The Pat Conroy Cookbook (23 page)
Read The Pat Conroy Cookbook Online
Authors: Pat Conroy
“Sagittarius,” the young man answered, removing the offending ashtray filled with the discredited pepper.
“Splendid,” Eugene said. “Sagittarians are the blown kisses of the
Zodiac, sweet-natured but peppery, like old-fashioned nasturtiums, not the sickly aromatic hybrids of today’s tacky gardens.”
I was in Mobile with my lawyer, Jim Landon, and we were staying with his sister, Sue Beard, in an area of the city near Spring Hill College. Eugene insisted that he would cook lunch for Jim and me the very next day, but he warned me that we should come prepared for chaos and surprise. Those were two watchwords of Eugene’s life that he shared with me whenever I saw him in Mobile. He took the idea of whimsicality to almost absurd heights. Jim and I entered the shabby foyer of a nineteenth-century house that Eugene was “renting for a song and the utter prestige of having me lease such a déclassé abode.”
The cats that moved throughout the house were named with boisterous, T. S. Eliot flair. Boxes, piled to the ceiling, still bore the name of an Italian shipping company. Eugene brought an insouciance to the science of disorder. Jim and I cleaned off a sofa as Eugene served us a glass of red wine.
Jim Landon possesses one of the most spectacular visual memories of anyone I have ever known. This lunch took place in Mobile eighteen years ago, yet when I called Jim at his law office at Jones, Day in Atlanta, he began speaking of it in precise detail.
“Eugene served us on beautiful Capodimonte china, although I do not think the word ‘china’ is correct. It is simpler than that. Very elegant. Let’s say plates. Yes, that will do fine. His wineglasses were thick, unwieldy, the provenance, I would venture, Woolworth’s. The tablecloth was lovely and I first guessed mohair, but upon further examination, I ventured it was cat hair. He served us barbecued chicken with a barbecue sauce I can taste to this day, taste but cannot duplicate. Pat, do you remember the orange slices floating in it, mustard and vinegar and we just raved about it? Then a perfectly composed salad, dressed with balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. We peeled our own oranges for dessert. You mangled yours of course. I cut my peel very precisely in one continuous piece that sprang back into its original shape when I laid it upon my Capodimonte plate. Afterward, he served us a demitasse of
strong Italian espresso. Then he gave us each a teaspoon of sugar moistened perfectly with Angostura bitters.”
“No wonder people think I’m a redneck, Jim,” I said. “I never think about moistening sugar with Angostura bitters.”
“That is only the beginning of the thing, Conroy” Jim said. “I must take my leave now. I have real paying clients who actually require my legal services. ‘Capodimonte,’ I believe you will discover, means ‘at the head of the mountain.’”
Eugene Walter sent me a paperback copy of his cookbook when it was published in November of 1982. He had titled it with a baroque Eugene Walter–like flourish,
Delectable Dishes from Termite Hall: Rare and Unusual Recipes
. I read the book from cover to cover the day I received it, and it remains one of my favorite cookbooks in a collection that has grown into a fairly extensive library. There is not a recipe in the entire book that does not shine with a ray or two of Eugene’s strange, piquant life. On every page, his complaints and prejudices about food and life spill out, staining the napery and the carpets with his vinegary opinions about everything. I have not come across a bad recipe in the book, and certainly not a dull one. It was Eugene who told me that as a cookbook writer he was always trying to disguise the fact that “my real job is to be a philosopher king or a prince of elves. If it has magic, Lyon, look for my footprints nearby. Promise me that, Lyon. Always.”
But always is never long enough and it is a word that runs out of time the way that life does. When I heard about his death in Mobile, I took down his first novel,
The Untidy Pilgrim
, from the shelf. I turned to the first sentence of the first page because I wanted the essence of the man to enter the room where I stood grateful to have known and loved him: “Down in Mobile they’re all crazy, because the Gulf Coast is the kingdom of monkeys, the land of clowns, ghosts, and musicians and Mobile is sweet lunacy’s county seat.”
Ciao
, maestro. Whenever I feel magic in my life, I will look for your footprints. That is a promise, Eugene Walter, a promise from Lyon.
TUNA AU POIVRE
Before I leave the glorious subject of Eugene Walter, I would like to quote from a small diatribe he sounded in his quirky cookbook
Delectable Dishes from Termite Hall
. Please note his obsession with freshly ground pepper; the next six recipes pay fine homage to that lordly obsession. At the beginning of
chapter 6
, Eugene Walter writes about the Salad Question: “A barbarous movement has swept America in the three decades that I lived in Europe, a movement as barbarous as that sullen minority which calls itself the Moral Majority as barbarous as plastic plates and glasses, as barbarous as synthetic cheeses or the crap-glop salad dressings, as barbarous as restaurants claiming to be first class but lacking a pepper mill.” Eugene rants for another couple of pages about how Americans are like huns because they eat their salads before the first course, not after it like Europeans do. In Mobile, they give out an annual Eugene Walter prize to a writer of note, and the splendid T. R. Pearson received the award in 2004. A wonderful book called
Milking the Moon
came out in 2001 in which Eugene Walter tells his life story to Katherine Clark. What an impish, pixilated, and original man!
Ciao
again, maestro, your Lyon will honor you for all time.
•
SERVES 4
¼
cup coarse or kosher salt
½
cup whole black peppercorns, coarsely cracked
4 bluefin tuna steaks (½ pound each)
Vegetable oil
1. Combine the salt and cracked pepper in a shallow baking dish and press the tuna into the mixture, covering both sides of each steak.
2. In a large nonstick skillet, pour enough oil to submerge (and thereby cook) the tuna. Heat the oil over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking and sear the tuna until a crust forms. Using a long-handled slotted spatula or tongs, turn the tuna only once: 3 minutes total cooking time for rare, 4 minutes for medium rare.
PEPPERED NEW POTATOES
•
SERVES 4
1¾ pounds small red new potatoes (about 24)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
Coarse or kosher salt and coarsely ground tricolor pepper
1. Wash the potatoes, but do not dry. Peel a ring around the center of each potato. In a pot large enough to hold the potatoes in a single layer, melt the butter over medium-high heat until foamy and almost browned. Place the wet potatoes in the pot and cover tightly.
2. In about 3 minutes, the potatoes will start to sputter. Holding the lid in place, shake the pot to crisp all sides of the potatoes. Continue to shake the pot frequently until the potatoes are browned on the outside and tender inside (the tip of a knife or fork should slide in easily), 15 to 18 minutes. Season with salt and abundant coarsely ground tricolor pepper.
PEPPERED PEACHES
Adapted from one of Lee Bailey’s groundbreaking books,
Country Weekends
. Peppered peaches are the right combination of sweet heat to pair with grilled or roasted meats.
•
SERVES 12
6 large peaches, ripe but not mushy (will yield to gentle pressure without bruising)
¼ cup fresh lemon juice (1 lemon)
1½ tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon coarse or kosher salt
Coarsely ground black, white, and cayenne pepper
1. To peel the peaches: Place 2 trays ice cubes in a bowl with 2 cups cold water and set aside. Cut an X in the end (not the stem end) of each peach. Using a slotted spoon, lower the peach into a pot of boiling water until the skin loosens, about 2 minutes. Transfer to the ice bath and cool, about 3 minutes. The skin should slip off easily.
2. Cut each peach in half around the seam and remove the pit. Transfer peach halves to a large platter, pit side up. Brush with lemon juice and dust with the sugar and salt. Sprinkle with pepper. Do not refrigerate before serving.
BLACK PEPPER AND PISTACHIO TRUFFLES
•
MAKES ABOUT 60
3 cups unsalted, uncolored shelled pistachios
1 pound best-quality semisweet chocolate (like Sharffen Berger), coarsely chopped
1 cup heavy cream
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise, seeds scraped out and saved
1½ teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon Frangelico (hazelnut liqueur)
1 pound best-quality dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
1. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
2. Spread the pistachios on a shallow baking sheet and toast in the oven, 8 to 10 minutes. When cool enough to handle (but still warm), transfer the nuts to the center of a clean kitchen towel. Gather the ends together to form a loose bag and vigorously rub the towel between your hands to remove the skins. Transfer the nuts to a cutting board and finely chop. Set aside.
3. In a double boiler over hot water (simmering, not boiling), melt the semisweet chocolate, stirring occasionally until smooth.
Stir in ½ cup of the chopped pistachios. In another saucepan over moderate heat, bring the heavy cream, vanilla (pod and seeds), and pepper to a low boil. Remove the vanilla pod, stir in the Frangelico, and immediately pour hot mixture over the melted chocolate. Whisk gently to combine and pour into a 9-inch round cake pan. Freeze for at least 30 minutes.
4. When the mixture has set, use a teaspoon (or melon ball scoop) to scrape the chocolate into small balls (irregularly shaped is okay; this misshapen appearance is behind the confection’s name “truffle,” after the earthy and expensive fungus). Place the truffles on a baking sheet and refrigerate until ready for dipping. (The recipe can be done in advance up to this point. Cover the truffles with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to 24 hours.)
5. To dip and roll the truffles: Melt the dark chocolate in a double boiler over hot but not boiling water. Stir occasionally until smooth. Divide the remaining chopped pistachios into two bowls.
6. When the truffles are set, working with a few at a time (and leaving the rest refrigerated), use two forks to dip and roll each truffle in the melted chocolate. (The chocolate should be warm to the touch, but not too hot. If the chocolate “slips” off the ball instead of coating it, the chocolate is too hot. Adjust heat.) Roll quickly, tapping the fork on the side of the pot to remove excess. Immediately place the coated truffle in a bowl of pistachios and roll, pressing down gently to coat the entire surface. Do several more (leaving the coated truffles in the bowl) and then place the bowl in the refrigerator. Let the truffles harden for several minutes before transferring them to a plate. Repeat with the remaining truffles (rotating the bowls of nuts to keep a steady work rhythm going). Refrigerate until ready to serve. (Or freeze in zippered bags for up to 4 weeks.)