kayb

Wow....none up there either? When I was a kid, Daddy and I would go quail hunting in W. Tenn. and routinely bring home a dozen or more on a Saturday morning. No quail there any more, either, nor in Arkansas. They're trying to import and reestablish the population in Arkansas now.

We'd have Spam hash every couple of weeks when I was a kid. Cheap, and Daddy liked it. Spam, potatoes and onions, and usually served with boiled cabbage and soup beans. Lent itself to many a fragrant evening in the den.

John's? By that time, the one (Ronnie's?) on Poplar near Chickasaw Oaks was open, and I think the one on Germantown Road. And of course, Dino's Southwestern Grill on McLean north of N. Parkway. Dino was John's brother, best I recall. I think Dino's is still there. The newest member of the "family" is Spindini, on South Main. He's a great-grandson.

As a resident of Greater Memphis, home of the World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest, for more than half my life, I'm bemused at the whole notion of a kosher barbecue competition. Despite what those people in Texas may try to tell you, barbecue is PORK. That said: as a West Tennessee kid, I was a 4-H Club member. As such, I got drafted every year into helping with the American Cancer Society chicken barbecue fundraiser. In that process, I suspect I have helped to turn out something more than 10,000 barbecued chicken dinners, consisting of a half a barbecued chicken, beans, slaw and a roll. Here is a recipe that is very close to the sauce we used, except that as I recall, ours had paprika in it as well. We did not turn the chicken as frequently as these instructions say; it was more like every 20 minutes. Once it's turned, you "mop" it with the sauce. I can say I have never had better barbecued chicken. Except that Vivian Howard's recipe for pork steak cooked in Blue Q blueberry barbecue sauce, from Deep Run Roots, adopts REALLY well to chicken. You might want to look at that. I've never had barbecued turkey. Smoked turkey, sans any kind of sauce, is a different animal. If I felt like I had to serve it with sauce, it'd be some sort of cranberry based sauce. I might try making something like the above Blue Q sauce, but substituting cranberries. Can't testify on brisket. I can corn one and cook you up a hellacious corned beef and cabbage, but I've never tried to barbecue one, and don't plan to. Well, except for smoking pastrami, but I don't think that counts.

Canned corned beef, like Spam, makes good hash.

H'mm. Would have never thought to put radishes with that. But I have yet to find anything which which radishes are NOT good.

Oh, my...this brings back memories of the late, great Little Italy, one of a fine crop of once-upon-a-time Italian eateries in Memphis, which has a surprising number of very fine Italian restaurants. I used to eat there with my co-workers from The Commercial Appeal, back when it was a real newspaper (ahem) 40 years ago and I was in college. Always got their linguine with white clam sauce, after I tried it one time when we'd gone to eat after watching the Super Bowl in a bar. First time, to my knowledge, this West Tennessee country girl had ever eaten a clam. I fell in love. Little Italy, along with so many more, has gone by the wayside, and the 'hood where it was located is not necessarily one where you'd go for dinner now. Interesting background about the Italian community (and the amazing number of good Italian restaurants in Memphis): In 1927, there was a huge flood in the Lower Mississippi Valley, with several levee breaks in Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. Many of the black sharecroppers, whose conditions were not good anyway, suffered horribly during the flood, living in camps atop the levees. After the flood, many left, migrating northward in the second of the major migrations of African Americans from the South to the industrial cities of the upper Midwest, leaving the Delta plantation owners short of labor for the following year's crops (the '27 crop year was mostly shot). Many "imported" shiploads of Italian peasants to work their farms. The sharecroppers eventually migrated upriver, settling in many of the river towns up to and past Memphis, with the result there is barely a Delta town in Arkansas or Mississippi that doesn't have its long-time Italian restaurant, which initially sprang up to serve its Italian community. One of the finest Italian restaurants I know is Uncle John's, in Crawfordsville, Arkansas, where it is one of three retail establishments (the others are a convenience store/gas station and a liquor store). They also serve steak, barbecue and fried catfish. But their ravioli and "spaghetti gravy" is a thing of beauty, and I will from time to time drive an hour to enjoy it. In Memphis, "Big John" Grisanti founded the flagship Italian restaurant in the city in the 1940s, at the corner of Airways and Lamar (another 'hood where you would not necessarily go to eat today). It was still operating in the 1970s, when I came to Memphis for college. By the '80s, it had closed, but several of John's sons had opened restaurants elsewhere in the city. Today, his great-grandchildren have Italian restaurants from the riverbank to Germantown, and all of them serve "Miss Mary's Salad" and "Miss Mary's Lasagna," as nearly as anyone can remember identical to that Big John served. It's a wonderful culinary tradition.

Egg salad (with bacon and grated cheese and dill pickles) on Ritz crackers, with a cup of ambrosia fruit salad. Hit the spot. May finish off with a dish of the banana pudding that's about to come out of the oven.

Oh, MY, that looks lovely!

Cornbread's much better both made with bacon grease and cooked in bacon grease. Which is one of many reasons I save bacon grease. Liquid gold. Well, solid when you keep it in the fridge.

I go both ways on green beans. I love fresh ones sauteed and finished like @Tropicalsenior with viniagrette and some kind of crispy meat, or with Asian flavors in a stir fry, but I also love the slow-cooked ones (particularly with new potatoes). They should be cooked with some variety of smoked pork, and salt and pepper; they're brought to a boil, covered, and then simmered long and low on the back of the stove while you're cooking everything else. It also has to do with the variety of green bean. The stringless variety like Blue Lake or Contender are good quick-cooked; but give me a big ol' mess of Kentucky Wonder pole beans, and I will happily sit and string and snap them and cook them all day with a hamhock, and eat the whole potful. Particularly if there is fried okra, Silver Queen corn, and fresh tomatoes to go with it.

I've done it both ways. Depends on whether I pour too much oil in the skillet to start with. I suspect the pre-cooking is fairly minimal. I have also fried cornbread in fritters (hoecakes, in the South) when I didn't want to deal with baking. It seems to hold together better if you want it to do that. I also like to make cornbread in my Belgian waffle iron. Of course, I like the ratio of outside crunch to inside crumb, too.

My recollection is that the tenderloin sandwich I had in Indiana had only mayo and lettuce on it. May have had tomato, I don't recall. Sure was good, though.

Well, I'm a good ways from Canada, but if you were to come visit me, I'd have a lot of choices for lunch...but I'd narrow it down to a couple. First, of course, is barbecue. And by barbecue, I mean smoked, pulled pork, accented prior to cooking by a complex spice rub, cooked low and slow until the meat shreds at a light tug of a fork. Topped, or not, as you please, with a dollop of tomato-based barbecue sauce, and a heaping spoonful of slaw, embraced between a couple of pillowy buns. It's the regional cuisine of the mid-south, and no place in the country does it any better. Specifically, I'd probably take you to Jones' BarBQue Diner, recipient of a James Beard American Classic award, where the 'cue is served on white sandwich bread. You want a side, you grab a bag of chips from the rack. You want a drink, you get a canned soda out of the case next to the wall. The pork carries the show, and it needs no assistance. If for some reason we were not in a barbecue mood, we'd visit one of the many "meat and three" locations that dot the landscape. The range from "soul food," with a choice of breaded pork chops, chicken wings, neckbones and dressing, sweet potatoes redolent with nutmeg, greens, soup beans, fried potatoes, to more mainstream blue plate specials, featuring standbys like fried chicken, beef tips and noodles, meat loaf with a dizzying array of sides from which to choose. My personal favorite is The Cupboard in Memphis, where I've been going for more than 40 years, always eating the same thing -- eggplant casserole, corn pudding, cucumber salad, and field peas. We could do Indian, or Mexican, or Thai, or Middle Eastern, or African, or Jamaican, or any number of other cuisines. But the two I described are home.

If by cakey you mean crumbly, it's both.

We'll make a Southerner out of you yet!

Re: Cakey vs. non-cakey cornbread -- try a ratio of 2:1 cornmeal to flour. Or buy cornmeal mix, which is about that proportion. I add salt, baking powder, a couple of eggs, a big glop of bacon grease, and enough milk to make it cake-batter consistency to fill my eight-inch skillet, which is the cornbread skillet, unless I'm making cornbread for dressing, in which case I up proportions and use the 10-incher.

I want one of everything on the menu, please. There are No Words for how much I love German and Central European cuisine.

Going to make coquille St. Jacques, with an add-on lobster tail; duck fat roasted potatoes, and baked apples in cinnamon red hots. Chocolate covered strawberries for dessert. I probably should have a green thing, but I don't have anything here, I don't think. Maybe some frozen green peas.

I'll go to Ash Wednesday service. And them come home and cook something special.

Never tried brining. I do like, in the case of using round steak, sous viding the steak first, cooling it, then pounding, breading, frying. Frying in medium hot to hot oil also seems to help hold moisture in.

We can only hope the crud is quickly gone. Best wishes.

Update on the duck situation: I did wind up waiting until today to deal with the ducks (life got in the way, as life has a way of doing), so I can only hope they are not too salty. If anyone's interested in the whole painful (not really) process: First, I was faced with ducks with a horde of pinfeathers. At left are the two mallards; the five at right are either teal or wood duck. It having been many years since I was faced with removing pinfeathers from a duck I betook myself to the Interwebs and reviewed the potential methods. I did not have a gas stove nor a blowtorch (must remedy that) to singe them. I didn't feel like tweezing them all. So I opted for a combo of paraffin and scalding. Paraffin, melting in the Dutch oven. I apparently missed taking a photo of the mostly naked ducks, but the paraffin/scalding method worked a treat. Here they are salted down with a salt-sugar-thyme brine, ready for the fridge. As I noted, life got in the way and they stayed there very nearly 48 hours. I rinsed them well, and repeatedly, and let the small ones rest on a rack while the mallard breasts went back to the fridge for an overnight dry-out on a separate rack. They'll go on the smoker in the morning. And here we are, ready to go in the sous vide bath, with the addition of some sliced shallot, a couple of garlic cloves, a couple of bay leaves and some duck fat. They're swimming along now, and will do so until sometime tomorrow morning, when I take them out and chill them preparatory to going in the freezer. I have found a source in Little Rock for Toulouse sausages, and as I have to go there Tuesday anyway, I'll pick some up. I'm looking at cassoulet (there being no shortage of pork belly or salt pork or pork shoulder here in Jonesboro) very possibly next weekend. Damn, I hope this sous vide confit thing works.

Business lunch at a local restaurant. Meat loaf (they have very good meat loaf, and Monday is meat loaf day), glazed carrots, mashed potatoes, white beans. I would have liked green peas, but they weren't an option. Another business lunch tomorrow. I always get to pick the place, so I picked another meat-and-three place where it'll be chicken-and-dressing day. I'll have that, lima beans, and mashed potatoes. Can't get those people to cook sweet potatoes on chicken and dressing day -- whassupwiddat?

Mama used to make persimmon jelly. I never have, so I have no recipes, etc., to offer. It was tart, and excellent.