Posts Tagged ‘ southern ’

Recipe: Red Beans and Rice

Ingredients

1 pound (2 cups) dried red kidney beans or small red beans, rinsed and picked through
1 ham bone, excess fat trimmed but spare meat left untrimmed (or 2 smoked ham hocks)
4 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, choppped
1/2 cup scallions, including most of green part, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 medium green bell pepper, coarsely chopped
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon Worchestershire sauce
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/8 teaspoon hot pepper sauce (Tobasco)
3 tablespoons parsley
2 cups long grain, white rice
6 cups water, to cook rice
Up to 1 cup low-sodium chicken stick, or additional water, to add to beans during cooking if needed

Instructions

Soak the beans (1 pound to 6 cups cold water) overnight, or at least 6 hours.
Once the beans have soaked, drain the liquid off into a large measuring cup. Add, if needed, enough low-sodium chicken stock or water to equal 4 cups liquid total.
Melt butter in a heavy 4 to 5 quart pot.
Add onion, celery, scallions, garlic, and green pepper. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until all are soft and transcluent but not browned.
Stir in the beans and their liquid. Add the ham bone, black pepper, bay leaves, and parsley.
Bring to a boil ove rhigh heat, then reduce to low and simmer, partially covered, for 2 hours. Throughout the cooking, check the pot occasionally; if beans seem dry, add up to 1 cup water or low-sodium stock , a few tablespoons at a time.
After 2 hours, add the Worchestershire sauce, oregano and Tobasco. Simmer at leat another hour, covered, with the heat at low as possible.
During the last 30 minutes, stir pot frequently to mash a few of the softest beans into the sauce.
When the beans are soft, use tongs or a slotted spoon to remove ham bone to a plate to cool.
When bones are cool enough to handle, cut away the meat from the bone. Dice the meat, returning it to the pot while removing bay leaves. Be sure to dsicard any skin, fat or gristle.
Also during the last 30 minutes of cooking, cook rice in 6 cups boiling water with a small pinch of salt. Drain in a colander when rice is tender, and fluff with a fork.

Cooking time (duration): 3 hours plus 6-12 hours soaking time

Culinary tradition: USA (Southern)

My rating:4.0 stars

Recipe by Brian Tomlin.
Microformatting by hRecipe.

Brian’s Chicken Salad

5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Olive oil

Salt and Pepper

½ cup mayonnaise

¼ cup sour cream (or omit and make it ¾ cup mayo)

2 stalks celery, diced small

½ red or green bell pepper, diced small

1 small carrot, diced small

1 cup seedless grapes, cut in half

¼ cup chopped pecans (or walnuts)

1 Tablespoon chopped parsley

¼ teaspoon paprika

Cook Chicken: Preheat oven to 400. Place chicken breasts on a sheet pan, coat both sides with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast until chicken is cooked through but not dried out (165 degrees), about 20-25 minutes.
Cool breasts. The chicken can be cooked a day ahead and refrigerated.
Cut cooled/chilled chicken into ¾ inch dice, or shred.
Place chicken in a large bowl and add all other ingredients. Mix Well.
Refrigerate mixed salad for at least 1 hour (up to 24 hours) before serving to allow the flavors to combine.
Serve on rolls or bread with salad greens and thin cucumber slices.

All the Living a Haunting, Melancholy Novel

Morgan, C.E. (2009). All the Living, a novel. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN: 9780374103620

A young woman from poverty in the rural south goes to live with her lover on his farm after his entire family is killed in an accident. A story rich with details of people acting, living and thinking by themselves and yet forced to relate to one another.

Much has been made about this being C.E. Morgan’s first novel, and rightly so, because their is a depth of feeling, a wealth of human experience captured just so in the language. The author has a special gift for crafting a story; she reveals the exposition cautiously but with just the right intriguing pace. She doesn’t overstate, she lets the images do much of the work in telling the story.

One of those recurring images is sex, presenting here in a raw form. Aloma and Orren’s sexual relationship shows the powerful human need for sex and also the ways sex can be used as a tool. It is refreshing to see a female character honestly, directly face her sexual nature, but it comes off as sort of passively accepting what he world brings instead of taking ownership of the experience. The choices the characters make, not just sexually, affect not only themselves but others, and yet the characters seem so often pulled along by fate.

As beautifully written as the book is, it is a heartbreaking tale of people who do not know how to relate to one another. Aloma, the lead female character, blindly accepts conventional female roles, puts her own dreams of accomplishment last, and seems to value her partner primarily through sex. It sin’t that this isn’t realistically portrayed, but that it is profoundly sad. Again, though, it is a magnificently constructed novel in that it shows this sadness, these situations the characters are in, and it doesn’t try to judge or make tidy solutions. The reader can think about the story, and this is one story that promises to stay with the reader long after the book has been put down.

Ted Turner: An Influence I Never Realized

Turner, Ted (with Bill Burke). (2008). Call Me Ted. New York: Grand Central Publishing.

This is exactly what you want from a good memoir: the book gives you insights into Turner’s life, his perceptions of what happened at various points in his career, and the writing is as unique, direct and as colorful as Turner’s public image. He discusses his own upbringing, such as being sent to a boarding school at age four, with a casual acceptance that says a lot about how he has been able to achieve what he has, as well as the personal costs. It is then no surprise that military culture, military schools, and strict discipline from his father jump out as the main influences. His discussion fighting authority and then accepting it is a great model to anyone faced with external obstacles.

The path of Turner’s business success, from billboards to yachting to local television to baseball to cable to CNN and beyond, is an entertaining story of a driven man that is told with Turner acknowledging the balance of hard word, good luck and risk taking that got him there. The book addresses Turner’s slow shift from military strong conservative to liberal environmentalist is fascinating but not fully fleshed out. Iit is telling that Ted credits meeting people from around the world as recognizing a shared humanity that spurred change in himself.

These same experiences led to Turner’s work in preserving the environment, reclaiming lands in the American west, and his interest in saving the bison. The appendix contains his “Eleven Voluntary Initiatives” about controlling our impact on the planet that are worth studying.

The book has personal anecdotes. It discusses Ted’s concern while raising his children that they not become like so many other children of wealthy parents. Ted also discusses his marriages, and takes responsibility, but it is not a confessional or demonstrative tell-all. All in all I have more respect for Ted Turner and his accomplishments than before I read the book; his public persona and current political associations caused me to make judgments that the book put into better perspective.

The impression Ted wants to create, as well as the book’s title, are born out by the one experience I have had in meeting Ted Turner. I was eating dinner at the Ted’s Montana Grill in downtown Atlanta in the Turner Foundation Building and Ted was there. He was friendly to all the restaurant patrons, taking time to talk with them and he made an effort to make a connection with the people. There was a large group of girl scout leaders presetn that he chatted at length with, took pictures with them, and I remember actually hearing him say to the ladies, “Call Me Ted.”

Brian’s Brunswick Stew, for the Fourth

Brian’s Brunswick Stew

Ingredients:

4 chicken drumsticks
1 skinless, boneless chicken breast (cooked)
1 small pork tenderloin
2 veal cutlets
1 large onion, chopped
2 cups chicken broth
2 16 oz. cans creamed corn (or 8 ears corn cut and scraped plus 2 T. cream)
2 16 oz. cans tomatoes, undrained
½ lemon, sliced
1 cup cut okra
1 cup lima beans
2 to 4 potatoes, diced
12 oz. ketchup
3 T. Worcestershire sauce
Tabasco (or other hot sauce) to taste
1 T. vinegar
4 cloves garlic tied in cheesecloth
1 T. dry mustard
2 T. lemon juice
1/8 t. cayenne pepper
1 t. salt
black pepper to taste
2 slices white bread, crumbled (if needed to thicken)
1 bell pepper, red or green, chopped

Procedure:

Roast drumsticks and tenderloin in a 325° oven or 30 minutes.
Lightly brown veal cutlets in a skillet.
Shred or dice chicken breast, veal cutlet, chicken drumsticks and pork.
Sauté onion in 1 T. butter in bottom of large stockpot.
Add meats, chicken broth, tomatoes, okra, creamed corn, lima beans, and potatoes.
Add seasonings.
Heat until barely simmering, then lower heat to Low and cook slowly for at least two hours, stirring occasionally.
Before serving, remove cheesecloth containing garlic. Add bread if stew needs to be thickened.

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Posts Tagged ‘ southern ’

Brian’s Red Beans and Rice