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Overview
Consumption is the real American pastime. Through the prism of food, we all see our pasts differently. Like the finest food writers, Power brings readers directly into her world through the evocative depiction of the experience of eating. From her childhood on a rambling farm in Virginia — during which she witnessed a saga of fighting, disowning, silencing, and other regrettable acts — to her peripatetic and international adult life, Power's reflections are surprising, enthralling, and entertaining. She has a deep understanding of the cuisines of Peru and Mexico, Iran and India; her stints as a sandwich seller in Rio, a waitress in the East Village, a funeral caterer in the Deep South, and on a food junket to Japan all seem familiar as she relates each experience to us through its cuisine. A wealth of detailed recipes throughout the book offer a chance to recreate Power's memories in perpetuity.
Lyrical and uplifting, unflinching and brave, Feed the Hungry is a supple, evocative memoir of food, travel, Americana, and family history, written with all the creativity, tenderness, grit, and verve we have come to expect from this uncommonly gifted writer.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781416556060 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Free Press |
| Publication date: | 06/17/2008 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
Virginia
The Dogs Bark but the Caravan Moves On, 1961-1971
In the first place, there is hunger, sniffi ng like a restless night beast toward satisfaction. To the kitchen in the cold night or bars on the edge of town, to the shiny mall, to new loves, new cars, new music! New anything! The drive is relentless. Is it the hunger of the stomach, but it has spiritual repercussions as well. Where is the difference between an actual instinct and a vague malaise? The growl of the stomach becomes the ache of the heart, becomes the screech of the banshee, the warrior's yell, the beat of the Mongol's drum, a song of vengeance. It could be a lot of songs, but it has only a small tune hummed ceaselessly, repetitively: hunger, deep and gnawing.
This is the title of the first book I ever wrote: Small Delicacies for Ladies. I was ten. In the few pages of this unfinished classic, I managed to provide a long, tediously wrought recipe for candied violets and mint leaves, both of which I was fond of making. I learned these recipes from an ancient tome I found in the home of my eccentric grandparents, Francis and Mary, who lived on a sprawling farm in rural Virginia. These were my father's parents, and although my parents divorced when I was young, we would make regular forays to their house. Their kitchen was dank and cool, lying partially underground, with a varnished brick floor. One had to go down the stairs from the upstairs hall, as if going into a dark basement. On the old stone and stucco walls, Francis had painted old medieval shields and fi gures, old crests and daggers. The smell was earthy stone and a healthy waft of moss. In general, one felt an unconscious surge as one came down the stairs, a Jungian journey into something unspoken and magical. From the kitchen one could enter the outdoor covered porch, laid in smooth obsidian stone and decorated with ancient Hindu statues and various decaying wicker furniture cluttered around a large lawn. Masses of stalky mint squeezed from the edge of the columns, and violets dotted the lawn, and here I gathered my sources of the delicacies.
The mint leaves were tricky, you had to carefully wash them of dust in just a mist of cold water and dry them on paper towels. I didn't even bother washing the violets, as they would no doubt disintegrate quickly into a purple mush. I boiled some sugar and water for about six minutes until the mixture thickened slightly and bubbled in a slow, unctuous way, like lava. You quickly dipped each leaf or violet in the goo and laid them out on foil to dry. You could use chopsticks or tiny tongs. I think I used my fingers and I think I got burned. I seem to remember the distinct sensation of candied fi ngertip, red, caustic, and sweet. After the leaves dried quite rapidly, they became tiny surreal jewels. They were bright and glittery and crackled against each other like fall leaves. My two half sisters, younger than me, were enchanted by them and we ate them on the lawn, overlooking a large brown river way across the meadow, where occasional shaggy horses strolled about.
I'm not sure what Francis and Mary did exactly, but they didn't farm directly. A grizzled old-timer named Eugene Stephenson did that. They were dilettantes. They seemed to play, as we did. Mary had a puzzle of a million pieces always set on a table upstairs and she sometimes played with that, or she slept in the afternoons, or she sat in a chair on the lawn with her white curled hair and dark small glasses, laughing with visitors.
Francis had gone to Yale, studied architecture. He painted, cooked the occasional blanquette de veau, drank, smoked tiny cigars, wore ascots, and had built a gothic prayer room in a hall closet. He was quite handsome and it was rumored that he kept a woman in Washington, D.C. It was said he was writing a book on stone church architecture. He had published one novel, a thriller, called The Encounter under the pen name of Crawford Power.
Their kitchen, as I mentioned, was underground and seemed dug from cool stone. It was the kitchen of a mossy ancient castle or a thousand-year-old cave. No doubt this imparted a certain metaphysical languor to cooking, as if one was engaged in druidish rites of magic or alchemy. Upstairs in my grandfather's study, he kept a human skull. The cookbooks were old and dusty, lounging on ramshackle shelves in the kitchen, containing recipes no one made anymore. A small needlepoint on the wall said The dogs bark but the caravan moves on. I had nothing really to do when I visited but read or cook. Occasionally, I drew. I remember cooking lots of things in that kitchen, the candied items, then later on, as an adult, I made a special dinner for my father, who had moved in after my grandparents died — Mary from intestinal cancer, Francis from a heart attack. Instantly, the tone of the house grew lighter, airier. Mark, my father, replaced the blackamoors and heavy Victorian artifacts with his vast collection of photos — being a quite accomplished artistic photographer by trade. This meal was made for him and some of his best photographic cronies, charming men surrounding themselves in a perpetual spasm of clicking and flashing, as if time itself had to be recorded and studied before it eased away.
The meal was ornate and special for fall: I remember it as spiced butternut squash soup, followed by roast rack of lamb with an Indian onion chutney with curry leaves. The chutney is a wonderful thing, classically served with idlis, the steamed rice snack cakes of southern India, but is a great sauce for meats or sandwiches. You slow-cook the onions with mustard seeds and add the curry leaves at the last moment. You can find those in Asian or Indian markets, though I've even seen them in some of the upscale markets, like Wegmans. They have no flavor of curry, but impart a certain earthy muskiness, which complimented the pleasurable tomb-like quality of my grandfather's kitchen. I forgot what dessert I made, but if I were doing this menu now, fall resplendent outside, ochered and toasty warm, I would follow with a local persimmon Pavlova and sprinkle with candied mint leaves, in honor of nostalgia. There are a few wild persimmon trees on the property, gnarled things, which produced a mass of opaque gilden fruits that must be iced by the fi rst frost in order to transform from a hideous mouth-wrenching pucker to velvetlike custard. It's their color which is so lovely — pearlized coral, or gauzed apricot. The skin, unlike commercial varieties, is ultra thin and crepey, like the upper arm of an eighty-year-old woman. They are mostly pit, so you have to use quite a few. They were one of first fruits discovered in Virginia. Captain John Smith of Jamestown (a relative, actually), wrote: "The fruit is like a medlar; it is first green then yellow, and red when ripe; if not ripe, it will drive a man's mouth awry with much torment; but when it is ripe, it is as delicious as an apricock."
I seem to remember grandfather Francis as being quite a good cook, but obviously this was a youthful invention. My sister Shelagh recalls visiting with school friends to find him dining alone at the end of his grand mahogany table on curried bananas. I asked my father for information on Francis's culinary expertise, whereupon he produced a dry snort, mumbling something about how he'd boil everything down for hours into an intense essence. He added, though, that he tended to cook this way as well, and that "once your grandfather had the plate before him, he would go into a whirlwind of activity with the salt and pepper, a vicious sprinkling of salt over food and table and many grinds of the pepper mill. And then he would eat with relish. It must be genetic because I am pretty much the same. Virginia often chides me for throwing in too many ingredients and thus ruining simple, good food. The last time I think she objected to nutmeg in my scalloped potatoes. I have noted the subtlety in your cooking and even attempted to emulate it but then I see some dried fi gs in the pantry and think, hey, those would be good in this lentil dal. I cooked some chopped up rhubarb with ground lamb the other day and I don't care what anyone says, it was good. But the figs texturally were a bit surprising, the seeds like little explosions. But the flavor was good! Both your grandfather and I don't have subtle palates and I think that's the explanation. Years of smoking and in his case, smoking and drinking, have dulled our palates to the point where we have to jump-start our food, which causes those with normal palates to recoil in horror, especially when they fi nd out what was in a particular dish."
Later though, he sent me a raccoon recipe with the following description: "The raccoon recipe was inspired by a night in which Eugene Stephenson, the farmer renting our farmland, invited us to tag along during one of his many nocturnal coon hunts. It was a memorable night. First of all, Gene began the hunt mounted on an albino mule, I think it was albino, I know it was white. Off he and the mule sauntered while the rest of us, not possessing mules, albino or otherwise, followed on foot. Us included the dog handler, by the name of Casey. Casey was a wizened old man about fi ve feet tall who had the unenviable job of keeping ten dogs on the leash. Suddenly a white shape loomed up then vanished: the mule, sans Gene. I'm over here, he bellowed; he was now on foot, apparently being too drunk for continued equestrianship. Bring the dogs up, Casey, he commanded from somewhere in the underbrush. Now I could swear that the minute he heard this request, Casey went skyward, launched by the combined effort of ten dogs to reach their master. I do know for a fact he lost his footing and was dragged several feet over the ground by the eager beasts before he had the sense to let them go. The rest of the night, a confused blur of fi refl y lanterns, crashing through weeds, avoiding baying dogs and and stampeding cows, and finally gathering below a tree in which was a coon, is pretty much described in the recipe."
See recipe on page 16.
Certainly, Francis was an aesthete who lived elegantly in a certain timeless bubble. I was around him here and there in my childhood, absorbing from his gregarious hugs on my arrival a crush of many scents: good leather, the bright limey tang of alcohol, and a smothering of warm patchouli, one of his many blends of perfume he concocted himself. The house frightened us, ancient and stiff with odd antiques, blackamoors, and that horrible human skull. We children made our arrivals, fairly unnoticed. We'd attack the puzzle table on the back sunroom or loll in the cold algaed pool. He was one of the many colorful characters who bespeckled my childhood, and then, when I grew old enough to actually look at them with observant eyes, seemed to fade like a distant star enveloped in black sky: when fi nally gone, they exist as a dream, something invented from another era, certainly not of this time. Who wears ascots anymore?
In just a few miles from the sprawling medieval farm in the Virginia countryside, lived my other grandparents, Gene and Nancy, in an estate called Crednal in the pompous town of Middleburg, noted for parlaying to the Kennedys and other aristocrati devoted to equine interests. Oddly, they happened to be the best friends of the aforementioned Francis and Mary, and as proclivity would have it, I came out of the mix. Their house was grander and decorated in early sixties southern simplicity, some rattan here, a piece of chintz there, except for the sequestered parlor, an ornate mausoleum of satin loveseats and dog sculptures reserved only for guests. The aura of their kitchen possessed none of the mystical haze of Mary and Francis's gypsy cave: this was a small factory mandated by a stately black woman named Bertha, who cooked large amounts of traditional Virginia fare, slow-cooked buttery lima beans, fried chicken, a wonderful beef vegetable soup with a layer of red fat and a swirl of local products, corn, peas, the ubiquitous lima beans. There was batter bread, cornbread, and popovers. I remember a multilayered cake, with perhaps ten thin layers oozing with icing. One fi ne day, it was sitting on a pantry and I thought she had layered pancakes in a surprising new way. My mother claims this is a Lady Baltimore cake. I beg to differ: I looked it up and found it is a Smith Island cake from Maryland. But Bertha made Lady Baltimore as well, a white cake studded with nuts and dried fruits. Occasionally, though, Bertha left the premises and my grandmother was the cook, and strangely, it's these meals I remember most. I say that because everyone rather secretly felt these were a definite step down from Bertha's brilliance, because Nancy didn't like to cook.
Nancy had a leonine cool blondness, hinting of the South and that moody ambiance without a twang or any of its unsavoriness. She would sit with her long limbs casually draped in front of her, cardigan, chin-length blond crimped hair. She came from an old Virginia family that was doing quite well until hit by the Depression. She seemed to have an inordinate amount of maiden aunts hanging around, as all those old families did. There was that miffed, residual irritation that hung around from the loss of the Civil War, as if someone had forgotten how to be gentlemen, in a big way. Some wouldn't even call it the Civil War, preferring the War Between the States. Two of her unmarried aunts, Beck and Mariah, actually had taken a ride with some friends in a new car, but when they found out it was a Lincoln, they declared they would need to be taken home. Those two aunts basically ran everything in the house. They picked the meals and raised young Nancy. She was forbidden to use the word "sweetbreads," which still confuses her to this day. The Depression hit them all hard. Nancy to this day must have a year's supply of toilet paper in the house because her family couldn't afford it and had to use newspaper. And yet, Henry, her father, and her mother, Mabel, scraped every bit, sold jewelry, and stock to mold together a precious $150 for the last cause, the ultimate sacrifice, for Nancy, to do well and have a debutante party in Washington.
At one of these many socialite whirlwinds that she fell into in those days, while visiting Princeton actually, she met Gene on a blind date. She told me he met her at the train station drunk as a skunk. Somehow they managed to stay together for sixty years. When she wasn't lipsticked and laughing and drinking gin, she was lounging on her large king-size bed, writing novels as well. So cooking the inevitable meal for her crowd — which was at that time my brother, John, my mother, Ann, and I (we had moved into a small house on the estate after a divorce), my two uncles, Harrison and Owen, and an odd friend or two — became a necessity. She would find one dish and work it for years. Lasagna was one of these. Next, marinated steak in bottled Italian dressing, cooked until gray, cut with the shredding implement of the seventies, the electric knife. And then, a wild chicken dish in a casserole involving a jar of apricot preserves. As plebeian as these were, I found them delicious.
We grew to endure more and more of these meals, because of the events of one particular day. My mother and uncle liked to sit in the kitchen and talk to Bertha. My brother and I liked to stay in the downstairs "mudroom" and watch I Love Lucy and Petticoat Junction and eat forbidden snacks that my hippie granola-baking mother wouldn't allow — Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Vienna sausages in the can. One day, though, the cantilevered doors to the mudroom became swiftly shut and we were told to stay put. We peeked through the doors and saw what looked like Harrison, our uncle, kissing Bertha as she lay on the fl oor. Something was not right. After a while, an ambulance came and she was taken away. Later, it turned out that Bertha had said to my uncle, Harrison, get me a chair for my leg, it has fallen asleep, and then that was it, she was down. A stroke.
We fared for ourselves, after that. Gone were the golden days. My teenage uncle, Owen, burned huge three-pound steaks he charged to Nancy and Gene at the local butcher, and drizzled them with his "secret" recipe sauce, as he put it, which was merely lemon and butter. I went nuts on the Vienna sausage cans. A strange food anarchy hit Crednal. Alcohol seemed to become a new nutrition source. I remember Nancy becoming loopy and sentimental almost nightly after a couple of drinks, and my uncle Harrison's irritation at it all. In these wild times, I was allowed to swig a bit of champagne, make an attempt at a fl owery toast, and fl ing the glass in the fireplace with a great, delightful spray of glass. My grandmother even bought six-packs of shrimp cocktail in the tiny glasses, with little metal lids you pried open, mainly for the purpose of smashing during toasts. There were also a bunch of industrial wine glasses from the Lone Oak Country Club thrown in, as an alternative group. The apricot chicken made more and more appearances. In other words, we got down to the bare nub.
My mother, however, was doing her own culinary Hippie's Tour of the World. In her long Mexican dresses, beads, her Cherlike mop of brown hair with bangs, she was baking granola, making Hungarian goulash, cannolini, fondue. She'd overkill on her latest, feeding us renditions until we fell in love with the dish, then, never again would she make it. In some odd sense of nostalgia for the three weeks in November 1968 when she perfected them, she's started making the old cannelloni again, mortadella sausage, veal, spinach wrapped in homemade crêpes, a soothing nutmeg-flecked béchamel. My older uncle Harrison was on a wildlife foraging mission, hunting and fi shing in every corner of the land, bringing back deer, rabbits, dove, elk, bluegill, trout, bass. He even shot a bear once and we baked a haunch of it, a massive, fulvous hunk covered in grease as thick as Vaseline. Somehow one of the Labradors that swarmed in a pack around the house devoured the meat and convalesced for four days under a couch. The hunting had little to do with food, it seemed he rather enjoyed the sport of tracking things down and killing them. My brother joined him on these forays. They shot skeet on cold fall mornings, with various local friends. When he wasn't hunting, he enjoyed torturing us or teasing. He had a game where he'd walk into a room, scream Assume the Fetal Position! and we had to fling ourselves to the ground in a ball in fi ve seconds. Anyone who lost received an Indian burn or some such pain. He also invented the Houdini Game, much to the delight of my family. My brother or I would be tied to a chair, and timed to see how quickly we could get out. Then, there was Operation. We'd lie on the wooden bar, pushing aside the giant gallon jugs of Bombay Gin, and Harrison would stick the wine opener in our nose or ear or some such. We actually enjoyed these draconian games. They seem a little sick and bizarre in our world now. The soundtrack to all these times was supplied by Owen, the younger uncle, famous for playing songs over and over ad nauseum. How many times I heard "I Am the Walrus" as I ate the apricot chicken? or Mick Jagger's twang of "Paint It Black" as Harrison probed our inner ear with an icepick during Operation?
My older uncle Harrison had a dark and mocking nature. Every winter we went to a small island in the Bahamas and all stayed for two weeks. Oh, during this time we traded Bertha for the small and ill-tempered Carrie, who was later replaced by Muriel, who drank too much and saw little people in the kitchen. But, in between the foul moods and the drinking, they made stuffed crawfi sh and cracked conch and we never ate better. My family befriended the local English doctors, named Cants, and their large family of teenagers soon took over our house. My uncle somehow told one of them that back in Virginia we were the members of an odd satanic cult. Apparently, he believed him for years. And one day, he called up and was coming to visit. An elaborate plan was hatched. He was led blindfolded across a cornfi eld at night to my mother's small house, lit from within by candles and greeted by shrouded figures (my other uncle, us, friends all in on the gag). The heart of a small dove that Harrison had shot that day was put in his palms and he was told to eat it. At some point, when it seemed he would actually eat the thing, the place broke into laughter and the story stayed for years in the annals of our family. My uncle also told my brother and I that Boo Radley lived in the attic. I once ventured there, it was announced by a lilliputian set of stairs spiraling upward into darkness. Upon cracking open the door, I saw a windowless room, heavily scented with the warmth of sweat, a single bed neatly made, and a laundry rack with a series of putty-colored tights drying. It was Bertha's room. No Boo Radley, but it was scary still the same.
What was I doing through all of this? I was sitting in my room, drawing endless pictures of ladies in whimsical, extravagant costumes that I intended to make one day. I was writing stories and poems. My brother was off with Uncle Harrison pillaging the forests of wildlife or lost in some imaginary war game. One day I looked out my window and saw him with a plastic rifle, saying to no one, Let's go, men. Somehow, just out of boredom and maybe hunger, I started reading cookbooks, which seemed like fantasies of other worlds. They'd say things like This is Aunt Miriam's favorite. Thanksgiving is just not the same without squirrel pie, and one could envision the whole family, the voices, the food, their lives. Or, even better, because my family seemed to love the exotic, This fish stew is served on the beach, on banana leaves. I recommend it served with dark rum and fresh Persian lime. It became an escape, reading cookbooks.
Most of the time, however, I was trying to avoid my younger uncle, who although I adored him with his Beatles and Rolling Stones and fashionable mop of long hair, had suddenly changed. It was the height of the sixties and Owen was ripely in the midst of it all. He brought us The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and we all loved it. Even my grandfather Gene, who favored crooning from the thirties like Cole Porter, had to admit "Yesterday" wasn't bad. Owen was closer to my age than Harrison, and nicer. He seemed to enjoy hanging out with us youngsters, laughing, clowning around. But in the way clouds move across the sky, in the softest yet perceptible way, he was growing in creasingly odder and odder, and it seemed only I knew. I couldn't fi gure out what had happened to him, but he was changed — a subtle difference I couldn't have expressed even if I had been brave enough to do so. I tried to avoid him, but I had no tangible reason. When my mother or grandmother wanted to run off to the store, which was fine before, I balked. My brother didn't mind, he didn't see yet. I'd beg to go with them and they just thought I was being foolish. So, I'd watch them drive off down the long gravel driveway surrounded by boxwoods in fear, not knowing what he'd do. It didn't seem good.
Nobody noticed the change, like I said, but it was inevitable they would, and in fact, it became quickly obvious, with the arrival of his girlfriend's parents and the police at the door one sad, cold night when they claimed he had assaulted her. That night had begun a long road of denial and pain for my grandparents, until years later when they came to accept the fate of schizophrenia for poor Owen, who has lived in a mental ward most of his life. But what caused it? He had a bad car accident at eighteen, suffering a concussion and briefly going into a coma. I remember the whole thing dimly, as if etched in velvet. Some of us attribute this. But no one knows these things. He simply went away.
And, coincidentally, Francis and Mary suffered the same. Was it something in the water? Their son, my uncle as well, also had the same illness. It was Francis's unfortunate fate to discover his son's body one day, by that large river I mentioned that I looked upon while munching candied mint leaves, where he had taken his own life with a shotgun on a weekend visit from the hospital. Perhaps this is the silent bond written in some genetic code that brought these two families together so long ago. I suppose the defi nition of the illness could be the definition of our families even, removed from reality, living in a different world. Other children at school seemed to be from an alternative universe. Their lunch boxes held white bread and peanut butter and jelly, or bologna, or a pale, fl oppy version of ham with American cheese. The ham we ate at home was a dried, salty thing that took three days to cook and was served paper thin on Bertha's rolls. It would rest for days in the cold room wrapped in cheesecloth, where we could peel off slivers and eat it with bread and butter pickles. My lunches were often Roquefort cheese and Euphrates crackers, a popular choice for seven-year-olds. The other children also didn't seem to live in a small hippie cabin next to their grandparents, with mattresses on the fl oor, a giant hewn log for a coffee table and Bob Dylan playing until all hours. Their parents didn't wear beads, or take them to antiwar rallies, or smoke pot against their children's wishes.
It's like this: Up in the attic, beyond Bertha's room, there was a dusty airless room full of wooden crates, each seemingly full of goods and artifacts of the family through the years. Those are Great-Aunt Beck's dresses, my mother told me when we looked through a pile of ancient clothing from the eighteen hundreds, with large poufed sleeves, and ruffl es and lace, bodices and petticoats, they all delighted me. But as you examined them, they crumbled in your hands. Sleeves fell off by threads and moths fl ew out. There were old books, family daguerreotypes in silver frames, Victorian furniture. Slowly, the clothing disintegrated into odd hunks and pieces, useless, yet somehow too valuable to throw away. And fi nally, everything fell apart: mice inhabited the eaves and took over, infi ltrating the boxes with fl uff and rattling dung. In the end it was all tossed out.
The curious hodgepodge of memory feels the same: hunks of incidences tempered by vague recollection. A certain wail of the Beatles humming over a taxi's radio or the whiff of patchouli or the taste of a long-forgotten food brings back via the feelings a long-lost flash. It hits you in the stomach, the place you are fed, and swells to a high pitch of what the Brazilians seem to understand well, saudade, a mix of memory, regret, and homesickness. In that very instant, you are gifted the reprisal of wholeness — similar to Great-Aunt Beck's voluminous velvet dress in perfect condition — and if you can stay with it, hold it, handle it, you are there again in your childhood, before the instant it crumbles.
The recipe is a tool of continuity, a mystical thing, a stitch against the crumble. This book contains many of them, small hybrids of many worlds, tiny windows in that windowless attic of nostalgia.
Forthwith, Mark Power's Coon Recipe:
Raccoon Goose Creek
This recipe, like all coon recipes, traditionally starts with the words, "Shoot, skin, gut & cover a medium-sized coon in saltwater..."
1. Shoot, skin, gut & cover a medium-sized coon in saltwater.
2. Add cut-up onions, potatoes, carrots, and celery, and soak overnight. Many times we have left out the overnight part. One time we even left out the coon. Save a cup of the liquid for sauce.
3. Dust coon lightly in fl our & brown in skillet. Cut up if too big. A chainsaw does a quick job of it.
4. Make a gravy using ½ C brine-blood, ½ C sherry, ½ C beef broth, ½ C soy sauce as the liquid base.
5. Stuff chest cavity with carrots, potatoes, onions & scatter the vegetables around the beast.
6. Bake 3 hrs or to taste in a 375°F oven. For years, Eugene would leave out the cooking part. After they were married, his new wife Malvinia introduced him to the novelty of cooked food.
ps # 1. Anyone who fi rst microwaves a coon let me know so I can add it to the recipe. Once we cooked one on a car radiator while driving from Snickersville, W.Va. to Rain Hole, Wisconsin. It was good despite nuances of 10-40 wt.
ps # 2. How to get a coon: go out in a pasture late at night with a pickup truck, a bottle of whiskey, one teen-age boy, ten dogs, & an equal number of friends. Once dogs tree coon, send teen-age boy up tree to shake animal down to ground. Stomp dogs & shoot coon, being careful not to shoot boy if he falls on ground next to coon which can happen. Skin at night in back of pickup with flashlight & a rusty penknife. As everyone knows skinning a coon does a good job of cleaning off rust.
Start soaking coon before you go to bed so you can cook animal in morning.
If it tastes like pork you may have cooked boy by mistake. Keep in mind coon should taste like coon not pork.
Candied Mint Leaves
Select crisp, fresh mint leaves. Wash lightly in cold water and dry completely on paper towels. Put 1 cup sugar in a pan and add 1Ú2 cup water and ¼ cup light corn syrup. Boil without stirring for about 10 minutes, or until liquid turns slightly yellow or a candy thermometer reaches 310°F. Using tweezers, dip mint leaves quickly in the syrup and place on foil-lined baking sheets to dry.
Rack of Lamb with South Indian Onion Chutney
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary
2 teaspoons salt
1 ¼ teaspoons black pepper
4 tablespoons olive oil One 7-bone rack of lamb, trimmed and frenched South Indian Onion Chutney (see below)
Preheat oven to 450°F. Move oven rack to center position. In large bowl, combine garlic, rosemary, 1 teaspoon of the salt, and ¼ teaspoon of the pepper. Toss in 2 tablespoons of the olive oil to moisten mixture. Set aside.
Season the rack all over with remaining 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. Heat remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large heavy ovenproof skillet over high heat. Sear rack for 1 to 2 minutes on both sides. Set aside for a few minutes. Roll the rack in garlic-rosemary mixture until evenly coated. Cover the ends of the bones with foil to prevent charring.
Place the rack bone side down in the skillet. Roast the rack for 12 to 18 minutes, or until springy to the touch (medium rare). Using a meat thermometer, take a reading in the center of the meat after 10 to 12 minutes. Remove the meat, or let it cook longer, to your taste. Let the rack rest for 5 to 7 minutes, loosely covered with aluminum foil, before carving between the ribs. Serve with onion chutney.
South Indian Onion Chutney
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
¼ cup chopped white onion
4 dried red chiles, seeded and chopped
1-inch-piece, ginger grated
1 tablespoon tamarind concentrate
3 to 4 curry leaves Salt to taste
Heat oil in skillet and sauté onion till translucent. Mix the sautéed onion with remaining ingredients and blend to a smooth paste in a blender. The chutney is ready to be served. Copyright © 2008 by Nani Power
Table of Contents
Prologue: A Memoir, with Recipes xi
Virginia: The Dogs Bark but the Caravan Moves On, 1961-1971: Recipes: Raccoon Goose Creek, Candied Mint Leaves, Rack of Lamb with South Indian Onion Chutney 1
Harbour Island: Blue Skies and Yellow Birds, 1969: Recipes: Golly's Grouper Chowder, Carrie's Crawfish, Joe Petty's Coconut Candy, Yellow Birds 21
Crednal: Glamour, 1972: Recipes: Nancy's Baked Apricot Chicken 33
Virginia Revisited: The Seventies: Recipes: Virginia Ham and Yeast Rolls, Bertha's Tomatoes, Tuttie's Squash Casserole, Damson Pie, Cannelloni 41
Maine: Sea Urchins and Blueberry Pie, 1982: Recipes: Lobster Rolls, Fried Green Tomatoes, Mushroom Sandwiches, Golly's Blueberry Pie 61
The Iranian Kitchen: Saffron and Rosewater, 2005: Recipes: Quormeh Sabzi, Khoresht Bademjoon 79
Peru: Muy Criollo/Gossamer Meringue, 2003: Recipes: Ceviche 89
New York City: The Catsuit, 1990: Recipes: Cold Borscht, Arancini 103
Greenwood: My Family's Attempt at Culinary Coup, Christmas Eve: Recipes: John's Smoked Venison, Morels and Cream 117
The Insanity of the Servitude Industry: 1980-1990: Recipes: Pizza in a Dish 129
Rio: Waiting for Dantinhas, 1984: Recipes: Feijoada, Xuxu de Galinha 139
Mexico: Chasing Butterflies and Fears, 1997: Recipes: Chilequiles with Chicken and Tomatillo Salsa, Huaraches with Papas y Chiles, ChickenTortilla Soup 151
Japan: A Tour of Essential Loneliness, 2000: Recipes: Ochazuke, Yakisoba 163
Kerala: A Lost Friend, 1997: Recipes: Aloo Paratha 175
Writing and Cooking: More Similar than you Think 183
Kousa and Warak: Memories and Food: Recipes: Zucchini and Stuffed Grape Leaves 189
Yesterday, Today, and So Forth 193
The Last Course 199