The Food of a Younger Land (23 page)

Fish fry night always follows pay day in the levee contractor’s camp and has to be on a Saturday night if the outside Negroes are allowed to attend. The feast is staged purely and solely for profit, the cook having purchased some riverman’s catfish with money furnished by the commissary and charged against her wages.

She will charge ten cents per plate for catfish and “hush puppies” and sell them as fast as she can get them off the griddle of her backyard fire. Cheap whiskey, locally known as “stoop-down,” brings about twenty-five cents for a short half-pint; “two-block” wine is a little cheaper but just as potent since you can’t drink it and walk more than two blocks.

The contractor views the proceedings with one eye closed and the other slightly drooped. There is always an overseer within pistol-hearing distance and if the sound of a blast is heard, all “warm-barrel” guns found on the person of the Negro participants are thrown into the Mississippi River.

The cook places her confidence in a big iron skillet and plenty of hot grease. Before hitting the skillet each slice of fish is properly salted, peppered, and mealed, constituting all of the precooking preliminaries after the delicacy has been scaled and cleaned.

“Hush puppies,” a sort of highly seasoned hoecake with the added flavor of minced onions and green pepper, are fried in the same skillet with the fish. A catfish fryer worth her salt will never serve “wasp-nest,” the local name for store-bought lightbread.

Singing has no part in the levee Negro’s festivities, his famed river chants being too closely tied up with his daily labor. At the moment, his mind is centered on eating, drinking, and gambling and, although the fish fry will last all night, he has a lot of it to do before Monday morning.

M
ullet, not usually prized as food, is commonly eaten by Negroes. In the Coast region, however, many white people eat it and have come to call it Biloxi Bacon. Besides the most common way of preparing mullet—frying—the fish is often made into a salad. The mullet should be cleaned at once after catching, preferably while alive. Scale them, remove entrails, and scrape around the backbone. Drop fish into boiling water to which a sliced lemon, salt, bay leaf, thyme, and cayenne pepper have already been added. When fish is tender, cool, remove skin, and pick the meat from the bones. Chill this meat in icebox and serve on lettuce leaf with mayonnaise or oil and vinegar dressing.

FRANÇOIS LEDGERE DIARD

W
hen Bienville had finished with his fish supper, he leaned back in his chair and exclaimed, “This would be a fitting meal for my emperor. Please, who originated this recipe?”

Madame Langlois, his cousin and housekeeper, smiled at his pleasure. She said, “I prepared the fish according to instructions given me by the Indians.”

On Alabama’s gulf shore today, years after Bienville’s time, the fish is still the favorite of those who like something new in the cooking of fish. It is prepared in many homes, but the Mobile fishermen, cooking their catch out of doors, are principally responsible for its present fame.

The fishermen usually put out their hooks near a clay bank, because clay is important to the cooking. After the clay is left to burn until there is a heaping bed of red coals. Then the fish are cleaned, split down the sides, and covered with melted butter. Salt, thyme, garlic, sweet bay leaves, parsley, and sometimes red pepper are then stuffed inside the fish, and it is sewed together with thread.

The next step is to sprinkle the fish liberally with corn meal, and this is followed by wrapping the catch in heavy brown paper. This is the time for the clay to be applied, and it is placed over the brown paper to the thickness of an inch or more. The whole is then covered by the red coals, and when the clay dries and begins to crack, the fish is ready to serve steaming hot with coffee and potatoes.

According to descendants of Madame Langlois, the Indians used bark instead of brown paper, but the Frenchwoman found that the paper gave the fish a better appearance after it was baked, and also served as a shield against dust, grit, and ashes.

STETSON KENNEDY

W
hen “Conch eats conch” nothing like cannibalism occurs, because the Conchs are a group of Anglo-Saxon people of Bahamian descent now living on the Florida Keys, who have come to be so-called because of their fondness for eating the conch shellfish. Some 5,000 Conchs live in Key West, Riviera, and along the Florida Keys, most of them eking a living from the sea by following their traditional occupations of fishing, sponging, and turtling. It is not surprising, therefore, that they are partial to seafoods.

On days “when the wind is walking right” Key waters are “as crystal as gin”—to use expressions of the Cockney-speaking Conchs. On such days conchs can be sighted at great depths on the ocean floor. Spongers, peering through glass-bottomed buckets, are able to bring up conchs with their sponge hooks from depths as great as 60 feet. But most Conchs are excellent swimmers, and capture many conchs by diving for them.

Some Conch fishermen and spongers are fond of eating the conch raw, as soon as it is caught. With a chisel or screw-driver, they pierce the shell near the spiral tip, and by inserting a knife blade they sever the muscle that binds the flesh to the shell. Grasping the protruding “heel” of the conch, they then draw out the mass of flesh.

Strips of the best parts are pared off, and dipped over the side of the boat to season them with the salty sea-water. Then the strips, perhaps still squirming a bit, are chewed and eaten with great gusto. It is popularly believed that raw conch is an aphrodisiac.

Conch meat is also eaten raw as a salad, with a dressing of lime juice, olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper. Similarly seasoned, it is made into sandwiches. It is also prepared as steaks, but the most popular conch dish is chowder made with tomatoes, onions, garlic, salt, and hot pepper. Conch in all these forms is served in most Key restaurants, and is popular with both natives and tourists, even more so than another Key delicacy, the “turtleburger,” made from ground green turtle meat.

Countless souvenir shops along U.S. 1 maintain heaps of conch shells which they sell for 5¢ each, or give free to their best customers. Other shops make the shells into attractive lamps and similar curios. This market for conch shells so depleted the supply of conchs that the Florida Department of Conservation was forced to restrict the business. Strange to say, the Conchs who supplied the demand for conch shells believe that they bring bad luck, and will not allow them to remain in their houses.

“Besides conchs, grits and grunts is our favorite eats,” the Conchs say. “We can’t afford much else, but even if we could, I guess they would still be our favorites.” The grunt’s popularity is by no means confined to the Conchs—it is one of Florida’s most important food fishes. In Key West, waterfront fish markets keep their grunts and other fishes alive in pens along the docks. Customers peer into the water, point out their preferences, and the fish are scooped up with a dip-net and sold either dressed or alive.

In former days, when ships piled up on the dangerous and then uncharted Florida Straits, the Conchs plied the lucrative trade of salvaging; and when a ship ran ashore the message was carried from one Key settlement to another by means of plaintive blasts blown on conch shell bugles. One wrecker became so prosperous that he took his wife to New York City and established residence at the old Waldorf-Astoria. His wife soon tired of the hotel’s rich French cuisine, and announced indignantly that if he did not wire Key West immediately for “a sack of grits and barrel of grunts” she was going to return to the Keys “where she could get some decent eatin.” The grits and grunts were sent for, and, in keeping with the tradition of American hotels to cater to the whims of their guests, were cheerfully prepared and served by the Waldorf-Astoria.

The grunt, it should be explained, is a small bottom-feeding fish (
Haemulon plumieri
), which derives its local name from its habit of emitting several loud grunts upon being pulled from the water. In other parts of Florida, this fish is known as a “croaker.” Because of their small size, usually from 5 to 12 inches, a considerable number of grunts are required to feed a hungry Conch family. Fortunately the grunts are numerous, and are quickly and easily caught on small hand-lines.

In preparing grunts for the frying pan the Conchs scale and clean them but leave the heads on. They are then dipped in meal, and fried in deep fat until they are a crisp, golden brown. Heaping portions of grits (finely ground hominy) are placed in plates or soup bowls, and the grunts are stacked high on a platter in the center of the table. The grunts are seasoned with “sour,” a bottle of juice from the small, fragrant Key limes, and the grits may or may not be eaten with butter, depending upon the family’s income. The grits are eaten with a fork or large spoon, while the grunts are eaten entirely by hand.

The Conch develops his skill at eating grunts at an early age, as his speed determines the number of grunts he gets from the platter. For this reason, speed, rather than ceremony, keynotes the meal. Competition is keen, and the piles of bones mount very rapidly.

The Conch’s knowledge of the grunt’s anatomy is truly amazing. First the head is snapped off, and by dexterous plucking with the thumb nails the cerebral cavity is laid bare and the brains are sucked out. Before being discarded the head comes in for a nibbling, which removes the fleshy strips and tasty crust. The body of the grunt is then manually dissected. The backbone and dorsal fin-bones are removed, leaving two slabs of virtually boneless flesh and the crispy tail and fins, all of which is consumed. The number of grunts that can be eaten at a single sitting by a single Conch is almost incredible—a conservative estimate would exceed 30. The bones are picked so clean that Conch cats are notoriously undernourished.

J
osephine—ebony, middle-aged, a comfortably plump matron from “Quarters,” serves as cook, maid, and mentor in the Benoit household. Sure, she could tell us how to fry hardshell crabs in the shell, a manner of preparing them unknown to inland Mississippians.

“First, you kill your crabs in boiling water—sounds sinful, don’t it, but it’s the best way. This sets the meat firm. Break off the claws an’ legs; the dark meat’s inside them. Break the body apart; save and clean the bottom part that’s got the white meat in; roll in meal and fry in deep fat.”

When served, the large claws may be laid by the plates in lieu of forks as useful and ornamental utensils for picking meat from shells. Hard-shelled crabs are more often left in the boiling water till done (about 30 minutes), then eaten, or meat is separated from shells to serve in crab gumbo, cocktail, stuffed crab, or other combinations.

C
rab has always been one of the favorites of Maryland sea food delicacies. The
soft shell
crab being considered the superlative in good eating. The only specie that is caught for commercial use is the
blue crab
and during the season which extends from May until November they assume an important place on the
menu
in Maryland.