But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria!: Adventures in Eating, Drinking, and Making Merry
Page 17
For dessert, I’ve traded in the green-and-white cake of my childhood party for a bread pudding with Irish whiskey sauce. Unlike Greenville, my adopted hometown of New Orleans was the site of a huge influx of Irish immigrants in the 1840s and 1850s. I live adjacent to the neighborhood still known as the Irish Channel, starting point of a raucous annual St. Patrick’s Day parade that features floats and “throws” including cabbages, potatoes, green beads, and, of course “to go” cups. New Orleans is also known for its bread pudding, a dessert that can be made instantly suitable for St. Patrick’s Day by enlivening the sauce with Irish whiskey (try the excellent Redbreast or Green Spot) rather than the usual bourbon or brandy. By far the most popular bread pudding in town is served at the Bon Ton Café, the recipe for which I have adapted below.
BREAD PUDDING
( Yield: 8 to 10 servings )
1 loaf French bread, about 5 or 6 cups (a day old and a little dry and hard)
4 cups whole milk
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 cups sugar
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla
1 cup raisins
3 tablespoons butter
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cut bread into 1-inch cubes and place in a large mixing bowl. Add milk and soak for about 10 minutes. Squeeze bread with hands until milk is well incorporated. Mix together eggs, sugars, cinnamon, and vanilla and add to bread mixture. Stir well and add raisins.
Melt the butter and pour into a 9 × 13-inch casserole dish, making sure to coat bottom and sides well. Add bread mixture and bake for 45 minutes to an hour, until the top is set and the edges start to pull away from the pan.
NOTE: The pudding is even more delicious when the raisins are soaked for a few hours in ¼ cup of the whiskey.
IRISH WHISKEY SAUCE
( Yield: About 11/3 cups )
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1⁄3 cup Irish whiskey
In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt butter and add sugar. Stir constantly until sugar is dissolved. Add egg, stirring to incorporate quickly, so that it doesn’t curdle. Add whiskey and stir well.
ANNE KEARNEY’S DOUBLE SALMON RILLETTES
( Yield: 12 appetizer servings )
1 pound fresh salmon, with blood line removed, cut into 2-inch cubes
Kosher salt
Freshly ground white pepper
¼ cup unsalted butter, softened
½ cup finely diced shallots
2 strips lemon peel
3 cups dry white Burgundy
Juice of 1 lemon
½ pound smoked salmon slices, cut into thin strips
1 tablespoon fresh dill, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh chives, chopped
2 tablespoons crème fraîche or sour cream, plus more for garnish
Salmon roe
In a small bowl, sprinkle fresh salmon with salt and white pepper and toss. Smear the bottom of a large sauté pan with 2 tablespoons of the butter, and add shallots, lemon peel, and wine. Add salmon, spreading it out so that it is all covered and to ensure even cooking. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook until salmon is just medium or medium-well.
Remove salmon with slotted spoon and place in mixing bowl. Reduce cooking liquid until only ¼ cup of liquid remains. Remove and discard lemon strips and pour liquid into bowl with salmon. Let cool for 10 minutes. Add a splash of lemon juice, the smoked salmon, herbs, crème fraîche, and the remaining butter. Using a rubber spatula, smear the butter onto the sides of the bowl first; then gently work the rest of the ingredients onto and into each other. (The poached salmon will break down into shreds.) When well combined, taste for lemon juice, salt, and pepper.
Place into small individual ramekins or in a lightly oiled terrine mold. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours. Serve with slices of a skinny French baguette that have been brushed with oil or buttered and toasted. On top of each ramekin, or on the plate with terrine slices, garnish with additional crème fraîche and salmon roe.
NOTE: I often serve these as canapés by spreading some rillette onto the toasts and garnishing with a bit of the salmon roe and a sprig of dill or chervil. Or I fill up a crock or pretty bowl with the rillette and surround it with the toast and smaller bowls of crème fraîche and roe. Either way, the rillette will go much further—you should have about 48 servings.
IRISH CHAMP
( Yield: 6 servings )
3 pounds potatoes, large russets or Yukon gold
1½ cups whole milk
4 to 8 tablespoons (½ to 1 stick) butter
1½ cups scallions, thinly sliced with some of the tender green part
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup watercress leaves, roughly chopped (optional)
¼ cup Italian parsley leaves (optional)
Peel and quarter potatoes and boil for 10 to 15 minutes in salted water until tender when pierced (but not overcooked). Drain and return to pan and toss for a minute to evaporate all moisture.
Meanwhile, place milk, ½ stick butter, a healthy pinch of salt, and a few grindings of pepper in a saucepan with the scallions. Bring to a boil, lower heat, and let simmer for about 5 minutes. Turn off heat and let sit for about 5 minutes more.
Mash up the potatoes with a masher or a big spoon (or put through a ricer if you want a smoother mash) and add hot milk mixture, mashing as you go. Once the mixture has the consistency you like, taste for salt and pepper. Add the remaining butter, cut up in bits, and the watercress and parsley leaves if desired.
If not serving at once, wait to mix in the final ½ stick of butter, and set the pan over almost simmering water. Covered loosely, the champ will keep for an hour or more. Stir it once in a while, adding the butter right before serving.
NOTE: I often mash a pound of steamed or boiled carrots roughly into the mix (the carrots should still be a little chunky) and adjust the milk, butter, and seasonings accordingly. It’s not traditional “champ” made that way, but it’s delicious and really pretty to look at.
BRAISED LAMB SHOULDER
( Yield: About 6 servings )
One 4- to 5-pound lamb shoulder roast, boned, rolled, and tied
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 carrots, roughly chopped
2 ribs celery, roughly chopped
1 onion, roughly chopped
12 garlic cloves, crushed with flat of a knife
4 leafy sprigs thyme
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
2 cups whole peeled tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 cup red wine
1½ to 2 quarts chicken stock
Chopped parsley and mint
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Generously season lamb on all sides with salt and pepper.
In a large ovenproof casserole or heavy pot with a lid, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the lamb and brown well on all sides. (Tongs are really helpful for this process.) Remove from pan and set aside.
Turn down heat a bit and add carrots, celery, onion, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, and whole peppercorns to pan. Cook, stirring frequently, for about 6 to 8 minutes, until vegetables begin to brown. Add tomatoes and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, for about 5 minutes. Add wine and bring to a boil. Cook for a few more minutes until the wine has almost evaporated.
Return the lamb to the pan and add enough stock to come about a third of the way up the meat. Bring the liquid to a boil, cover snugly, and place the pot in the oven. After about 15 minutes, check to make sure liquid is barely simmering. Braise for about 3 to 3½ hours, spooning sauce over the meat occasionally.
Remove the lamb from the pan and transfer to a cutting board or platter. Remove string and cover with foil to keep warm.
Strain the braising li
quid through a mesh strainer into a saucepan, pressing hard with a wooden spoon to push solids through. Discard the solids remaining. Let rest for a few minutes and skim the fat that will rise to the surface. Bring liquid to a boil and let simmer for about 10 to 15 minutes until the sauce is reduced and thickened. You should have about 2 cups. Taste for salt and pepper.
Slice the lamb into thick slices (they will be almost falling apart), arrange on a serving platter, and spoon sauce over the dish. (Alternatively, you can arrange them in a baking dish and reheat when ready to serve.) Garnish the platter with chopped parsley and mint and pass any extra sauce on the side.
28
Catching Summer
The novels of Henry James have always left me a tad cold, but he was on to something when he said, “Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” When uttered, they immediately conjure images of lazy days filled with hammocks and pitchers of lemonade, dog-eared books and beat-up jigsaw puzzles, long hours on the croquet lawn or playing doubles tennis. Think Mia Farrow and Lois Chiles in The Great Gatsby or James Salter’s Light Years with its “lunches on a blue checked cloth” and long shadows on grassy lawns. But that’s the problem—increasingly, it is only in fiction or at the movies that one encounters summer afternoons, or at least the idealized versions of them. My own are not much different than, say, my February afternoons—they just require more air-conditioning.
Of course James was writing in the nineteenth century, long before smartphones and BlackBerries, relentless e-mails and text messages, twenty-four-hour news channels and interminable streams of useless information. Unless you are almost brutally vigilant, there is no such thing as “off” time, much less whole collections of languid hours. Recently, I attended a wedding in Cashiers, North Carolina, a place notoriously lacking in cell phone coverage. During brunch at the lovely house of some friends from New Orleans, our hostess told me that at the end of most of her days there, she could never figure out what it was exactly that she had done. When I asked how they made dates for golf or dinner or a trip to the sliding rocks with no cell phone, her husband told me they made plans well in advance by post or by landline, and people simply knew to stick to them. Typically frustrated by the lack of phone coverage when we first arrived, I was almost sick when I heard the familiar beeps signifying reentry into what passes for civilization.
Every year, I vow to carve out some nineteenth-century style—or even some 1970s style—summer afternoons, and pretty much every year I fail. There have been some moments, of course. For years, my friend McGee and I spent whole hilarious days planning beach pageants with my two nieces, complete with complicated plots and elaborate costumes. One summer, my eldest niece was a reverse Rapunzel held captive beneath the sea with hair that floated upward to aid her escape, while her younger sister played her silver lamé-finned accomplice, Minnie the mermaid. My godson Barrett was Niall the Vile Crocodile and I was a seagull with feathered wings that still hang above my bedroom window in our family’s house in Seaside, Florida. Our last production was an ambitious musical, with songs written on the beach with the aid of numerous frozen margaritas and my husband-to-be, who was once lead singer in a band called The Mersey Shores. I remain amazed that he married me after we cast him as the Evil Catfish, a role that required him to ruin a perfectly good polo shirt by sticking it with at least a dozen large fishing hooks and to writhe menacingly—and repeatedly—on the sand.
Sadly, the house’s pageant box, like the jigsaw-puzzle box and the Monopoly and the Clue and the Trivial Pursuit boxes, has been left untouched for far too long. My vow is to get them all out and have at it. I also have two enormous tote bags filled with books I keep meaning to read or reread and films I’ve never seen. And then of course there are pitchers to be filled, lunches and dinners to be cooked and lingered over, blender drinks to be made. I once spent a whole day out on the water deep-sea fishing with friends, and when I returned to our house around five, my mother and McGee were still in their nightgowns, working on their second blender of margaritas, having spent the day watching Lethal Weapon I, II, and III. It’s not exactly Jamesian, but why not?
A million years ago I bought a postcard that features a retro black-and-white image of a couple romping on the beach overlaid with a photo of a mousetrap. Across the top, it says “Catch summer before it gets away.” It’s a tricky business, catching summer, carving out time that adds up to a string of lazy days. One way to do it is to make late lunches or suppers that are Gatsby-esque in their elegance but simple enough to be put together at the last minute. To that end, my go-to menu for one entire summer was grilled marinated tuna steaks served with two perfect (and perfectly complementary) salads: the eggplant salad and another consisting of room temperature white beans (preferably a good dried brand you’ve cooked yourself, which can be done way ahead of time) tossed in olive oil and crumbled gorgonzola along with a handful of chopped fresh sage and freshly ground black pepper. I use the same marinated tuna in my version of a Niçoise salad, which is not only beautiful to look at, it never fails to bring the house down. All you need with it is some grilled crusty bread, lots of cold rosé wine, and a bowl of cherries or something equally easy for dessert.
GRILLED MARINATED TUNA WITH FRESH HERBS
( Yield: 8 servings )
3 pounds fresh tuna, cut into 4 equal steaks
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons chopped mint
3 tablespoons chopped basil
1 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons red or sherry wine vinegar
2 tablespoons minced parsley
4 medium shallots, minced
Sprinkle tuna with salt and pepper and let it marinate in 1 tablespoon each of the mint and basil and 4 tablespoons of the olive oil for at least 2 hours in the refrigerator.
Combine the remaining ¾ cup of olive oil with the rest of the ingredients to make a vinaigrette. Taste to correct the seasonings and reserve.
When ready to eat, put the steaks on a charcoal grill or in a heavy-bottomed skillet (to which you’ve added more olive oil) and cook for about 3 to 4 minutes on each side until it is just medium rare. Remove from heat, slice in thick slices, and nap with the vinaigrette.
NOTE: Keep in mind that this recipe is a template. You can replace the mint and/or basil with cilantro, or use thyme and oregano instead (in which case I’d use lemon juice rather than lime). Sometimes I add a little soy sauce and minced fresh ginger. Remember the key to catching summer is to be relaxed about the cooking—and even a little playful.
My Niçoise Salad
For this I’m going to give you direction regarding the components of the salad rather than exact measurements.
First, make the tuna and the vinaigrette above and cut the tuna into thick slices. Then, take a big platter and make a bed of young lettuces. In the center of the lettuces, place the sliced tuna and nap generously with its vinaigrette, drizzling any that remains onto the lettuces. Next, prepare some or all of the following components and arrange in alternating little mounds around the sides of the platter.
Components:
The smallest young new potatoes you can find: Steam or boil them, halve them and toss immediately in some dry white wine until it is absorbed. Toss again with olive oil, lemon juice, salt and black pepper, and some snipped chives.
Haricots verts: Snip off the ends and steam or boil until just tender. Toss in walnut oil with a bit of sherry wine vinegar, salt and white pepper, and some minced tarragon, summer savory, or chervil.
Roasted red, yellow, and/or orange peppers: Broil them or grill them over an open flame until charred, and steam in a paper bag for 10 minutes until skins can be easily removed. Skin and seed them, cut them into strips, and toss with a little balsamic vinegar.
Japanese eggplants: Halve them, brush each half with olive oil, stud with slivers of garlic, and sprinkle with co
arse salt and chopped basil or cilantro. Run under a broiler or place cut side down on a grill for a few minutes until cooked through.
Hard-boiled quail eggs, halved (you may substitute regular hen’s eggs, quartered).
Niçoise olives
Enjoy!
Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Anne Kearney’s Double Salmon Rillettes
Basic Mayonnaise
The Best Blackberry Cobbler
Bill Blass’s Meatloaf
Black Velvet
Blackberry Cobbler, The Best
Black-Eyed Pea Salad
Bloody Mary Mix, Judy’s
Bouligny Tavern’s Sage Julep
bourbon
Bourbon Balls
The Commander’s Palace Whiskey Smash
Fig-Infused Bourbon “Toddy”
The Hot and Hot Fish Club’s Fig-Infused Small Batch Bourbon
Whiskey Smash 2
Braised Lamb Shoulder
Bread Pudding
Broccoli Puree with Ginger
Brussels sprouts
Brussels Sprouts Puree
Brussels Sprouts “Slaw” with Mustard Butter
Bullshot
Buranee Banjan
Burgers, Suzanne Goin’s Pork
Cake, Joyce’s Flawless Flourless Chocolate
Cauliflower Puree with Mint