Mess of Greens

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Amped Up Tomato Gravy

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Tomato Gravy is definitely a southern breakfast thing. I’ve seen it on country-style and rural greasy spoon restaurants ALLLL over, from North Carolina to New Orleans. But, the thing is, I rarely order it because lots of time it takes like Chef Boyardee or thicker V8 Juice. Do you know what I mean? There’s nothing wrong with that but honestly, I LOVE BISCUITS SO MUCH why would I eff up a perfectly good one with fake-tomato goop with butter and a little jam works like a charm.

I’ve been testing recipes out of John Currence’s Big Bad Breakfast cookbook lately that my wonderful Mama-in-law gave me for Christmas, and ALL of the things in there are good…but THIS ONE is probably my favorite. It mixes a creole/cajun roux with bacon grease, FRESH tomatoes and then I replaced dried thyme with fresh basil. It takes a little time, but since I had my biscuit dough in the freezer already from a previous batch it was worth the effort…especially since we had it for supper instead of breakfast. A side of bacon or ham, and Oooooweee!

But tell me..where’s YOUR favorite tomato gravy and what makes it the best? I’d love to have a list of where my next roadtrip breakfast should be!


Amped Up Tomato Gravy
 
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Serves: 5 Cups
What You Need
  • 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter
  • ½ Cup diced onion
  • 1 Tablespoon bacon grease
  • ¼ Cup all-purpose flour
  • 2 Cups cored, seeded, and dice tomatoes
  • salt and black pepper
  • 1 Cup canned crushed tomatoes
  • 4 leaves basil, minced
  • ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • 1½ teaspoons lemon juice (fresh is best)
  • ½ Cup heavy cream
  • ¾ cup green onions, green part chopped only
What to Do
  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan
  2. Cook the onion until transparent
  3. Add the bacon grease/fat and cook until it melts.
  4. Put the flour in and whisk it constantly until a light golden roux forms. (I'm NOT an expert roux maker... my LSU grandmother and Louisiana aunt would frown if they knew). But this one is lighter and doesn't take so long(2 to 3 mins)...just get the flour lightly cooked.
  5. Stir in the fresh tomatoes, season with salt and pepper.
  6. Once the tomatoes begin to cook down, add the canned crushed tomatoes and the seasonings.
  7. Simmer the sauce, stirring occasionally until it thickens some.
  8. Once that happens, add the cream and lemon juice and simmer again, stirring it a lot until it thickens and "coats the back of a spoon".
  9. Take it off the heat and mix in the green onions.
  10. Serve over biscuits immediately, or keep it warm for a couple of hours over a double boiler.
  11. Die because it's so delicious.

 

Sweet and Savory Fig Toasts

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Fig week 2k17 continues folks!

So I never really understood the “Toast” phenomenon. I mean, WHOLE restaurants dedicated to what is basically an open-faced sandwich?

But you know, I DO get that sometimes two pieces of bread is too much for your sandwich ingredients and other times the food is just too pretty to cover up. My Pregnant lady brunch (prunch?)– which is basically an extra meal between breakfast and lunch since my belly is waaaaaay too big for regular sized meals these days– the other day was both of those things. Pretty AND light. Two pieces of toast would have overwhelmed it all. What I loved about this (beyond how yummy honey, figs, burrata, and a sprinkle of kosher salt was) was that the only real cooking involved was toasting the french bread, so this could be a fancy breakfast, a light lunch, or a killer appetizer.


Sweet and Savory Fig Toasts
 
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Author:
Recipe type: Appetizer
Serves: 6-10
What You Need
  • ¼ or ½ loaf of French Bread, sliced into rounds
  • 4-8 Figs, sliced in half
  • 1-3 Pouches Burrata cheese, cut open
  • 2-4 basil leaves, Chiffonade (or cut into ribbons)
  • 3 Tablespoons (or more!) Honey
  • Kosher Salt or Sea Salt
What to Do
  1. Toast the French Bread rounds until crispy.
  2. Spread with creamy Burrata cheese.
  3. Top with sliced ripe figs and place on the cheese.
  4. Sprinkle Basil ribbons.
  5. Drizzle honey. Season with kosher salt or sea salt and devour!

Roasted Fig and Whiskey Puree’

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So, let’s dive into fig week 2017, shall we? In my opinion, during the summer (and in some parts of the world, fall), there are two kinds of people…. those folks with a fig tree or two in their backyard, and those without. If you HAVE a fig tree, then you get gallons of figs to eat, make into preserves, and do just about whatever you want with them until your sated and maybe a little too full. If you don’t (like me), well, then you have to rely on the kindness of friends with fig trees or farmer’s stands to get your fig-fix. Here’s something to know about keeping them as long as possible.

Once you’ve picked or bought them, DO NOT WASH THEM. Put them in an open tupperware container with a paper towel on the bottom to wick away moisture, and leave them in the fridge. I’ve learned the hard way that if you leave figs on the counter then they melt into goo VERY VERY fast, so don’t make that mistake of your summertime fruit-gold.

But then, once you have them (or if you have a zillion pounds of them) what do you do? I’ve got lots of ideas here, but this morning my little dude craved pancakes, so I pulled out a recipe and went to town. But instead of basic syrup or  powdered sugar, we made a super quick and easy roasted fig and bourbon puree’ and drizzled the pancakes with honey. It was DIVINE…sweet, rich, and made silver dollar pancakes seem so fancy with minimal effort. My little person didn’t get the puree’ (even though all but the whiskey flavor had cooked out in the oven), but the honey and fresh figs were a HIT. If pancakes aren’t on deck for you, try this mixed into vanilla or plain greek yogurt, over ice cream, or just in spoonfuls. It’ll keep in your fridge for just under a week.


Roasted Fig and Whiskey Puree'
 
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Serves: 4-6
What You Need
  • 20 to 25 Fresh figs, washed & cut in half
  • 3 Tablespoons Unsalted butter
  • 3 Tablespoons Honey (local is always better!)
  • 2 tsp lemon zest
  • 1.5 tablespoons whiskey (I used bourbon)
What to Do
  1. Preheat your oven to 375.
  2. Slice your figs in half and place them in a roasting pan or glass baking dish, spreading them out evenly.
  3. In a small saucepan, melt the butter.
  4. Add in the Honey and cook until they've combined.
  5. Add the whisky into the hot honey/butter mixture.
  6. Pour it all over your figs and lightly roll them in the mixture so all the sides are covered.
  7. Roast the figs for about 15 minutes or until they are bubbly and very soft.
  8. Let cool for a few minutes and then puree' with an emulsion blender or regular blender.
  9. Serve on top of pancakes for a very grownup breakfast, over ice cream, mixed into yogurt with granola, or just eat it by the spoonful.
  10. Store in a small tupperware container or in a jar in the refridgerator for just under a week.

 

Spiced Persimmon Pancakes

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My little person has started negotiating. Anytime he wants something, but thinks we’ll say no, he’ll say, “Mama, let’s make a deal.” For instance, “Mama, let’s make a deal. In the morning, let’s make pancakes.” He hasn’t quite got the concept down, because there’s never a second side to the deal. Like, “If you make pancakes, I’ll let you sleep all night because I’ll stay in my own bed.” or “I won’t fight you at bath time about washing my hair.” or “You won’t have to sing every sweet song ever written until I fall totally asleep.” There’s none of that. Just the first part of the deal…the part that works out for him.

Anyway, he woke up one morning asking to make a deal for pancakes. He won, but I also snuck in a bit of extra goodness by making our standard buttermilk pancake recipe and jazzing it up with persimmon puree. And they were DELICIOUS and tasted like the holidays. Forget pumpkin spice…persimmons are where the fall and winter flavor is….

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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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Foraged Beauties: Beautyberry Jelly

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Y’all, we got our first Free State Feasts virtual cookbook published and then things got really crazy really fast in life. I started a job that I just couldn’t turn down, our house started coming along really quickly and decisions had to be made about finishes and paint and light fixtures and stuff,  my little one got a cold and started school, AND I got an opportunity to start writing a food essay each month for a magazine. Cooking ended up taking a bit of a backseat for the past two weeks or so, but I’m back and I’ve got some awesome things to share! My friend, Joseph brought me a sack of wild persimmons, beautyberries, and chestnuts, and a sweet friend’s mama has been REALLY good to her basil plant this fall and she brought me a huge bouquet of it. All that is to say I’ve had some pretty incredible local ingredients to work with this weekend. Stay tuned for some stuff you’ll want to make yourself!

img_4364First up, beauty berry jelly. …

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Comfort Hash

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IMG_3070After our vacation I should probably be sticking close to home, focusing on getting our house built, and only eating salads and juicing since none of my clothes fit anymore, but instead, I want to eat comforting foods and I want to share kindness and care with everyone I see because sometimes, we all need comfort food.

Sometimes the world goes sideways and upside down. I know it has this week. People I love and care about are afraid and anxious and worried about the future, and it is made worse because they’ve been terrified and nervous for almost as long as lots of them can remember.

My faith tells me that those who mourn will be comforted and those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness will receive heaven but damn, y’all. Damn.

Thankfully, I’m reminded by people all around me that we still have hope. We still have hope…and we can still reach out to those in need of comfort and care from wherever we are.

If there are people in your life who could use some good comfort food, add this Portland brunch hash that I recreated and amended to your list of things to eat and share with people you love, along with your hugs and words of comfort. And pray. Pray a lot.

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Bacon sauteed Cauliflower and Potato Harissa Hash
 
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Cuisine: Brunch
Serves: 2-4
What You Need
  • 1 Tablespoon Bacon grease (or vegetable oil/olive oil to make it vegetarian)
  • ¾ Head of Cauliflower, cut into small pieces
  • 6-8 small red potatoes, cut into fourths
  • 1½ cloves of garlic, minced
  • 1½ Tablespoons Harissa powder
  • 1 teaspoon turmeric
  • salt and white pepper to taste
  • ¼ Cup feta cheese
  • 2-4 eggs or tofu (cooked however you like! I recommend sunny-side-up or scrambled)
  • 6 slices of crispy cooked bacon
  • 6-8 stems roughly chopped parsley
What to Do
  1. Boil the potatoes until you can put a fork in them easily.
  2. Toss the cauliflower and the potatoes in the harissa turmeric, salt and pepper in a medium bowl.
  3. In a skillet, heat the bacon grease and sautee' the garlic. Once it's softened, add in the potatoes and cauliflower and sautee' until the cauliflower and potatoes are starting to turn brown. Turn the oven on broil at 400 degrees and finish browning the vegetables for about 5-10 minutes.
  4. While the vegetables are in the oven, fry or scramble your eggs.
  5. Once the cauliflower and potatoes are finished, add in the parsley, bacon, and feta cheese, add the egg on top, and serve.

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Free State Foraging: Mulberry Scones

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When I was a little girl, we lived in a little house in Laurel with the BIGGEST mulberry tree in the backyard. In the late spring, I’d gorge myself on the tart-sweet berries and stain my fingers reddish-purple. I also sat down in the ditch behind the house in my clothes and caught crawfish with nets, made up a very short lived and ill-fated “Recycler’s club” with the other neighborhood kids, and got my only two spankings for misbehaving in that yard.  Oh, Memories. 😉

I honestly hadn’t had a mulberry until this week when Joseph Hosey, also known as the Free State Forager, a member of Newt Knight’s #squad in the upcoming Matthew Mcconaughey movie, and founder of wild woods cuisine dropped a quart off by my folks’ house….

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Thank You Mama Frittata: Fennel Bulb, Ham, Turnips, and Spring Onions

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My gorgeous mama, holly and my little guy on “Green Day” an imaginary holiday she planned for him.

So my mama and I have this totally crazy, really special, absolutely maddening-mother-daughter-best friend relationship where she takes care of me and thinks of me basically every moment of her life, and when I try to do the same she’s all like “that’s not how you do it.” 😉 It drives me totally insane, but deep down, the truth is that I know she’s right like 96% of the time. I don’t know how to do it.

But that’s kind of how it’s supposed to be, right? Mamas make sure we leave for college knowing how to wash laundry, and make beds, and then we get married and they make sure we look our absolute most gorgeous, plus make sure we have hand-calligraphied invitations that they spend hours and hours and hours on (did I mention my mama is an award-winning artist and Martha Stewart Magazine featured calligrapher? no? oh…)

When we have children they dredge up all the tips and tricks and memories of how to care for babies from when we were children, and EVEN if pediatricians have changed their minds like ZILLIONS of times about what is right, or healthy, or appropriate since we were little, our mamas somehow STILL know how to do it better than we do.

Or, at least, my mama does.

…

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Green Biscuits and Ham

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IMG_2470   We got out in the dirt this weekend and planted our vegetable garden… the weather was dreamy and it felt so productive to get my sweet little seedlings in the ground.

We’ll have about every color cherry tomato, plus some big ole red Big Boys, and some okra and summer squashes. It’s going to be wonderful IF we can keep the silly deer and other fauna out of them. Gardeners out there, any ideas or tried & true ways for how to keep my little vegetable babies safe?

…

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