style with a green salad on the side (be sure to fish out the bay leaves).

Dundalk Banana Pudding

Dundalk is a town in Ireland. It’s also an industrial area of Southeast Baltimore. It’s in the county but feels like the city, at least to me since as a kid I usually arrived there from downtown via the Harbor Tunnel so the city never really ended. My dad’s best friend worked for Dundalk’s long-defunct branch of Bethlehem Steel Company, my high school boyfriend’s dad worked at the Lever Brothers factory, and my mom taught night classes at Dundalk Community College. I could be conflating memories, but I think we also used to hunt shark’s teeth at Sparrow’s Point once Beth Steel shut down. So this part of Baltimore was a big part of our lives.

Somehow, in our family the word “Dundalk” also came to refer to anything overly or unexpectedly large. My seven-year-old self might have said “Wow, the mosquito bite on my ankle is the size of Dundalk!” Or my Dad still might exclaim “That steak is the size of Dundalk!” Good, bad, indifferent, if it was big it was the size of Dundalk.

Which strangely brings me to a dessert not prevalent in this ironically small hamlet: banana pudding. That concoction heaped in gelatinous yellowy mounds on salad bars far further south of the Mason-Dixon than Baltimore. A box of Nilla Wafers, some vanilla pudding, bananas and Cool Whip. Why even give it a mention? Because made properly it is divine. The pudding is infused with banana, the bananas and cookies still have integrity—it’s basically an American version of trifle, heavy on the custard.

For my husband’s graduation party I made a banana pudding the size of Dundalk. Really, it was huge. Big enough to have leftovers after a party for more than thirty people. Unfortunately its creamy expanse wasn’t captured on film but conjure, if you can, the largest Pyrex lasagna pan you can think of and that’s about the size of it. Our almost-two-year-old son could easily have taken a banana pudding bath.

It’s a terrific casual dessert for a crowd—easy to assemble and universally enjoyed. No one wants to admit to liking something so seemingly low-brow, but by the end of the night the pan is empty, guests are surreptitiously scraping the sides of the pan with a spoon or finger, or they’re clamoring to take the leftovers home.

A few simple tricks give this buffet mainstay a bit more integrity. First, use cook-and-serve pudding. No need to make your own (though you certainly could) but do not use instant. It’s horrible stuff. And make said pudding with whole milk, two percent if you must, but no skim (also horrible stuff). Second, assemble the dish while the pudding’s still hot. This helps all the flavors to come together. And finally, top with real whipped cream. Once whipped, the cream will last a good 48 hours, longer than your pudding is likely to. So much better than Cool Whip.

Dundalk Banana Pudding (serves about 20)

3 quart shallow baking dish

3 large boxes of cook-and-serve banana pudding prepared according to package directions

8-10 medium bananas, fairly ripe (a bit of brown on the skin, but still firm—you want that good banana flavor)

2 boxes vanilla wafers (generic are fine)

1 pint heavy whipping cream

Powdered sugar

1. While hot, spread some pudding in the bottom of the dish. Top with vanilla wafers and slices of banana. Repeat layers, ending with a smooth layer of pudding. Refrigerate until chilled.

2. Whip the cream, sweetening to your taste (since the pudding is so sweet, I usually just use about 2 T of powdered sugar). Spread over cooled pudding. Garnish with any remaining wafers. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

Crock pots of mac and cheese and baked beans plus vases of flowers from our neighbor’s yard, all staged for party set-up.