When the temps hit freezing here in the South, many people go into semi-hibernation. Not me–I’m as busy as a porcupine sticking spines into the mouth of a fox. I think I have a paint recipe that doesn’t require ten coats to cover something. It may take even only one.
New Tempera
2/3 cup Boiled Linseed Oil
1 Egg
1/3 cup Water
3 tablespoons Pigment
Mix them together in that order. The extra oil and pigment make this is a nice thick paint. I must have been channeling my hero Sandro Botticelli. My covid mask has a print of the Birth of Venus on it. Thus far, no one has objected to the nudity–on the mask, that is.
My main man HD Thoreau wrote, “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.” I have done this with my lemon chicken recipe, which I have been obsessed with for years.
Sauce
Juice of one large Meyer Lemon (or two smaller other lemons)
Sugar
That’s it. MJ and I ate this dish a hundred times at a Chinese restaurant in Tuscaloosa, and it took me years to realize the Zen truth of simplicity.
Chicken
Cubed Chicken Breast
Cornstarch
Salt and Pepper
Peanut Oil
The last is for deep frying, and an inch and a half is enough. Serve with rice and green peas. Nosh away, as this is fantastic.
Everyone has a recipe like this, but add real eggs and real ham, along with fresh herbs, and you have a real breakfast, or an anytime dish for two, for that matter. Cut directly to the chase, with two ramekins/custard cups.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon melted butter
2 Eggs (or more)
Cream
Diced Ham
Diced Onion or Shallot
Toppings: Grated Cheese and Chives
Cook this in a bain-marie, a hot water bath, a method which allegedly was invented by an alchemist named Mary. How she got in all that hot water we’ll never know. I crank up the stove to 550 F. This can also be cooked on the stove top.
How much cream, ham, and onion? Fairly small quantities, but let your conscience and doctor guide you. The cheese makes this a gooey work of art. It’s done when the cream bubbles.
Tomatoes, in season, make this the best egg dish imaginable-wild cherry tomatoes are the best, cooked whole in the dish. Complaining about having your favorite fruit being out of season is as old as ancient music. Oh, snap, that’s the title to a great satirical poem by Ezra Pound.
Ancient Music
Winter is icummen in, Lhude sing Goddamm. Raineth drop and staineth slop, And how the wind doth ramm! Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us, An ague hath my ham. Freezeth river, turneth liver, Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, ’tis why I am, Goddamm, So ‘gainst the winter’s balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm. Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.
“Pass the damn ham”– Scout, in To Kill a Mockingbird
We have plenty of dope sticks in the South, like our new US Senator from Alabama, a former Auburn football coach named Tupperware (I think that’s right,) so take our new Senator, PLEASE. This dude was fired by Cincinnati–the college team. I would say we really need Chairman Mao and some re-education camps, but that would be too tough on people who never got an education to begin with (Tupperware could not name the three branches of the US Government, when asked.).
I’m Talking about Sides
So let’s get off the train to Crazytown, and have a real Southern New Year’s meal. You also have my permission to make this any time of the year. The ham is the star, but the sides are the supporting actors. MJ came up with yet another new ham glaze this year. Superb is only the beginning.
Ingredients
Juice of 4 Oranges
Juice of 1 Lime
Maple Syrup
Honey
Mustard
Make this as rich as you want. I like lots of Mustard, MJ lots of sweet, so split it down the middle. She did grow all the citrus.
I accidentally found a sustainably grown ham. Seek, and ye shall find.
The sides? Collards are a classic. Serve with pepper sauce. I have some high octane made.
Welcome to our Southern Table, Metaphorically
You get one dollar for every cowpea you eat (seriously). All you get with macs and cheese are extra calories. Thanks, James Hemings. He was the chef for Long Tom Jefferson.
Rolls finish this off. We will be eating leftovers for the indefinite future.
When you get up early on New Year’s Day to feed the chickens, and the low temp is 67 F, something is seriously wrong. That something is Anthropogenic Climate Disturbance, aka Global Warming. It’s fine now, but the summer will be when the bill comes due.
There is one constant, however–the wonders of chicken excrement. Americans in general treat chickens like a protein machine, caged, abused, and thrown away and eaten at a very early age. Our flock of eight ramble around all day, eat greens and high protein food, and we get eggs by the dozen. Better, possibly is the giant piles of excrement, which I compost. I am just beginning to use it as fertilizer. It could be the GOAT (greatest of all time.)
Chicken excrement and I go way back. When I grew up on the old farm, that was our main fertilizer, and sometimes the only one. As it turns out, industrial scale chicken production produces industrial scale chicken stuff. We had tons of this stuff at a time, which means we had tons of vegetables, and pounds and pounds of beef–we fertilized the pastures with chicken stuff, and even had to buy a giant stuff spreader to be able to do it.
So the moral for this new year is, what goes around, comes around. I have been fertilizing my mustard greens with chicken stuff, and feed the greens to the chicks, and the egg quality just gets better. I composted my garlic plants (forty in total,) and they took off like weeds. I just layered my young asparagus patch with several inches of compost. I better get the asparagus steamer ready for spring.
Southern Fusion Cooking 