The Drop Edge of Yonder - An Alafair Tucker Mystery

by Donis Casey

  FRIED OKRA

  1 pound tender okra pods (4 cups)

  2/3 cup yellow cornmeal

  1/4 tsp. salt

  Lard or drippings for frying

  Place the cut up okra in a large mixing bowl. Add cornmeal and salt and mix well, coating each piece of okra. Fresh okra is very…well, slimy. It isn’t necessary to boil the okra first or moisten in any way in order for the cornmeal to adhere. Many cookbooks say to boil okra for a few minutes before frying, but if your okra is fresh and tender, this is just a waste of effort and not good for the flavor, either. Fry it raw. It’s the Southern way.

  Melt the fat in a large skillet over medium heat. When the fat is very hot, add the okra, stir well to coat with grease, and fry until very brown. Stir occasionally, and add more fat if the skillet gets dry, to prevent scorching. The okra will be crispy, crumbly, and tender in the middle, and not gelatinous in the slightest.

  FRIED OKRA PIE

  Okra “pie” is not pie at all, but a variation of fried okra. The idea is that the entire batch is cooked in such a way that it adheres together in a pie-shaped disk. The finished product can be cut into wedges and eaten by hand, which makes it quite appealing to the younger set.

  1 lb. cut up okra (about 4 cups)

  2 eggs, beaten

  1/4 tsp. salt, or to taste

  3/4 cup yellow cornmeal

  Fat for frying.

  In a large bowl, mix freshly cut okra with beaten eggs. Add cornmeal and salt and mix well to coat.

  Melt fat in skillet. The fat should cover the bottom of the pan to about 1/8 inch deep. When very hot, add the coated okra and spread out so that it covers the bottom of the skillet in a single layer. Do not stir. Let the okra cook until the top looks dry and the edges are beginning to brown, then turn the batch over with a large turner. After years of practice, Alafair could turn the entire thing over in one piece. If the pie breaks into two or three pieces the first hundred or so times you try it, don’t worry about it. It’s still tasty. Fry the other side until brown, adding more fat if needed. Turn the “pie” out onto a serving plate, cut into wedges, and serve. One’s first thought may be that this sounds rather like an okra omelet, but, truly, it is not. It’s more like skillet cornbread.

  RICE

  Rice is one of the most versatile foods in the cook’s arsenal, especially if she has an army to feed every day. A pot of rice can be used as a savory side dish instead of potatoes or as the basis for a soup or casserole. It also makes a good dessert. There are endless uses for leftover rice. Alafair’s family often ate leftover rice as a warm, filling cereal for a light supper before bed.

  The climate in Oklahoma is not generally conducive to rice cultivation, so Alafair would have bought five or ten pound bags of rice grown in the Gulf states. The rice would have been unwashed and un-instant. It was very important that preparation begin with spreading the rice out on the cabinet or table and painstakingly picking out the little rocks and grit, chaff, and insect parts, before rinsing it in clear water.

  Cooking times and methods depend on the variety of rice used as well as how the cook wants her rice to turn out. Short-grain brown rice generally takes more water and a longer cooking time than long-grain white. Rice is forgiving, however. As long as it’s cooked long enough in enough water and it doesn’t burn or boil over, it’s hard to spoil. And even then, it can often be salvaged.

  The rule of thumb for cooking white rice is to use twice as much cool water as rice, plus about a quarter teaspoon of salt per cup of rice. Use a heavy pot with a tight lid to retain moisture and avoid scorching. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat. Watch the pot during this phase of cooking to avoid boil-over. There’s no mess quite like boiled-over rice all over your nice clean stove. When steam begins to escape from under the lid, remove from heat for five minutes or so, then return to very low heat and simmer for about thirty minutes, or until all the water has been absorbed. Don’t stir rice during cooking. Remove from heat and let it sit for a couple of minutes, then fluff with a fork before serving. Great with butter or gravy.

  If you would like a denser, stickier rice, which is a good way to cook it for cereals and puddings, just add more water and simmer longer until the water is absorbed. Rice will absorb a surprising amount of liquid if you’re patient about it. Alafair was known to simmer a cup of rice in six or seven cups of water, or water and milk, for an hour or more in order to make a soft and digestible gruel for a sick child.

  RICE CEREAL FOR SUPPER

  Reheat 2 cups of leftover rice from dinner by simmering it in a heavy pot with about a cup of water or milk until the extra liquid is absorbed and rice is warm and sticky. Add more liquid during cooking if needed. Makes about 3 cups of warm rice.

  Ladle into bowls. Sweeten to taste with white sugar, brown sugar, maple syrup, sorghum, or honey. Plop a good chunk of butter on top to melt. Add warm milk or cream and enjoy.

  GREENS AND CORNMEAL DUMPLINGS

  Any kind of greens can be used for this delectable dish, but Alafair had a lot of turnip greens in the late summer. Before cooking, wash the greens thoroughly in cool water to remove dirt and sand. Cut off any roots and damaged or yellowing parts. Rip the greens off the stalks by hand and tear into strips. Turnip greens are extraordinarily nutritious, but they have a peppery bite and can be bitter. To mellow them out, blanch them first for ten minutes or so in a couple of cups of water.

  1/4 lb. fatback or salt pork

  2 lb. turnip greens, torn

  1 lb. turnips, peeled and cut into quarters

  2 1/2 quarts water

  1 tsp. salt

  CORNMEAL DUMPLINGS

  1 1/2 cups cornmeal

  1/2 cup flour

  1 tsp. baking powder

  1 tsp. sugar

  1/2 tsp. salt

  3 tbs. melted butter

  1 beaten egg

  Bring the water to boil in a large pot. Add fatback or salt pork, greens, turnips, and salt. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for two hours. Remove meat and discard. Dip out one cup of the broth (pot liquor) to make dumplings.

  For the dumplings, thoroughly combine the cornmeal, flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl. Stir in the melted butter and one cup of pot liquor. Stir in the beaten egg. Spoon the batter by rounded tablespoonfuls into the simmering greens. Cover and simmer thirty minutes, or until dumplings are cooked through. To serve, ladle soup, greens, turnips, dumplings, and all into bowls and dig in.

  ICE CREAM

  Hand-cranked, homemade ice cream is not only a rare treat to eat, making it is also great aerobic exercise and a good way to increase upper body strength.

  An ice cream freezer from Alafair’s era was basically a large lidded tin can that fit down into a wooden bucket. The lid had a hole in the middle, through which was inserted a dasher, which somewhat resembled an oar. The handle of the dasher protruded from the hole and was attached to a hand crank, which had to be turned continuously until the ice cream was frozen. The recipe for ice cream does not have to be complicated, by any means. An excellent ice cream can be made with a half-pound of sugar beaten into a quart of sweet cream. Add some sweetened fruit puree or just some vanilla extract, freeze, and devour.

  For Gee Dub’s eighteenth birthday, though, Alafair made a rich peach custard to freeze, which is more work, but the results are worth it.

  PEACH ICE CREAM

  1/2 cup sugar

  3 egg yolks, beaten

  1/4 tsp. salt

  1 tsp. vanilla

  1 cup milk

  2 cups heavy cream

  Puree four or five peaches, which Alafair would have made by mashing the flesh of the fruit through a sieve with the back of a large wooden spoon. Sweeten the peaches with another 1/2 cup sugar, if desired.

  Mix sugar, salt, milk, and egg yolks in a saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, just until bubbles begin to appear around the edge of the pan. Cool to room temperature. Stir in the cream, vanilla, and peach puree.

/>   Pour the ice cream mixture into the freezer can. Fill the can only two-thirds full, to allow for expansion as the ice cream freezes. Fit the can into the bucket, insert the dasher and put the lid on the can, then attach the crank.

  Fill the freezer tub one-third full of ice, then alternate the rock salt and remaining ice, filling the bucket to the top of the can. Use about four parts ice to one part salt. Turn the dasher slowly until the ice partially melts and makes a brine. Then crank rapidly until it’s hard to turn the dasher. How long this will take depends on the weather. If you’re lucky, the ice cream will set in ten minutes or so. Or it may take half an hour. Or it may not want to set properly at all. It’s all very mysterious.

  When it does happen, remove the ice from around the top of the can and remove the dasher. Plug the hole in the lid and replace it on the can. Refill the bucket with ice and salt and leave the ice cream to “ripen” for several hours.

  “Ripening” makes a firmer dessert. However, when the day is hot and a bunch of impatient kids are clamoring about, a bowl full of soft, semi-frozen cream that has to be gobbled up before it turns back into liquid is perfectly delicious.

  COLD CANNED TOMATOES

  When the cook is tired, the night is warm, and it’s too late to be messing around in the kitchen, a bowl of home-canned tomatoes right out of the jar is light, refreshing, and delicious.

  Sadly, this dish cannot be replicated with an aluminum can of store-bought tomatoes. In order to experience the mild, sweet, flavorful dish that Alafair and Shaw ate one hot night on their front porch, one must begin by growing one’s own tomatoes over a long sunny summer on a mound of pure compost. The tomatoes must be picked fully ripe off the vine, and canned in glass jars in one’s own kitchen.

  Open the jar, pour it straight into a bowl, and eat it. Maybe a little salt, maybe a little sugar, perhaps a sprinkling of chopped onion.

  The result of all this care and work tastes like nothing that has been shipped to the local A&P in a refrigerated truck, nor cooked in a big vat in a factory and sealed in a metal can with a dash of citric acid. It will be smooth and mild and sweet and so full of flavor that you’ll wonder why you ever thought those things you’ve been buying at the supermarket were tomatoes.

  PICCALILLI

  Piccalilli is a kind of relish that can be made with any number of finely chopped vegetables. It’s a good way to preserve any garden crop that is bearing to excess, and it’s a delicious accompaniment for meat and fish, to boot. Alafair usually made piccalilli out of the green tomatoes she thinned from the vines.

  2 quarts chopped green tomatoes

  4 finely chopped large onions

  1 1/2 quarts vinegar

  1/2 lb. sugar

  1/2 lb. mustard seed

  1 tbs. ground pepper

  1 tbs. cinnamon

  1 1/2 tsp. ground cloves

  1 tbs. ground ginger

  1 1/2 tsp. allspice

  Dash cayenne pepper

  1/2 cup salt

  Combine tomatoes, onions, and salt. Let stand in a covered bowl overnight. Drain off liquid, then boil in one quart of water and 2 cups of the vinegar for 20 minutes. Drain through a colander and return to pot. Pour in the rest of the vinegar, the sugar, and the spices. Boil for an additional 15 minutes, until tender, stirring often. Seal in sterilized glass jars.

  CHICKEN AND DUMPLINGS

  It’s a good way to cook a tough old bird. Wash a 4 or 5 lb. stewing chicken and cut it up, removing any excess fat. Put the chicken in a kettle, along with the giblets and neck, a couple of teaspoons of salt, a little pepper, and just enough water to cover. For extra flavor, you may add a sprig of parsley, a bay leaf, some celery leaves, a small sliced onion, and/or a sliced carrot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours, until the chicken is fork-tender and practically falling off the bone.

  Remove chicken from the broth and pull the meat off the bones with a fork and cut into pieces. Discard bones, skin, the bay leaf, and any other disgusting pieces of innard that you don’t want to eat, then return chicken meat to broth. Bring back to the boil.

  DUMPLINGS

  1 1/2 cups flour

  2 tsp. baking powder

  3/4 tsp. salt

  3 tbs. butter or shortening

  3/4 cup milk

  Mix flour, baking powder, and salt into bowl. Cut in the shortening until the mixture looks like meal. (One may use a fork to do this, or a couple of case knives, or one of those special utensils made for the job. Alafair would have used her fingers.) Stir in the milk.

  Drop the batter by the tablespoon-full into the simmering chicken broth and cook uncovered for 10 minutes. Then cover the pot and cook for another 10 minutes, until the dumplings are fluffy and done through.

  HOW TO IRON A SHIRT

  There is a science to ironing. Each piece of clothing requires its own technique. The well-brought up housekeeper was taught the correct way to iron by her mother, and she in turn did her duty as a parent and taught her daughters. This is how Alafair’s mother taught her to iron a shirt. Other women’s mothers may have done it slightly differently. There’s no use becoming incensed about it.

  Cotton shirts should be ironed damp with a hot iron. First, iron the inside of the collar. Then drape the shoulder over the narrow end of the board and iron around the seam from collar to sleeve. When the shoulders are done, iron the inner side of the button plaquets. Drape the left side of the shirt over the wide end of the board and press the front. Rotate the shirt around the back and press (do the yoke first, if there is one), then the right front. Lay a sleeve across the center of the board and iron the inside of the cuff. Iron the front of the sleeve from the shoulder to the cuff, then turn the shirt over and do the back of the sleeve. Press the outside of the cuff over the point of the board. Repeat the process with the other sleeve. Finish with the back of the collar. Button the shirt up before folding or hanging.

  Compendium

  Bill Tilghman—A famous U.S. Marshal in the Indian and Oklahoma Territories. In the early 1900s Tilghman became a silent movie actor and director. Eventually he formed the Eagle Film Company in Oklahoma City and produced Westerns.

  Caliche (ka-LEE-chee)—A concrete-hard layer of soil composed of clay and rock.

  Co’Cola—Any American Southerner or Westerner in the earlier part of the twentieth century would be very much surprised to know that this is not the correct pronunciation of Coca-Cola.

  Fatback—A chunk of pork fat. May contain a little meat.

  Fetlock—A horse’s ankle, or the tuft of hair that grows on the back of the ankle.

  Forelock—The part of a horse’s mane that hangs down between the ears onto the forehead.

  The Glenn Pool—In 1905, oil was discovered on the land of Ida Glenn, a member of the Creek Nation. At one time, the Glenn Pool was the richest producing oil field in the world. Site of the present town of Glenpool, located some fifteen miles south of Tulsa.

  Mess—A quantity of food that is enough for a meal.

  Mother’s Helper—A patent medicine that was readily available to mothers of toddlers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was almost pure alcohol. One teaspoon full would put the kid out for hours. It was outlawed in the ’teens.

  Pot liquor—The concentrated liquid left after vegetables or meats are stewed or steeped.

  Visitation—When someone died, it was customary for everyone who knew the family to call on the bereaved and pay their respects while the body was laid out in the parlor before the funeral. A visitation is akin to a wake.

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