The Food of a Younger Land (16 page)

 

Mrs. Bicknell T. Eubanks, also of Aberdeen, prepares Spanish rice this way.

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in large frying pan and add rice. Cook until brown, stirring constantly. Cook remaining 2 tablespoons oil with onion and green pepper until the onion is yellow and tender. Combine with rice. Add tomatoes and let it simmer until the rice is tender, stirring constantly. Add a little hot tomato juice if the rice seems dry. Add seasonings. Serves 6.

 

Vicksburg, in the old steamboat days Mississippi’s wicked, wide-open town, lived high with all the trimmings. Perched on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi, it is famous still for its excellent catfish. The disarmingly simple recipe for preparing it is here given:

Take a catfish weighing ½ pound. Season well with salt and pepper, and roll in cornmeal. Use a pot of deep fat with temperature of 360 degrees. Place the fish in the pot and fry until done. Serve very hot.

To go along with the fish, the Hotel Vicksburg serves a wickedly hot potato salad, prepared as follows:

Mix and serve with quartered tomatoes, sliced dill pickles, mixed sweet pickles, and quartered onions.

 

A collection of recipes from the Old South is no more complete than the Old South itself without that magic ingredient, the mint julep. In the fine old city of Columbus, in the northeastern part of the state, hospitality for many years is said to have reached its height in “Whitehall,” the home of Mr. and Mrs. T. C. Billups. “The drink is refreshing,” says Mrs. Billups, needlessly enough, “and carries with it all the charm of the Old South when life was less strenuous than it is today; when brave men and beautiful women loved and laughed and danced the hours away, but in their serious moments, which were many, aspired to develop minds and souls that made them among the finest people this old world has known.” The “Whitehall” recipe is as follows:

Have silver goblet thoroughly chilled.

Take half lump sugar and dissolve in tablespoon water.

Take single leaf mint and bruise it between fingers, dropping it into dissolved sugar.

Strain after stirring.

Fill the goblet with crushed ice, to capacity.

Pour in all the bourbon whiskey the goblet will hold.

Put a sprig of mint in the top of the goblet, for bouquet.

Let goblet stand until FROSTED.

Serve rapidly.

 

Who could ask for anything more?

KATHERINE PALMER

Cream butter. Add sugar and cream together thoroughly. Beat whites and yolks separately. Add yolks to butter and sugar, then sifted flour, fruit and seasoning. Fold in whites last. Bake in paper lined pan three hours or more.

From:
Mrs. Thomas C. Darst, 510 Orange St., Wilmington, N.C.

Pound each of sugar, butter and one dozen eggs. Beat the egg yolks and sugar together, the white separate. With your hand cream butter and small quantities of flour until all creamed. Add yellow mixture by bits, creaming or beating all the time. Beat long. Fold in stiff whites. Bake carefully. Some wash the salt out of the butter.

From:
Miss Nancy Watkins, Madison, N.C.

Bake slowly about l½ hours.

This recipe collected by Mrs. Edith S. Hibbs, 1720 Orange St., Wilmington, N.C.

Boil meat until about done. Peel potatoes, dice. Peel onion and slice in rings. Add 1 green sweet pepper, chopped. Put these ingredients into the pot with the meat. Season with salt, pepper, butter and 1 cup of sweet milk. Cook until potatoes are done but not mushy. Serve hot.

This recipe collected by Mrs. Travis Jordon, 808 Cleveland St., Durham, N.C.

Handle as little as possible for mixing. Roll out ½ inch thick; spread over biscuit pan and bake in hot oven. Split while hot, butter generously and cut in squares for serving.

This recipe collected by Mrs. Edith S. Hibbs, 1720 Orange St., Wilmington, N.C.

At various meetings and celebrations held in the woods squirrel mulligan, a lineal descendant of Brunswick stew, is a popular favorite. Cooked in an iron pot over an open fire, it is among the simplest of one-dish group meals. The recipe below (provided by Bert Jacobi of Pulaski County, who is often called upon to concoct the mulligan for special occasions) is based upon four squirrels; if there are more or less squirrels the other ingredients vary accordingly.

The whole aggregation is put into the pot together, with enough water to keep it from burning, and cooked until done. If corn is used it should not be added until the other ingredients have nearly finished cooking.

Hot tamale pie is a frequent chief constituent of covered dish dinners, and can of course be used equally well to feed a family. The recipe is one found by Gertrude E. Conant, Extension Service nutritionist.

Make a cornmeal mush of the meal, water, and salt, and cook for 1 hour. Meanwhile, brown the onion in hot fat, add meat and tomatoes, season with salt and chile pepper to taste, and let simmer five minutes. Put a 1-inch layer of the mush in the bottom of a greased baking dish, next a layer of the meat and sauce, then another layer of the mush, and so on until the dish is full, topping it with a layer of mush. Bake 20 minutes in a hot oven.

Pioneer Arkansans, unable to obtain spinach or other greens, found a substitute in the tender shoots of the poke bush, gathered in the early spring. Poke “sallit” or salad is still so highly thought of by most Arkansans that many housewives spend hours gathering the leaves in fence corners and along roadsides, although other greens are readily available.

The usual method of preparing is to place the poke greens in a pot with sufficient water to cover them and parboil for about fifteen minutes, then drain off the water. Meanwhile, fat salt pork has been simmering in another pot for fifteen or twenty minutes, a quarter-pound of pork and a quart of water for every pound of the greens. The parboiled greens are put in the pot with the meat and cooked until tender. “Pot likker” from poke greens cooked in this way is particularly good with corn bread.

Many people like to season poke sallit with pepper sauce at the table. The pepper sauce is made in a vinegar cruet or a small pickle jar. Fresh-picked ripe bird peppers are placed in the cruet until it is a third full; then the container is filled with vinegar and the peppers allowed to steep for two or three days. As the sauce is used more vinegar may be added.

These recipes are supplied by Mrs. Ola M. O’Hara, a native of Des Arc, in Prairie County. Mrs. A. C. Jacobi of Pulaski County adds another way of preparing the greens:

Boil the greens until tender, drain thoroughly. Place the drippings in an iron frying pan. Beat the eggs thoroughly and stir in the boiled greens. When the grease is hot, pour in the mixture and stir until the eggs are set. Serve hot.

Persimmons, which grow on mountainsides through the Ozarks and to a considerable extent in the Ouachitas, have been called “Arkansas dates.” They are best when allowed to dry on the tree, but if the fall rains threaten to spoil them they can be gathered and dried indoors. When dried, they add spice to many sorts of cakes and cookies.

The following recipe, which uses dried persimmons along with many other products of Arkansas farms and woodlots, was given to Gertrude E. Conant, Extension Service nutritionist, by Mrs. Sherrill, an old resident of Washington County.

Soak fruit overnight, drain, and cut in pieces with scissors. Mix with nuts and dredge with flour.

Cream the butter and add sorghum slowly, add eggs one at a time and beat well, beat fruit juice into mixture. Combine with second mixture and blend well. Add third mixture (prepared fruit) and pour into a well-greased pan to bake or steam. If baked the pan should be lined with well-greased paper. Bake three hours in a moderate oven, then remove from pan and cool. When cold, wrap in heavy waxed paper and pack in a tin box or a heavy stone crock to ripen.

There are dozens of ways of making corn bread, and most of them are practiced in Arkansas. One of the oldest and probably the simplest of all is ash cakes, baked in the ashes on a hearth. L. M. Rall, a Negro woman of Little Rock, tells how her mother made them:

“She would make up ash cakes with a pinch of soda, hot water, a pinch of salt, and corn meal. The water must be hot. Make the paste just stiff enough to handle. Rake back a clean place on the hearth, then put the cake down and cover it with hot coals, or ashes. When it has cooked done enough, you can dust it off with a cloth. You can bake ash cakes in the oven, and they’re just as good. Don’t put any grease on them and very, very little soda.”