Goal Post Bar-B-Q
Anniston AL, 2008.
Poached Pear Clafoutis, and Bardot
Thinking the other day about our last visit to Las Vegas in 2017, and the really terrific brunch we enjoyed at Bardot, Michael Mina’s restaurant at the Aria Hotel. Clicking around, I found their recipe for poached pear clafoutis, and I made it over the weekend (pics, and a link to their recipe at the bottom of this post).
First, though, have to show how really pretty the restaurant is:
it’s just dark and rich, with the right amount of shine
such a great hamburger and fries
for me, the house-smoked salmon plate
Completely would recommend for brunch. Perfect.
While we didn’t have a dessert that visit, I totally wanted to try to make their poached pear clafoutis here at home. I won’t repost it here as it’s their recipe (and I followed it very closely) but here are a few pics of the — pretty easy — process in case you’re considering
None of us are particularly fond of pears, but agreed this was a fine, every-now-and-then kind of brunch-y sweet. It had a very soft, eggy pancake texture, and the powdered sugar on top (many people add ice cream and I can also envisage a really big spoonful of freshly whipped cream on top too) make it. This more-than-a-dusting-but-not-Morning-Call-level powdered sugar atop got it going. Nice!
Heart.
Heart of Dixie Motel
Dadeville AL, 2008.
Winx.
Moon Winx Lodge
Alberta City AL, 2008.
This Week’s Various
As always, all images unless otherwise noted copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Like to use one elsewhere? Kindly contact me here.
St Louis Cathedral, 2006. Whitman: “Sundays I sometimes went forenoons to the old Catholic cathedral in the French Quarter”
Was reading Richard Horan’s Seeds: One Man’s Serendipitous Journey to Find the Trees That Inspired Famous American Writers from Faulkner to Kerouac, Welty (via Bookshop, via Amazon) last week and was reminded that for a very short time in 1848, Walt Whitman lived in New Orleans. The book author mentions that in a PBS doc, there’s the idea that the city may have been the inspiration for Leaves of Grass (Bookshop, Amazon).
Further, from New Orleans: a Literary History (Bookshop, Amazon):
Even more importantly, Whitman experienced in New Orleans such an extraordinary diversity of peoples mingling on the streets that he began to devise a new aesthetic of urban democracy, of strangers from radically different worlds mingling if only for a moment on crowded streets, a vision that would shape his poetry ever after and become a towering monument in American poetry in general.
And: the earliest image of him, a daguerreotype, has been identified as having been made while he was in Louisiana.
In a letter to his mother, Walt’s 15yo brother Jeff, who came with him to New Orleans, writes (and notes in another letter that the whole state is level as a race course, and riding in balloons isn’t always easy):
New Orleans is a very level place and you do not dig down above two feet before you come to the water. It is also [a] very dirty place. Mother, I never wanted your cleanliness so much before as I did at our first boarding house, you could not only see the dirt, but you could taste it, and you had to too if you ate anything at all. And the rooms too, were covered with dirt an inch thick. But now we are through with all that. We are now living at the Tremont house, next door to the Theatre and directly opposite the office.
Also: at one time the newspaper there that the Whitmans worked for, the Daily Crescent, was managed by John Wesley Crockett, the son of…yep, Davy.
Music venue, Gordo AL, 2017
From the NYT: In the Ozarks, the Pandemic Threatens a Fragile Musical Tradition
In normal years, the store, still crammed with faded boxes of bras and women’s pumps left from a generation ago when the business shut down, is revived once a week for the jam. Musicians stream into McClurg, about 240 miles southwest of St. Louis, on Monday nights, performing for friends and spouses. They play sitting in a circle, stealing glances at Mr. Dooms’s callused fingers to gauge where his rhythm guitar might go next.
and
The McClurg jam featured variations of songs that could not be heard elsewhere, he said. But the safety of the elder musicians, whom he describes as “treasures,” was paramount, he said.
Po Monkey’s, 2018
Roger Stolle (who owns Cathead in Clarksdale) writes The Last Remaining Juke Joints in America at Spin:
So, circling back to the big question: How many live blues juke joints are left in 2021? Honestly, we don’t know yet.
For those with a Clarion-Ledger subscription, here’s Mississippi’s Oldest Juke Joint Still a Hot Spot for the Blues, on the Blue Front
And: Photos for The Chitlin Circuit Juke Joints that gave rise to American Music at The Tennessean
Super random:
Gorgeous St Mary Basilica in Natchez
This 1995 Southern Catfish Plate by Frank Fleming is in the collection of the Smithsonian
7 Texas Chefs Share their Favorite Sandwich Recipes at Texas Monthly: Misti Norris of Dallas’ Petra and the Beast goes with pork rillettes and collards, San Antonio’s John Russ of Clementine enjoys ‘The Tickler’ which is all about Tickler cheddar and shredded duck confit on sourdough
This is the new Rosa Parks sculpture created by Ian Mangum, a 42nd Force Support Squadron team member, at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery
Paramount has a screenplay for a new adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but — and this is going to court — the Trustee of the Truman Capote Literary Trust is shopping it with the idea of a television series instead
(hi, I mentioned this is the super random section) the print on the Lilly Pulitzer + Honda Classic is soooo goood
Mashama Bailey (The Grey in Savannah) is opening two new places in Austin this year, at the upcoming Thompson hotel: the Grey Diner Bar and the Grey Market
This, about the top of our mothers’ dressers (go ahead and suspend calling the English police on the tweet, you’ll see, just kindly roll with it) gave me and others so much pause. My great-grandmother passed away while I was still very young. She was born in the 1890s (!) and I can still see in my mind the top of her dresser…her beautiful things arranged just so. I love thinking of those that way…as altars…pictures, perfumes, jewels…
One of my besties was chosen to be included in Harvard’s Staff Art Show. Was thrilled to be in the Zoom of the opening, and all the works can be viewed here
This 1937 menu from the Waldorf Astoria included Florida stone crabs, North Carolina salted pecans, Virginia suckling pig, Kentucky sweetmeats, Georgia collards, South Carolina candied yams, Alabama beaten biscuits, New Orleans (surely, chicory) coffee and Louisiana apple butter
A million apologies — I was brought up better than this — for the word on this 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle (how many people have ever gotten to say that?) but Fred has a series of artist puzzles and one of them is a — absolute Chattanooga treasure! — Wayne White design
Loved seeing Larry Poons multiple times in The Price of Everything (on HBO Max now) wearing an Ole Times Country Buffet t-shirt with the state of Georgia on the back
The original moonshine of the Colonies? Applejack. And it’s being made again: Virginia and the Carolinas are as far south as most apple varieties can grow; they need a certain number of cold nights each year to flourish. It’s the land of dried apple hand pies, apple stack cakes, apple cider vinegar and applejack — all ways to preserve fall’s fruit for eating and drinking through the winter
Yes yes yes: 50 Years Later, We Need Rothko Chapel More Than Ever
There’s now a law in Southampton, New York that empty (for one month or greater) storefronts must mount installations by local artists for free
The $30 Lodge 12″ cast iron pan — the SK10 — is the top-selling cookware product in the US and has been for a while now
I figured the interwebs *had* to have a map of indie bookstores, and yep
Old Rock House Holiness Church, from a 2009 visit
From National Geographic this month, Appalachian snake handlers put their faith in God—and increasingly, doctors: After a number of high-profile deaths, some Pentecostal Christian snake handlers are rethinking their approach to a risky practice. Some of the pics in the article are from the Rock House Holiness Church in north Alabama; the church uses my pic above of their building as the header on their FB page
Hattie B’s, 2020
From the Dallas Morning News: Has Dallas hit peak chicken? A look at Nashville hot chicken’s North Texas takeover: Helen’s Hot Chicken. Sarah’s Hot Chicken. Lucky’s Hot Chicken. Palmer’s Hot Chicken. Are you catching the formula? — they name 12 existing hot chicken places, and another five to be opening soon.
My kids endorse Hattie B’s, my affections stick with the O.G. Prince’s, which isn’t in Dallas…yet.
BTW, there’s a new restaurant in Knoxville called Wicked Chicken which serves ‘hot chicken pimento cheese nachos‘ and alright, alright, I’ll have that.
John B’s “We’ve got the kid out bragging about it in front of the Little Caesars Pizza Hut” in Woodstock, Alabama, 2020.
The S-Town podcast was mentioned in a New York Times Food email recently. National Geographic did a story on horologist Brittany Nicole Cox (though you must be a subscriber to NG to read it), just as the podcast’s main character, John B, also worked on clocks.
Just a reminder: S-Town podcast is still so, so good.
New Orleans Museum of Art, 2016
This week, the New Orleans Museum of Art announced what they call a ‘transformative’ new gift:
Albright gave almost 400 works to the museum, more than 350 of which were photographs. Of these, the majority are by acknowledged contemporary masters such as Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Nan Goldin, and Thomas Ruff, and the collection also includes a smaller group of excellent prints by earlier twentieth century artists such a Man Ray, Brassaï, and Doris Ulmann
Antoine’s, 2017
The History Channel posts 15 of America’s Most Historic Restaurants and among them: Jones Bar-B-Q Diner in Marianna, Arkansas; Antoine’s in New Orleans; the Bright Star in Bessemer
Looking up: inside the JFK Library, Boston, 2017.
They NYT with 25 Great Writers and Thinkers Weigh In on Books That Matter: To celebrate the Book Review’s 125th anniversary, we’re dipping into the archives to revisit our most thrilling, memorable and thought-provoking coverage. Included, Nora Ephron on Rex Reed’s ‘Do You Sleep in the Nude?; JFK on Arthur Larson’s ‘What We Are For’; Eudora Welty on E.B. White’s ‘Charlotte’s Web’; Tennessee Williams on Paul Bowles’ ‘The Sheltering Sky’.
The thing that made the biggest impression at the JFK Library in Boston? He was so incredibly smart. Just sharp. So quick. Ah, we need that, and are deserving of that in leadership, no matter what flavor political persuasion.
Looking up What We Are For, for weekend reading.
Maya Angelou kept a hotel room, but didn’t sleep there. She told George Plimpton (here, from The Paris Review) she would lie on the bed and write, with “a bottle of sherry, a dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, yellow pads, an ashtray, and a Bible.” I like to picture that. And I think of other writers, and what they kept closeby. What was their writing environment? That’s the subject of the new, quite illustrated, Bookish Broads: Women who Wrote Themselves into History (via Bookshop, via Amazon)
PS: further in that interview of Maya Angelou in the Paris Review (there’s so much to pull from there), she talks about her sensitivity in writing — and here’s a link to the podcast:
I’ve had the same editor since 1967. Many times he has said to me over the years or asked me, Why would you use a semicolon instead of a colon? And many times over the years I have said to him things like: I will never speak to you again. Forever. Goodbye. That is it. Thank you very much. And I leave. Then I read the piece and I think of his suggestions. I send him a telegram that says, OK, so you’re right. So what? Don’t ever mention this to me again. If you do, I will never speak to you again.
and
INTERVIEWER: And then, finally, you write “The End” and there it is; you have a little bit of sherry.
ANGELOU: A lot of sherry then.
Here, the piece with Bill Moyers she mentions in the interview, about going back home to Stamps, Arkansas:
Spotted this Psalm van, at a Birmingham Walmart parking lot
Telfair Art Museum, Savannah, 2019
Early next year, Telfair Museums in Savannah will present ‘Hard Knocks, Hardships, and Lots of Experience: The Maritime Art of William O. Golding‘ thanks to a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) award
1818 Monmouth, Natchez, 2007.
Natchez is offering $6k to people who will move there for a year, in their “Shift South” grant. Participants must purchase a home of at least $150k. How about the 1856 $3.85M Brandon Hall, with seven bedrooms and a punkah in the dining room, or 1803 Glouchester at $2M…the panelingggg yesssss. Also, wow that in anywhere in the country one may acquire this home at $134k
Ah, Loretta Lynn Crisco commercials
Made the lemon pudding cake recipe whole, in a Corningware, rather than indiv ramekins from Zoe Bakes and it turned out pretty nice. It’s one of those ‘magic’ cakes where you put it all together as batter and voila, in the oven it separates as distinct layers. Recipe here, if you’re feeling citrus-y:
Baconator says hello from one of his fave places, Shugie’s robe pocket. The weather is supposed to be cool and wet here this weekend so we’re nesting and petting pets and there’s probably a copious amount of baking and puttering and Netflix/Amazon/HBOMax-ing to be going on. I hope you’ve got a good place to snuggle in too. xoxo!
Following Christenberry
Several years ago, I found this rather stunning church around Moundville, Alabama. It wasn’t until later that it dawned on me that I’d seen it many times before; William Christenberry had photographed it for decades.
It’s been abandoned for some time and obviously today without any intervention is in its worst shape ever. Being open to the elements, it’s only a matter of time before there’s some heavy equipment in the lot, taking care of leveling it off. Or maybe it will be left to continue to simply fall away.
Here, a couple of images from my 2013 visit
So often in gallery catalogues or museum labels, it’s simply referred to as Church, Near Moundville, Alabama. A few examples of Christenberry images of the church:
Cross Garden.
William C. Rice’s Cross Garden
Prattville AL, 2008.
Sticky Toffee Pudding
Since March, we’ve been through just a world of new recipes. It’s given us time to try more skill- and time-intensive dishes at home, and things we’d just never otherwise do. The boys have grown accustomed to me saying “okay, new recipe, so tell me what you really think” withholding any sensitivity to something not being just absolutely amazing. I keep a couple of Pinterest boards, one for things to try this week, and another of recipes I’ve tried that have made the mark and can be added to the repertoire. Those that don’t make the cut just get deleted and never move to the other folder. This one is a keeper.
Anyway, early on, we were going over fabulous restaurant experiences. Something that I’ve ordered a few times and love though I wouldn’t have made at home (because dates) is sticky toffee pudding.
Here at Gordon Ramsay Steak at the Paris in Las Vegas (this is from a 2017 visit) is sticky toffee pudding, their sweet pudding cake and brown sugar toffee, brown butter ice cream
This one is from a 2015 visit.
sticky toffee pudding at Balise (ah, I miss Balise!), in 2016
Nigella has this STP recipe that’s made whole, in a baking dish, and I’m thinking: is this the English cousin to Texas Sheet Cake? Making icing while the cake/pud is in the oven, then pouring it over while still hot? Maybe.
The recipe we chose to draw from was based on this one at Food & Wine
Following, what we did, with our mods. Best to read over the whole thing first to decide whether to use (six half-cup) ramekins or a muffin tin:
Ingredients for the toffee sauce:
2 ½ cups heavy cream
1 stick salted butter
½ cup dark corn syrup
1 cup sugar
Cake:
6 oz dates, pitted, and we did use Medjool (seven of them)
¾ cup water
¾ cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 tsp salt
4 tablespoons softened butter
¾ cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
Directions:
Combine 1-1/4 cup of the cream, plus the butter, corn syrup (though I used dark, light would be fine) and the granulated sugar in a saucepan. This part doesn’t even require a thermometer: simply bring to a boil and then bring down to medium/low until as the F&W recipe mentions “a deep amber caramel forms, about 40 minutes”. At that point, it’s time to add the rest of the cream and strain it through a sieve into a bowl. Set aside.
These are the Medjool dates — in the produce section
To prepare the dates, just simmer them in the 3/4 c water in a small saucepan until most of the water is absorbed. The dates will be soft. This took closer to 20 minutes.
To be fair, so many of these pictures are just ugly. Here comes another.
Move the dates and any leftover water from the pan to the Cuisinart, and blitz until smooth.
Preheat the oven to 350*
The F&W recipe uses ramekins, but I decided to simply use a muffin tin.
In one bowl, combine the flour with the baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
In the Kitchenaid, combine the butter with brown sugar until completely incorporated. At that point, in goes the egg and vanilla, then the date puree:
Then everything altogether in the Kitchenaid, just until incorporated.
Spoon the batter evenly into either ramekins or muffin tin. At 350* these will bake for approx 20 minutes until they’re set in the middle. Let them cool for a few minutes.
If you’re using a ramekin, the F&W recipe suggests to trim the tops of the cakes with the rims of the ramekins, but I skipped that altogether. In either case, the next step is to remove the little cakes from their baking vessels. Cut each in half horizontally.
Now, with a paper towel, remove any crumbs/residue from the ramekin/muffin tins and then spoon a tablespoon of the toffee sauce into each. Place the bottom layers of the cakes back on top of the toffee sauce now, cut side up, then another tablespoon of the sauce, then put on the top of the cakes, and another tablespoon of sauce on top of that. Everything is just as it was, you’ve simply got toffee sauce now on the bottom, in the middle, and on top of the little cakes. Bake again for 10 minutes; the sauce should be seen bubbling around the edges:
The beauty of the ramekins is that you can simply invert them on a plate and voila! Using the muffin tins, you’ll want to use a large spoon and do a little transfer to the serving plate. Scoop up any remaining toffee sauce and put that over the top.
It’s great with ice cream or fresh whipped cream, but we went in au naturale.
Spoiler alert: it’s really ugly but nobody cares because it’s so delicious!
Just because, a few pics from Balise, which served a really fine sticky toffee pudding. And omelets:
And plenty of Butch Anthony Intertwangalism works:
Justin & Mia Devillier, who had Balise, also have La Petite Grocery, which I also love, and Justine.
Whether you try the recipe with the mods I did, or the original from F&W (it get so many great ratings!), hope you really, really enjoy it. xoxo!
Everwhatchaneed.
Truly one of the worst pics I’ve taken but so tickled with myself that “everwhatchaneed” has been documented for the ages
Ronnie Marchant’s Visionland Furniture Outlet
Everwhatchaneed
Bessemer AL, 2008.
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