Southern Fusion Cooking

Home Cooking–All Local New Year’s Meal

Let’s Eat!

Way back in the 1970’s Neil Young had it right with his song “Homegrown.” Here are the first few lines:

Homegrown’s alright with me
Homegrown is the way it should be
Homegrown is a good thing
Plant that bell and let it ring
“Homegrown”

We didn’t start out with the idea that we were going to ring in the New Year with an all local feast, but it just turned out that way. I’ll start at the top, and go left to right around the plate, and then right to left.

Top: Baked Sweet Potato. That’s half of a big one, purchased from the Festhalle Farmer’s Market. These were grown by long time family friends, and are probably the variety “Porto Rican.” These are very sweet, and are served with lots of butter–a dessert substitute.

Left Center: Corn Bread. This is an all corn meal recipe, using McEwan and Sons Fine Ground Cornmeal. I doubt that the Certified Organic Corn was grown in Alabama, but their business, Coosa Valley Milling, just south of Birmingham, has some national fame. Their meal and grits are used at multiple James Beard award winning restaurants, and you can buy their products online–all around good stuff.

Bottom: Collard Greens. These are local as well, purchased at the Festhalle, and then frozen by yours truly. I like mine with lots of home made pepper sauce. The inheritance of bottles of such has been the subject of legal battles.

Right Top: Locally grown fresh Ham. Until this year, this was practically impossible to find. The ham pictured was home brined as well, and I will give the process of home brining, “curing,” in an upcoming post.

Center: Black-eyed Peas. More than likely these were grown by my in-laws, Melanie Jane’s sister and her husband, who brought us bags of them. That’s the way to pay a visit to some one. Southern folklore has it that every pea consumed is worth a dollar. I should be a millionaire.

The wine to wash this down with is local, if you live on the Rhône river in France. It’s a Côtes du Rhône, which has just enough pink tinge to call it a rosé.

This is as classic a Southern New Year’s meal as can be put together. People in NYC would probably label it “Soul Food.” Down here, we just call it food.

Great Food Jokes, Part Two

This is way better than the standard “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup” joke. Here it goes:

A guy runs in to a psychiatrist’s office and says, “Doc, I need help. My brother thinks he’s a chicken.”

The doctor says, “Why didn’t you send him?”

“Because we need the eggs,” the guy replies.

I think I first heard this in a Woody Allen movie, but I disremember.

The Smokehouse Gets A Shingle Lift

Paint it Red, not Black

Some actors get a facelift or Botox or embalming fluid to give them that paralyzed face-look that Hollywood likes, but my Smokehouse has been given a shingle lift. It was something of a fiddly operation, but it turned out to be a success. It was actually completely unplanned.

The story is this: Melanie Jane wanted some tongue and grove put on one of the walls in our bedroom, so I went by our new local wood only lumberyard/sawmill to see what they had. It turned out their office was clad with exactly the kind of tongue and groove that I was looking for, and it was only 3/8″ thick. I left with two bundles of 12′ boards, all a little over 6″ wide.

That was a lot of board feet, as it turned out. I had about one fourth of it left over, and my work shop is not big enough to have a bunch of lumber lying around. I finally thought, what is 3/8″ lumber good for? Then it hit me–shingles. There was just enough wood to shingle the front of my smokehouse.

I cut it up in to 16″ long shingles. The part that is left visible is called the “reveal,” and all the rest is overlap. The 4″ long reveal means that there is actually three layers of shingle on each run, which if installed properly, will make a waterproof covering. I planed off the tongues, and cut off the groove edge with a bandsaw.

Many many shingle nails later the wall was ready for some paint. I wanted to do it right, so I bought some pigment called Blue Ridge Hematite, which is a dark red Iron oxide from Virginia (the door is made from Virginia Juniper, aka Red Cedar). I made egg tempera paint with it using the following recipe. This is for a pint:

1 tablespoon Iron Oxide pigment

2/3 pint boiled (cheap) Linseed oil

Mix these thoroughly and leave overnight. The next day add:

1 Egg

1/3 pint Water

Stir, but don’t shake, the paint. Think of it as one of James Bond’s martinis. Theoretically, the building will rot down before this paint fades. Now there’s only three more walls to shingle. I think those can wait.

Florida Man and Florida Woman should Skip Fall Vaccinations, says State’s Idiot Surgeon General

Not even an Ivy League education can stop some people from being a fool’s fool. Florida surgeon general Joseph Ladapo and Governor Ron DeSatan, both Ivy League grads, are teaming up to make certain that as many Floridiots die as is humanly possible.

DeSatan had the following to say:

Pharma will make more money if this thing is approved and they start pushing it on everybody.
Goobernor Ron DeSatan

The fact is, that DeSatan doesn’t believe any of that. His spokesperson refuses to say if the Goobernor has been vaccinated, which is essentially the same as shouting YES. The surgeon general, on the other hand, is a true believer. From the English paper The Guardian:

Meanwhile, Dr Joseph Ladapo, the governor’s hand-picked surgeon general and a vaccine skeptic previously found to have manipulated data on vaccine safety, falsely claimed the new booster shots had not been tested on humans, and contained “red flags”.
The Guardian

A liar and a fool is definitely a fatal combination. I’m going to petition the good old University of Illinois to have my PhD changed from English to Reality. I’m first in line for the Fall Booster shot–I think it will be my sixth Covid vaccination.

Michaux’s Lily

Lilium michauxii

This native Southern beauty has something of a reputation as being a rarity, but we have had it on both properties we have owned in Alabama, at opposite ends of the state. The fact that it blooms during the hottest part of the summer, when few people are wandering around in the woods, might explain its rep.

This Turk’s Cap like lily was discovered by eighteenth century French botanist and explorer Andre Michaux. It thrives in poor sandy soil. Unfortunately it is also a favorite food of rabbits, especially our small dog sized Swamp Rabbits. To have one bloom like this is a rarity even among our couple of acres colony of plants.

Another problem with cultivating this lily, is that it is only possible by growing it from seed. Reputedly, it is impossible to transplant, unlike other Lily species. Ben Pace, right hand man of Fred Galle at Callaway Gardens in Georgia, said they tried to transplant almost fifty of them before they gave it up. They always ended up with nothing but a handful of bulb scales. Therefore, we leave ours to grow in the wild, as they always have.

Farmer’s Market Farmer’s Omelette

Let’s Eat!

June is one of the best times of the year to buy fresh locally grown produce. The omelette pictured above is all local save one ingredient, some bacon. Because we grew two of the main ingredients ourselves, this cost pennies compared to supermarket bought ingredients. I won’t mention that it is also about a thousand times better. This recipe serves two.

Ingredients

1 or 2 slices Bacon

Sliced Fingerling Potatoes

1/4 diced Onion

I diced Tomato

Salt and Pepper

Cook the bacon until most of the fat is rendered from it. Remove from the skillet, and add the sliced fingerlings. We grew these in 10 gallon grow bags, and once you go grow bags, you never grow back. We have enough taters now to take us on into the fall. Salt here well and fry until brown.

Add the onions and tomato, and turn on the oven to 400 degrees F. When the onions appear to be almost done, add two eggs. These are our homegrown ones.

When the white begin to harden, throw the whole thing into the oven. Now is paranoia time-Am I going to overcook them? There’s nothing worse than turning a good fresh egg into a golf ball. Shake the skillet occasionally until you get the desired score on the jiggle test. Then halve this beauty and thanks nature’s God for her/his bounty.

I like my eggs with some hot sauce, and I am currently on the fence between two Tabasco sauces–the Chipotle and the mild Jalapeño (Green) Sauce. Maybe I should try both at the same time.

Bigleaf Magnolia in Bloom

That’s a big bloom.

After a couple of decades, our signature plant in our outdoor kitchen is blooming. Bigleaf Magnolia (Magnolia macropphyla) has the largest leaves and largest blooms of any North American tree. This is the last of five blooms on this tree this year.

There are a couple of varieties for this species. Ashe magnolia, which is common in the higher mountains, was formerly considered a separate species, but is now lumped in as a sub-species. The most unique variety is a yellow flowered one that is found in Bankhead National Forest in Alabama. And yes that forest is named after the Bankhead family of politicians and actors.

I think this would have been the favorite tree of Talulah, as it is as extravagant as she was.

Big Chicken Company Increases Profit 718%, Blames It On Bird Flu

In yet another case of “Did they really say that?”, Cal-Maine, which has 20% of the US egg market, outlines the real cause of egg-flation–bird flu. Said CEO Sherman Miller: the profits were caused by “the ongoing epidemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza which has significantly reduced the nation’s egg-laying capacity.” By 718%? Not likely.

If not, then the real cause? Good old fashioned corporate America ripping off customers. After that comes the BS PR campaign that no one believes. This one is so stupid it’s amazing that the news industry even bothered to report it.

The answer is, as usual, to take the means of production into your own hands. Buy some chickens, get a coop, and whip inflation now. As well as some pigs of the capitalist variety.

Cherry Tool Handles, Part One: Backsaw Handle

Restored

Having found myself with enough (free)Black Cherry to replace every handle on every tool I own, I began with the neediest–an old Disston backsaw that has spent years in the spare parts bin. The broken Apple handle was/is usable but unsightly, and it was the first candidate for replacement. If I had known how easy the handle was to make, I would have made one years ago.

While the saw rested in a miracle product called Evaporust, I researched how to make a replacement handle with a Google search. The best post I found was the one that advised the simplest approach–just trace a handle that you like on graph paper, and copy it. I traced the remaining piece of the old handle, and went with it.

The handle itself was split from a much larger chunk of Cherry, and then planed to size. I rough cut the shape with a bowsaw I also made from Cherry and Maple. Then I made my first mistake–I cut out the back end of the handle first, and when I went to rough out the inside of the handle, I promptly snapped off the top. It glued back on easily, but the note to self is rough out the middle first, and then the outside.

With that repaired, I moved to final shaping and finishing. I started out with the universally suggested tool, a rasp, but found it both tedious and seriously slow. After an hour of that torture I said screw it, and pulled out my roll of spoon carving tools. That decision saved the proto handle from the firewood pile, and myself from much more work. A good Swedish Sloyd knife can remove wood much faster than a rasp, and is ideal for the curves on the handle.

The fitting of the handle to the saw blade was simple enough–cut a slot for the saw blade, and mortice out for the iron back. The finish here is super blonde shellac. My last criticism is that the connecting section where the saw blade joins the handle should be beefier, but the function of the saw is unaffected. Overall, for a first attempt at saw handle making it is acceptable, and should last through many years of sawing.

Montreal Style French Bagels

Not Exactly Southern

Not only is this recipe not Southern, it is only half North American–but it is still very tasty. As usual, it involves a transatlantic dispersal of culture and food.

This is essentially the Canadian version of a Parisian Jewish recipe for water bagels, which means the bagels take a swim in boiling water before baking. Here’s my method for making these.

Recipe

This makes six extra large bagels, or ten-twelve normal sized ones.

For the Dough:

1 1/2 cup “00” style flour

1 tablespoon Olive Oil

1 teaspoon Sea Salt

1/2 Cup warm Water

Mix these in a stand mixer, or use whatever you have.

Combine

2 tablespoons warm Water

1 teaspoons dry Yeast

1 tablespoon Maple Syrup

Let the yeast mixture rise until it increases by a factor of three, and then mix with the dough. Let the dough rise until doubled.

This step is where the French and Montreal styles diverge. The traditional French additive is Malt syrup, which was not widely available in Canada. Maple syrup was, and still is. I should learn how to make Poplar syrup one year, and turn this into a Southern bagel.

Forming and Boiling

The home baker’s method of forming bagels is simple. For monster bagels, divide the dough into six pieces. Roll each piece into a ball, and then flatten with your palms. I use my thumb to poke a hole in the middle, and then widen out the hole to the desired size. Jo Goldenberg of Jo Rosenberg Restaurant in Paris makes the hole large enough for her palm to fit through. Place the finished bagel on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and let rise while the water heats up to boiling.

Two things are important about the boil: the pan needs to be large enough so the bagels are not crowded, and the bagels need to boil long enough so they will not collapse while baking. I use an enormous fourteen inch skillet for the boil, which is still barely large enough.

For the Boil

Enough water to float the bagels

1 tablespoon Brown Sugar

Here is the most important step in the whole process, for which eternal vigilance is needed. As the bagels boil and expand, they will crowd against each other, and one side of a bagel will try and submerge. If you let this happen, that part of the bagel will become inedible soggy pasta bagel. With that said, the bagels should boil at least two minutes on each side. After that, remove the bagels with a slotted spoon, place them back on the parchment paper, and bake at 400 degrees F until light brown. Cool on a rack, and decide if you want cream cheese or a bagel sandwich.

It takes some practice to get this right, but when you do, it’s goodbye supermarket bagel, or even deli bagel. I make these about every two weeks, and they improve just a little with every batch. It’s a stretch to eat just half of one of these, but the dogs love the leftovers as much as we do.

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