MIDNIGHT BRISKET AND SIMPLY CAKE: DINNER BY MARTHA HALL FOOSE

Thursday, November 26, 2009

A friend of mine loaned me this cookbook. It won the James Beard Award this year. She has dog-eared half the pages -those are the recipes she has already made or is going to try. I opened the book just for a peak, but ended up devouring it cover to cover right then and there. When I finished, I ordered my own copy.

The majority of the recipes in Screen Doors and Sweet Tea Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook are Southern classics, but this book is not just a collection of recipes. “Tell me what you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are” is a quote from Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a 19th century food writer. It is this idea, that food reflects who you are and where you are from that resonates throughout this book. Reading this cookbook is like peaking into the life of its writer and her neighbors in the Mississippi Delta. You get a sense of them as people and as a culture: the food, the South, the people, and their lives are all intertwined. It’s a good read. For me, it played like a “best of” music cd bringing back my own memories of food, people, and places. Food can make you hungry, but it also can make you nostalgic.

The Texas Gulf Coast, where I live, is a melting pot of cultures and cuisines. We have a bit of everything, but when I was very young, it was more Southern and Mexican than anything else. Lunch at the drugstore counter was a cup of tomato soup served with a choice of a pimento cheese, egg salad, or chicken salad sandwich. Sunday supper at my grandparents’ house was biscuits made from scratch and fried chicken with boiled greens in the winter and succotash in the summer. At summer camp in the Hill Country, every kid in the Chow Hall would go berserk for chicken fried steak with gravy. My mother is famous for her gumbo, and when I can’t have hers, there are plenty of good choices around town. This book has recipes for all those things plus fried catfish with hush puppies, homemade mayonnaise, several types of gumbo, BBQ shrimp, and lots more. Whether you have experience with these dishes or not, they are all right there in one book for the taking.

Take note that Martha Hall Foose is no back-country fry cook. Although born and raised in Mississippi, she went to pastry school at Ecole Lenotre in France and is the executive chef at the Viking Cooking School. Along with the classics, she also offers recipes with a contemporary twist. There is curried sweet potato soup with lemongrass and coconut milk, venison roast with root vegetables, and white chili made with green chilis and hominy baked in a cornbread crust. YUM!

With all of the tempting choices, I decided to start with the Midnight Brisket. I served it with pinto beans, a salad, and cornbread. I made Simply Cake for dessert. As I knew it would be, dinner was a wild success.

Midnight brisket with cornbread, pinto beans, and a mixed green salad. Note: A whole brisket is around 11 lbs. When it is cut in half, there is a FLAT END and a THICK END. Be sure you follow the recipe and buy the flat end. The fat cap is a layer of fat that covers the flat end of the brisket. It flavors the meat as it cooks.
This made enough for leftovers. I served the leftovers in corn tortillas with a choice of picante sauce and salsa verde. Leftovers would also be delicious on a sandwich made with a baguette.

Simply cake is an old fashioned bundt cake. This version is dense and dangerously delicious. I served it sliced with lemon curd, but a little vanilla ice cream would be a-okay.

Tip: Look for shortening with natural ingredients. Some brands contain things that only exist in a laboratory.

Below are the recipes for Midnight Brisket and Simply Cake with the full narrative from Screen Doors and Sweet Tea by Martha Hall Foose. It is printed with permission from Random House.

Peace and love from my kitchen to yours,

Waverly

Midnight Brisket
Feed the Band

…
Jackson, Mississippi, has seen legendary rhythm and blues artists pass through, such as Little Milton, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Johnny Taylor, Dorothy Moore, Z. Z. Hill, and Denise LaSalle, all of whom recorded at Malaco Records. Performing at clubs like the Hidden Agenda, Queen of Hearts, George Street Grocery, Freddie B’s Hideaway, Hal and Mal’s, and the basement club of a defunct hotel, the Subway Lounge, they kept the music scene thriving in the capital city.

The Tangents, known as the “House Band of the Delta,” occasionally rolled into town to stir up trouble. My mother made this brisket for them once and had me deliver it over to “Blues Central,” the nickname for a midtown flophouse frequented by musicians, back when I was in high school. She thought the guys in the band were looking a little peaked and thin. That gesture instilled in me the value of caring for and feeding musicians. This brisket is the perfect dish for anybody who works the night shift, such as bakers, firemen, and nurses.

Count backward 36 hours from the time you want to serve and this tells you the time to start preparation of this simple, soulful dish. . Serves 6

2 medium onions, cut into 1-inch-thick rounds
1 (5- to 6-pound) piece flat end beef brisket, with fat cap intact, tenderized
2 tablespoons natural liquid smoke seasoning
1?4 cup Worcestershire sauce
2 teaspoons celery salt
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Choose a glass baking dish or lidded casserole large enough to comfortably hold the meat. Arrange the onion rounds in the bottom of the dish, then place the brisket fat side up on top of the onions. Pour the smoke flavoring and Worcestershire sauce over the meat. Sprinkle the celery salt, paprika, garlic powder, and pepper over the surface. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and marinate in the refrigerator for 24 hours.

Preheat the oven to 200ºF.

Remove the plastic wrap and cover the baking dish tightly with a lid or foil. Bake for 1 hour. Uncover and bake for an additional 5 hours.

Remove the brisket from the oven, and as hard as it seems, do not taste it. Allow to cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate for 5 hours.

Preheat the oven to 325ºF.

Remove the cover and spoon off the fat that has solidified on the surface of the juices. Remove the brisket from the liquid and wrap it in foil. Pour the juices into a small saucepan. Place the foilwrapped brisket in the baking dish in the oven and warm through, about 15 minutes.

Simmer the pan juices and reduce to a thin, saucelike consistency. Thinly slice the brisket diagonally across the grain. Serve with the sauce.

Notes
• Brisket is a cut of beef that contains a large amount of collagen, a connective tissue that can be tough and chewy if not fully cooked. Long, slow cooking works best for briskets.

• There is a meat tenderizer device that is a handle with 20 or so sharp little blades. It is pressed into the meat and pierces it.
I like to use this tool on brisket, venison, and countryfried steak. But, the brisket can simply be pierced all over with a fork before marinating.

• Allowing the brisket to cool fully produces a better meat texture for slicing, whether the brisket is reheated or served cold on sandwiches. If you cannot stand not eating the brisket right away, go ahead and serve it, but the texture will be stringy and the slices will shred rather than slice nicely

After most restaurants have shut down for the night and the day world is sleeping, musicians do their creeping. At my first bakeshop, Bottletree Bakery, in the college town of Oxford, Mississippi, we were often startled in the wee hours by errant, hungry bands pounding on the big garage-style back door. About the time the first batches of bread and pastries were coming out of the oven, the musicians had just finished loading up. We never turned any of them away. The same thing occasionally happens at the Mockingbird, with most of them looking for a cup of coffee for the
long drive through the big Delta night. This custom of feeding musicians has led to some strange visits. Late, late one night a friend from the aptly named band “The Night People” tapped on my window. “Baby!” he pleaded. “Some men might come here wanting sexual favors. Honey, I just want you to cook me some bacon and eggs!” I got up, put on my robe, and fried him some.

Simply Cake
Basic Pound Cake

…
She simply lost her mind. I had simply had enough. It was a simply beautiful wedding. These are a few examples of how my mother can use the word “simply” in a variety of ways. My mother uses the word more than any person I know. This is what she makes when she simply wants some cake.

Mrs. Mildred Nicholas gave my mother this recipe. Mrs. Nicholas had made one for my father just about every time she came to his office for a doctor’s visit. When her illness seemed to be worsening, she brought my mother the recipe and told her how she knew Michael loved that pound cake, and she would hate for him not to have any once she was gone. It is simply a wonderful pound cake and Mrs. Nicholas was simply a lovely lady. Makes one 10-inch cake

3 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1?2 teaspoon salt
1?2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1?2 cup vegetable shortening
3 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon lemon extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
5 large eggs
1 cup whole milk

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a 12-cup (10-inch) tube pan.
Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder.
In an electric mixer, beat the butter, shortening, and sugar at medium speed until fluffy. Add the vanilla, lemon, and almond extracts. Reduce the speed and add the eggs one at a time, beating well between additions; do not overmix. Add the flour mixture alternately with the milk, ending with the milk.
Spoon the batter into the prepared pan and tap lightly on the counter to level. Bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes,until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes. Tip the cake out of the pan and continue to cool completely on the rack.

Notes
• To make chocolate pound cake, add 1?4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder to the flour before sifting.
• Do not mix at a high speed after the eggs are added. The cake will have tunnels and be tough, if you do.
• If the cake begins to brown too much, tent with foil.