The Tally

The Dirty South

Magnolia — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 01:16:56 +0000

I like martinis. Not very often. Maybe a few times a year. But when I do, they’re always with something pickled, never with a twist, and always vodka, usually Belvedere (if you’re going to go…). One of the few bars we’ve visited here is on an upper floor of a hotel and is kind of a scene, at least for Tallahassee. When they first opened their drinks list was pretty ambitious. One of my favorites was called the “Dirty South,” a dry martini garnished with pickled okra. Genius. The okra is flavorful enough that you don’t need the completely top quality vodka, especially if you splash in a little of the pickling juice. We’ve taken to pickling our own okra and making these at home now and again, which is a good thing because the last time we got a drink at this bar their menu was seriously dumbed down. Pretty much everything was either fruit or chocolate, two substances I feel should only rarely be mixed directly with alcohol, and certainly never together. I mentioned my disappointment to our very nice waitress and she promised to see about bringing the okra back. Even if you’re not an okra fan, you might like pickled okra which is far less slimy due to its vinegar soak.

What I Baked on My Summer Vacation

Magnolia — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:45:43 +0000

I’ve written elsewhere about my aversion to large fruit. But bigness in food isn’t always bad. The scale of food is an under–considered topic, except in discussions of portion size which somehow trend towards comparing cooked meat to a stack of playing cards. Certainly the heaping piles of largely processed calories served up at most restaurants is large-scale food gone wrong. But when my mother returned from a bus trip in Switzerland with two gifts for me, a cuckoo clock and a ½ kilo Swiss chocolate bar, I can tell you which one delighted my ten-year-old self.

Likewise, I was recently at the Hannaford while we were in Maine and found a bag of giant marshmallows, Campfire Giant Roasters to be specific. Certain confections are more fun when they’re big (though I might have to draw the line at a six-foot donut). I imagined a fist-sized marshmallow weighing down my s’mores stick, its size relative to me making me feel, however hokey it might be, like a kid again. But I didn’t buy them. We already had a bag of perfectly good standard-issue marshmallows at home. Adults have far too much impulse control.

But I did make this tower of a cake from Stonewall Kitchen. And it was so much better than I expected. Because the thing about out-sized sweets is that they often appeal more to the eyes than to the taste buds. Which is sometimes fine, like that flavorless but fantastical face-sized rainbow lollipop your parents got you just that once. The one you licked about a dozen times before leaving it blithely on the kitchen counter where it would later be pried off with a dirty dinner knife, leaving a sizable scar that remains to this day (sorry dad). Despite the fact that even a thin slice of this cake resembles a door wedge, it is delicious. It’s not overly sweet and the mortar holding this construction together, the creamy filling, is light and rich at the same time.

I followed the recipe exactly except for the bit about measuring out ¾ cups of the whipped cream. I just used all the cream I’d whipped and dolloped in a bit of sour cream for good measure. I also used store-brand jam, though Stonewall products are generally terrific. The cake looks best served immediately but it did taste great the next day, even after a five hour ride (on ice) to Boston. And it could easily be tweaked for our peach season here in the south by subbing in peach jam and peaches for the filling.

The Armpit of the South

Magnolia — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:41:50 +0000

It’s been an eventful few months around here. A dissertation finished and defended and a somewhat unexpected extended trip overseas, capped off by a family vacation in Maine. A really fabulous, remind-you-how-lucky-you-are kind of summer. And it even feels good to be back here in Tallahassee, enjoying home. The thing about Tallahassee is that there is no big reason to come here, nothing in particular to see or do that would lure anyone to what I sometimes at this time of year can’t help but think of as the armpit of the south. But this is part of what makes this bit of north Florida so great. It has nothing to flaunt, nothing high-profile. So it’s very unpretentious. Which means that even though some of the beaches here rival any in the world people don’t tend to crow about it. They’re just part of life on the panhandle. It also means that there are lots of what a friend calls “pockets of cool” to be discovered. This past weekend we went blueberry picking and, finding the great spot we visited last year to be picked out, we went to a new place in Wacissa.

North Florida has fantastic dead ends. Roads sometimes delta into the Gulf or a river somewhat unexpectedly. This is how we arrived in Wacissa, as the asphalt ran out at a small parking lot by possibly the most charming swimming spot I’ve ever seen. A pocket-size beach on a cool and clear spring-fed river, a cement platform with a large tree and a rope swing: utterly iconic American summer. No life guards, no evidence of any real regulation (except a port-a-potty hidden in the woods). Just a bunch of dripping kids swinging, dropping, and swimming. Sadly, we didn’t have our suits. The kids swam in their underwear but we had to be content with wading.

At one point the group of swimmers schooled together on the platform to watch a very large snake sidewinding the river bottom. Speculation pegged it for a water moccasin, which led a few men to reel of some fish tales. One thing about a southerner is that it’s usually pretty easy to get them talking about most anything (we call my Kentucky dad “chat man” for just this quality). I love this easy prolixity and think a little is rubbing off since when we were traveling I found myself suddenly confident enough to strike up a conversation with just about anyone, even given my shallow grasp of the language. As my mother would say, I could talk to a lamppost.

So the group’s general desire to talk up the dangers of the water and my obvious interest meant we got some local knowledge. Our amateur herpetologists turned out to be just that, as the woman who owned the blueberry farm laughed when I recounted the snake sighting saying that he had been living in those rocks for weeks. Apparently it’s a banded water snake. This suspicion was mostly confirmed when a man on the far end of too many PBRs recently yanked the poor thing from the water and wasn’t bitten. But it did secrete a foul, milky-white funk, which was less than the man deserved.

If the rope swing biology lesson was questionably accurate, we did learn that Jefferson county has no stop lights, just a blinking yellow, and is too poor to have oversight of every swimming hole. This time of year, when cities across the country are closing public pools for budget problems, it seems particularly fortunate that Wacissa, whatever its struggles, has such a lovely and free place to be on a hot summer day.

Big Apples and Blueberry Pie

Magnolia — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:47:06 +0000

Large fruit: I hate it. I’m not sure what evil agri-genius thought a single apple should be able to feed a family of four, but his perverted ideas about proportion have wrecked havoc on fruit aisles across the country. Spots on my apples, fine; apples as big as the Big Apple, no thank you. Here in Florida you hear a lot of buzz about Plant City strawberries. And it is exciting to experience strawberries as a Christmas/winter fruit. But I’m here to report that Plant City’s strawberries reflect national trends: fully two-thirds are overweight. And tasteless (not that I think two-thirds of us have bad taste too, mind you…). It’s easy to forget this—the occasional tart/sweet behemoth in a box making you think you’ve got real-deal berries because you’ve lost a point of reference. But then I was in Washington, DC a couple of weekends ago and had some organic, local, freshly picked berries each one no bigger than a quarter, the whole pile threatening to deliquesce into impromptu jam. Plant City, your berries are just as industrial as your name.

And don’t even get me started on blueberries. I’m a self-professed blueberry snob. If they’re not from Maine and they grow more than two inches off the ground, they’re not blueberries. They are, as my mother would disparagingly call them, “bush berries” or “those New Jersey berries” (seriously, if you live in Baltimore like I did growing up most of your “blueberries” come from the Garden Sate). Maine blueberries are delicate, petite, and vaguely floral. They taste like blueberries, not like the bloated, overly fleshy, citrusy berries we get down south. It may not sound like it, but I’m trying to have a more open mind to southern blueberries since they are in abundance down here right now. So we went to pick blueberries last weekend.

In Maine, if you want blueberries in any number you don’t pick them, you rake them. I’ve actually never done this, but driving around in early August you’ll see “rakers” working in the fields and signs advertising for more people to help rake in the harvest. We usually go to a wild patch on a nearby hill and pick just enough for a few batches of pancakes or muffins then buy the rest; because they’re so low to the ground, picking Maine blueberries is tough on the back.

Our Florida berry picking was unexpectedly terrific. We started with brioche, sticky buns and local color at Tupelo’s in Monticello, then headed to Green Meadows Farm, coming away with one bee sting (me, thankfully, not the kids) and six pounds of surprisingly tasty organic blueberries. They still lack the subtleties of the Maine variety, but they did make a mighty fine pie. And I have a bunch more frozen for future uses. Julia Child’s pie crust recipe yielded its usual flawless results, and Alton Brown’s formula for the filling (minus the freezing) was perfection. It was really a terrific pie—the filling tasted just sweet enough and it actually set! A first for me.

Oranges Three Ways

Magnolia — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:53:29 +0000

When you live in the sunshine state you come across a lot of citrus—at roadside stands, in neighbors’ yards–but not, it turns out, in big chain grocery stores. For some reason, Florida oranges have been bullied almost off the grocery shelves by their big, thick-skinned, easy peeling, but often flavorless California cousins. I wonder if they were bread with thick skin just so they could survive cross country treks? In fact, our local Publix sells almost exclusively California oranges. This strikes me as entirely ridiculous—Florida citrus is fresher, juicier and generally better than anything we get all the way from California. You do have to invest a bit more effort in peeling, or learn to supreme an orange (well worth it). So I’ve been trying out a variety of recipes for our state fruit. Here are three of this season’s favorites:

Swamper Muffins

These are delicious and hearty. I’m not sure where this recipe came from, but I’ve adapted it slightly. Don’t be put off by the whole orange or the dates—both give the muffins full orange flavor and a moist texture. The date flavor is barely detectable. You can substitute up to half apple sauce for the butter, but this will make any bitter notes in the orange more prominent.

1 1/2 c. flour

¼ c. flax meal or wheat germ

3/4 c. sugar 1 t. baking soda

1 t. baking powder 1/2 t. salt

1 whole orange

1/2 c. orange juice

1 egg

1/2 c. melted butter

1/2 c. dates

1. Pre-heat oven to 400. Grease a 12-cup muffin tin.

2. Place all dry ingredients in a bowl and mix.

3. Cut orange in six pieces and grind all wet ingredients in a blender, including dates.

4. Mix wet with dry until blended. 5.Place in individual cups in a muffin tin and bake for 20 minutes.

Roasted Beets with Orange Aioli

This is a great recipe from the New York Times. Be sure to allow enough time to dry the orange peel. It doesn’t take long and gives the aioli a very mellow flavor. We added a bit more mustard and served this as a spin on remoulade with some grilled Gulf shrimp the next day.

Asparagus with Orange Butter

A delicious and refreshing way to serve asparagus. I wanted to literally drink this sauce. Green asparagus would work well too. And we didn’t have tarragon, so basil was a good substitute. Be sure to really reduce the orange juice. I didn’t let it reduce quite enough and the sauce, though delicious, was slightly watery.

Baking With Baby: My Grandma’s Red Velvet Cake

Magnolia — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:24:26 +0000

Babies change time. Not just because early on they scoff at simple distinctions like “day” and “night.” The first few months are like having a job that requires your absolute attention at random increments twenty-four hours a day. So you learn to fit things into the shifting margins of free time. Sudden thirty minute nap? Time to prep dinner. Unexpected ten minutes of contentment in the crib? Time to catch up on email or make a phone call. You get the picture. It’s a difficult adjustment; I’m finding it much easier the second time around. This might be why I found myself baking a red velvet cake with a two week old. (It might also have had to do with my wonderful mother-in-law still being here helping out and a visit from a red-velvet-cake loving best friend). To some this might sound crazy. Not, perhaps, as crazy as making boudin blanc with a seven week old and without an electric meat grinder or sausage stuffer. Screaming infant, meat-filled pastry bag, lamb intestines. Rookie mistake. We’ve not tried making our own sausage since, though we might venture again now that my husband bought me the grinder attachment for our KitchenAid (what woman wouldn’t want to come home after childbirth to a gift like that?).

So, the cake. I love red velvet cake. It’s southern for sure. And there really is no good reason to make it red. It’s basically just a very tender mildly chocolatey layer cake. One pet peeve I have, though, is that people persist in icing it with cream cheese frosting. No, no and NO. Red velvet cake needs boiled icing. Made right it is, as my buttercream-hating husband said on tasting it, a revelation. Lighter than buttercream and with a delicious dairy sweetness. I’d been wanting to make my grandmother’s recipe, recently unearthed from my mother’s recipe file, for a long while. But a cake needs a crowd. And a baby brings one. So it seemed the perfect thing to make while we had a full house after the baby was born.

There is a great bakery in my hometown that makes a red velvet cake put over-the-top by a schmear of chocolate ganache between the cake layers. I used a whipped ganache recipe from The Cake Bible, but any ganache that’s spreadable would work. Credit for the decorating idea goes to the folks at Baked. These pictures aren’t great, but they’ll do.

Boiled Icing

Prep 1^st and let cool in fridge. Cook until thick:

1 c. milk

5 T. flour

Beat with mixer until creamy:

1 c. butter, softened

1 c. 10x sugar

1 t. vanilla

pinch of salt

Add cooled milk mixture slowly until smooth.

Cake

2 eggs, room temperature

1 ½ c. sugar

1 ½ oz. red food coloring

1 T vinegar

2 ½ c. flour

1 t. vanilla

2 T. cocoa

1 t. soda

1 t. salt

½ c. shortening or butter (you could sub the appropriate amount of butter)

1 c. buttermilk, room temperature (set aside 1 T)

1. Pre-heat oven to 350. Grease two 9″ cake pans and line the bottoms with parchment.

2. In a medium bowl, cream shortening, salt and sugar until light.

3. Add eggs. Beat 1 minute.

4. Blend in food coloring and cocoa.

5. In a small bowl, combine vanilla and buttermilk.

6. Add to shortening mixture alternately with flour.

7. Add vinegar and soda to remaining T of buttermilk. Gently mix into rest of ingredients.

8. Bake in two 9” layers for 25-30 min.

Optional: Your favorite spreadable ganache to use between cake layers.

Cracked and Blown

Magnolia — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 02:02:31 +0000

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

Magnolia — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:57:20 +0000

“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

Magnolia — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:19:02 +0000

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

Magnolia — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:05:15 +0000

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.