But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!: Adventures in Eating, Drinking, and Making Merry

by Julia Reed

  I saw Prine again more than thirty years later at Jazz Fest in New Orleans, (where he performed, rather fittingly, in the rain), but during the years in between I heard his music played more times than I can count in the living room of the house where I grew up. My family’s been mightily blessed to have a great many close friends of all generations who are far more musically talented than we are, and to this day, we seldom have a party that doesn’t morph into an impromptu concert. My friend Ralph McGee has always been a huge Prine fan—he and his wife Ann were in the front row of the auditorium for that concert in Greenville, and he played “Illegal Smile” for me when I was too young to figure out what it meant. Ralph is also a seriously gifted guitar player, and he and his brother Humphreys both have great voices. At almost every gathering they crack everybody up with Prine’s “Four Way Stop Dilemma,” always my father’s number one request, and they never fail to break my heart with “Hello In There.”

  Humphreys and Ralph’s father, Ug, played the guitar at a dinner party my parents had for Bill Buckley and his wife Pat when they visited Greenville, a raucous evening that ended with Buckley pounding out “Cielito Lindo” on the piano while Ug’s daughter Chargee danced on the table. I was eleven then, but we have not stopped showing off for outsiders. When I threw a party for then British ambassador to the United States Sir Christopher Meyer and his wife Catherine several years ago, the McGee brothers rose to the occasion with a rousing performance of “Happy Enchilada” (otherwise known as “That’s the Way the World Goes ’Round”). Sir Christopher was making an official visit to Mississippi and my assignment was to provide a festive diversion before the dull stuff. We had a catfish fry at a juke in Panther Burn where Ralph farms; we ate steaks and hot tamales at Doe’s Eat Place. The night of the party, Ralph and Ann’s son and daughter-in-law, both just off stints as chefs in two of New Orleans’s best restaurants, dazzled everyone with a regional feast that included lots of crabmeat and barbecued oysters and the Brits went back home well fed and well entertained.

  When I’m in the kitchen without the benefit of professional chefs, we usually have a one-pot meal and a big salad so everyone can eat on their laps, often on the floor around the fireplace in front of which the musicians always pull up a stool or two. One of my more popular standbys is crawfish étouffée. As it happens, there’s a restaurant in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, the wonderful Café des Amis, which serves crawfish enchiladas—essentially tortillas filled with étouffée and topped with cheese. I serve my own étouffée with rice and lots of French bread and a big salad with a make-ahead dressing that is one of my long-time favorites. Dessert is “pick-up,” too—usually my mother’s famous lemon squares. She gilds the lily by icing the baked lemon filling rather than sprinkling it with powdered sugar, and people have been known to stuff them in their pockets. No matter what we actually eat, those evenings are nothing short of soul-feeding—very happy enchiladas indeed.

  CRAWFISH ÉTOUFFÉE

  ( Yield: 8 servings )

  SEASONING MIX

  2 teaspoons salt

  2 teaspoons cayenne pepper

  1 teaspoon white pepper

  1 teaspoon black pepper

  1 teaspoon dried basil

  2 teaspoons dried thyme

  ¼ cup chopped onion

  ¼ cup chopped celery

  ¼ cup chopped green bell pepper

  7 tablespoons Wesson oil

  ¾ cup all-purpose flour

  3 cups seafood stock

  2 tablespoons tomato paste

  1 cup (2 sticks) butter

  2 pounds peeled crawfish tails or medium shrimp

  1 cup finely chopped green onions

  ¼ cup cognac

  3 or 4 healthy dashes of Worcestershire sauce

  In one small bowl, thoroughly blend seasoning mix ingredients. In another bowl, combine chopped onion, celery, and bell pepper.

  In a large heavy-bottomed saucepan or Dutch oven, heat the oil over high heat until it begins to smoke, about 4 minutes. Using a metal whisk, gradually whisk in flour, beating constantly to keep from scorching. Make sure to eliminate any lumps and keep beating for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the roux turns a sort of medium reddish brown. Remove from heat and immediately dump in the chopped vegetables. Stir in 1 tablespoon of the seasoning mix and keep stirring, off heat, until vegetables have softened and cooked a bit, about 4 minutes.

  Slowly whisk in the stock while bringing to a boil, making sure the roux is fully dissolved. Lower to a simmer, add the tomato paste, and continue to simmer for about 25 minutes. By this time the paste will be well incorporated and the flour taste all gone. Remove from heat.

  In a large skillet or saucepan, heat 1 stick of the butter. Add crawfish (or shrimp) and green onions and sauté for about 2 or 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Turn the fire under the stock/roux mixture to medium and stir in the crawfish mixture. Add the cognac and remaining stick of butter. Stir until butter melts. Stir in one more tablespoon of the seasoning mix and taste. Add more, depending on the heat level you prefer. Serve immediately, or keep warm over very low heat, stirring occasionally so that it doesn’t separate.

  NOTE: I have made this recipe for as many as eighty people—or ten times the original recipe—with no problem. I learned the hard way that you do not need to multiply the pepper, or even the salt, by the same amount, only the dried herbs. Make up the seasoning mix as for one batch, and add extra herbs and a little extra salt. After you add the crawfish toward the end, you can figure out how much more heat the dish needs. The trick is to taste and taste again—you may need a touch more tomato paste or cognac, or thyme or Worcestershire. Just taste—that’s the key to all “stew-y” dishes like this.

  FRENCH DRESSING

  ( Yield: About 2 ½ cups )

  1½ cups Wesson oil (you may also use saff lower or canola)

  ½ cup red wine vinegar

  ½ cup sugar

  2 teaspoons curry powder

  ½ onion, sliced

  Juice of 1 lemon

  ½ teaspoon salt

  Pinch of cayenne pepper

  ½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

  Mix all ingredients together and let stand for 24 hours. Remove onion before using.

  NOTE: I copied this recipe, simply titled “French Dressing,” from my mother’s own notebook when I left home for college. Everybody loves it and no one can ever figure out that what they’re tasting in it is curry. It’s wonderful on a composed salad of Boston lettuce, red onion, grapefruit, and avocado, which has long been a holiday staple in our house. For big parties like the one described above, I toss a mix of Boston, romaine, watercress, and, occasionally, iceberg with sliced red onion, avocado, and sliced hearts of palm.

  JUDY’S ICED LEMON SQUARES

  ( Yield: About 16 squares )

  FOR THE CRUST

  2 cups flour

  ½ cup powdered sugar

  1½ sticks butter, at room temperature

  FOR THE FILLING

  2 cups sugar

  4 eggs

  1 tablespoon flour

  ½ teaspoon baking powder

  6 tablespoons lemon juice

  Grated rind of one lemon

  FOR THE ICING

  2 tablespoons melted butter

  1 cup powdered sugar

  1 tablespoon lemon juice

  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

  Sift flour and sugar together and cut in butter until well blended. Press into ungreased 8 × 12-inch baking pan. Bake for 15 minutes until lightly browned. Leave oven on.

  Whisk together filling ingredients. Pour over baked crust and bake for 25 minutes. Cool.

  Melt butter and stir in powdered sugar and lemon juice until smooth. Spread a thin coat over the baked and cooled filling. Let set and cut into squares.

  22

  Table Talk

  During the many years that I lived in New York, I grew to fear two words above all others: Table Talk. You might be seated at a perfectly nice dinner table, try
ing valiantly to make conversation with your neighbor (and occasionally succeeding) when the host or hostess taps on his or her glass and announces that it is time to turn our attention to the pressing issues of the day. Sometimes, the phrase “table talk” is actually used, sometimes not. Either way, small talk, flirting, witty asides, pretty much everything that makes a dinner party bearable or even fun, comes to an abrupt halt and a topic is introduced—a recent Supreme Court ruling, say, or the fate of the latest immigration bill. The guests are then made to take turns around the table saying what they think about it.

  In me, this brings up fear and loathing and torturous memories of my six weeks at a Christian camp in Alabama where the counselors went around the cabin after lights out and made us all tell God—out loud—what we were thankful for. In everyone else, apparently, it brings out new levels of pomposity and long-windedness and all sorts of other things best left out of dinner parties.

  During one especially excruciating session at the apartment of a TV executive and former cabinet secretary, the topic was the Gaza Strip. When it was his turn to say his bit (and I emphasize the word “bit”), one of the guests who had recently returned from the region just kept on talking. (This same man had been my dinner partner at a previous party where he regaled me with jokes he read off cards taken out of his wallet, so I had already braced myself.) Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts on the Gaza Strip myself, all wildly different from this guy’s, but even if I had wanted to respond to him, I couldn’t have. This is the thing about table talk—it completely shuts down spontaneity and lively debate and, worse, the flow of wine. In this particular case, not even the waiter was allowed to cross into the lofty oratory zone.

  Impeded by nothing, the speaker droned on and on, until I got busy devising ways to somehow vanish beneath the table. Finally, there was a timid knock on the dining room door—a still-very-much-with-it-and-adorable Brooke Astor also was in attendance and her minder had standing orders to come and fetch her at ten P.M. no matter what. This did not stop the droning, alas. But it did make me wish more than anything in the world that I had a minder—and I have never been more jealous of anyone in my life than the happily departing Mrs. Astor.

  Writing this reminds me of a dinner party a few years ago at my mother’s house in Seaside, Florida. At the time, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans, where I sit on the board, had a “satellite” in the next-door community called Watercolor, and my great friend William Dunlap, the artist and the most unreconstructed liberal I know, had just had an opening. His old college buddy, who is far, far to the right of him (and, indeed, to pretty much everyone), came to the house afterward, along with some devoted arts supporters, a restaurateur/columnist/cookbook author, an architect, and assorted other friends, including Joyce Wilson, who had spearheaded the Ogden at Watercolor. After we sat down, the right-winger made one of the arts supporters so mad that at one point she rose from her chair and looked like she might be about to hit him. Several of us pelted Dunlap with napkins after he said Al Gore was a terrible candidate but would have made a great president.

  We drank a lot of wine—which never quit flowing—and ate grilled Roman steaks and a dish I made up with warm field peas and enormous Gulf shrimp in a sherry wine vinaigrette. I can’t remember what we had for dessert, but afterward we took the wine out on the porch and someone let the dog out, which made me so briefly hysterical I began pelting poor Dunlap again when he told me everything would be all right. It was—we found the pup at my neighbors’ house feasting on hamburger buns, so we toasted his safe return and kept talking and laughing and listening to too-loud music until late into the night.

  It turned out to be such a memorable occasion that the restaurateur/columnist wrote about it. To me it was not all that notable, just the norm—or at least what should be the norm. People should get in good old-fashioned arguments rather than raptly—sycophantically—listen to each other orate. They should fuss at each other, charm each other, and flirt, a lot, for God’s sake, all in good fun, and make their partners laugh without the benefit of wallet-sized prompters. I am firmly against the choreography of conversation—or the “anchoring” of parties, as one long-suffering friend puts it—by someone who makes like (or indeed happens to be) an anchorman.

  I know very few people who aren’t under a lot of stress right now. And I can think of no better remedy than to commune at the end of the day with good food and drink, to kick up your heels (or at least take them off under the table) with people you already love or might really want to get to know. With that in mind, Joyce and I threw another dinner party in Seaside not long ago. She had some friends she wanted me to meet, and our friend Karen Wagner, whose Meyer lemon trees are legendary, had infused an enormous jar of vodka with countless slices of the lemons, and she said she’d bring it over. The Seaside farmers’ market had lots of lady peas and pink eye peas on offer that morning, so I repeated the field pea and shrimp salad, which is essentially a Southern riff on the white bean and shrimp antipasto always on offer at Nino, the restaurant in Rome that is one of my favorites in the world. Nino also is known for its Roman steaks, so I made those again too, along with some crabmeat bruschetta to start off. Joyce brought a seriously delicious flourless chocolate cake and I’d made some simple syrup with lavender sugar and infused it with mint, so we added it to the whipped cream that we served with the cake—which, I have to say, was inspired.

  Karen’s vodka was an enormous hit. Her husband Steve mixed it with ginger beer for a lemony Moscow Mule, and I mixed it with the lavender mint syrup and topped it with club soda. Both were delicious, as was the lemonade I made with the same syrup, to which, of course, we added more of the vodka. This time the dog stayed safely inside, but we found plenty of other things to toast—and talk about—without any pesky direction.

  CRABMEAT BRUSCHETTA

  ( Yield: 8 servings )

  8 generous slices crusty bread, preferable from a round country loaf or a fat loaf of sour dough, sliced about ¾ inch thick (if a wide loaf can’t be found, use a baguette and double the amount of slices)

  2 garlic cloves, halved

  1 pound lump crabmeat (this is one of the few times that jumbo lump is not preferred; even backfin would be just fine)

  1⁄3 cup good olive oil, plus more for the toast

  Juice and zest of 1 lemon

  1 jalapeño, seeded and chopped fine

  Coarse salt

  Prepare a fire on the grill or preheat the broiler.

  Grill or broil the bread slices for about 30 seconds on each side, until crisp and golden brown (you want some grill marks or brown bits to appear, but be careful not to burn it). Rub one side of the bread with the cut side of the garlic and drizzle or brush with a little olive oil. If you are using the big slices from a round loaf, cut them in half.

  Drain and pick over the crab and place in a mixing bowl. Add the olive oil and lemon juice and zest and toss carefully. Add the jalapeño and salt to taste. Spoon on top of the toast and serve.

  WARM FIELD PEA AND SHRIMP SALAD

  ( Yield: 8 to 10 servings )

  FOR THE PEAS

  2 pounds peas (I like pink-eyes, crowders, and lady peas best for this, and you can combine them if desired)

  2 onions, halved

  3 bay leaves

  4 thyme sprigs

  1 rosemary sprig

  3 dried hot chile peppers

  2 teaspoons salt

  Chicken stock or water

  FOR THE SHRIMP

  2 pounds large shrimp, peeled (and deveined if you are so inclined)

  3 cups of water

  2 tablespoons kosher salt

  Freshly ground white pepper

  1 tablespoon olive oil

  FOR THE SALAD

  2 or 3 shallots, diced finely

  1 bunch arugula

  Sherry vinegar, about 2 tablespoons

  Olive oil, about 6 tablespoons (the best you can find is important in this recipe)

  Salt

/>   Freshly ground black pepper

  1 bunch basil, cut into a chiffonade

  Put peas and seasonings in a large pot and add stock or water until peas are covered by 2 or 3 inches. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer, uncovered, until peas are tender, usually about 30 to 45 minutes. (You might need to skim some foam off the top as they cook.) Cooking time will depend on the type of pea and the age, so keep checking.

  While peas are cooking, place shrimp shells in a pan, cover them with about 3 cups water, and bring to a boil. Decrease the heat to a simmer and cook about 20 minutes. Remove and discard shells and taste stock for intensity. Return stock to a healthy simmer and reduce until you have about a cup of fragrant stock (see note on the following page).

  Meanwhile, place the shelled shrimp in a bowl and rub and toss 1 tablespoon of the salt. Wash under cold running water, roughly pat dry, and rub and toss again with the remaining tablespoon of salt. Rinse again, drain in a colander, and pat dry. Sprinkle with the white pepper and toss.

  When peas are done, remove from heat and strain. Immediately add the shallots and arugula and toss with about 2 tablespoons of sherry vinegar (the arugula will wilt a bit, which is what you want). Add about 6 tablespoons of olive oil along with salt and pepper and taste to make sure the oil/vinegar balance is right.

  In a large sauté pan, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil over medium-high heat until it begins to shimmer. Add the shrimp and cook until pink and opaque, about 3 to 5 minutes. Be careful not to overcook—as soon as one turns pink, taste it.