by Julia Reed
It should be noted that even though it’s likely that corn will be included in an end-of-summer supper, cornbread should not be ignored. Nor should dessert, which is a great way to use up all those peaches that always fill up the space on my mother’s counter not already crowded with tomatoes. When another generous neighbor stops by with zinnias from his own big field, pretty much the whole meal, including the centerpiece, can be summed up with the now ubiquitous phrase “farm to table.” Most folks who grew up like I did have always known that it’s a practical and utterly delicious way to eat—even if the farm is sometimes a bit too overwhelming for the table.
MY SUCCOTASH
( Yield: 6 to 8 servings )
6 strips bacon
1 medium yellow (or, preferably, Vidalia) onion, minced
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and minced
3 cups sliced okra
4 ripe tomatoes, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme leaves
6 ears of corn, shucked and scraped
Cayenne pepper
8 fresh basil leaves, torn into pieces
Cook the bacon slices in a large heavy-bottomed skillet or sauté pan until crisp. Leaving the rendered bacon fat, transfer bacon to paper towels to drain.
Add the onion and jalapeño to the drippings, and cook, stirring occasionally, over low to medium-low heat until vegetables begin to soften, about 4 or 5 minutes. Turn the heat to medium, add the okra and sauté for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the tomatoes, garlic, salt, black pepper, and thyme. Turn heat down to medium-low. Cook for another 3 or 4 minutes, then add the corn kernels (and any accumulated milk), and simmer until corn is tender, about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, making sure to scrape the bottom.
Stir in a dash of cayenne pepper and the basil leaves. Crumble reserved bacon and sprinkle on top.
NOTE: Stir in some raw peeled large Gulf shrimp during the last 5 minutes or until they are just cooked through; you’ll have a great main course.
MARY LOU’S PESTO
( Yield: About 4 cups )
4 cups basil leaves, removed from stem
1½ cups freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup walnuts or pine nuts
4 large garlic cloves
1¼ cups extra virgin olive oil
½ to 1 teaspoon salt
½ to 1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
Rinse basil leaves and dry thoroughly. Place them in the bowl of a food processor with the cheese, nuts, and garlic, and pulse until mixture is ground to a paste. Add oil slowly, until texture is creamy. Add salt and pepper to taste and mix well.
HARRIET’S CORNBREAD
( Yield: 8 servings )
Butter for greasing pan
1 small can cream-style corn (8¾ ounces)
½ cup Wesson oil
1 cup sour cream
1 cup white cornmeal
1½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 eggs
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Generously butter a number 5 iron skillet or a corresponding heavy ceramic or glass casserole dish.
Put all ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Transfer to a blender or food processor and process for a minute, or less, until mixture is smooth and liquefied.
Pour into prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes.
STEPHEN STRYJEWSKI’S SQUASH AND ZUCCHINI SALAD WITH GOAT CHEESE AND SPICY PECAN VINAIGRETTE
( Yield: 4 to 6 servings )
FOR THE VINAIGRETTE
1 cup pecans
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup sage leaves, cut into a chiffonade
1½ tablespoons finely chopped garlic
1 tablespoon seedless chili flakes
1⁄3 cup sherry vinegar
Freshly ground black pepper
FOR THE SALAD
1¾ pounds yellow squash, cleaned, trimmed, and sliced very thinly, lengthwise (a mandoline is helpful here or a good vegetable peeler)
1¾ pounds zucchini, prepared as above
½ sweet onion, sliced very thinly
1 cup arugula leaves
½ cup packed mint leaves
½ cup packed parsley leaves
4 ounces goat cheese, crumbled
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Toss pecans with melted butter and the salt. Spread on a baking sheet and toast for about 20 minutes, shaking the pan to redistribute about midway through, until golden brown. Cool and crush roughly with a rolling pin. Blend the remaining ingredients.
Toss salad ingredients with ½ cup of the vinaigrette, season with salt and pepper.
DRINKING
12
Of Pimm’s and Paris
More than twenty years ago, I canceled a wedding to a man who I still very much cared about. So, in a seriously misguided attempt to soothe the would-be groom’s feelings—and much to the disbelief of my mother and many other equally sane people—I agreed not to cancel our French honeymoon. I thought I was doing the civilized thing. I thought I’d be letting him down easy, that he could save face with friends and family (many of whom lived in Paris) if he could say it was the wedding and not necessarily the marriage I was afraid of. There also was the fact that we already had first-class tickets, a suite at L’Hôtel, and, on my end, a particularly swell trousseau.
We got over the first hump, the bottle of champagne left in the room to welcome the new “Mr. and Mrs.,” by drinking it—very quickly. My jilted groom spent his days catching up with fellow foreign correspondents; I spent mine with my then colleague at Vogue, André Leon Talley, and George Malkemus, CEO of Manolo Blahnik U.S.A., who happened to be in town. André himself had a new wardrobe for the wedding, including a white piqué suit with a fuchsia silk lining and a double-breasted seersucker suit with matching shoes made up by Manolo. Dressed to the nines, we lunched at Caviar Kaspia or on the Ritz terrace. We shopped at Madeleine Castaing and an ancient place George knew where I bought ropes of green cut-glass beads that looked like emeralds.
I wore the latter with a white silk dress to dinner à deux with my former intended at Jamin, Joël Robuchon’s first restaurant in Paris. Tucking into Robuchon’s justifiably famous potato puree (accompanied by lots of Château Giscours, which was my ex’s favorite), I remembered why I’d fallen in love in the first place. But the next morning we were off to Lyon, a city not nearly so romantic or containing a single soul we knew, and by the end of day two we’d almost killed each other. (I think we actually might have killed the Michelin three-starred chef Alain Chapel—all the electricity went off in his restaurant the night we dined there, and he died of a stroke less than forty-eight hours later). By that point, I’d begun to feel as though a piano wire was being stretched through me, so I called André, who instructed me to get myself immediately on the fast train back to Paris where he would meet me at the bar at the Ritz.
Like all of André’s advice, it was excellent, not least because it led to my discovery of the Pimm’s Royale. I had already imbibed plenty of Pimm’s Cups at the Napoleon House in New Orleans, where it is an improbable specialty, and I’d attended a garden party or two in the British countryside, where they are summer fixtures. But what I’d enjoyed in those venues were classic Pimm’s Cups, made with Pimm’s No. 1 and a refreshing topper of fizzy “lemonade” (usually 7UP) with a cucumber garnish. Pimm’s, by the way, was invented in the 1840s by James Pimm, a London oyster bar owner who blended gin with quinine and a secret mixture of herbs. The Pimm’s Cup is a wonderful summer refresher, but the Pimm’s Royale is one of the world’s great drinks.
At the Ritz, where I arrived before André, it came in a short-stemmed goblet much like a brandy snifter, accompanied by the usual slice of cucumber, but also a sprig of mint, lots of sliced fruit, and a seriously
potent brandied cherry. The main difference though, was that the lemonade was replaced by very good Brut champagne. After the first one, I felt better than I had in weeks. The brandied cherry in the second made my blood rush almost as fast as the train I’d just disembarked. When the third one came, I vowed to call it quits, but then André arrived and there seemed no point in stopping, so we sipped and held court well into the night with fellow Ritz drinkers including the actress Arlene Dahl (to whom I poured out my story) and a group of former Los Angeles Rams who were serving as Madonna’s bodyguards during her European tour. By the time my almost-groom turned up with his sister, I was really happy to see them, and the evening remains one of the most entertaining and memorable of my life.
The bill, not surprisingly, was also memorable, but in the end it was a small price to pay for finishing the “honeymoon” off in style and maybe even with some modicum of grace. I kept it as a reminder that even misguided intentions sometimes end up being not so crazy and that Paris can be a forgiving place—Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman are not the only ones who will always have it, after all.
Since then, the Pimm’s Cup’s popularity has spread far beyond Parisian bars and English lawns. I serve it in one incarnation or another at all my warm-weather gatherings—the Aussie chef Pete Evans’s version includes homemade sparkling lemonade and looks especially pretty in a glass pitcher for crowds. The drink also has been taken up by many bartenders who add their own touches by doing everything from muddling the cucumber with lime (very nice) to incorporating all manner of liqueurs and flavored syrups. Chris Hannah, the drinks maestro at another New Orleans institution, Arnaud’s French 75 Bar, adds watermelon syrup to surprisingly good effect.
PIMM’S ROYALE
( Yield: 1 drink )
1¼ to 1¾ ounces Pimm’s No. 1
Brut champagne
Cucumber slice
Apple slice (optional)
Lemon slice
Orange slice
Mint sprig
Brandied cherry (optional)
Pour Pimm’s over ice cubes in a large wine goblet or highball glass. Top with champagne and add garnishes.
PETE EVANS’S PIMM’S CUP
( Yield: 4 to 6 drinks )
8 ounces Pimm’s No. 1
4 ounces lemon juice
2½ ounces simple syrup
1 cucumber sliced
1 orange sliced
¼ cantaloupe chopped
4 to 6 mint sprigs
¼ cup grapes
2 cups club soda
Add all ingredients to a carafe with some ice and stir well.
CHRIS HANNAH’S PIMM’S CUP WITH WATERMELON
( Yield: 1 drink )
1 medium-size watermelon
1 cup sugar
2 ounces Pimm’s No. 1
1 ounce lemon juice
2 ounces ginger ale or 7UP
Sliced cucumber, berries of any type, and mint sprig for garnish
Puree and strain enough watermelon to make one cup of juice. In a small pan, heat the sugar and watermelon juice and boil until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat (mixture keeps in the refrigerator for weeks.)
In a cocktail shaker with ice, add Pimm’s, lemon juice, and 1 ounce of the watermelon syrup, and shake. Strain into an ice-filled Collins glass. Top with ginger ale or 7UP and garnish generously with cucumber, berries, and mint.
NOTE: The watermelon syrup is a fine thing indeed to keep in your fridge and is a great addition to mojitos, margaritas, and any number of vodka drinks.
13
Gin!
To those among us who define their seasons by the cocktails they consume, the spring and summer months almost invariably come under the heading of “G&T weather.” Now a lot of the people who persist in using this phrase tend to wear smug expressions and Guccis with no socks, and are not, therefore, included in the ranks of folks whom I consider ideal drinking partners. Still, the fact remains that the gin and tonic is a drink that almost begs to be consumed as temperatures rise, and we would all do well to pause and consider its merits.
First, the gin. Gin is a highly distilled grain-based spirit flavored most strongly with juniper berries, but also with a wide array of botanicals that, depending on the distiller’s recipe, can range from coriander, cardamom, and almonds to dried lemon and Seville orange rinds. The wildly popular and relatively new Hendrick’s Gin contains hints of rose petals and cucumber; the Philly-based Bluecoat is made in small batches with organic botanicals and triple filtered water, and, like Hendrick’s, is relatively new (introduced in 2006 as opposed to, say, Gordon’s, which first appeared in 1769). One of my literary heroes, John D. MacDonald’s “salvage expert” Travis McGee, drank Plymouth and sometimes Boodles. People who do this kind of stuff for a living report that Plymouth starts off with hints of citrus, coriander, and caraway seed, and finishes with a mild juniper flush. Boodles, on the other hand, starts sweet, finishes dry, and contains whiffs of everything from citrus and mint to nutmeg and rosemary.
In its infancy, gin was not nearly so complex and certainly not as subtle. Made by a Dutch professor of medicine, it was named “Essence of Genièvre” (the French word for juniper) and promoted as a diuretic. After the Dutch Protestant William of Orange assumed the British throne, it became enormously popular in England, not least because William imposed punitive tariffs on imports from the Catholic winemaking countries and promoted the local distillation of jenever, which his subjects shortened to “gin.” As the empire expanded, so did gin consumption—even in the North American colonies the Quakers were known for their custom of imbibing gin after funerals.
The gin and tonic is said to have been invented as a way for the Englishmen in tropical colonies to get their daily dose of quinine, a derivative of the bark of the cinchona tree and, for three hundred years, the only effective cure for malaria. (The required citrus wedge had the added benefit of fighting scurvy.) Winston Churchill, a devoted gin fan (he mostly drank Plymouth), once said, “The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the Empire.” The “minds,” I’ll buy. But the effective treatment of malaria requires as many as three 350 milligram doses of quinine per day, while 6 ounces of tonic water contains less than 20 milligrams. By that math, only the heroic Churchill himself could take both the medicine and the gin and remain standing.
Which leads us to the tonic. These days most of the widely available commercial stuff is so wimpy and so heavily sweetened with corn syrup it’s a wonder it wasn’t outlawed by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. Your best bet is to search out either the Fever-Tree or the Q Tonic brand or to make your own (easily done, courtesy of mixologist Brooks Reitz’s Jack Rudy syrup and some club soda). The first time I tasted a G&T with house-made tonic (and Plymouth gin), it was at New Orleans’s aptly named Bar Tonique. It was also a revelation—after one bracing swallow, I understood completely why all those Brits were content to stick around India and perpetuate Her Majesty’s Empire.
It may not cure malaria, but even a little quinine is surely better than none, and one can never be too careful. In New Orleans, for example, mosquitoes are extremely plentiful and epidemics of malaria are not an altogether distant memory. So it is that I look forward to the seasonal switch, like many others before me. A character in Padgett Powell’s lovely Edisto Revisited, for example, was partial to the summertime combination of gin and tonics with country ham. Ernest Hemingway was partial to pretty much all things alcoholic but in Islands in the Stream, he has his alter ego, Tom, expound on the virtues of a gin and tonic in a way that only an obsessive drinker can. When the barkeep Bobby asks, “Do you really like the taste of that stuff?” Tom says, “I like the quinine taste with the lime peel. I think it sort of opens up the pores of the stomach or something. I get more of a kick out of it than any other gin drink.”
By all accounts the Queen Mother got a kick out of gin and tonics all year round, and, encouragingly, she lived to be 101. (There’s a po
ssibly apocryphal story in which she yells out to two of her gossiping retainers: “When you old queens have finished, this old queen would like a gin and tonic.”) When Doris Lessing became the second-oldest Nobel Prize winner for literature, the London Times reported that she celebrated with a G&T, and that was in October. Most of the rest of us partake primarily in the summer, when many other refreshing gin cocktails are also frequently on offer. Among the most popular is the Tom Collins, made with gin, lemon juice, and simple syrup and topped with club soda. When FDR’s cousin entertained the visiting Churchill by serving him one, he promptly spat it out. I imagine it was the sugar—she would have fared better, perhaps, with a Gin Rickey, made with gin, lime juice, and club soda. My father insists that he build his first business by bombing around the Mississippi Delta armed with a thermos full of Gin Rickeys on the floorboard of his Buick. In the ninety-eight-degree summer heat, an icy Rickey greatly eased his ability to sell grain bins to farmers. He and his business partner once tried mightily to finish a story that began “Remember that time we were up on the combine in Holly Bluff?” I never heard the end of it because they started laughing so uncontrollably that they threw napkins over their faces and wept for long minutes. Apparently there were Gin Rickeys involved.
The Rickey was invented in a Washington, D.C., bar called Shoemaker’s in 1883 by a “gentleman gambler” named Colonel Joe Rickey, who was not in fact a colonel but a lobbyist. Washington is by far the most unbearable of all the unbearably hot places I’ve ever lived, so it’s not surprising that the “colonel” needed a refresher. There is less certainty about the origins of a Southside (essentially a Tom Collins with mint), a drink more at home in a private club on Long Island, one of the places where it is said to have originated, than in a D.C. saloon or the soybean fields of the Mississippi Delta. Depending on who’s telling it, the Southside was an invention of: the Southside Sportsmen’s Club, where moneyed New Yorkers repaired to hunt, fish, and enjoy the powerful gin drink on offer at the bar; Prohibition-era Chicago’s notorious Southside gangs who were forced to mask their inferior hooch with sugar, mint, and citrus; or the ‘21’ Club, which began life as Jack and Charley’s speakeasy and where it has long been a signature drink. I have no special insight, but my money is on ‘21,’ not only because I love the place, but because theirs is a particularly excellent Southside, whose punch is unimpeded by the soda that’s usually added.