A trip to the Land of Guys

I didn't make remoulade today, the first Sunday I'm missed since I started my remoulade diary. I have two excuses. One is that M and I went to Dallas and I sort of didn't have time. The second is that I'm tired of remoulade and boiled shrimp. I still have remoulade from two weeks ago in the fridge, and I just finished off last week's in a salad a few days ago. There are only two of us, and we can only consume so much remoulade in a week. I just don't want another jar of it right now, all right?

But I did have remoulade today, and I had it during my first ever trip to Guy Land--Bass Pro Shop. I had only seen its vastness as I drove by on I-30. I gaped as it was built, amazed by the great expanse of concrete that was poured before the building itself started to go up. That is one big building. And now as I drive by, I keep thinking, Geez, can they sell THAT many boats?

While I was away at a two-week techie camp earlier this summer, M checked the place out and told me stories of an indoor waterfall and pond with fish and just lots and lots of guy stuff. We had also heard from friends (one of whom is a caterer whose cooking skills we respect) that the restaurant is a good one. So on our way to Dallas, we stopped and tried it.

It's not a quick in and out, as anyone who's even seen one of these "shops" from the outside can no doubt tell. It's very much like a Guy Mall where you have to make your way through lots and lots of merchandise before you get to the food court. I guess I was mildly surprised that there were so many families in the "shop" itself, but then I shouldn't have been since I've actually been to a Hooters and was really astonished there to see so many families--I mean, they had a kid's menu! So BPS is sort of like an amusement park where there's way more gift shop than rides. For example, there was a shooting arcade area although I wasn't quite clear on what one was supposed to aim at. There may have been other stuff like this as well; I didn't explore much of the store.

I had already been thinking that I likely was not going to be making any remoulade today, so as I ran my eyes over the menu, I was pretty pleased to see that I could order a crab cake sandwich with remoulade. It wasn't bad. The remoulade sort of looked like thousand island dressing, but wasn't sweet. It was a tad bland; I probably should have perked it up with some Tabasco, but the crab cake wasn't bad considering how far we are from any actual living crabs. I can't say I feel compelled to return to the restaurant (the name of which I simply cannot remember). It was pleasant enough--huge as I should have expected, with lots of fishing kitsch on the walls and "island"-themed music playing (Jimmy Buffett, Bob Marley, you get the picture). Big place, big plates of food.

But the trip to the Land of Guys resonated on another level because I've been reading a lot of guy literature recently for a dissertation committee I'm on. I started with Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which I will admit that I loath. Then I read his No Country for Old Men, which I think is terrific. Now I'm making my way through Ellis's American Psycho. Eww. And then I'll be moving on to Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato and The Things They Left Behind. Prior to this I had read Philip Roth's Exit Ghost, which is very much an old Guy's book. The representations of women, in all, so far, are pretty limited, and I'm dreading what's coming next in American Psycho since I'm getting lots of foreshadowing that doesn't bode well.

Guy Land is pretty foreign territory, I have to say. But let me say in my defense that I like guys a lot. I'm married to one who's still amazing me with his fabulousness after a zillion years of marriage, and some of my best friends are guys. Still, I just don't get Bass Pro Shop or Cormac McCarthy.

I mean, take this sign, for instance:


This made me think for a second or two before going in, I can tell you.

There was a sign on the stairs to the bottom floor, too, advertising some sort of special on Glocks as well.

I see a connection here between Bass Pro Shop and Blood Meridian, if I can just articulate it. It's an epic tale of the border between Mexico and Texas in the latter half of the 19th century, and the epic includes unspeakable acts of violence. But I found myself, after 100 pages or so, reading and saying to myself, oh, more scalpings. Hmm, here's another horrible death. It became no big deal. In fact, I found myself perking up and reading with more zeal when the characters stayed in a hotel and had baths. I figure Bass Pro Shop is where the Judge (back to Blood Meridian) could go and stock up on ammo these days.

Now I'm not saying that customers of Bass Pro Shop go out and commit unspeakable acts of violence. The clientele seemed like very nice men in bermuda shorts, tee shirts, and caps. But both McCarthy's world and Bass Pro Shops are, in many ways, foreign to me.

On a nice note, M and I went to the farmer's market in Dallas and, among other things got these lovely heirloom tomatoes along with peaches, cantaloupe, and a delicious Israel melon. And we went to the Dallas Museum of Art for a show by artist On Kawara.


So life is good, and I'm very happy that I'm not living on the Texas-Mexico border in 1849.

Veggies take the starring role

OK, this doesn't look very appealing, but it was a darned good dinner, inspired by a collection of tasty leftovers and a trip to the farmer's market in Dallas.

I'm amazed to admit that I'm sort of sick of boiled shrimp. So I decided that an oyster po-boy with a mayonnaise-y remoulade would be just the ticket.

We had some good bread because Friday we made a trip to the big city to go to the Farmer's Market and have dinner and drinks. The bread is actually more important than the middle ingredients for a po-boy since the middle protein source will be fried and what's not to love there? But a squishy, full of high fructose corn syrup roll of no character is just not worth the effort to bring it home from the store.

Of course, I didn't expect to find fresh oysters in the shell here in Mayberry, but I had thought I had a chance to find oysters in pint containers. Nope. We only have two stores, and one is the dreaded Wal-Mart that I try not to frequent. It's an ugly store and I always find myself fighting mild depression when I'm in there.

So no oysters meant I had to rethink my plan. At the farmer's market we bought little eggplants, tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, and smoked sausages. We'd had the sausages with grilled onions on some of the good bread last night, but still had a large part of one sausage left over. We also had one (breakfast) pork chop that M had smoked in his propane smoker a few nights ago. And we had some really good lentil salad that I'd made a couple of nights ago.

So dinner in the picture above includes a few slices of sausage, a couple of strips of meat from the one pork chop, lentil salad, marinated eggplants in a mint vinaigrette, tomatoes in a balsamic vinaigrette with fresh basil, some roasted veggies (zucchini, peppers, and the tail end of a red onion), leftover lentil salad, a piece of toasted bread, and slices of avocado with a too big helping of remoulade.

My trip down memory lane this evening had nothing to do with remoulade but with veggies and suppers eaten in Fort Worth at the home of my grandmother, four great aunts, and one great uncle. If my relatives had tried to live alone as single women and men (my grandmother was the only one who ever married and she was widowed when she was barely fifty), they would have lived in poverty, but because they lived together their entire lives and pooled their money, they were able to build a big house with a big kitchen and make a warm home for themselves and for me on my summer visits. No one can imagine living like that now, and it was pretty eccentric even then.


When they were all working (my great aunts were telephone operators and secretaries) and while my great grandmother was still alive, they always had help--usually a woman of color who cleaned and cooked and looked out for my great grandmother, who lived into her nineties. These women were always called by their first names and were always wonderful cooks, cooking the same kinds of foods my great aunts and grandmother cooked and ate: cornbread, greens, green beans cooked with ham or bacon, corn cut from the cob, okra, black eyed peas, pinto beans--you get the idea. As they retired one by one, my great aunts took over the cooking and they no longer had "help." But the meals were identical--Southern cooking at its best. I don't remember one bad meal during the many summer weeks I spent with them.


Suppers were always more vegetables than meat; meat was more of a seasoning than the main event. And leftovers always played a role as the dribs and drabs of previous meals were put on the table until they were eaten. They had all lived through the Depression and wasting food was a sin they couldn't abide.


They also kept a big backyard garden, growing tomatoes, okra, greens, black eyed peas, and pole beans. What couldn't be eaten fresh was frozen or canned. I swear their home grown tomatoes were beyond anything I've eaten since.


It was a healthy way to eat and live; all, except one, lived into their late eighties or early nineties, and their health problems were minimal.


So remoulade definitely played a minor role in tonight's dinner, but it can't be the star every Sunday.

Here's the recipe:

2 cups mayonnaise
1/4 cup Creole mustard
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons Hungarian paprika
1 minced garlic clove
3/4 teaspoon cayenne

Stir everything together to blend then cover and refrigerate for at least an hour.

I backed off on the mayonnaise but left everything else as is. I think I would have liked it even a wee bit hotter and more mustardy.

The recipe comes from Southern Living magazine, but I don't have the date.

This remoulade would be mighty fine on a turkey sandwich, and it's easy.

The Junior League comes through

At last, another contender for Finest Remoulade Recipe.

After last week's mayonnaise extravaganza (although there's nothing wrong with mayonnaise), I decided to go with another oil-based version for this week's experiment.

The recipe comes from a collection put together by and for the Junior League of New Orleans--Jambalaya (this one is the 2006 edition).

My sister A (who died over 15 years ago--so hard to believe) was a member of the Junior League of Shreveport, and I lived with her when she put together her campaign to be asked to join. For those of you from parts of the country where the Junior League does not figure into the social network, think of a sorority for married, middle/upper middle class women.

I was twelve years younger and living with her and her husband for a year of high school, getting away from difficulties associated with living with my parents. It was the late sixties, and while much of the country was going through social upheaval, Shreveport was, at least from my limited experience, still deeply enmeshed in southern traditions, for good and for ill.


The high school I attended was in the first year of integration, but, again, from my limited and very white experience, the year went amazingly smoothly. But when I asked to host a baby shower for a friend who "had to get married," my sister forbade me from inviting my African-American friends. I still remember her pained explanation to my outrage: "We have to live in this neighborhood." I decided not to have the shower at all.

So back to the Junior League: My sister strategically and systematically planned ladies' bridge parties and the like. For each event, the guest list was carefully considered and food was carefully planned, prepared, and presented. Since my parents never entertained, this in itself was an education as I learned that a menu could involve more than what was on sale and what can of vegetables was near the front of the pantry. Cookbooks were for browsing and were about possibilities--not just about how to make sure the turkey was done at Thanksgiving. Lists were made and remade; finger foods were tested before hand to make sure they would not only be appealing and tasty but manageable given the necessities of timing and the small size of A's kitchen.

So I watched the preparations with great interest and helped with the preparation but more importantly learned the work and the pleasure that go into making food that others will enjoy and making entertaining look effortless. I will always be grateful for that lesson, along with so many others that I learned in my sister and brother-in-law's home.

Her campaign was a success, and she was thrilled. No one loved being a member of the Junior League more than A. And while the Junior League is not my particular cup of remoulade, I salute my sister's focus and talent to make it happen.

When my sister died, she left me her fox fur coat--a prized possession, but as she was taller and a bit thinner, the coat always made me look like a clown in a really, really cold country. What I regret is that I didn't let her know that I wanted her cookbook collection which was huge, filling a floor to ceiling bookcase in her kitchen. I'm sure the books went to lots of different folks (her husband was a minister, so I'm betting lots of parishioners loved getting something to remember her by), but I would love to have them now and think of her sitting at the kitchen table with a dozen or so books spread out before her as she planned the next event.

All in all, you can't go wrong for party food with any Junior League cookbook.

The meal we had tonight was a light summer meal that included a tomato given to us by a friend whose mother grew it and a cantaloupe purchased at the tiny farmer's market in Greenville.

Boiled shrimp on a bed of arugula. (It's a wonderful and amazing thing that I'm able to buy arugula in my tiny backwater town.)

Bruschetta (chopped home-grown tomato with garlic, olive oil, fresh basil, and a little red wine vinegar) on a whole-wheat herb bread that MO made on the 4th

Sliced cantaloupe


Here's the remoulade recipe:

2 large cloves of garlic, pressed
1 hard-cooked egg
3 anchovies
salt and pepper to taste
3/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 cup ketchup (I was worried about this but it turned out just fine!)
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 1/2 tablespoons Creole mustard
2 teaspoons dry mustard
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon paprika

In a food processor with a metal blade, bloend garlic, egg, and anchovies until smooth. Transfer to a bowl. Stir in salt, pepper, and remaining 9 ingredients. Chill. Stores well in the refrigerator. Yields 2 cups.

The result is surprisingly smooth. The chilling time is important; when I tasted it before putting in in the fridge, I thought uh oh, this is too sweet. But the chilling gave the other flavors time to assert themselves.

This one's a keeper.

Joy of Cooking remoulade remix

The remoulade from the Joy of Cooking that I made Sunday was sitting in the fridge, begging to be used.

I tried to give a small bowl full to some friends who came for a potluck night before last, but they forgot it. I don't think it was intentional.

Today, I did the obvious: I made tuna salad with it. Tuna, celery, white onion, hard boiled eggs, and the remoulade. Perfect. The tarragon was particularly good.

MO had his on (admittedly inferior) sour dough bread. The only way to get bread in our little town that doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup is to make it ourselves--which MO has been doing with wondrous regularity. I had mine (seen above) on a whole wheat tortilla (bought in and transported from Dallas) with arugula.

Happy summer lunch.

A comfort with fat

I can't remember a time when I didn't love fat.

My family was working class, and meat with a starch covered in margarine was the centerpiece of the family meal. Vegetables came from cans and lettuce was iceberg and dressing was bottled and the veggie part of the meal never excited anyone's palate.

At the end of the month--especially when my milkman father was unable to collect all that was owed him from the people on his milk route--we ate beans and cornbread, and no one was happy about it.

But even then, fat was an essential ingredient as the beans were cooked with big chunks of ham fat or the bone left over from a baked ham.

Ham and bacon fat were religiously collected in separate containers to be used as "seasoning." The ham fat was kept in the fridge for more special occasions; bacon fat, less precious, was kept in a metal container on the stove, ready to be spooned into an iron skillet to cook eggs or stirred into cornbread batter or added to the canned vegetable du jour.

My mother tried to instill in me a horror of fat, but it was a hopeless effort. My father would spear the fat trimmed from our various meats and chew with gusto. I trimmed the biggest pieces for my dad but would always leave an unctuous margin on the edges for myself. Given my mother's generally indifferent cooking, I can now see that the fat was the tastiest part of our suppers.

Back in the day, barbecue sandwiches from Sonny Bryan's Barbecue (the original on Inwood in Dallas) came with the bottom of the bun dipped in barbecue grease. Those sandwiches were insanely good. I don't know when they stopped doing that, but I'm grateful because I could never resist such excess on my own.

During the many diets of my life, I have labored to reorient myself toward fat. I have tried to convince myself that fat is gross, that things taste better when they are fat-free. But I remain very affectionate towards fat.

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying that I made a mayonnaise-based remoulade this week. Mayonnaise holds no horrors for me, so I'm sort of surprised that I don't like it more than I do.

I used the Joy of Cooking recipe--the 75th anniversary edition since I gave my old edition to my daughter when she moved into her own apartment.

It's good because it's full of mayonnaise-y goodness and pretty much anything made with mayonnaise is good, but it's still disappointing, I have to say. It's sort of more like tartar sauce with tarragon than a good shrimp sauce. In fact, I figured it wasn't going to work with boiled shrimp as I wanted it to, so I lightly sauteed some tilapia filets and served the remoulade with it. The picture above shows the tilapia with a healthy dollop of remoulade, home grown black-eyed peas (MO and I didn't grow them, but we shelled them), and a salad featuring tiny yellow tomatoes purchased at the farmer's market.

Here's the recipe:

Combine:
1 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon minced cornichons or sour gherkins (I had to substitute dill pickles because I
couldn't find either in my teeny town)
1 tablespoon drained small capers
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped tarragon (OK, I used dried--but it's organic)
1 small garlic clove, minced
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
salt and black pepper to taste
(1 hard-boiled egg, finely chopped) This was optional but I had an egg already boiled in the
fridge so I opted to use it.

Unless you have a lot of people eating it, I recommend cutting the recipe in half, as I wish I had now that I have a big bowl of it in my refrigerator. This version certainly isn't my idea of the perfect remoulade, but I think it would be darned good on crab cakes (if I could get fresh crab in my rural East Texas town).

Tomorrow we're going to buzz it (per MO's suggestion) with some chipotle peppers and use it to dress fish tacos made with the leftover tilapia and some jicama slaw (another farmer's market purchase).

I have a feeling this remoulade is going to be in our fridge for quite a while unless I can figure out something else to do with it.

Of course you know what would it would be good on? Something fried. Fat, fat, and more fat.

No Proust am I

OK, I don't have much of a memory.

My childhood is largely a blur. I have some moments here and there, but usually I find that what I think I remember is really based on a photograph of me and my sister in a rare Dallas snowfall or me sitting on an alarmingly red-nosed Santa's lap. If I bite into a madeleine (or in my case, a barbeque sandwich), rather than being swept up in memories of a past moment associated with that food, I'm far more likely to think, Oh yeah, I like barbeque.

When I photographed the cookbook that my remoulade recipe came from for my last post, I saw that Mrs. Brown is not who gave it to us. I mentioned it to MO who pointed out that Mrs. Brown had given us another cookbook, a cookbook that I have to admit I find irritating due to its tying the southern Louisiana recipes together with folksy stories told about and by a character called King Culinary. Sure enough, there on the title page (which came out of the binding years ago and is stuck in the middle of the book) is the inscription: "May this serve as a reminder of good food and good friends in Louisiana--The Brown's." A bit of irony, no?

So maybe my memory of Mrs. Brown's remoulade being the same as in the River Roads Cookbook is as faulty as so many of my other "memories." So maybe I needed to make the remoulade recipe from the Brown's gift, Royal Recipes from the Cajun Country by John and Glenna Uhler (1969).

I did, and it isn't at all what I remembered Mrs. Brown's perfect remoulade being. It's good. It's much sharper, and it's really good on boiled shrimp atop a bed of mixed salad greens. But it's different, and I'm not feeling as much love for it as I do for the remoulade I made last week.

Before I provide the recipe, let me add two caveats. First, the recipe calls for Accent, and I felt no desire to add msg to all those lovely fresh ingredients. Second, the recipe recommends boiling shrimp then pouring the sauce over them to sit overnight. Maybe if I lived in a place where fresh shrimp is bountiful and is an everyday occurrence, I'd be open to this. But I love shrimp, and if it's ready to eat, I'm eating it.

Oh, and some folks say shallots but are referring to green onions. So I went with green onions, although shallots would be good, too.

Here's the recipe verbatim:

Combine:

1/2 cup finely chopped onion

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

1/4 cup finely chopped celery

1/4 finely chopped shallots

1/2 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon Accent

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

2 tablespoons Creole or dijan [sic] mustard

1/2 teaspoon Tabasco (I used more)

1teaspoon horseradish

Mix well.

Boil, peel and devein 2 lbs. jumbo shrimp. Pour the sauce over them and refrigerate overnight. Serve over shredded lettuce.

You can see in the picture above that it's not at all the same color as the remoulade I made last week. The remoulade I made today is yellow and much more chunky with finely chopped celery, onion, and parsley. I pumped up the Tabasco, but it still needs more.

So the next remoulade will be moving out of the arena of personal history (or at least as much personal history as I'm capable of remembering--which ain't much apparently).

I think I see mayonnaise in my future.

Mrs. Brown's remoulade

It seems only right to return to the remoulade that started it all: Mrs. Brown's remoulade. As near as we can tell, the recipe comes from River Roads Recipes, published by the Junior League of Baton Rouge. This one is the 1972 edition (which gives you a hint about how long M and I have been married).

This remoulade is piquant and a little sharp. Not sweet at all. The color comes largely from paprika.



Here's the recipe:

4 tablespoons lemon juice
4 tablespoons vinegar
4 tablespoons prepared mustard
4 tablespoons prepared horseradish
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons paprika
Dash of cayenne (I use a little more than that)
2 tablespoons catsup (optional, and I don't opt for it)
1 cup oil (I used a combination of olive and canola)
1/2 cup finely chopped celery
1/2 cup finely chopped green onion

Combine the lemon juice, vinegar, and everything up to the oil. Gradually add the oil (although I admit that I dumped it in all at once, and I don't see that I did any damage.) Finally add the celery and onion.

You get about two cups.

According to River Roads Recipes, this recipe was submitted by Mrs. Lenton Sartain. Mrs. Sartain, I thank you. If you made this remoulade for them, your family was darned lucky, Mrs. Sartain.

The picture on the right above is my battered, coverless copy of the cookbook. It has moved from place to place with us, well over a dozen times. What's funny is that I had myself convinced that Mrs. Brown had given us the cookbook along with the jar of remoulade, but looking at it again, I'm reminded that it was a wedding present from a member of M's family, not Mrs. Brown at all. So I may be kidding myself that this remoulade is close to what I remember so fondly.

The picture on the left at the top of this post is our dinner: boiled shrimp on a bed of lettuce with plenty of remoulade on top, sliced pickling cucumbers (from the Dallas farmers' market) in seasoned rice vinegar, sauteed yellow squash, and sauteed, sliced sweet potatoes (also from the farmers' market).

I wanted to begin with a remoulade that I know my husband and I love and hold to be the platonic form of remoulade by which all others are judged. And shrimp with remoulade is pretty much the perfect summer dinner. It's hot in Commerce.