Recent Foodsville publications

Mighty, Mighty Collards

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:47:21

    I started out to write about low country social customs, but a friend sent me a request for instructions on cooking collards and I had to decide which topic to go on about. I think I am more qualified to discourse on the latter, not to mention inclined.
   Starting out, I have to say that collards – my favorite winter vegetable - are just greens; big, heavy, dark green leaves. They can be made absolutely unpalatable with a little time and effort, but they can be – and should be – silken and firm. Many eaters only know canned collards or what could pass for canned collards if they hadn’t been cooked so long with so much sugar that they are nothing more than green residue in sweet ‘pot licker’.
   Collards will always have a strong flavor, there’s no getting around that and one shouldn’t want or attempt to overcome it. If a more genteel flavor is required, try spinach or kale or chard. I’ll admit that I sometimes mix those milder greens into my collards and the result is quite satisfying and I can serve it to eaters with a disinclination to collards, but earthy collards in all their heavy, post frost greenness are wonderful all on their own.
   There are, to me, two ways to make collards. The first - my favorite - writes out long, but isn’t much trouble. Collards, like other leafy vegetables cook down to nothing.
   First, buy your self some collards. They are, as noted above, best after the first frost. That’s what I have always been told and experience bears it out. Get a lot of collards because a lot of the leaf is stem. Break the leaves off from the main bunch and cut out the tough woody stem. Leave the branches. You will have the two sides of the leaf with a triangular cut out down the middle. Put that one aside and do the next one and the next one until they are all done. This takes some time, but it isn’t an unpleasant kitchen task.
   You start out with a sink full of leaves that require you to go find the seldom-used lobster pot because that’s the only thing you have that might accommodate the volume of greens that a bunch of collards represents.

       If you have been carefully stacking your leaves in the best OCD manner you will have quite a nice big pile. It isn’t as big as it’s going to get, but it is a nice satisfying mass of greens. Roll them up together like a roll of bills and with a BIG sharp knife cut the roll cross-wise into ribbons maybe an inch wide. Then turning the knife perpendicular to the strips, cut them once or twice more. Anymore than that and you are making chopped collards and chopped collards are what come from a can and appears on cafeteria steam tables. Chopped collards suck.
   Put this mass of collards – and it will seem to be an even bigger pile of greens now that you have cleaned and cut them – into the sink and fill it with cold water. Stir the greens around a few times; let them soak gently stirring and turning them a couple of times. This allows the dirt to fall off and sink to the bottom.
   While they are soaking, you can do something else like think about what wine goes with collards. Investigate a few. Muscadine works nicely. Most of the dirt will fall away and the little that clings will likely fall away when you lift the collards out of the water and transfer them to a colander, a big colander, maybe two, to drain.
   If you determine there is still dirt and sand on the ribbons, repeat the process. DON’T SHAKE OR SPIN THE LEAVES DRY. The water that clings to them is what they cook in. Some folks I know go directly from lifting them out of the rinse/soak water to the pot. This is okay, but puts a lot of water in the pot.
   In that large pot from the basement or garage - on medium heat - heat some oil, a half a chopped onion and a quarter pound of diced pork. This can be bacon, pancetta, a pork chop, a smoked pork chop – whatever. Cut it up coarsely and cook it with the onions until the onions start to wilt. It’s going to cook and tenderize along with the greens. This is flavoring meat and can be omitted, naturally, if you don’t want it.
   Now we add the collards. Put in a double handful bunch and turn them over a time or two. Put in another double hand full or two and turn them over. Keep doing this until you have managed to get them all into the pot.
   Put on the top and turn the heat down to medium low. The collards will cook in the water that clung to them. You can add salt to them if you like as they cook. These can steam for twenty or thirty minutes being turned every so often and they will cook down to nothing so that you will have reach deep into the pot to stir them.
   At this point, they can sit, off the heat for quite some time. When you want to eat them, you can move them to a more reasonable sized vessel and heat them up. If you find they are bitter to your taste, add a teaspoon of sugar and stir it in while heating. (This is not usually a problem with post frost collards) If you like garlic in your greens, add some with the onions in the beginning. Some people cook collards with pepper flakes. This can be good, but be careful. Some people add a little - a couple of ounces - chicken/veal/beef or vegetable stock for the flavor. I do, too, sometimes if there some sort of stock cooking on the stove; otherwise not.
   Serve them with hot pepper vinegar on the side. Other condiments are plain vinegar, white or cider, almost any pickle or pickle relish, chutney, chowchow, Tabasco … there are others, but those are the standards.
   That’s how I like them. If, however, you are feeling that you must absolutely ruin them to reconnect with grade school experiences do the following. Get a bunch of collards. Wash them off a little bit and chop the bejeesus out of them stems and all. Boil up a pot of water and dump the chopped mess in with a ham hock, a quarter cup of salt, a quarter cup of sugar and bring back to a boil. Reduce to a simmer, cover and cook for the first half of the ball game. If they aren’t over-done enough, give them another quarter. When they are cooked unto green death, lift them out of the pot licker with a slotted spoon or shovel or something appropriate and ladle into a serving dish. Make sure to have some of the green water to call pot licker on hand so you have something to mash your corn bread into. The collards will be just like Public School Double ‘O’ zero’s all over again. My, my.
   For this style of collards, you should maybe just bust open a can. They will be pre-ruined for you. All salt and water.

   Sometime ago I was given - and have since lost - The White Trash Cookbook. There were some pretty good ideas - as well as some plain awful ones - in that little book and one of them was a collard sandwich. If you have any collards left over, drain them as best you can and put them between two slices of bread. Mayo is an option. I think the book specified mushy white bread – Wonderbread - and Duke’s Sandwich Spread. I do not remember trying this, but found it appealing. A thin slice of salty ham would not be amiss.

Christmas Pig Accomplished - with Photos

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:01:35

It’s cold where we live and the piglet stayed in the 40 degree garage for several days until it thawed out. I brought him inside the day before and removed the rib cage and backbone thinking this would allow me to stuff the cavity and then slice straight through presenting a complete slice of pork with stuffing. This is probably something that a pro could do, but it didn’t work for me. I didn’t make the forcement dense enough for that. Then there was the issue with the skin. I’ll get to that.

Christmas morning, I stuffed the piglet with a pork forcemeat I had made the day before and refrigerated overnight. I trussed piglet using butchers string and some sort of extra heavy bamboo toothpick that Laura keeps in the pantry in the event someone has monumental needs in the tooth picking line. When all was done, the pig looked like – well a like pig. His shape was good, his waist trim just like it had been when he was complete with bones and viscera.

I tried putting something in the eyes, but when the finished pig emerged from the cooker I came to the conclusion that putting faux eyes in a piglet is un necessary and somewhat ghastly. The eyes, when cooked, recede into the skull and the pig appears to be squinting and I will, if I ever do another piglet for presentation – omit this garnish altogether. I put tin foil on his ears and a shallot in his mouth. His mouth wasn’t very big and a shallot was about as big as I could get in there.

Trussed and thus decorated, I placed him in a the largest pan in the house, discovered that he was too long for the largest roasting pan in the house and thus too long for the oven and that either his head or behind was going to have to extend over the lip of the pan. I found a large, long metal meat fork and used that to hold piglet’s head above the pan handles and fired up the Weber. The Weber is a big gas grill, but piglet filled it from smokey side to side with essentially no room left at either end.

Running the Weber around 325, pig and stuffing were done in about two hours, but had not achieved any degree of crispness of skin. I think this was because the stuffing kept him moist and he just couldn’t, despite extending the cooking time by about another hour and raising the temperature a hundred degrees, get crisp. Crispy cracklin’ is, I read, one of the most significant features of a roast suckling pig. Ears, tail and head got quite crispy. (This is a somewhat strange thing to present. It looks alot like I roasted the dog.)

Dinner eventually had to be eaten so piglet came inside, had a twenty minute rest to compose itself, and then I attacked with several extremely sharp knives only to find that carving the pig was quite like attempting to carve a greasy football. Essentially what I had to do was rip all the skin off the well done, very tender and tasty meat and throw it into the hot oven to crisp up. It did so admirably.

We had eleven diners and there is no pig meat left (not there was a lot to begin with) and very little stuffing. We had a brace of chickens to augment piglet and that was mostly consumed as well. There were roasted sweet potatoes, Brussel sprouts with bacon, minty peas, oyster dressing, and some other stuff. Dessert was a variety of nut tarts and cakes.

It was probably a mistake to go to the gym this morning, but having survived that, it’s time to move on. Yikes.

Simple Planning Tips, Leftover Recipes and Frugal Ideas can Save You Hundreds of Dollars per Month

tsolomoningv@gmail.com — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 19:15:02

Tips from the folks at LeftoverLovers.com

Combine a little planning with some flexibility, leftover recipes, and new technology, and you could save hundreds on your monthly food bill — without compromising quality. This article discusses many budgeting tips, meal planning ideas, leftover recipes, and frugal shopping to maximize your savings. With the state of the economy today, we need to save everywhere we can!

Plan weekly menus with leftovers in mind

Plan at least four to five dinners for the week, based on what’s on sale in your store circular (most are available online). If possible, double those recipes and freeze the second for a complete leftover meal. If not, maybe plan some 2-meals-in-one dinners, doubling up on the key meal ingredient only. Use that leftover chicken, beef, turkey, or whatever it may be to follow up the next day with a meal using some of our leftover chicken recipes, leftover beef recipes, leftover turkey recipes, or other leftover recipes that you already have. This “planning” for leftovers can go a long way when trying to save money and time.

Be brand flexible

Use your store’s loyalty card religiously, and be willing to buy different brands in order to maximize the money saved.

Track prices and save

While your store circular obviously tells you what’s on sale, it doesn’t reveal whether the price is a true bargain. Use a price-tracking website to assist you with this one. The two largest are http://www.thecouponmom.com, which is free but requires registration; and http://www.thegrocerygame.com, which charges a fee of $10 every eight weeks for a list of deals from one store ($5 for each additional store).

These sites track thousands of items for months at a time, and publish weekly lists by state and store showing the best deals. They also let you know if a coupon is available for a particular item by listing the circular name — such as “Smart Source” — and its date.

Coupons equal money

To maximize your discount, subscribe to the your local Sunday paper, pull out the coupon circulars each week, write the date on them and save them in a drawer or a flexible file. Throughout the week keep track of the items you need to add to your grocery list. When you’re ready to shop, go to the grocery website, click next to the items you want, print the list, grab your dated circular from your file, clip the relevant coupon and go.

For those coupon-resistant types, the only time you have to cut out a coupon is when you actually save a bunch of money with it. Quite often your loyalty card will account for the coupon anyway.

If you’re a coupon queen or king and you really want those savings to add up, definitely visit coupon sites such as http://www.thecouponclippers.com, http://www.coolsavings.com or http://www.coupons.com.

More ideas to save money

The key to saving money is buy big items first, on sale (kind of an extension to “Plan weekly meals with leftovers in mind” from above). Once or twice a month stock up on meat or poultry on sale and freeze it. Then plan four or five days worth of meals from seasonal recipes or “2-meals-in-one” leftover recipes, using vegetables and fruits from nearby farmers’ markets. (You can search for a farmers’ market in your area on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website.) Better yet, grow your own produce.

There is a dramatic price difference between the farmers’ market and the grocery store, where people buy stuff in packages. For example, a bag of chopped lettuce might cost $3 to $4 a package at the grocery store, as opposed to 50 cents a head at farmer’s market.

Instead of buying deli meat at $6.99 a pound, cook a whole chicken for less than a quarter of the price, and use it for sandwiches or other “leftover” meals throughout the week.

Also stock up on grains and beans in the bulk bins for as little as 99 cents a pound. To save money, stay away from processed foods and go for the rice and beans.

Budgeting Tips and Tricks

Christmas Pig

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 23:45:30

I have determined to cook the suckling pig that I got last week from Caw Caw Creek Farms for Christmas dinner. This is not something that I am entering into lightly. I have been researching on-line and going through the cookbooks and have found wide variations in timing and seasoning. Two methods are favored - oven roasting and spit roasting. I feel like I should do the spit roasting method in honor of the pig, but that involves outdoor cooking and I may simply cook it in the oven. I think that I will grind up some other pork pieces provided by Emile and use that to stuff the pig. Pig weighs almost sixteen pounds and that might almost feed ten according to what I am reading so stuffing is necessary. I also plan to remove most of the large bones and the stuffing will help hold the pigs shape. Seasoning is going to be mostly salt and pepper, but there will be a few others included. If I am able to retrieve any sage from the herb garden (we have had our first snow and really cold temperatures) I will use some of that. The rosemary is holding up well and some of that might find its way into the mix.

Most of the recipes I find on-line are somewhat Latin in flavor. I am not going that route, good though I am sure it is. I'll use that in warmer weather. I want this to be soothing and rich, but not too explosive or exciting. Sides are still floating around, but I think there will be collards and sweet potatoes and rice. There may - or more likely, may not - be some sort of baked apple. It's Christmas so there will be baked oysters. Dessert is too far away to contemplate. My sister has a James Beard cookbook from the 70's I guess that shows a roasted suckling pig on a platter sporting a huge red fruit for an eye looking like some sort of extra terrestrial. This particular one might get a cranberry if it gets anything. As for the apple-in-the-mouth thing.... I think I'll find something else although the apple does bring a traditional Christmas color to the dish. I am wrestling with the question of how much perfume I want to put on this pig ... you know, does it get the Holly Leaf necklace, the bed of greens and all that or does it just come to the table as a browned pig? Does it come to the table at all? maybe it will all happen in the kitchen.

It gives me something to write about for the next few days although I doubt either of you are going to be very interested in how the thawing process goes. I've cooked a bunch of whole hogs overnight, but this is different. You can't hardly screw up a hundred pound pig given enough time and vinegar, but a little sixteen pounder - well, that could get done to cinders if not watched and cared for properly. AND, it's Christmas dinner so I would just as soon not blow it.

Gunnar Revisits Texas

franchiseremedies@sbcglobal.net — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 15:26:57

It’s cold and blustery and snowing here in Detroit. Everyone seems upset about the economy in general and the local economy in particular, whatever than means. I hear people using words I haven’t heard before, and everyone seems stressed. Is December 2008, my first December, this way all the time, or is it just now? I suppose I’ll know next year this time if the situation is different and people are acting different. Who are General Motors, Ford and Chrysler anyhow? Why are they acting so badly and upsetting everyone like this? Hmmmmmmm.

We are packing for a trip to Houston. It’s Grandpa Muldoon’s 71st birthday weekend and we’re going to visit him and wish him happy birthday. I haven’t seen him in a few months, and this is making me very happy. It will be my first visit to Texas outside Mommy’s uterus, so I expect this to be quite a different experience than when I wrote about my first visit there. We’re only going for a long weekend, but everyone is packing like we were moving there permanently. I think it’s because of all the baby stuff they have to carry along for me.

I’m now 8 months old and I’m growing and developing very quickly. I bet Grandpa will be just thrilled at all the things I can do and say now. I can crawl and stand up if I hold on to something. I hear that Grandpa used to have to hold on to things to stand steady too, back when he was having such a grand time of it in his favorite haunts, especially Muldoons. His stories about Muldoons are really wonderful examples of how great people should conduct their affairs. Too bad we don’t have a Muldoons here in Detroit. Grandpa Muldoon says that the
CEOs of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler ought to get in their big private jet planes and fly down to Muldoons so the folks at Muldoons could help them understand how the real world actually works.

The flight to Houston was uneventful, and we rented a car and went straight to Grandpa and Aunt Belinda’s for lunch. Grandpa’s lentil soup and crusty bread smelled so good. I got to eat chopped banana and baby food. Grandpa was so happy to see me. I thought he was almost going to cry he was so thrilled. He kept thanking Mommy and Dad for coming down and giving him an opportunity to visit with us all. After lunch we went into the living room so I could start to be introduced to the kitties. I met Booger, Bubba, Sweetie Pie, Little Girl and Cowboy. They didn’t seem overjoyed to meet me though. I think they may be used to having the house all to themselves with Papa and Aunt B I.

Dinner that evening was one of Papa’s specialties, Beef Rhonesque. It is very much like Beef Bourguignon, but made with pancetta instead of salt pork, Cippolini instead of pearl onions and Rhone red wine instead of Burgundy. The sauce was out of this world. Mom dipped a piece of the beef into the sauce and let me taste the sauce. I have never tasted anything that lusciously satiny and perfectly balanced in my entire life. It sure beats baby food. With it Papa prepared an asparagus risotto with four cheeses that was a perfect match. The wine was a bourgeois Cote du Rhone – a Clos D’Oratoire I think. It was the same wine with which he made the sauce. The whole experience was mind bending. It was hard to talk, as everyone was concentrating on the delicious flavors. Papa said that if we would move to Houston we could eat like that all the time. That would be enough to make my mind up, but I think Mom and Dad are probably going to stay in Detroit and not resign their professional positions just so they can move to Houston and eat Papa’s cooking.

After one of Papa’s glorious dinners, replete with copious vino, there isn’t much left to do but take a few moments to say goodnight and go to bed. Great sleeping! Everything tastes better when he makes it. Mom says that even when he gives her a recipe it doesn’t come out the same as when he does it. She thinks that when you are using some recipe you are careful to measure everything just so, whereas he just eyeballs everything because he has made whatever the dish is so many times.

Saturday morning starts with breakfast at The Frog, a French Croissant Brioche type café in Rice Village – near Rice University – and a walk around the neighborhood. Papa used to live there until he and Aunt B I moved to where they live now. Papa says that when he moves out of an area it is called gentrification – whatever that is. Then we went to this old house on a very busy street where they have thousands of Mexican ceramic art pieces for very reasonable prices. Papa and Aunt B I have a lot of this around their home. The colors are very rich and of course almost everything they have involves some theme of food. Their kitchen and breakfast room is really incredible – so many colors and all those wonderful aromas. We have lunch at Sylvia’s, Papa’s and Aunt B I’s favorite Mexican restaurant, where Mom actually once attended a class in how to make tamales. Having plans for dinner in a very nice restaurant, Papa took the afternoon off for a nap. So did we.

We had dinner in one of the best seafood fusion restaurants in America, The Reef. The chef, Brian Caswell, is a friend of Papa and Aunt B I. He cooked all over the world and is a master at Asian-Classic Euro fusion cooking. He worked with Jean George Vongerichten, the world’s foremost fusion cuisine celebrity chef. It seems that Chef Caswell got his introduction to the world of professional cooking when he was in college and worked at Papa’s and Aunt B I’s restaurant in Brenham Texas. His conversations with Papa about food and wine seemed to ignite a passion in him. After he had worked for many years around the world to become a great chef himself, he opened his restaurant in Houston and sent Papa an email letting him know about the restaurant and thanking him for the inspiration to do that. His restaurant is now Papa and Aunt B I’s favorite. The food is wonderful. Mommy dipped bread into several things so I could taste them, and I enjoyed my baby food in a different setting that evening.

At The Reef I discovered that I really like waitresses. They kept smiling at me and paying attention to me and touching me whenever they passed my chair. I think that I am always going to have a certain warm feeling for women. YUM!! Mommy says that when I’m old enough Papa Muldoon will teach me all his wonderful techniques for meeting women.

One of Papa’s and Aunt B I’s friends, Pat Moran joined us for dinner. He is so animated and funny. His cell phone plays the Notre Dame fight song when anyone calls him. In addition to telling many stories, some of them possibly true, he showed us his knife and gun that he carries everywhere. Mom and Dad were somewhat surprised when he whipped out the hardware, but Papa, Aunt B I and I weren’t surprised. Papa and Aunt B I always pack weapons, and I saw so many guns around their house that it may seem strange when I get back home and there aren’t any. Dad was moved to have his picture taken Sunday morning after breakfast holding Aunt B I’s AK-47 assault rifle. We have a picture of Mommy holding that gun, and now we have one of Daddy looking like some third world terrorist wearing an outfit from The GAP. Now that is what I call eclectic.

Oh – I almost forgot to tell you – Pat Moran says he wants me to travel around with him so he can use me for women bait. What does that mean? Can he really be serious?

Going to visit Houston is fun. It is much more enjoyable outside Mommy’s uterus than it was on my first visit when all I could taste was amniotic fluid. I really like Texas. I could get used to their way of thinking and the way they do everything with so much gusto. They really know how to enjoy everything, especially cold beer and BBQ. And the women are so much fun there. WOW! I can’t wait until my next experience with a waitress. Papa Muldoon says that waitresses are a very special chapter in the life of every real man.

Demise of the Ossabaw

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:55:59

Down south recently I found occasion to stop by and see Emile Defelice and pick up some pork. I may have gone a little far with this as I bought a forty-two pound box of chops and and twenty odd pound box of bacon. Those two purchases weren't the extent of it, however. Oh, no. Not by a long shot. He had some small prosciuttos and I got one of those. I also purchased a loin roast that - wrapped in freezer paper and cellophane - looks like the center cut of jumbo Anaconda. There was still some room left in the truck bed and it was cold enough to store frozen meat outside overnight so I talked myself into a suckling pig. Just a small one, you understand - fifteen pounds is all. Emile says this won't hardly feed but a few people.... I don't know. I guess it's mostly skin and bones until you add the apple-in-the-mouth and the cranberry eyes. We looked up suckling pig in an old James Beard book and the pig is shown on a silver platter that's wedged in to a three way fork in a tree and whatever fruit was selected to replicate the eyes was about as big as the apple-in-the-mouth making for a truly ghastly presentation. Pigs have - well - little piggy eyes. This picture had great big, red, bugged out eyes. It belonged in "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" and I am surprised that it isn't in there. That must be an oversight. I really wish I had a copy of that picture because words just can't describe it.

Emile says he has given up on the Ossabaw pig, just dropped it from his line-up altogether. These are smallish pigs and he says that they are 10% meat and 90% bad attitude, that they are mean, unpredictable, aggressive, spiteful and too fatty. "Well", I say, "they are pigs after all", but Emile says he will have nothing more to do with them. Having never met a living Ossabaw pig I never formed an opinion about its' personality, but I did find them pretty good eating and they have been surviving in the wild for a couple of hundred years. That makes them wild, semi-native food as far as I am concerned.

The meat survived the chilly ride back to NY and reposes now in the freezer. The sucking pig made the trip remaining in the frozen state. I haven't seen it, but Emile did a credible imitation of a suckling pig on a platter - sort of a crouch with his arms drawn up to his chin - and said that's what he would look like when I unwrapped and thawed him out. I am thinking about maybe having the pig for Christmas dinner along with something in the bird line. Maybe a chicken or two. I have a Good Shepard Farm Heritage breed Bronze turkey in the freezer that didn't see action at Thanksgiving. It would be a sort of a sty and sky dinner like the old fin and feather doos that I was priviledged to attend from time to time in my youth. They were called fin and feather and often they produced some memorably bad dishes, but there were usually one or two pretty good things on the table. That's the first place I ever had the classic deep fried, mustard marinated venison loin. The oysters were usually up to par. The feather parts often lacked a certain something ... taste, I think it was, both in conception and execution. Little tiny birds, quail and doves 'smothered' in onions and baked until dry were a constant threat. Maybe 'menace' is the word I want. Frying took pride of place and along with the fried venison there was good fried fish.

There was always a great deal of alcohol at those dinners so it wasn't such a big deal when a dish or two failed. No one noticed or everyone pretended not to notice. I remember the little unidentifiable birds tasted of liver and onions. Maybe they were supposed to and I don't remember anyone claiming them. I love quail and dove, but a couple of those avian rocks almost put me off them for good. Venison chilis and stews were often present and, depending on the cook's preference, tasted of either beef or pork. Venison was considered too dry to be cooked without the addition of some sort of other quadraped fat. There isn't much fat on a deer to begin with and the belief is that deer fat carries off tastes so the little the animal has is always trimmed away. I find that venison, unless cooked pretty much just to the point of medium rare, can have a very faint taste. It's hard to cook just 'to the point' when dealing with sixty eaters and trying to get the food on the table all together so that grace can be said. Something has to give.

There was an interesting discussion with a butcher in a local grocery store who insisted that a Johnsonville Brat was an Italian sausage and that basic Carolina Pride could be used in the place of Italian sausage. This did not happen on my watch. I substituted smoked Kielbasi for the Italian sausage and made sausage and lentils that improved daily until I finished it up.

But back with the suckling pig. Emile says it doesn't cook long, maybe an hour. He was really tired and I am going to have to look this timing thing up. I asked about what to do with the head other than plug it with an apple and he suggested head cheese. This may be well beyond me, but apparently everything I need to produce this 'cheese' is there with the pig. The head, the brain, tongue, cheeks and whatever. That has to be looked up as well. He assures me there is plenty of info concerning the production of head cheese on line.

I'll let you know.

Shepherd's Pie by Paula Deen

jjbbrrdd@yahoo.com — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 20:05:37

Paula knows how to do it.

A great way to get good use out of left over roast beef or pork.

Chicken Nuggets

gatessummerville@yahoo.com — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 15:44:22

Olives - Fruit of Life and Love

franchiseremedies@sbcglobal.net — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:28:29

Many of us look at this coming January 20th as a day of liberation. We voted for President Obama because we believe that what is most sorely needed is the ushering in of a new age,

In this new age, we hope to see the rolling away of a curtain that has been placed over so many areas of knowledge in the luddite hope that people would remain forever ignorant of various scientific potentialities and of information that would enable them to make more informed choices about how they go about managing many aspects of their personal lives. Religious fanatics sought, many times with success, the suppression of such things as stem cell research, and birth control and sexually transmitted disease prevention information. Women were, in the belief of these people, supposed to subjugate them selves in all things to some biblical role of servant to men; to remain silent; to obey; to conceal themselves lest they stimulate in male psyches and egos a lusting after intimacy. Men, on the other hand were simply admonished not to “sin” in protocols that rarely involved punishment for them where the infractions were against the interests of women. In some extreme “cultures” if a woman is assaulted by a man, it is the woman’s fault, and her family may kill her for having been assaulted and bringing dishonor upon them. Women in these cultures are regularly mutilated in their genitals to prevent their ever deriving pleasure in intimacy. Children are only to be taught creationism, and evolution, not mentioned in the Bible with sufficient specificity for the fundamentalist mentality to be able to sort it out, is to be deleted wherever possible. The world, according to the “family values” constituency is a snap shot and not a moving picture, and the snapshot of what God supposedly wants from you was taken during the short period of the earthly life of Christ.

The more educated people become, the better able they are to make intelligent decisions for themselves. They no longer need to be ruled and regulated with harsh, judgment inhibiting regimentation. Those who live to tell others what to do and not do abhor education. Education deprives them of their victims. They need a world of ignorant people whom they may direct to whatever ends they believe should be served. The ends which these people seek are all too frequently unjust, unfair and oppressive. Fundamentalists love to attack, verbally and physically, those with other views. Wars of mindless slaughter are waged over opportunistic doctrinal differences. Always in the background may be heard the contrapuntal rhythms of fundamentalist self serving and profiteering on the backs of their “followers”. There are very few poor religious leaders. God mongering is always lucrative. If you want to find the motive for the action, follow the money.

This bleak interregnum in the march of enlightenment is, we hope, over. It will be over in the sense that individual respect and freedom born of access to information will loosen the bonds of fundamentalist, evangelic oppression.

To be sure, like any liberated oppressed people, there will tend to be an initial period of excess in which the deposed fundamentalists will proclaim “See. We told you this would happen”. That celebratory explosion will resolve in the short term to more mature and reasoned enjoyment of the privileges of sentient living. Hopefully we can keep the fundamentalists under their rocks for a very long time.

The world is celebrating the liberating potentialities of this American election. The enlightened world really does want to get along with a strong, free and beneficent America that does not believe that there is some divine right to regulate by threat and by bribery, with the phony pretext that there is consensus where no consensus really exists; but there is pretextual consensus as long as money is attached to adherence to the regimen being promoted. For $ 10,000,000,000 a month, the government of Iraq, for instance, pretends that American military presence is helpful to the resolution of their internecine disputes. If the money were to disappear, they would gleefully return to slaughtering each other over religious differences, Shiite versus Sunni and tribe against tribe, as they have always done. They can then go back to their common bond being their mutual hatred of everyone else. The sooner they return to their natural selves, the more easily will lay the heads of the rest of us. We have no business placing our armies in their midst in some ridiculous attempt to Westernize and democratize them. If they wanted that, even for one moment, they could bring it about themselves just like everyone else has done who wished for that kind of society.

With the advent of a less threatening America will come – we hope – a recognition of lessened threat and a return to doctrines of mutuality of consent and mutuality of prosperity. Those who claim to love peace must recognize that prosperous people usually do not threaten their neighbors. It is the impoverishment of ideals and economic security that most frequently becomes a casus belli.

Like all sacrificial celebrations, something consumable becomes symbolic of the movement. I nominate OLIVES. Olives bespeak eternality. Olives abide. Olives move from bitter to delicious with exposure to sun and to tender loving care. Olives fit in everywhere. Olives enhance meats and cheeses. Olives symbolize enlightened romantic enhancements of life and art. Olives come in all sorts of gastronomic configurations. They enhance every occasion, from romantic picnics to the dry martini.

I have configured a recipe for the olives of Aquarius. I present it as a variant for your delectation as you enter this new and hopefully happier time. Like all recipes, I do not claim it to be original with me. I am certain that someone, at some time, has done something similar in the past.

Mix together in a very decorative bowl the following:

3 cups of first cold pressed extra virgin olive oil.

To this add three cloves of fresh minced garlic, a teaspoon of coarse sea salt, a tablespoon of coarse ground black pepper and a pinch of fresh Greek oregano. (What? You don’t have ready access to fresh Greek oregano? Uproot yourself and your family immediately and move to where you do have access to fresh Greek oregano. Grow your own!)

Add the zest of two lemons and one orange (some planed zest and some the minced product of a channel knife).

Add a half cup of minced sun dried tomatoes.

Stir that together and allow it to macerate for about 4 hours, stirring occasionally.

Obtain from a Middle Eastern grocer a quart of their “olive medley” mixture of various kinds of olives – do not include any highly seasoned or citrus marinated olives. Among these will be small black and green olives and larger black and green olives – as you enjoy this for some weeks and months, you will change the olive blend to your own tastes. Mix these into the olive oil.

As you enjoy them from day to day they will become more delectable, and you will find you are eating them even for breakfast with bread and cheese. Put the bowl on the table at every meal and at every wine enjoyment occasion.

Place the bowl, covered, in the fridge every night and take it back out in the morning to come up to temperature. Replenish the dwindling supply every week as you consume them more aggressively.

You will find that you are changing your diet to include more foods that go well with these olives, and that the dietary change is a more healthful and delicious approach to your personal gastronomy.

I wish you all long life, good health, love, good music and much sunshine.

Slow Candles by Hand

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:22:48

Laura is a big fan of the local farmer’s markets and a true booster of local businesses and efforts of all sorts. Her idea for Christmas presents this year involves products from these markets. Our favorite is the one in Hastings; it’s closed for the season now, but some of the farmers and crafts people who attend it will be reprising the act one more time on December 13th.
    Laura does the family Christmas presents and starts putting them together on December 26th. She has an eye for things that people like and an avocation that keeps her going in the Christmas shopping arena. One of the items she selected this year comes from Hummingbird Ranch, a bee farm/hive. Richard, the owner and chief operating officer, allowed us to watch him hand dip the bee’s wax candles when we went to pick up Laura’s order on a cold, sleety last day of November.
    Almost everyone has tried their hand at making candles sometime in their lives. Grade school candles are ubiquitous in homes with small children. Heads used to make them, man, because, you know, they were what was happening and they were easy to do …. Like tie dying, you know - and don’t say you don’t know, man, because you and I know you do – know, that is … I mean …. What?
    Making a beautiful bee’s wax candle is a simple process, but the product is elegant, way more so than any candle I ever made or bought in any head shop/candle shop or specialty store. Richard accomplishes it all by hand. He says it started as a hobby and turned into a small business to supplement the sugar bush and the honey operation.
    The process won’t be news to anyone who attended grade school or lived through the sixties and seventies…. Take a string and dip it into the melted wax over and over again until the taper forms. Richard says depending on the time of year and the temperature he will dip a rack of four strings between eighteen and twenty-five times to form four tapers.
    There are machines that do this dipping in larger quantities and maybe if he were to turn straight candle maker he would use one, but his is a functioning year round agricultural endeavor. Buying this sort of equipment might be more than the farm can support.
    In addition to making beautiful tapers, Richard makes votives and tea lights. It would seem to me that this would be a matter of pouring wax into molds and dumping out candles and to a certain extent I guess it is. Still, votives take more effort than I would ever have imagined. He has two methods; one involves pouring the wax into a metal mold with the wick already in place.
    The second method produces a prettier burning candle and is done by pouring wax into a mold that has a central rigid stick instead of a wick. The advantage to this is that when the candle is removed from the mold the stick leaves a straight tube through the wax into which the wick is inserted. This makes for a straighter wick and a more evenly burning candle. When this is done by hand the process is sloooow. I thought $2.00 for a votive candle somewhat high – not anymore, I don’t.
    This process takes place in a small outbuilding/garage of two rooms. One room is crammed with carpentry tools necessary for building and servicing the hundred odd hives the farm keeps. The second room in the candlery. It’s a small place, packed with a honey centrifuge, a small sugar boiler/bottler, a honey cooker (Richard sells plenty of raw honey, but there is a cooker) and a wax melter of his own design. There are tables, benches, wall shelves stuffed with – stuff and heated by a small wood burning stove and a large kerosene heater. The wax melter is essentially a double boiler with electrically heated water filled outer vessel. When this is heated, it keeps what appeared to me to be at least five gallons of wax in a liquid state. Floating in the wax is another smaller vessel containing the dipping wax. Richard says that this allows him to keep the dipping wax at a constant temperature even when adding wax to the main tank.
    Candles have been made this way about forever and if one overlooks the electric light, appliances and the modern clothing, watching this process today is probably like watching it three hundred years ago. When Richard determines that the tapers have had enough dips, he tales them, still on the rack, to a vat of cold water and submerges them. This imparts a smooth shiny gloss to them. He then cuts them loose from the dipping frame and hangs them over a pipe to further cool. It wasn’t taking long today.
    The candles are an offshoot of and sideline to the honey production. Richard also runs a smallish sugar bush in addition to the honey operation. The honey is used not just for eating, but also in cosmetic creams that he makes. The farm produces royal jelly and bee pollen, too.
    Richard takes custom orders for the various tapers and lights. He said he doesn’t know how long it would take him to make a thousand, as he hasn’t had to do that many yet. As labor intensive as this process is, I would think the cost would go up the more he made.

Sausage and Bean Soup

gatessummerville@yahoo.com — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:48:37

Sweet Chicken Bacon Wraps

gatessummerville@yahoo.com — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:38:58

Dog's favorite Thanksgiving.

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:53:06

This was a less ambitious dinner than some in days past and the better for it, I think. It certainly was more relaxed; that had to do with some of the details and small dishes being done the day before and the addition to young adults at the table. What a good bunch of kids these are. They made it easy, whipping cream, serving and clearing and generally contributing in a whole new way.

We had turkey, legs braised and breast roasted. This is a very good technique if you don’t mind missing the presentation of a beautifully roasted whole bird. Lately I carve in the kitchen so there is less and less point to achieving the whole thing. I used a combination Saveur magazine and Mark Bitman recipe and I had a wonderful American Bronze turkey from K&M Farm In North Andover, Mass to start with. The breast was stuffed, browned and added to the braising legs for the last hour of cooking.

There was a semi smoked boneless leg of venison stuffed with mushrooms and celery done on the BGE that cooked too fast and consequently longer than it should have. It was okay, but needed way more attention than it got. It got eaten, but the cook was disappointed and the dog got some of the leftovers for dinner. She seemed to think it was about as good as cooked food gets, but – she IS a dog.

The oyster pie was an enormous hit. There are many elaborate recipes for this dish, but the simplest one I know seems to be about as good as it can get. It involves very little: select or large oysters, good breadcrumbs, lots of sweet butter, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco and a hot oven. The recipe as I make it is here, but you can find more involved ones in many places. The oysters, if they are good, don’t need much help.

We pan roasted cauliflower and Brussels sprouts with butter and salt and a splash of turkey stock. This required no sort of embellishment and a good thing, too, as I had worn down before making the butter/anchovy sauce.

Plain, straight Basmati Rice served to soak up some of the juices. I didn’t make a gravy exactly, but the braising vegetables did nicely for that. These included, shallots, a few carrots, leeks and lots of celery. I had been reading something about a Mark Twain imaginary eighty dish meal and he was very fond of poultry with celery sauces so that’s the way I went. Celery is an overlooked vegetable when cooking. It compliments beef in a big way and does good things to turkey, too. I have had no success with braised celery as a side dish, but maybe I will try again.

The sweet potatoes were micro waved and then sliced into rounds and caramelized on each side in butter. Pretty red/brown disks to go with everything. Bread and butter pickle from the annual Christmas Bazaar at Trinity Church in Columbia, SC always make turkey and rice more interesting.

The cranberry sauce was the surprise of the day. There were some who couldn’t leave it alone. I’ll say that it was pretty good and done according to package directions with a couple of substitutions. I used about half the sugar called for and that consisted of a little white, a little brown and a healthy amount of maple syrup. When the skins burst, the fruit made three passes through the food mill with successively smaller perforations. Mostly the skins went through, but some volume was lost. A little salt was added and then the fruit was brought back to the boil and poured into jars and allowed to cool. It was thick, but did not achieve jelly.

Paula Dean’s fruit cobbler with whipped cream finished us off and the wonderful DeLonghi Magnifico Espresso maker got everyone stoked enough to get home. I assume everyone was done for by about 8:00. Cook sure was.

Mama's SC Oyster Pie/Dressing

pinkney@meadandmikell.com — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 17:20:27

I do not know where this comes from. Because my mother made it for Christmas and Thanksgiving I usually think it is found in The Charleston Receipts Cookbook put out by the Junior League of Charleston, SC, but it isn't. It is very simple and if you have good ingredients, unbeatable. There are many much more involved and elaborate versions of this dish, but I don't know that they add anything to the basic recipe. Some include celery, eggs, onions, anise, milk, cream, potatoes, bacon and various liquors. Use them if you want, but this is the basic, close to the ground real good thing.

Using a two and a half pints of largish Western oysters and the crumbs from an Eli's Tuscan loaf, this served eleven with not a single crumb left . Everyone got a bit.

NEVER go more than two layers of oysters. It won't cook evenly.

If you shuck your own oysters, be careful to remove any shell fragments. This applies to oysters you buy from the store as well. Almost inevitably you will find a fragment of shell in even the most expensive, processed oysters. It is incredibly uncomfortable to grind teeth on a shell shard.

Thankgiving - Potato Salad

totallyabby1@aol.com — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 05:16:15

The potato salad recipe is missing one ingredients_which is love.