Fran Rizer - Callie Parrish 06 - A Corpse Under the Christmas Tree (34 page)

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

½ cup milk

½ cup butter or margarine

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup chopped pecan pieces

1 cup pecan halves

Directions

Bake cake in four layers as directed by recipe or on box. Set aside to cool. Combine sugar, cocoa powder, milk, butter, and vanilla in a saucepan. Stirring constantly, bring to a rolling boil over medium high heat. Cook for l minute continuing to stir. Remove from heat and beat icing for 3 minutes, preferably with an electric mixer. Mixture will cool to spreading consistency. Use ¾ cup frosting between first and second layers. Sprinkle with ⅓ cup chopped pecans. Repeat between second and third layers and then between third and fourth layers. This should leave about 1¾ cup frosting to spread over top and sides of cake. Place four pecan halves in an x-shape on the center of the top. Use halves to make concentric circles on top of cake.

BRUNSWICK STEW

When anybody’s freezer goes out in St. Mary, you can be sure they’ll be making Brunswick Stew and inviting all their friends and relatives over for a huge chow-down. That’s because it can be made with any meat—deer, duck, squirrels, rabbits or with pork, beef, or chicken and is usually cooked with butter beans (tiny green lima beans), corn, and okra. These are things most people in St. Mary put in their freezers during the year. When the power’s out or they forgot to pay the electric bill, they multiply the ingredients as much as they want, dump them into a huge pot and make Brunswick Stew. This thick stew is served with cornbread or biscuits.

Brunswick, Georgia, and Brunswick County, Virginia, both claim to be the home place of Brunswick Stew. You can look it up on the Internet. My Gullah friends add rice, too, but nobody in our family does.

PA’S BRUNSWICK STEW

Ingredients

3 pounds stewed and deboned meat*

1½ cups broth from meat

½ cup chopped onion

2 cups diced potatoes (with or without peelings)

2 cups butter beans (fresh, frozen or canned and drained)

2 cups corn (fresh, frozen or canned and drained)

2 cups chopped okra (fresh or frozen)

2 bay leaves optional

1 28-ounce can of chopped tomatoes including juice**

Salt and pepper

Directions

Stew the meat and onion on low heat in just enough water to cover it. When the meat begins to fall off the bones, turn off the heat and let it cool. Remove the bones and shred the meat with two forks. (This will look like pulled pork barbecue, and you can use that, too, if you have it.) Combine the meat, broth, vegetables and bay leaves in a large pot. Bring to a low boil. Reduce the heat. Cover, and simmer for at least an hour or maybe all day. After it’s cooked for a while, taste, and then salt and pepper however much you like. Some cooks add a little prepared barbecue sauce, but Pa doesn’t. If you see the bay leaves when serving the stew, dip them out. Otherwise, whoever finds them in their bowl can throw them away.

*Pa occasionally makes this with squirrel or rabbit, but he prefers to mix chicken, pork, and beef together.

**Pa peels and chops fresh tomatoes or uses home-canned stewed tomatoes if he has them. Squish them through your fingers when you add them, and it makes the stew a bit better than having chunks of tomato in it.

OYSTERIZERS

This is included as one of Pa’s recipes because he always makes a couple of batches of them on New Year’s Eve, but he got the recipe from Rizzie. She had appetizers called Rumaki at a Chinese restaurant in Charleston several years ago. Rumaki are small chicken livers (or halves of large ones) marinated six hours or overnight in the refrigerator. The marinade is drained off and discarded before you put a slice of water chestnut beside each piece of chicken liver. Wrap a half slice of bacon around the liver and water chestnut and push a wooden toothpick through it to hold the Rumaki together. These can be broiled or grilled. Make them extra Southern by frying in a beer batter.

Rizzie made up her own version of Rumaki, which she calls Oysterizers. When Pa tasted them, he insisted she give him the recipe. Rizzie adds garlic, ginger, brown sugar, and sherry to soy sauce to make the marinade. Pa just buys a bottle of prepared teriyaki sauce.

PA’S OYSTERIZERS

Ingredients

1 pound small shucked oysters

½ cup teriyaki sauce or “doctored” soy sauce

1 five-ounce can sliced water chestnuts

14 - 16 slices bacon, cut into halves

Optional:

1 cup beer

1 cup plain flour

1 beaten egg

Vegetable oil for frying

Directions

Drain the oysters and marinate them in teriyaki sauce for a half hour. Pour off the marinade and throw it away. Place a slice of water chestnut beside an oyster, then wrap it in bacon and stick a toothpick through it to hold everything in place. Repeat this until all oysters are used. Broil or grill until bacon is crispy or fry in beer batter. Make the batter by opening a can of beer and pouring one cup into a bowl. Drink the rest of the beer. Stir the flour and beaten egg into the beer and beat until smooth. Pa serves these with extra teriyaki sauce, shrimp cocktail sauce, and/or horseradish.

COLLARDS

First off, I don’t understand why cookbooks call them “collard greens.” They aren’t like turnips, which can be cooked as greens, or turnip roots, or greens with diced roots stirred in. The only edible parts of collard plants are the green leaves. My ex-wife considered herself a gourmet cook and collected recipes from television, books, and the Internet. When she cooked collards, she put onions, garlic, vinegar, beer, molasses, and some other stuff in them. They weren’t bad, but they didn’t taste like collards. Different strokes for different folks, but Pa’s collards are simple and the best I’ve ever eaten. We have them a lot when they’re in season and always on New Year’s Day. Except for the fact Pa likes to cook a lot of bunches at one time, here’s how Pa does it:

PA’S COLLARDS

Ingredients

½ pound smoked meat (ham hocks, smoked turkey wings, or smoked pork neck bones)*

1 large bunch fresh collards

Salt and pepper

Dash of garlic powder

1 tablespoon sugar—brown or white granulated

Directions

Ham hocks are the bony ends of smoked hams. If you live up north or out west and your grocer doesn’t stock them, use any smoked meat that’s available. The ham bone you stuck in your freezer after Christmas dinner is also good for this. Add the meat to 3 quarts boiling water. Reduce the heat and simmer for 1 hour while cleaning the collards. When cool, take the meat out of the broth, remove all bones, and cut or tear the meat into bite-sized pieces. Return the meat to broth.

Wash the collards several times in salted cold water, being careful to rinse away all dirt or sand. Leave the salt out of the last rinse. Remove the stems that run down the center of each leaf by holding the leaf in one hand and stripping both sides with the other hand. Discard the stems.

Stack six leaves on top of each other. Roll them into a tight roll, and then cut each roll into ½ to 1 inch-thick slices. Place greens into a pot with the meat and broth. Cover and cook 45 to 60 minutes, stirring off and on. Taste before adding salt and pepper to suit yourself. Be sure to taste first, because the smoked meat adds saltiness. Collards are done when they are tender but not mushy. Set bottles of hot sauce and pepper vinegar beside the collards. Some Southerners stir in bacon drippings or a spoon of butter, but Pa didn’t do this even before his heart attack. Don’t discard extra liquid. It’s called potlikker and is delicious. Some folks actually sip it out of a cup like hot tea or drink it like a tonic. We like it poured over chunks of cornbread in a soup bowl.

*The degree of smokiness in smoked meat varies. Try to get meat that is heavily smoked. Pa prefers smoked neck bones. Some cooks leave the bones in. Pa removes the bones and chops the meat back into the broth before adding the collard leaves.

**Some Southerners chop the stems up into the pot. Pa wouldn’t be caught dead with a stem in his collards.

Personally, I love the scent of collards cooking because it means there’s gonna be a whole mess of something good to eat, but some people don’t like the smell. Rizzie told Pa that putting a whole washed, unshelled pecan in the pot will make the smell less noticeable. I don’t know if that’s true because Pa won’t try it. He likes the odor, too.

HOPPIN’ JOHN

No self-respecting Southerner would let New Year’s Day pass without eating Hoppin’ John. A common saying is, “Eat poor that day, eat rich the rest of the year. Rice for riches and peas for peace,” but Pa always says, “Eat peas for coins and collards for folding money during the coming year.” So far as eating poor, I guess if Hoppin’ John was the entire meal, it might be poor in price, but not in taste. Around our house, Hoppin’ John is only a small part of the New Year’s Day feast that includes lots of collards, sweet potatoes, other winter vegetables, and some kind of pork. When he was younger, Pa sometimes roasted a whole pig outdoors for New Year’s Day. Now he usually cooks pork chops or a big fresh ham. Pa calls fresh ham “green ham.” All that means is that it’s not cured. When I was a little boy, I thought he was talking about the meat in my favorite book,
Green Eggs and Ham
by Dr. Seuss.

PA’S HOPPIN’ JOHN*

Ingredients

2 cups dried black-eyed peas

1 pound meaty smoked ham hocks (or leftover Christmas ham)

1 medium chopped onion

4 cups chicken stock

2 cups long-grain uncooked white rice

Salt and pepper

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes or a splash of hot sauce

Directions

Wash the peas in a colander and pick through them for stems, shells, or pebbles. Cover the peas with cold water in a pot and soak them overnight or, if you’re in a hurry, put the pot with cold water and peas on the stove and bring the water to a boil. Cover the pot, remove from heat, and let it sit for 1 hour. Drain the peas and discard the soak water. Add onion and chicken stock to peas. Bring to a boil over medium high heat; reduce heat to medium low and cook covered for 1½ to 2 hours until peas are tender. Do not boil to cook because the peas will bust if you do. Remove meat from the pot. Take out the bones and cut the meat into small pieces. Add the meat, rice, and chicken broth to the peas. Put a lid on the pot and cook on low until the broth is absorbed and the rice is tender. Remove the Hoppin’ John from the heat, taste, and add salt, pepper, and pepper flakes or hot sauce to suit yourself.

*Some cooks prefer to cook the black-eyed peas and rice separately. They serve the peas on top of the rice. Also, some Southerners put a washed dime in the peas. Superstition is that whoever gets the dime will be lucky all year. With the current inflation, a quarter might be better.
 

The stories behind names in the South are frequently interesting, so I looked up the origin of the name “Hoppin’ John.” Among other legends, the name is said to come from children hopping around the table in eagerness before eating peas and rice, from a man named John who was so excited that he hopped to the table for peas and rice, or from someone who invited a visitor to “Hop in, John,” and stay for a supper of peas and rice. The one I like best is that back in the 1840s a man named John sold peas and rice cooked together. Because he was crippled, they called him “Hoppin’ John.”

CORNBREAD

Cornbread is perfect with many Southern dishes including Brunswick Stew, Collards, and Hoppin’ John. Although there are many excellent cornbread mixes on the market, Pa refuses to use a mix. In the South, we like a slight sweetness in our cornbread. If you don’t, just leave out the sugar.

PA’S CORN BREAD

(Not from a box or bag)

Ingredients

½ cup butter or margarine

1 cup self-rising cornmeal

1 cup self-rising flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon sugar

2 large or 3 medium eggs

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

½ cup buttermilk*

½ cup whole milk

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400° F. Put butter or margarine in the bottom of a dark, heavy iron skillet and set it into the oven just long enough to melt, then remove and put it on a trivet or hot pad. Mix the first four ingredients together. Beat eggs, oil, and both kinds of milk together in a separate bowl, then add the mixture to the dry ingredients. Pour the cornbread batter into the skillet on top of the melted butter or margarine. Bake 30 minutes or until the top is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. This is good with lots of stews and vegetables, and hot or cold covered with butter.