Mess of Greens

full bellies | warm welcomes

winter

Blood Orange Cake, Dark Chocolate Ganache and Candied Oranges

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Confession: so, until a few weeks ago I’d never eaten a blood orange. I’d seen them in magazines, and decided they were gorgeous but probably not very yummy since I’ve never really been a fan of oranges anyway. But after tasting them, I’m eating my words these days (AND ALL the blood oranges I can get my hands on). In fact, I celebrated turning 35 by testing out a flavor combination that I was pretty sure would be dynamite… blood oranges and dark chocolate. OH y’all. It’s a grown-up cake for feeling like a real grown up. It takes a few steps but not nearly as many as a Momofuku layer cake and it’s absolutely worth it for a special occasion.

NOTES about this cake: Make sure to make the candied oranges the day before as they take a while to harden

Also, the ganache takes a little while to harden, so plan to put the cake in the fridge after frosting, or wait a few hours.

Lastly, this type of cake dries out quickly.. so if you don’t eat it immediately, make sure to wrap it up tightly and put it in the fridge.


Blood Orange Cake, Dark Chocolate Ganache and Candied Oranges
 
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Recipe type: Dessert
Serves: 1-3 Layer Cake
What You Need
  • CANDIED BLOOD ORANGES
  • 2 blood oranges, scrubbed and sliced into ¼" rounds with the peel on
  • 2 Cups Water
  • 1 Cup sugar
  • 2 Tablespoons Corn syrup
  • 2 tsp Bourbon
  • BLOOD ORANGE CHIFFON CAKE
  • 2 Cups cake flour (leveled)
  • 4 teaspoons baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1½ Cups sugar
  • ½ Cups coconut oil, melted
  • 6 Large eggs, separated
  • ¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
  • Finely grated zest of 4 Blood Oranges
  • 1 Cup fresh orange juice (from the blood oranges. About 4-6 oranges, depending on size)
  • CHOCOLATE GANACHE
  • ¾ bag to 1 entire bag of dark chocolate chips (or 16 oz of other dark chocolate, rough chopped)
  • 1 16 oz can coconut cream, OR 2 Cans of Full Fat coconut milk, unshaken and unemulsified with the cream skimmed off the top
  • 1 Tablespoon blood orange zest
What to Do
  1. FOR the CANDIED BLOOD ORANGES
  2. Boil the water and add the sugar and corn syrup.
  3. Wisk the sugars in the water until dissolved.
  4. Add in the orange slices, not letting them touch one another.
  5. Let them simmer for one hour, and then remove from the water onto a rack. You can either wait 24 hours for them to cool and dry OR put them in a crock pot on low for 4 hours, then in the refrigerator for 1 hour. I imagine 100 degrees in an oven would do the same thing.
  6. FOR the BLOOD ORANGE CHIFFON CAKE
  7. Preheat oven to 325 degrees and oi/flour 3 8" cakepans or 1 10" cake pan.
  8. In a large bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, and 1 cup sugar together.
  9. Make a well in center of flour mixture.
  10. Add oil, egg yolks, orange zest and juice, and ¼ cup cold water; whisk batter until smooth.
  11. With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, whisk egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form.
  12. Gradually add the remaining ½ cup sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time; continue to beat until stiff peaks form.
  13. Using a spatula, gently fold half of egg-white mixture into batter. Fold in remaining egg-white mixture just until combined.
  14. Pour equal amounts into each cake pan, and bake at 325 degrees for 35 mins or until the top is brown, the sides slightly pull away from the pan and a toothpick comes out clean.
  15. Let cool slightly.
  16. FOR the CHOCOLATE GANACHE
  17. Heat the coconut cream over medium-low heat until it steams.
  18. Add in the chocolate and zest and stir continuously until it has melted entirely and the combination turns a dark, creamy brown.
  19. Remove from heat.
  20. PUT IT TOGETHER
  21. Using a bread knife (or better yet, an electric knife) cut off the tops of each cake until they are entirely flat (it feels sad to loose this much of the cake, but it's how to make it look even).
  22. Spread a thin layer of ganache over the top of each layer and stack each one on top of the other.
  23. Spread a layer of ganache over the sides and top of the cake, let stand for 30 minutes to slightly harden. This will be your "crumb layer" which will serve to keep all the crumbs from mixing with the ganache.
  24. Once the ganache has hardened on the cake slightly, spread another layer on the top and sides of the cake.
  25. Garnish with the candied orange slices. You may serve warm, OR wait until the ganache hardens entirely.
  26. If you wait to eat it, make sure to wrap the cake tightly and put it in the refrigerator since this type of cake dries out quickly. It can also be wrapped tightly in saran wrap and frozen for over a month.

You can see here how the warm ganache seeped into the warm cake… heaven!

Mess of Greens Dip

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2017 was a bittersweet year for me. I lost my mama, but gained a new little boy. I’m looking forward to New Year’s Day as a way to move forward and look for the good in the world.

New Year’s Day (when there’s no hangover involved) has always one of my favorite days of the year. Everything seems new, full of possibilities, everyone sticks close to home, hanging by a fire, watching football, and eating greens, cornbread, and black eyed peas….it’s basically the perfect day for cold icy weather (which the south is getting in spades tonight).

The thing is, I know that not everybody is crazy about the New year’s Day tradition of eating greens for money and black eyed peas for luck.Maybe you’re the kind of person who loves a warm bowl of chili instead while you watch the game. Well, lucky for you, I AM crazy about it, and always try to find new ways to eat my greens & peas. My aunt passed along a version of this recipe to me last year and after seeing how fast it disappeared at my little get together last year, it’s going to be a STAPLE every time. It’s basically spinach-artichoke dip all southerned-up. Once you’ve tasted it, it’ll be on your table every year, too….

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New Year, New Take on an Old Favorite: Greens, Bacon, White Bean Pot Pie

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I love cold, wintery weather… the more freezing, the more dreary, the better. I’ve loved these days since college in Virginia, when exams always seemed to fall on the snowiest, coldest days of the year and I would find myself sequestered with my favorite people in our house with soup, DVD marathons of The OC or Sex and the City (yep, college was in the early 2000s). Now when the weather is cold & dreary I can’t help but want to cook ALL the comfort food, watch all the crappy TV, and snuggle under a blanket with my loves. Unfortunately, it never, NEVER gets below 40 degrees in South Mississippi. Like, ever. This week, though, we went from having a rainy 75 degree New Year’s Day, to an icy 23 degree Friday. (and next week we’re looking at 7o degree temps again, too). Anyway, this means that I had to seize the moment and make ALL the food. So far, I’ve roasted a chicken, baked cookies, made curried cauliflower & cabbage soup, and baked this PERFECTION of a pot pie. We ate it on the coldest night while the sleet was peppering our wall of windows, and then we snuggled down to watch something Netflix recommended. I hope you’ll do the same since it’s a delcious way to take advantage of the seasonal greens all over grocery stores, and make a homey, yummy supper.


 
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Author:
Serves: 4-5
What You Need
  • PIE CRUST:
  • 1 Pie Crust
  • 1 Egg
  • 1 Tablespoon Milk
  • FILLING
  • 2 Tablespoons olive oil
  • 4 slices cooked bacon, diced
  • 4 slices, thick cut ham, diced
  • 1 large onion, diced
  • 2 carrots, peeled, finely chopped
  • 2 stalks celery, finely chopped
  • ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 2 garlic cloves
  • Kale, Collard greens, or chard leaves chiffonaded/sliced into strips
  • 2 cans White (Cannellini) beans, drained
  • SAUCE
  • 3½ Cups chicken or vegetable broth
  • 3½ Tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 3½ Tablespoons all-purpose flour
What to Do
  1. MAKE THE FILLING
  2. Heat the olive oil in a dutch oven, and cook the onions until translucent.
  3. Season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.
  4. Add in the celery, carrots, and garlic and sautee' for about 2-3 minutes
  5. In handfuls, put the greens into the pot and stir until wilted.
  6. Once the greens have been wilted, add in the beans in and the ham and bacon.
  7. Cook and stir for 5 minutes and then scoop into 4-5 small ramekins or 1 large deep round corningware dish
  8. MAKE THE SAUCE
  9. In the same dutch oven, and without worrying about wiping it out, melt the butter.
  10. Once it's entirely melted and bubbly, add in the flour a tablespoon at a time and whisk it in vigorously so that it totally incorporates. Continue until you've used all the flour.
  11. Keep stirring and cooking until it's turned golden in color.
  12. At this point, pour in the stock ½ Cup at time and keep stirring.
  13. Cook on medium heat, stirring continuously until thickened and reduced slightly (about 10 minutes)
  14. ASSEMBLE THE PIES
  15. Pour the sauce evenly over the filling.
  16. Put the pie pastry over the top of each pie and cut slits in the top to let out any additional steam
  17. In a bowl, whisk the egg & milk until entirely combined.
  18. Using a pastry brush, paint the tops of each pie for a gorgeous, golden brown crust (not necessary, but HIGHLY recommended)
  19. Bake at 350 until bubbling and golden brown.
  20. Serve hot.

 

‘Simmon Pudding with Bourbon Whipped Cream

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Oh bring us some ‘simmon puddin’

Oh bring us some ‘simmon puddin’

Oh bring us some ‘simmon puddin’

and bring it right now!

Now that I’ve discovered the incredible flavor that is wild persimmons,

That’s how I imagine that this Christmas carol would go if it had been written in the south. img_4562

My mama and I made some plum (figgy) pudding a couple of years ago and it was such a fun, nostagic project that had plans to make it every Christmas from then on, but honestly, I wasn’t a huge fan of how it tasted. But this, y’all. Oh this. It turns out that European American settlers made this pudding all winter with the tiny squishy persimmons that grew wild (and that Native Americans had been gathering and eating all along) and, in my opinion, it’s SO MUCH more divine than the one they make across the pond. I tampered a teeny bit with a Saveur recipe and added some bourbon whipped cream, and well… I’d say it’s a holiday dessert MUST MAKE. Plus, although it takes a little time to cook, it is EEEEAAASSSY.

Note: If you don’t relish the job of foraging and then scooping out 2 cups worth of wild persimmon pulp, you can cheat and use store bought persimmons. I won’t tell.

Oh bring us some 'simmon pudding
 
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Serves: 1 9"x13" pan
What You Need
  • FOR THE PUDDING:
  • Pulp from enough ripe persimmons to make 2 cups (about 5 hachiyas or Fuyu, OR about 3 pounds of wild very smushy ripe persimmons)
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 eggs, beaten
  • 1 1⁄2 cups buttermilk
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 1⁄2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1⁄2 tsp. cinnamon
  • ½ tsp nutmeg
  • Pinch salt
  • 1⁄4 cup heavy cream
  • 4 tbsp. butter, melted
  • FOR THE BOURBON WHIPPED CREAM
  • 1 Cup whipping cream
  • 3 Tablespoons powdered sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 teaspoon bourbon
What to Do
  1. Preheat your oven to 350°. Place a large roasting pan filled with water ½ way or other way to create a water bath into the oven to warm. (Using a water bath will keep the center of the pudding moist. You can also use a traditional plum pudding mold that is then steamed...google that if you want to know more!)
  2. After you've gotten the fleshy pulp from the persimmons (if you're using wild, you'll need to skin them and also strain the pulp for the large seeds) add it and sugar into a large bowl.
  3. Beat in the eggs.
  4. Add in the buttermilk and baking soda into a separate medium bowl, and stir. Add to pulp, and mix well.
  5. Sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt into the medium bowl (i like to reuse bowls when I can). Slowly add the flour mixture to the pulp, stirring until it's totally and thoroughly combined.
  6. Add heavy cream, and mix.
  7. Grease a 9'' X 13'' baking dish with a small amount of the melted butter
  8. Stir remaining butter into batter.
  9. Pour batter into dish.
  10. Place the baking dish into the water bath that's been warming in the oven, bake until dark brown and toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 1 hour, 20 minutes. OR bake according to your traditional plum pudding mold directions.
  11. Set aside to cool. Serve with bourbon whipped cream. (recipe below)
  12. FOR THE WHIPPED CREAM:
  13. In a COLD bowl and with a COLD whisk implement on your mixer (or your hand held emulsion blender) mix the cream, extract, bourbon, and sugar until frothy and until it has peaks. If you over mix it will turn into butter.

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Wild Persimmon & Bourbon Breakfast Bread

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Wild Persimmons: Bourbon Breakfast Bread
 
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The most time consuming part of this process is getting the persimmon pulp, but I assure you, the flavor is like NOTHING else and it's even more exciting because it grows wild and is connected to native peoples and early european settlers.
Author:
Recipe type: Breakfast or Dessert
Serves: 4 loaves
What You Need
  • FOR THE BREAD:
  • 2 cups sifted cake flour
  • ½ teaspoons salt
  • 2 teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 2 cups sugar
  • ½ cup melted unsalted butter or vegetable oil
  • 2 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten
  • 1 Tablespoon Bourbon
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 cups persimmon puree (about 3 cups of wild persimmons)
  • FOR THE FROSTING:
  • 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 18 oz package cream cheese
  • 2½ teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1 tsp bourbon
  • 4 to 5 cups confectioners’ sugar
What to Do
  1. FOR THE BREAD:
  2. First things first: you have to get the persimmon puree'. A note about wild persimmons... you know they're ripe if they've fallen off the tree or are SUPER wrinkly and soft... like a deflated helium balloon. Once they're at that stage, and you've got a food mill, the you can use it to separate the skin and the seeds from the pulp. If not, then peel the skin away from the pulp and squeeze it into a wire strainer over a bowl. Using the back of a spoon, push the pulp through the strainer and into the bowl, leaving the large seeds. The pulp can be frozen for use later.
  3. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
  4. Prepare your bread or cake pans by coating the insides with butter and lightly flouring the inside.
  5. Mix all of the dry ingredients/spices except the sugar (flour, baking powder, soda, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon) together in a separate medium sized bowl. You may wish to sift this so they are combined consistently.
  6. Then, in a large mixing bowl, combine the puree', the butter or oil, and the sugar until it is entirely incorporated.
  7. Mix in the eggs, the vanilla, and the bourbon.
  8. Cup by cup, mix in the dry ingredients into the puree' mixture. Fold in until just mixed together.
  9. Pour the batter into 2-8" round cake pans, or 2- 9" bread pans, or 4-5" bread pans and bake until a toothpick can be inserted and comes out clean. (somewhere about 20-30 minutes depending on the size of your pan).
  10. FOR THE FROSTING:
  11. Using an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed until its all creamy.
  12. Add cream cheese and vanilla and bourbon, and beat until it's totally incorporated.
  13. Gradually increase the speed and beat until the cheese and butter mixture fluffy, scraping down the sides of bowl if you need to.
  14. Add in the powdered sugar one cup at a time, scraping down if you need to until everything is fully incorporated.
  15. PUTTING IT TOGETHER:
  16. Once the cake has cooled, frost it, slice it and serve it with a cup of coffee. it is even good at room temperature or straight from the fridge.

How perfect are persimmons? The gorgeous, peachy-oranged fleshed fruit that ripen into wrinkly, sweet pulp are not only the most lovely subjects for still life paintings ever, but also have been used in foods from puddings to beer for generations (read more about its history at American Food Roots). Until my friend Joseph brought me some that he’d found in the woods I’d never tried one and didn’t know that they’d played a large role in the diets of native people in our part of the world AND my southern ancestors. But now I know why.

When I saw the perfect little rosy “sugar plums” I couldn’t resist biting into one….but boy did I regret it. The skin of wild persimmons, dispyros virginiania (small, peachy fruit with smooth skin that’s a bit smaller than a golf ball and has several large, hard seeds) is VERY, VERY bitter and made my mouth feel like I’d covered it in a dry, awful tasting powder. But the inside flesh was soft, very sweet, and super fragrant.

In fact, when I just got a taste of the flesh I was in love. It was divine! And so different! Eventually I’d like to make a beer or vinegar using this lovely little fruit, but to start, I made something I felt pretty comfortable with… persimmon bread loosely based on James Beard’s version but with the added ah-mazingness that is cream cheese buttercream. I also made another batch and shaped it into a cake, which was brown like pumpernickle bread but was something like carrot cake. It really was PERFECT for breakfast, and super easy. If you’ve got folks staying over for Thanksgiving, then this is a nice change from the ubiquitous holiday sweet rolls for breakfast, especially since it makes use of local wild fruit you can find in the woods AND harkens back to the earliest settler’s food.

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Cool Nights call for Pot Pie: Quail & Chicken Pot Pie

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So, when the weather turns cooler, we break out the cool weather food. chicken & dumplins, pot roast, and of course, pot pies. I have a pretty excellent and easy pot pie recipe that I made on the reg, but since we had some leftover quail meat AND my mama had been teaching me about the ease that is bechamel sauce, I decided to spice things up a little. Enter this baby.

Not only was I able to pull it together in about 30 minutes (minus baking time) my mama lent her artistic talents to supper and covered the top in tiny, pretty leaves of crust.

If you don’t have quail, sub in a little extra chicken, and make SURE to serve it with sweet potatoes and butter beans. Happy fall, y’all!

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Cool Nights call for Pot Pie: Quail & Chicken Pot Pie
 
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Serves: 6
What You Need
  • FOR THE FILLING
  • 2 chicken breasts
  • Wings and Legs from 10 quail
  • 4½ Tablespoons unsalted butter
  • 4 Tablespoons All Purpose Flour
  • 1½ Cups Milk
  • ⅛ teaspoon dried Oregano
  • Salt & Pepper to taste
  • 1 bag of frozen mixed vegetables (onions, peas, carrots, celery), Thawed
  • 6 button mushrooms, sliced
  • FOR THE PIE
  • 1 package of premade pie crusts (2 crusts total)
  • 1 egg
  • 2 Tablespoons Milk
What to Do
  1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Boil the chicken and quail until cooked all the way through
  3. Shred the chicken and pull the quail meat from the bone. Discard the bones.
  4. In a sauce pan, heat 4 Tablespoons of the butter until simmering, and whisk in the flour quickly
  5. Stir and let it bubble for about 1 minute while it thickens. Add in the milk a little at a time, stirring.
  6. Cook for about 2 more minutes to let the sauce thicken, then season with salt, pepper, and oregano.
  7. In a separate pan, heat ½ tablespoon of butter
  8. Add in the thawed vegetables and fresh mushrooms and sautee until softer but still slightly firm. Season with salt and pepper.
  9. Place one of the two pie crusts in a pie plate or deep, round casserole dish.
  10. In a mixing bowl, combine the chicken and quail meat and the vegetables, then pour the mixture into the casserole dish.
  11. Pour the Sauce over the top and allow to seep down.
  12. Cover with the second pie crust.
  13. In a small bowl, whisk the egg and the 2 tablespoons of milk to make a thin egg wash.
  14. Using a pastry brush, paint the top of your crust for a golden brown color.
  15. Bake the pie for at least 40 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and bubbling. If you find the top is turning TOO brown, cover with a piece of foil while it continues to bake.

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Fried Quail with Country Style Gravy and Grits

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Back when Jill & Ruffin got married, they sent us home with possibly the best party favors on the planet… 2 jars of honey from their beekeeping efforts and 22 frozen, cleaned quail that Ruffin had hunted earlier in the spring. Talk about hospitality! The first time I remember eating quail was around the holidays around my mother’s mother’s large, fancy, beautifully set dining table with all my aunts and uncles, so I mostly associate quail with feast days. It doesn’t HAVE to be that way. Quail are a very lean source of protein and have a lovely, mild, chicken-like flavor. Plus you can get them EASILY down south (For starters, you can get expensive ones in the grocery store, but then if you want to get more local, all over Texas, Alabama, & Louisiana people have set up quail hunting farms, and locally in Laurel, MS are some good folks raising, cleaning, and selling them straight to customers.)

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Roasted Summer Tomato Soup, OR Papa al Pomodoro, Southern Style

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Well lovelies, it’s the tail end of tomato season in south Mississippi, which is making me act a lot like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings about each and every plump bright red orb that comes off my vines.

There’s really nothing better than the acidity and sweetness of a ripe summer tomato, and sometimes you want something other than a BLT or caprese salad, ammIright?

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Riffing on Robert St. John: White Bean & Ham Stufato

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Have you ever eaten at a Robert St. John restaraunt? He’s got what amounts to a restaurant owners compound in Hattiesburg,  right down the street from the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi.

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A rustic Italian spot, a new orleans pub and a southern fine-dining experience,  a super swank cocktail bar, and now, a much anticipated hamburger joint are all within the confines of basically one parking lot. ALL the food at all the places (well, I don’t know about the burger spot yet since the lines have been too long for me to try it out) is really delicious, and the ambiance is always perfectly suited to the cuisine. Anyway, I’m a huge fan, especially since his food is great, AND uses his platform to support hunger initiatives in Mississippi.

He also has some pretty lovely cookbooks, and we were leafing through the Italian one, and ran across a recipe for white beans. My dad has basically been talking about wanting a bean dish for DAYS, since it’s what he wants to eat in cold weather, AND we had a huge bone-in honebaked ham (and what do you do with a ham bone if you’re from the south? You season something.) I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, and I didn’t have all the things to make his unique seasoning blends and herb blends, so I just kinda went with my gut. What resulted was my take on his already warm, creamy, Mississippified-Italian white bean dish that is PERFECT for a cold, cold night.

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Sweet Potato, Kale, and Sausage stew

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Ok, it’s freezing all over America, right? Like everywhere? Except here. Our former town is probably covered in frost and ice (Can someone in Leland, MS confirm, please?) but here in Laurel, it’s just overcast and muggy. Although there’s SO MUCH to love about the deepest and farthest south, the winter weather isn’t one of them if you happen to like cold. However, I’m not going to let our mosquito-ridden warm front stop me from making the most delicious, easy, healthy soup on the planet, snuggling up with a bowl of it, cup of hot coffee, and pretend it’s a glorious 21 degrees. I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you do this, also, even if you aren’t pretending.

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