Some well tested dessert recipes here, because everyone deserves to get their just deserts.
Just Desserts
Category: Local Food
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.
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.
Veg and Fruit
“I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, & that, not as an aliment so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet.”–Thomas Jefferson
Edible Plants
“Homegrown is the Way it Should Be.”–Neil Young
Speckled Lima Beans
Lima Beans, known as butterbeans in the South, are one of our most prized fresh summertime vegetables, partly because they are less common than other goodies, like really fresh ripe tomatoes. They are less productive and more labor intensive than many other legumes, even though it is yet another crop native to the Americas.
Imagine our surprise, then, when we were roaming the Festhalle Farmer’s Market yesterday morning, to see market baskets full of butterbeans being sold by one of our favorite farmers. Note: a standard farmer’s market basket is four quarts, or roughly 1/10 of a peck. We swooped in like a chicken on a June bug, only to be told these were a special speckled variety of butterbean. Naturally, that made them more expensive. Nevertheless, we paid up, and bought a basket.
They turned out to not only be a wild range of different psychedelic speckled colors, but also included some funky solid colored beans. They are butterbeans tripping on LSD, and almost too pretty to eat, but eat them we will. Here’s the recipe:
Ingredients
2 cups fresh Butterbeans–any variety. (Frozen will do if fresh are not available)
Water
Seasoning Meat (in order of preference–Tasso, Smoked Ham Hock, Smoked Bacon, Country Ham)
Salt and Pepper
Tasso, in the South, is a Cajun/Creole invention made of heavily spiced strips of pork shoulder, which are then hot smoked, which means smoked and cooked at the same time. It’s easy enough to make yourself. Tasso adds more flavor than other kinds of smoked pork.
The cooking process is simple enough: simmer the beans until they are tender. Removing the seasoning meat when serving is optional. I like my butterbeans to fly solo. These will work great that way, especially considering that they are already on a trip.
Mesclun
Mesclun season is about gone here now, but the fall season is just around the corner. The idea of having a real mixture of baby greens came from the beautiful French province of Provence, where mesclun is a fixture in farmer’s markets.
This mixture of lettuces are the result of a 99 cent purchase of seeds from Ebay. In the adjacent bed there is also Mizuna, Bak Choi, and Broccoli Raab. It’s a virtual UN of salad greens.
A planter is all anyone needs to grow Mesclun, which is a note to poor sods who live in cities. I always serve mine with some jumped up remoulade sauce–with honey and hot sauce added.
An International Pot Lid Competition
Pot lids are the most underutilized kitchen tools. They save energy, and can also improve greatly the quality of a dish. If you want the pot to boil faster, put a lid on it.
Here we have two distinct styles of lids, the left American and cast iron, and the right copper and French. The American is made by Lodge, the French by Bourgeat. They will be judged by aesthetics, construction, and versatility.
Aesthetics
There’s nothing more attractive in the kitchen than a French copper pot with a riveted copper lid. The French are off to a fast start. I once sat next to a fabulously dressed woman at a French movie during an International conference at the University of Illinois. Her three friends were equally well attired, and they spoke only French. I saw her again the next day, heading one of the conference sessions. Turns out she was the French Minster for Culture under President Mitterrand. France 1, US 0.
Construction
The US turns this period into a rout. Cast iron lids can make a pan into a semi-pressure cooker, especially those on Dutch ovens. As a student of mine said, who was a professional cook, “Nothing lasts forever, but cast iron lasts forever.” France 1, US 1. Into extra time.
Versatility
This extra time is going to be a beast. The French lid is like the AK-47 of lids- it fits our pots and theirs. But then off the bench comes the best US all rounder–the cast iron skillet lid.
Is it a skillet or a lid? False choice–it’s both. Too bad it’s not a striker, as it’s shot bounces off the post with a few seconds to go in extra. Could this be decided on penalty kicks?
Not if I have anything to do with it. As Jon Stewart famously said after an actual World Cup was decided on penalty kicks, that was like deciding the NBA championship “with a game of horse.” Buy some of each, and like Scarlett O’Hara, you’ll never go lid-less again. I think that’s what she said.
Salad Dressing Maison
I’m always amazed that people actually buy salad dressing, as it takes less than a minute to make a really good one. Here’s my latest creation. By the way, all that title means is “House Salad Dressing.” Once again, everything sounds better in French.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon Dijon Mustard (Most of the mustard seed actually comes from Canada)
2 tablespoons Catsup
2 tablespoons Mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Sweet Pickle Relish
Salt
Honey to taste
Chipotle Hot Sauce to taste.
The last two are the kickers. This stuff is delicious. Some Romaine lettuce, Cucumbers, and Tomatoes are going to disappear tonight.
Great Southern Food Essays–“The Pleasures of Eating,” by Wendell Berry (1989)
Every writer runs across an essay occasionally, and says, “Damn, I wish I had written that.” Let’s just say that there are probably thousands of writers who wish they had written “The Pleasures of Eating.” Brilliant and prophetic at the same time, it has to be the best takedown of the current food system dominated by big agriculture.
I’m just going to start with one of the finest sentences I’ve ever read. “Like industrial sex, industrial eating has become a degraded, poor, and paltry thing.” Industrial sex? What a comparison. Every time I drive past a fast food place like Chickin-fil-whatever, I have the same thought.
Here’s another zinger, about how oblivious people are to the garbage they are eating. “One will find this same obliviousness represented in virgin purity in the advertisements of the food industry, in which the food wears as much makeup as the actors.” I actually had a student who worked as a food “stylist” and photographer, and she sprayed her food with hair spray before she took a picture of it. Enough said.
I will end with the thesis, which is something of an odd way to end, but it is “the proposition that eating is an agricultural act.” I won’t give all of Berry’s recommendations, but a revised version of the entire essay is posted on the interwebs. Alas, it omits the industrial sex reference. Read it, and weep anyway, for the current state of our food system. Then go to your local farmer’s market, and buy some real food.
I saw Mr. Berry once, when he gave a reading at the University of Illinois. He drove up from his farm in Kentucky, and showed up wearing a pair of overalls. That’s what we call keeping it real.
Southern Fusion Cooking 