Mrs. Williams' Shrimp Dip

Mrs. Williams loved to make what we now call appetizers at Christmas time. She probably didn't call them that, but they were always stored away in her Frigidaire side by side refrigerator with pies and cookies and fruit cake in tin boxes ready for company. I swear that fridge stretched. I have never been able to get as much in a refrigerator as she did.

The thing I liked best, I think, is her shrimp dip. She served it with crackers, but a spoon would have been fine with me, and she really could have left out the shrimp. While I like shrimp, I LOVE cocktail sauce.

Recipe:

6 oz. cream cheese - lower fat is fine
1 pt. sour cream - lower fat is fine
1 1/2 bottles Cross-Blackwell's cocktail sauce
3-5 drops hot pepper sauce
1 lb.cooked tiny shrimp

Mix together the cream cheese, sour cream, cocktail sauce and red pepper sauce. It is okay if there a few small lumps of cream cheese. Stir in shrimp. Refrigerate until time to serve. Serve with your favorite crackers.

Note: Try to use only Cross-Blackwell cocktail sauce. It really is better. I usually buy the 1 lb. package of precooked and shelled tiny little shrimp, but if you can only find larger shrimp, cut them into 2 or 3 pieces.

Pimiento Cheese

My father in law, Eugene Williams, loved pimiento cheese, but Mrs. Williams never made it. She frequently bought the already made kind at the commissary, but that was made with wimpy cheese and could not put a patch on Mother’s homemade. Mother used what Daddy called rat trap cheese. It was cut off a big wheel at Bradley’s store and was as sharp as any cheese I have had since.

The first year(s) Del and I were married the budget was tight, so when Mr. Williams’ birthday came around, I made a big batch of pimiento cheese, put a bow on the container and called it a present. He was so taken with it that he had me show him how to make it and made it every week of his life from then until he became too feeble. It is called Daddy’s pimiento cheese out in Colorado because he used to make it out there when he went to visit daughter Dianne. So far as I remember it was just about the only thing he cooked.
Del likes toasted pimiento cheese sandwiches. I prefer to spread it on Premium saltine crackers, but the cheese has to be on the unsalted side so the salty side touches my tongue when I eat it. That’s just one of my little food peculiarities, but I’m sure you’ll be won over if you try it. It’s also good stuffed into celery sticks

Recipe:

10 oz. cheddar, extra sharp is my choice, but use your favorite strength
4 oz. jar of diced or chopped pimientos
6 T mayonnaise, light’s fine
½ tsp. yellow mustard

Grate the cheese by hand or in food processor. You can use the kind that comes shredded, but it doesn’t mush together with the other ingredients as well. Drain the pimientos and add them, the mayonnaise and the mustard to the cheese. Mix well and refrigerate. It keeps several days

Pecan Tassies

Pecan tassies are miniature pecan pies baked in muffin tins that are in the neighborhood of an inch across, give or take. They were pretty much guaranteed to be served at weddings, showers, teas and other dress up functions in Jarratt, and in Emporia, I think, when I was growing up.

This would probably be as good a time as any to explain the geography of our growing up. We lived on the farm five miles from Emporia, a city of 5,000 and five miles from Jarratt, a smaller town. (The word city is important, because it was a big deal when that status was achieved. I’m not sure why.} We went to school in Emporia, and to church in Jarratt, and Daddy worked in Jarratt at Johns Manville. When mother worked while Bubba was in college and again after I was in high school, she worked in Emporia, and I started working there when I was fifteen, first in Rose’s dime store and later in Gene’s and whatever it turned into. I mentioned in an earlier post that we got married on Sunday so the ladies I had worked with could come to the wedding.

This bi-community living made for some confusion the first year we had Daylight Saving Time. Virginia allowed local option, and Emporia did and Jarratt didn’t. The clock was set for Emporia time and it was a mess. After Daddy got to work and we to church at the wrong time a couple of times, we went to the two clock system.

When I was in first grade, I was terribly worried that the people in Emporia would think I didn’t go to church and the people in Jarratt would think I didn’t go to school. If I recall correctly, I was much more worried about the church part than the school part. To be expected of a properly brought up Southern Baptist child, I expect.

Apparently that sort of worrying runs in the family. We’re keeping Moonpie this weekend while Rosa and parents go to Disney to the science class they have there. When we were making plans on the phone last night, David said they had decided not to surprise her because they were afraid she would think there was a family emergency if they took her out of school early without warning. I heard a voice in the background say “I tend to over think things.” I wish I could tell her she would get over it with age, but her Mema hasn’t yet, and I have a Medicare card. Mother used to say that if I didn't have something to worry about, I'd worry about that.

Back to the pecan tassies. They require a special pan, one for mini muffins about an inch across. When we were first married, I bought one pan and used it and washed it and used it and washed it until I had baked enough to serve. Then every Christmas, I bought another pan until I had enough to feed a small army without stopping to wash in between. It certainly made things easier and quicker, but it can be done with just one pan.


Recipe

Pastry

3 oz. block cream cheese (lower fat works, but not fat free)
½ cup margarine or butter
1 cup flour

Mix together with mixer or by hand. Form into a log, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour. Divide into 24 balls. Spray pans with vegetable spray. Press balls into and up the sides of tiny muffin tins, about an inch across.

Filling

2 eggs
1 cup light brown sugar
2 T melted butter or margarine
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
Pinch salt
1 cup pecans

Beat eggs slightly, add all other ingredients and mix well. Put into uncooked shells, leaving a small rim of crust showing.
Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes until crusts are brown and filling is set but not hard. Use blade of knife to help remove tassies while they are still warm. If left to cool completely, they may stick.
These freeze well.

Note: When I’m feeling lazy, and don’t plan to freeze the tassies, I let Publix or some other nice company do it. Roll out one of their pie crust circles until a bit thinner and cut out circles big enough to reach up the sides of your muffin cup. I use a juice glass that is just the right fit, but it took a couple of tries to find the right size. Gather the scraps, reroll and keep cutting.

Mema's Special Spaghetti Sauce (Mema 2)

I don’t remember that Mother made spaghetti sauce, but Dolly, our aunt by her marriage to Mother’s Brother Mel, made it quite frequently and shared it with us. I remember that when the weather was cold enough that it would not spoil, she used to put a jar of sauce in Mother’s car which was parked behind Leggett’s department store. That was in the day when no one much bothered to lock either cars or houses in Emporia or Jarratt.

Mel and Dolly had lived all over because Mel had a career in the Army. He fought in World War 2 and had what they called a battlefield commission. I remember that Mel wore his dress whites to Bubba and Pat’s wedding and Dolly looked so elegant. She always wore her black hair up, in a bun or on fancy occasions in a more elaborate twist or curls. As she aged, she first developed a white streak and then it all turned silver . I remember that she always wore “Youth Dew” perfume by Estee Lauder. The young country/small town girl thought Dolly knew everything there was to know about the proper way to “do things." She probably did, after all those years of Army functions. Even in my day as an Army wife, they gave us a little book of social rules and regulations. How else would I have known that the wife of the ranking officer would be asked to pour the first few cups of tea at any ladies'event and the wife of the second ranking officer the first cups of coffee. Unless I've gotten it backwards, of course. It hasn't come up in our post army life, thank goodness.

They moved to Emporia after Mel retired, and we so enjoyed having them nearby. They were so good to Bubba and Pat and me. I remember that Dolly came out to see me get dressed for proms, and she was Mistress of Ceremonies at our wedding. They also gave the after rehearsal party, and Mel drove Daddy and me to the church and Del and me to the reception and back out to the house in his big new car.

Both Mel and Dolly are gone now, but it makes me happy to know that my cousin Barry and his wife Suzanne are now living in the house where he spent his high school years.

Back to spaghetti sauce. I used to make a pretty respectable sauce from scratch, but that got to be too much like work after I discovered MIDS sauce. It’s the only jar sauce I have ever really liked. It is made in Northeast Ohio and only recently found its way down to Georgia so I can make what Rosa calls Mema’s Special Sauce without dragging sauce home from Ohio when we visit. (Thank you MIDS and Publix.)

Mema’s Special Sauce (Mema 2, not to be confused with the REAL Mema)

1 jar MIDS spaghetti sauce
1 T olive oil
1 large clove garlic, minced
1/2 Italian style chicken sausage link per person, thinly sliced (comes precooked)
½ T fennel seed
¼ cup white wine
¼ cup water

Heat oil in sauce pan. Add sausage and lightly brown on low heat. Add garlic,and fennel sead and cook for 30 seconds or so. Add sauce. Pour wine and water into sauce jar, screw on top and shake so that you will be able to get every drop of sauce from jar. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes, or longer if you like.

You can substitute another jarred sauce, but it won’t be quite the same.



Continuing on the spaghetti sauce theme –

Tomato Basil Sauce

When David and Tracy were first married, he was interviewed for the cooking column of the newspaper where Tracy worked. They published a couple of recipes that he enjoyed cooking. One was for this quick spaghetti sauce.

Recipe

2 slices bacon
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
28 oz. can crushed tomatoes (Muir Glen is a good brand, but it’s more expensive.)
1 T oregano
1 T basil
2 t. onion powder
Dash cayenne pepper
Dash black pepper
Pinch of sugar if sauce seems sharp

Fry bacon until crisp. Remove from pan, drain on paper towel and crumble. Wipe most of fat from pan, but leave the brown bits, if any. Slightly brown garlic and add tomatoes, spices and peppers. Simmer over medium low heat for 15 minutes. Add bacon during last 5 minutes. Taste for seasoning. Serve over pasta.

Baked Vidalia Onion Dip

If Del were listing his favorite things to eat, this recipe would be close to the top of the list. I usually make it once or twice a year when lots of people are around so he won’t be able to eat the whole thing all by himself. I don’t recall where I got this recipe. Probably someone brought it to a potluck, and we begged until given the recipe.

Our family is divided on the subject of onions. David likes them. In fact, when he was quite young, and became cranky while I was cooking dinner, a slice of onion often improved his disposition. I can’t remember how I landed on that as a snack for a small child. Seems strange when I think about it.

Tracy and Rosa don’t care for them one bit. They don’t seem to mind onion powder so much, so it may be a texture thing instead of just a matter of the taste. Tracy’s mother, Sally Stenberg, another really good Southern cook, makes her turkey dressing part with and part without onion so her whole family will enjoy it.

Recipe:

Combine equal parts grated Vidalia onions, mayonnaise and grated Swiss cheese, add a sprinkle of paprika or red pepper and spoon into a sprayed casserole dish. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 45 minutes or until brown and bubbly. A knife will come out pretty clean. Remove from oven and use paper towels to blot up the grease on top of the casserole. Serve with crackers or slices of baguette. Of course you could also just apply directly to waist and hips, ‘cause that’s where much of it is going to end up. The rest will be in your arteries.

Note: I have been told that only Vidalia onions will work in the recipe, but I don’t know. I use Duke's mayonnaise when it's available, it's a regional product, so use your favorite brand. The empty mayonnaise jar works perfectly for measuring the onions and the cheese.

As Far As I 'm Concerned, Gravy Should Be a Beverage!

I love gravy and have often commented that it should be a beverage. Maybe I’ll even get a sweat shirt with that printed on it, although it might be more becoming on someone thin.

We ate a lot of gravy at our house when I was growing up – fried chicken gravy, baked chicken gravy, turkey gravy, beef gravy, pork gravy, and red eye gravy – yum! Mother did not make fried fish gravy, but Del’s Aunt Hattie did. I’ve also heard of tomato gravy and chocolate gravy, but I’ve never eaten either.

I don’t recall Mother having a recipe for gravy. It was more a process and differed somewhat based on the meat. If she was baking (roasting) something in the oven, she usually browned some flour by putting it into the oven in a pie tin when cooking the meat. I remember you had to peek at it and give it a stir every so often or you would have nasty smelling burnt flour. Once the meat was done, she would pour off the drippings into a small bowl and spoon off the fat that rose to the top.
Depending upon the amount of gravy she planned to make, she would return equal amounts of drippings and browned flour to the roasting pan and stir them until well combined, scrubbing up the brown bits on the bottom of the pan as she stirred. Then she would pour in about a cup of water or broth for each two T of drippings. She would stir until the gravy thickened up and add salt and pepper as needed.

When Mother made gravy for meat cooked on eye of the stove, she poured off the drippings, leaving a couple of tablespoons in the pan. She would then add in an equal amount of regular flour and cook, while stirring and scraping, until the mixture was a nice caramel color. Again, she removed as much fat as possible from the reserved drippings and added them and enough water or broth to make a cup to the pan. She continued to cook and stir until the gravy was as thick as she wanted it to be. Some people use milk when making fried chicken gravy, but never did as far as I remember.

Turkey gravy
Turkey gravy is a more elaborate process, so I’ll number the steps.
1. Remove packets from both ends of the turkey. It’s gross to cook a turkey and discover that the packers left a present in the neck end as well in the nether region. I know whereof I speak.
2. Cover neck and everything except the liver with water and simmer until done. When cool enough to handle, coarsely chop gizzard and heart and return to broth. Refrigerate until needed.
3. If you use Mrs. Williams’ method, you need to boil 2-3 eggs.
4. When the turkey is done, pour off the drippings. Return 2 tablespoons to roasting pan for each cup of gravy you plan to make. Add an equal amount of plain flour and cook until light brown, stirring and scrubbing up the brown bits. Remove as much fat as possible from the reserved drippings.
5. Combine reserved drippings and the broth with the chopped giblets. Pour one cup per 2 tablespoons of flour into roasting pan. Cook until thickened. Mrs. Williams would have coarsely chopped the boiled eggs and added them to the gravy at this point. I don’t do that, but I don’t find it objectionable.
6. If you don’t have enough liquid for the amount of gravy you want, add water or canned broth.
7. If you have extra liquid, use it when you make your dressing. Otherwise, you can use canned broth for that.


Red Eye Gravy

I can’t think of a better, or much less healthy breakfast, or dinner, really, than an egg fried so hard nobody would eat it but me, fried country ham, plain grits, homemade biscuits, red eye gravy and apple butter. If you want the gravy, you had better learn to make it yourself, because I rarely find it in restaurants. Del, who calls it “grease,” thinks this is as it should be. Bless his heart.

Recipe
Fry thin slices of old fashioned country ham over low heat until brown on both sides, but not hard and crunchy. An iron frying pan is best, but not mandatory. Remove ham from pan and keep warm. Remove some of the drippings unless you want to make lots of gravy. Pour ½ to 1 cup of water, depending upon the amount of drippings, into the pan and use wooden spoon to scrub up the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Cook 2 minutes or so until bubbling, slightly reduced in volume and reddish in color. Some people add half water and half coffee, but Mother never did that.

As suggested, serve with fried eggs and the ham and biscuits. You can put a spoon of the gravy on your grits or you can split your biscuit and pour the gravy over it instead of using butter and apple butter. That is a hard choice, so maybe you should have one of each. A large glass or two of ice water, blood pressure pills and an antacid would be the appropriate chasers for this meal, and it certainly should NOT appear on the table very often.

Nowadays, we don’t eat gravy often, and when we do, I try to defat it as much as possible. Often I just pour off all the drippings and pat the pan with a paper towel, being careful so the brown bits remain in the pan. Then I pour in a can of broth and thicken with a little cornstarch. To avoid lumps, stir a couple of tablespoons of water or cold broth into a tablespoon of cornstarch. Add the slurry to cold broth. If the gravy does not thicken enough, make more slurry. This time put a little of the hot broth into the slurry while stirring and then add it to the hot mixture, whisking to avoid lumps.

That pretty much sums up all I know about gravy. Now if I could just figure out the difference between gravy and sauce. I've always suspected sauce was just a fancy word for gravy,used by chefs who considered gravy low class, and later adopted by the rest of us to describe that which is poured over more sophisticated dishes. (Or in these days, requested “on the side.”) Even after consulting my faithful expert, Google, I still don’t understand the difference. So much conflicting info for what seems a simple question. Help, anyone?

Mother's Scalloped Potatoes

It was quite a surprise to me when I got to Westhampton College and found out that Mother’s way of making scalloped potatoes was not the only way to make them. Our cooks made them with cheese and onion and sometimes with crumbs on top,and lots of students pronounced scalloped with a short /a/ as in /cat/. Mother pronounced scallop with a /ah/ sound whether speaking of the potato dish, the sea creature or the rounded decoration on clothing. Of course I do, too, and I am convinced that even if her way is not the only of making scalloped potatoes, it is surely the best way.

It was quite common for Mother to serve scalloped potatoes and string beans with meatloaf, and it was one of the first meals I learned to cook. I felt confident that I could successfully manage that meal, so I served it the first time Del’s folks came for dinner. Unfortunately, I forgot that both potatoes and tomatoes aggravated Mrs. Williams’ nasal allergies, so I’m sure she had to pull out the nasal spray that evening. Since it was a discomfort kind of allergy rather than a potentially lethal one, she was kind enough to say nothing, so I didn’t realize what I had done until Del reminded me after they went home. I was mortified, to say the least.

Recipe

4 cups thinly sliced potatoes
1 T flour
Salt
Black Pepper - I like lots
1 ½ cups milk (1% is fine)
2 T butter

Mix potatoes with flour, salt and pepper and place into sprayed 8 inch dish. Add milk. It should reach top of potatoes but not cover them. Dot with butter. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 1 hour, but start checking them after 45 minutes. Potatoes are done when easily pierced with paring knife and the milk has combined with flour and the starch from the potatoes to produce a thick sauce. Additional milk can be added during cooking if the potatoes appear dry.

Serves 4-6.

Note: I usually make scalloped potatoes when I am going to have the oven on for a long time to cook the main dish of the meal, but sometimes I speed things up by starting the dish in the microwave for 10 minutes. Then I have to play the rest of the time by ear.