July 2019 – Page 2 – Southern Fusion Cooking

Chickurkey a la King with Morels

What we have here is a dairy-less Chicken a la King with turkey added, and fancied up with morels. I am carefully rationing my years supply of morels, because they are renewed yearly only on December 24. This seemed like a good time to use a few.

Ingredients

3 dried Morels, reconstituted and sliced (Porcini or Oyster work also)

Morel Water

1 tablespoon Olive Oil

1 tablespoon Flour

I sweet Pepper, chopped

Chicken Stock

Salt and Pepper

1 cup cooked Chicken and/or Turkey

The cooking is simple. Make a blonde (light colored) roux with the oil and flour, stirring constantly. Add the chopped pepper, and stir for another minute or so. Add the morel water, filtered through a paper towel, and the chicken stock, until the sauce reaches the desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer until the sweet pepper taste becomes apparent–I let it go for around ten minutes, and add more stock if necessary. Finally add the cooked bird, and warm it all the way through. Best if served on toasted baguette slices.

Though I am far from being a calorie counter, this strikes me as a healthier dish than the normal butter and milk a la King. It certainly tastes better than one with canned mushrooms. Good cage free organic chicken doesn’t hurt, either. For the best chicken satire ever, see this old video from the days when Steven Colbert still did The Colbert Report. This is not a spoiler, but he has a pet chicken named Shirley, who is boneless, and lives inside a paper towel roll tube.

Peach Marmalade

Peaches Marry-nating before the Magic Happens

Most people in the South would call this recipe “preserves,” but the amount of lemon in it gives it some punch. I also came up with the idea of adding some lemon pulp to the mixture.

Ingredients

5-6 Fresh Peaches

1 Meyer Lemon

1 cup Sugar

Why Meyer Lemon? It’s something of a cross between a lemon and an orange. And check out the size.

My wife Melanie Jane grew the lemon, and the peaches came from an orchard a couple of mountains away from here. Time for some process.

Place the peaches in a colander or strainer in a sink, along with the jars, flats, and rings. Crank up the old teakettle and soak them all with scalding water. You’ve just done two steps at once.

Meanwhile, combine the sugar and lemon juice/pulp in a non-reactive pan. Lemons pulp easier if they are frozen first, and then thawed. Peel the peaches, and compost the peels (I fed mine to my chickens. They’re experts at composting.) Cut into eights, and add to the lemon sugar mixture. Let that marry-nate until the sugar dissolves.

Action time! Slowly bring the mixture up to a boil, and then turn it down to low. Sing the refrain from “Lady Marmalade” a few times–that’s the part that’s in French. When the peaches are soft, mash them into small cubes with a potato masher. Cook for another five minutes, at a higher temp, and then you have two options.

Can at this point, if you want a juicy spread. Add pectin, if you want a firmer marmalade. I use Certo, because it’s quick, and available everywhere. Pour the mixture into jars, and boil ten minutes in a water bath. Here’s the result:

Bring on the Biscuits

Strangely enough, the diva Patti LaBelle, who recorded “Lady Marmalade,” is also an accomplished cook, and has a number of cookbooks in print. I don’t know if she has a marmalade recipe in any of them, but she is welcome to try this one.

Better Know a Southern Staple

Grits or Polenta? Either way, it’s Boiled Ground Corn.

Ingredients here that are specific to the South, though the Grits/Polenta controversy lives on, and probably will, as long as people boil ground corn.

Just Desserts

Some well tested dessert recipes here, because everyone deserves to get their just deserts.

Peach-Pecan Upside Down Cake

This recipe is my wife Melanie Jane’s specialty, and she has been making it since she was a teenager. It originally was for pineapple, but we had fresh peaches, not fresh pineapples; for some reason, there were no fresh pineapples at the farmer’s market.

Ingredients

For the Cake:

3 Eggs, separated

1 cup Sugar

1 cup Flour

1 tablespoon Baking Powder

1 tablespoon Salt

For the Topping:

1/4 cup Butter

1 cup Brown Sugar

1/2 cup Pecans, chopped

2-3 fresh Peaches, sliced

This recipe is upside down, so it is made backwards, topping first, and cake second. Begin by melting the butter in a pan, dissolving the sugar in the hot butter, and adding the pecans. Pour that into a heavy skillet, and arrange the sliced peaches on top of this mixture. We use a really heavy Lodge Pro-Logic cast iron skillet.

Combine the dry ingredients, mix, and then beat the sugar and egg yolks together. Combine those two. Make a meringue with the whites, and fold that into the flour/egg yolk mixture. Pour the whole thing into the skillet with the topping, and cook at 350 degrees F for thirty minutes. It’s imperative that this cake be inverted onto a platter as soon as it comes out of the over–otherwise the now caramelized top will stick like crazy.

In our experience, these things don’t stick around long. We made certain of that by serving ours with some homemade peach ice cream. The result was some serious peach on peach action.

Peaches

Fresh peach season is here. Get them and cook them while you can.

Fig Preserves

Fig preserves are a staple of Southern breakfasts, and good figs are not easy to come by anymore. I get them whenever I can, and sure enough, a farmer at the Festhalle Farmer’s Market had some this weekend. It was time to make some preserves.

Ingredients

4 cups Figs, halved

1 cup Water

Organic Sugar to taste

1 tablespoon Lemon Juice

That’s it. Just be prepared to simmer these things for at least a couple of hours. The amount of sugar needed depends on how ripe the figs are. These were dead ripe, so I didn’t need that much sugar.

After about an hour and a half of cooking, I resorted to my wife’s medieval looking antique potato masher, to speed things up. It’s a mashing machine.

Three Eight Ounce Jars of Preserves, Brought to You by this Masher

After about two hours of total cooking, I added a package of Certo liquid pectin–not required, but it does speed things up. The three filled jars then went into a hot water bath for ten minutes, and sealed almost as soon as I took them out. Into the pantry now, and onto some English Muffins or Drop Biscuits, eventually.

Month: July 2019

Chickurkey a la King with Morels

Peach Marmalade

Better Know a Southern Staple

Just Desserts

Peach-Pecan Upside Down Cake

Peaches

Fig Preserves

Stoves and Outdoor Equipment

Structures

Meat

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