After years of peeling ginger and chopping cilantro in vain, the recipe for the cilantro-lime sauce at Brasa in Minneapolis has finally been published. 

If you only knew how this sauce has haunted me since I first ate there four years ago, you would understand how momentous this is for me.

Is it crema? Sour cream? Coud it actually be an aioli? Am I imaging the garlic part? They couldn’t possibly be using pickled ginger, could they? How much cilantro can there possibly be in this? Why is this so hard!? Where’s the Tylenol!? These were the questions that would keep me up at night when I needed a fix and was too far from Minneapolis to feed my craving for Creole comfort food — slow roasted pork with yellow rice and black beans, fried sweet plantains, cornbread and the sauce.  

Much like the moment Lance Bass announced he was gay or when my brother realized at the age of 18 that Robert Palmer wasn’t saying “Hyenas wear faces, you’re addicted to love,” reading the actual ingredients was a revelation, but the kind of discovery you wish you had been able to come to on your own. It doesn’t take a secret ingredient you must hunt for at five different mercados or a time-consuming process. Just simplicity in a blender. 

You will need to rustle up:

• 2 large jalapeños seeded and coarsely chopped. 
• 2 large smashed garlic cloves
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
• 2 tablespoons minced white onion (I used Vidalia, as I do for everything, and it was still crazy good.)
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 1 cup mayonaise
• 1/4 cup water (Believe it or not, this is what I was missing. In the words of my father, “Of all the damn things.”) 
• 1/4 cup finely chopped cilantro
• Salt

Put the jalapeños, garlic, ginger, onion, lime juice and water in a blender and puree until smooth. Add the mayonnaise and cilantro and pulse until smooth. Season with salt to taste. 

I would put this sauce on anything short of cardboard, but for its maiden voyage in my kitchen I drizzled it over wild Georgia shrimp, avocado and purple cabbage tacos.

I really can’t think of anything better for Cinco de Mayo except maybe the addition of a strawberry margarita. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a whole mess of tortilla chips and mango salsa I need to regret eating tomorrow. 

There’s lots of talk going ‘round about mint juleps mostly due to an upcoming horse race. But when I think of mint juleps, I think of a silver cup I saw inside a glass box at an old house in the woods of Oxford, Mississippi. 

This year, it will have been fifty years since William Faulkner died, and even longer since my redheaded grandmother Loree watched him watch others in Oxford’s square when she would go galavanting with her cousin Eppie, a student at Ole Miss. “Count Do Nothing” was his nickname around town. 

My grandmother and mama were able to go inside Rowan Oak, his old house in the woods, ten years after he died, but before it had been turned into a museum, because Eppie knew somebody. My mama said it was then when she saw the words scrawled across his bedroom walls that she knew writers were different and that was okay. 

Last summer, northward on our way from Savannah, my mama took me to the now curated house owned by Ole Miss. The red and black outline on white-washed walls was arresting, but I found another familiar piece of Rowan Oak.

Behind a locked pane glass door was Faulkner’s favorite room: the kitchen. It was apparently where his wife Estelle would begin her search for him whenever he was out of sight. Obscured by the reflection of rustling oak leaves and dappled patches of June afternoon sunlight, there were curtains made from blue gingham (my favorite), a double freezer, a combination gas-wood stove and an electric range. It’s hard for me to see this photo and not wildly fantasize about remedially line dancing across the floor in my boots and cherry-print apron to some Waylon and Willie between stirring some grits or peach jam on the stove with an electric fan whirring in the background.

Apparently, Faulkner just played Old Maid in here because it was warm. 

But back to the mint juleps…

For a drink having remarkably few ingredients, everyone still has their own way of putting together the sugar, ice, mint and bourbon. Below is William Faulkner’s recipe, a simple set of additions to a distillation he had such a complicated relationship with. Lord knows what he could have done with less of it. But the two are inextricably linked, and even in death Faulkner’s whiskey is within reach — a bottle of Jameson sits faithfully at his tombstone.

Mint julep technology really hasn’t advanced in the past fifty years. They’re still served in metal or silver cups on ice with a sprig for garnish. Although today’s mixologists (and, no, I won’t watch my tone) will have you believe you need to throw in ginger bitters, cognac, a pickled lemon and a free range chicken leg while you’re at it, when it comes to juelps, it’s better in my opinion to err on the side of classic. 

The only thing I will be persnickety about is that you use this as an excuse to run up to Johnnie Ganem’s or whatever your local liquor purveyor is to buy a bottle of Bulliet Bourbon Frontier Whiskey. Not only is it high-quality and affordable, it recently made a cameo appearance in Jack White’s latest music video for “Sixteen Saltines.”

You’ll also need this…

Simple syrup. It might not be a simple as throwing in a teaspoon of sugar, but it ain’t much harder than that. Bring 1 cup of water and 1 cup of sugar (or 2 cups of water and 2 cups of sugar, and on and on) to a boil, stir until sugar has completely dissolved into the water and pour into a mason jar. Let syrup cool and put jar in the refrigerator until cold. For an extra punch of mint in your julep, you can leave a handfull of mint sprigs (10 or so) in the jar overnight. Make sure to discard them after.

As you saw in the first picture, I use a chilled jam jar for my mint juleps. This may not be fittin’ or proper, but it works all the same. I already have too many grown-up kitchen appliances and devices people are supposed to give you in silver-wrapped boxes tied up with white ribbons at your wedding reception. A set of silver julep cups would only scare my friends more.

Once you have your chilled jam jar, silver cup, pork ‘n’ beans can or tumbler, perform the following actions.

• Pour in a tablespoon or so of simple syrup and add 3 or 4 mint leaves. Use the bottom of a wooden spoon to press the leaves against the glass, which will release their minty potential. 
• Add enough crushed ice till the cup is nearly full. 
• Pour in however much Bourbon you see fit after taking into account the day’s occurrences. 
• Place a mint sprig near the top.

Sip continually as the evening sun sets. 

If you’ve been wondering where I wandered off to lately, I’ve been wrangling high school jazz bands, bluegrass prodigies and stage equipment the past few weeks for the Savannah Music Festival. 

And let me tell you, it takes more than a couple Luna Bars to herd a hundred teenagers carrying trombones, saxophones and upright basses through the hallways, streets and cramped backstage areas of Savannah. I also discovered that two Kashi waffles, scrambled eggs, a mango smoothie and two pimento cheese sandwiches for breakfast really isn’t enough to accomplish the various other tasks I had during the festival either.

So while others were drinking sangria and making grilled fish with pineapple salsa or greek salads with cucumbers and chickpeas as the weather became warmer, I ended up eating a lot of biscuits with various pieces of meat between them and turnip soup because, well, I was hungry. 

Seasonal and satisfying, this meal can carry you through any situation including but not limited to: walking briskly/running with heavy boxes; pushing electric organs; cleaning up various beer and/or Smoothie King spills; and carrying coolers that weigh as much as a full-grown Newfoundland.

I believe that country ham biscuits are a personal matter much like who you vote for or what supernatural force you appeal to when things get heavy. Whether you want to make your grandmother’s angel biscuit recipe or purchase a bag of frozen Alexia buttermilk biscuits, there is no judgement here. Nor is there any for how many country ham biscuits you take company in or what you put on them. I like to spread orange marmalade or Sourwood honey on mine. 

However, I will take the liberty of telling you how to make this turnip soup that I read about on Garden and Gun’s web site a few months ago. If you haven’t discovered the myriad joys of turnips, you’re really not as happy as you could be. This is your chance.

You’ll need:

• 1 head of roasted garlic (Wrap 1 bulb in aluminum foil and roast for 30-45 minutes in the oven at 425 degrees, press down with the side of your knife and squeeze out soft garlicy goodness. Discard papery casings.)
• 4 cups turnips, trimmed, peeled and cut into 2-inch cubes 
• 1 medium onion (I used a Vidalia of course)
• 4 cups chicken stock
• Salt n pepa 
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 2 slices prosciutto or left over country ham cut into “really fin” 1-inch stripes
• 1/4 cup creme fraiche or heavy cream

Find a decent-sized stock pot or sauce pan and put the roasted garlic, turnips, onion wedges and stock in it. Season with salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Reduce temperature to a simmer and let it create turnip and onion magic for 30-45 minutes uncovered. Rev up your food processor or immersion blender and puree until smooth. Return the soup to the pot or pan and add nutmeg, prosciutto or ham, and creme fraiche or heavy cream. Bring it to a boil and reduce to a simmer again. Ladle into bowls and garnish with green onions. Much like the rug in The Big Lebowski, the green onions really tie the whole thing together. 

With enough biscuits and soup, you’ll be ready to TCB Elvis-style too. 

Next up: pictures of what I ate on my birthday, mint juleps and mint-glazed carrots.

I love grocery stores. The giddiness some reserve for Tahitian vacations, first dates or March Madness is nearly the same emotion I feel for an afternoon trip to the Publix on Wilmington Island or a new neighborhood market. In fact (pathetically?), I’ve been known to call friends from my neighborhood Kroger to tell them what amazingly corny song is playing over the store intercom. If you only knew how excited I get when I hear “More Than Words” by Extreme in the dairy section… or the groan i just made after reminiscing about that moment.

However, there are times even for a grocery store fanatic like myself that a 20-minute trip to pick up Wasabi powder or a two-hour search for plain sorghum syrup (Seriously Savannah, where are you hiding this stuff?) just doesn’t fit in my schedule.

Which is precisely why this strawberry pie I cobbled together from two different recipes is so wonderful. If you need an excuse to buy Madagascar vanilla beans or make your own leaf lard, this is your pie. If you don’t happen to have the time or energy to go find Madagascar vanilla beans or make your own leaf lard, this is also your pie. Both the simple and complex versions of this are delicious, and I’ll bet that you have most of the other ingredients in your cupboard.

Here in the South, strawberries are at their peak, and I found all the berries I needed to make this pie at the Forsyth Farmers Market. You will need 3 lbs. of strawberries, which translates to about three standard size cartons. 

This pie crust recipe comes from Libbie Summers’ Whole Hog Cookbook. In a world that seems to think the only part of a pig worth bothering with is the belly, here is a book that shows you hundreds of tasty ways to consider the other various other parts of a hog. You should get it.

But, as you probably saw coming, this crust has lard in it. If you do not have a heart condition or other serious medical ailment, I would beg you to consider it. A lard pie crust is one of life’s more pure and simple joys right up there with tickling a baby, rolling the windows down on a hot day while your favorite song is on the radio or watching a sunset on the side of a mountain.

However, if you want to use vegetable shortening instead, you can skip this part. 

If you’ve fallen for my recruiting speech, Ms. Summers has instructions for rendering your own leaf lard, but you may need to ask your butcher to help you find leaf fat. 

You’ll need…

• 5 lbs. leaf fat chopped
• A dutch oven 
• Wooden spoon
• Fine mesh strainer
• 2 (1 quart) sterilized canning jars

First roughly chop the fat then heat the dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add the fat and 1 cup of water. Cook the fat by stirring every 15 minutes for 1 hour until the fat begins to melt. When the fat melts, you’ll hear a few loud pops. This is the cracklings losing the last of their moisture.

When you hear these pops, begin stirring more frequently for the next 15 minutes. Strain and remove any cracklings that float to the surface. When the remaining cracklings have sunk to the bottom of the pan, you are good to go. Pour lard (which should look like yellow liquid) through a fine mesh strainer into jars and refrigerate overnight uncovered. The lard will solidify and turn white. Cover tightly. You can store this up to four months in the fridge and one year in the freezer. 

Whether you’ve chosen lard or vegetable shortening, this pie crust handles like a [insert outrageously expensive foreign sports car here]. 

You’ll need…

• 2 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (preferably White Lilly)
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 tablespoon sugar (or vanilla sugar, which can be made by sticking the seeds of one vanilla bean and the bean itself into a 1 quart jar of sugar that’s given a good shake and left to sit for 2 weeks in a cool place)
• 12 tablespoons seriously cold butter
• 1/4 cup leaf lard or vegetable shortening
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup ice water

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, salt and sugar. Using a pastry cutter or two forks, cut in the butter and lard (or shortening) until there are chunks left that are the size of peas. Use as much ice water as you need to form a ball (it will be slightly crumbly). Work quickly and do not over mix. Halve the dough and shape into discs. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours. 

For the filling, we are going to use a Saveur recipe. Rev up your oven to 425 degrees and acquire these ingredients. 

• 3 lbs. strawberries, halved
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 2 tablespoons orange juice
• 1 tablespoon orange zest
• 1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped (If you don’t have a vanilla bean, don’t freak out. Usen 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract.)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Whole milk or cream for brushing top of pie

In a big ole bowl, mix the strawberries, sugar, cornstarch, orange juice, zest, vanilla and salt together. 

After two hours, roll out one of the discs to fit a 9-inch pie dish and roll out the other to be cut into 3/4” strips for a lattice top.

Pour filling into pie crust, weave lattice over top and crimp edges together. Brush top of pie with milk/cream and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for one hour or until it’s golden and bubbly. You may need to shield the top of the pie with foil if it browns before the filling is ready. 

Well, that sure looks like a fine pie to me.

Be sure to have vanilla bean ice cream and hungry friends on hand for this one. 

Next up: Creamy turnip soup with country ham biscuits and orange marmelade and that Vidalia Onion and Swiss Chard Gratin recipe I concocted. 

From pecans still in their shells to Butter Crunch lettuce, collard greens to strawberries, even sugar cane and crowder peas, I’m still stunned at the variety I see every week at the Forsyth Farmers Market. 

While some farmers markets nowadays have become flooded with one-sided ideology and seem like temples of hipster worship at times, Savannah’s market is primarily made up of good people who care about good food in a welcoming, un-pushy way. Being a militant vegan or having six nautical-themed tattoos will not get you extra cool points, but nor will it go against you. 

Without a “Uhway-yell, how y’all dooo-un” from my favorite singing Forsyth Farmers Market vendor, Farmer Joe of Clark and Sons Organics, my Saturday, no, my week is incomplete. 

The past two Saturdays, I’ve stocked up on strawberries, swiss chard, collards, multi-colored carrots, watermelon radishes, turnips, green onions and said Butter Crunch lettuce. I’ve also gone hog wild over Libbie Summer’s Whole Hog Cookbook, so I decided to make a Strawberry Pie with her Better Than Basic Pie Dough recipe and her Sweet and Sour Pork Chops with a salad of farmers market bounty and my mama’s special poppy seed dressing recipe. 

Let’s start with the pork chops and the poppy seed dressing. 

These pork chops are so easy to fix, you’ll want to have them three times a week. Seriously. This balsamic reduction is the black tar heroine of meat accompaniment. I will give you her recipe for four pork chops, but it is possible to halve the reduction for two chops. Don’t do this, you will want to slather everything within your grasp with it. 

You will need to find:

• 4 (8-10 oz.) pork rib chops
• 4 tablespoons of olive oil (more for garnish)
• Salt n pepa
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar 
• A pinch of cayenne pepper
• A pinch of nutmeg
• 3 tablespoons good honey
• 6 tablespoons of butter
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves with some springs for garnish

Drizzle pork chops with olive oil and season liberally with kosher salt and fresh cracked  black pepper. Leave them to sit at room temperature for 20-30 minutes. Remove any ravenous German Shepherds from the area. 

In a small sauce pan, stir together balsamic vinegar, cayenne pepper, nutmeg and honey. Stir over medium heat until reduced to a 1/4 cup. Stir in the butter and thyme. 

Put pork chops on heated grill or grill pan (I used my Lodge cast iron grill pan, which I would like to marry in a civil ceremony.) and baste with reduction, leaving some to be drizzled on later. Each side should get around 6-8 minutes of cooking time. Transfer to a serving dish and allow the meat to rest for five minutes. Drizzle with remaning sauce and a smidge of olive oil and garnish with thyme.

Bask in the unadulterated praise of your dinner companions.

For my mama’s special poppyseed dressing you will need to get a hold of a blender or food processor and throw in:

• A handfull of chopped onions, preferably Vidalia or sweet yellow. 
• 1/4 cup of white vinegar
• 1/4 cup of honey 
• 1/4 cup of sugar 
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon dijon mustard

Combine all these things thoroughly, then gradually pour in a cup of good olive oil (one that doesn’t have too robust of a flavor) and a tablespoon of poppy seeds.

I will expect thank you notes.

Next post:  I combine an old Saveur recipe and Libbie’s crust formulation to create a pie for all who wander the Google searches for “strawberry pie” in sadness and despair.

I might also give you the recipe for my Vidalia Onion-Swiss Chard gratin.

If you’re going to have an oyster for the first time, Charlie Teeple’s in Savannah, Georgia is a good place to do it. 

At least that’s what I told my friend Amy as we stood in the parking lot after she had said “Confession: I’ve never had any oyster.” (Something I was near shocked to hear since Amy is one of the best Southern cooks I know. Seriously, her coconut cake… Baby Jesus it’s good.)

I’m glad Amy mustered the courage to try one because oysters here come with a side of hot sauce, saltines and good conversation. 

Here’s me on the end eating oysters with Gloria and Joanna. Photo by Amy Condon

This ain’t a sit-down joint, but $14.99 will get you endless laundry hamper-sized buckets of roasted oysters poured in front of you on to a wooden forest green table. Unless you bring your own oyster knife and oven mit, you’ll have to make do with a butter knife bent at the tip after years of use and a few salty nicks and cuts.  

Here’s me on oyster #10 or 13 out of 40. Photo by Amy Condon

While we all enjoy a nice white table cloth, square plate or pre-dinner bread basket, there’s something to be said for the sheer satisfaction of shoving your primitive dinner scraps into a hole in the middle of a table and wiping your hands off on a discount paper towel. Wine lists, a draft 21st Amendment Bitter American or Brooklyn Maple Porter, and pineapple mojitos are all well and good, but sometimes you just want to bring your own gas station fountain 24 oz. iced tea.

…or a 12 pack of Keystone.   

Above photo by Amy Condon

One of the better parts of prying, yanking, pulling and cracking on crustaceans and mollusks in order to eat is that hunger doesn’t wane at the same rate of eating say a steak or a BBQ sandwich. So, it’s easy to justify a vegetable plate at one of the local soul food joints in the surrounding area. Butter beans, cornbread, collards and yams are great chasers. 

It’s everything to love about the Low Country in one parking lot: oysters harvested from just over there, spanish moss and palm trees swaying in the warm evening breeze and congenial exchanges with perfect strangers all in a scene of fatigued buildings, faded wall paintings, stacked milk crates and boxes, rusty propane tanks and overgrown grass. 

Grab an oven mit and and a spot at the table this Thursday. We’ll see you there. 

One of Back in the Day Bakery’s famous Baby Cakes.

Back in the Day is a special place for myriad reasons. When I first moved to Savannah and didn’t know a soul, I messaged my friend Despina and asked her what a lonely, bewildered girl in Savannah should do. She said to go have a banana pudding at Back in the Day and everything would be okay. She was so right, and I still maintain that puddin’ can fix just about any problem you could come up with from existential dilemmas to finals week. 

My friend Amy Paige Condon, a source of much witty wisdom and a brilliant writer, recently helped Cheryl and Griff Day, owners of the bakery and certified sugar sorcerers, write their cookbook that is coming out in March. Pre-order a copy immediately. It will be the best decision you make all year especially if you bet $50 on the Patriots.

But more importantly, Back in the Day is just such a darn cheerful place to visit. If you, like me, get inordinately excited over vintage kitchen equipment and tables, kerchiefs and aprons, retro dessert plates and espresso cups, you need to visit this Mecca of domestic cuteness.

And as if staring at distressed brick walls and antique cake stands while listening to the Supremes and the Four Tops wasn’t enough, the treats inside their cases are so good you’ll weep into swirls of pink frosting and clouds of marshmallow meringue. 

One bite of their Old Fashioned Cupcakes, and you will understand the utter tragedy of Back in the Day not being named one of Southern Living’s The South’s Best Bakeries. 

But I digress. 

It was a lovely Baby Cake and a lovely Valentine’s Day. I hope your’s was as well. 

Because until you do, I won’t be hearing any of this…

“Oh, the best fried chicken is unequivocally at Prince’s Hot Chicken.”

or

“No, I had the most amazing fried chicken in Brooklyn. No, seriously I did. It had this Asian fusion thing going on.”

or

“You have to go to this Sunoco station down the street from my house. It has good chicken.”

All lies. 

The best fried chicken is at MaRandy’s on Skidaway Road and Beaumont Drive in Savannah. MaRandy herself fried up some special thighs and legs for me and my mama and gave us heapin’ helpin’s of candy yams, green beans, okra and tomatoes, mac n’ cheese and cornbread. She even *air quotes* forced me to take a free piece of red velvet cake with me.

That’s what I’m talking about.

All of it was so obscenely good, I couldn’t stop hootin’ and hollerin’ the whole way home. But more importantly, my soul food allegiance has abruptly switched, and if you know me, you know my said devotion to soul food restaurant (that shall not be named out of manners and decency) was bordering on cult-ish.  

Do not let two-year-old news articles about a manager shooting a cook there deter you. Besides, the argument started over work performance, which means there is definite commitment to quality food here. 

And if that’s not enough to convince you, need I mention you get rice and gravy without even asking? Yes ma’am.

In conclusion: If you enjoy being called baby doll, suga, sweetie and/or honey darlin,’ fried chicken, red velvet cake and a choice of 13 sides with your meal, this is where you need to be. 

Based on general perception, if the meat counter is the ice cream parlor, the flank steak would be chocolate raspberry; the pork belly, salted carmel; the ahi tuna steak is watermelon sorbet; and chicken would most likely be vanilla…maybe cookie dough. 

But there are things you can do to make chicken just as thrilling as Jeni’s Reisling Poached Pear or Sparky’s Pineapple Upside Down Cake. Things, my friends. 

Two easy options are buying enough garlic and/or pecans to choke a horse at your local green grocer and asking yourself “What would the Barefoot Contessa and/or Virginia Willis do?” and/or you could also make the following chicken fingers that were recently in Saveur, which automatically makes them classy. 

Let’s begin. 

Chicken fingers with honey-mustard-rosemary dipping sauce and Andre 3000’s kale/collards recipe? You too can have all this. 

First, add the Dolly Parton and Beyonce stations to your Pandora account if you haven’t already, put them on shuffle and get out the mayonaise (also, just so you know, you’re about to hear some early 2000s Usher hits).

I use Savannah Bee Company Sourwood Honey for nearly everything that requires honey. Much like J. Crew cardigans, cars with two sunroofs, mail-order bacon, a Third Man Records Platinum Vault Membership or a Dyson, it isn’t the cheapest of comforts, but it’s one that I think is worth it. Besides, a vacuum cleaner won’t do anything for your cornbread situation.

First, make the dipping sauce by mixing together:

• 1 1/2 cups of mayonnaise (preferably Duke’s)
• 1/4 cup honey 
• 2 tablespoons chopped rosemary
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon dry mustard powder
• Salt and pepper to taste

You can easily halve this if making dinner for a smaller group of people or gnomes. 

For the chicken fingers, cut 2 lbs. of boneless, skinless chicken breasts into 1 inch wide planks. Toss them with the following in a large bowl:

• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1 tablespoon black pepper
• 1 1/2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard powder

Put a cup of flour in one pie dish, 4 lightly beaten eggs in another pie dish and 3 cups of panko breadcrumbs in another. Heat some canola oil to 325 American degrees in a cast iron skillet, braiser, pan or something that won’t catch fire. One plank at a time, dredge each piece in flour, shake of excess, dip in egg, coat in panko and fry until outside is golden brown. 

If you haven’t clicked on the link to Andre 3000’s kale recipe in the latest issue of Bon Appetit, you should because it is wondrous. I used collards instead of kale, but I’m sure both are equally good much like Outkast’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below. 

Or if that chicken fingers don’t blow your skirt up, you could make Southern cooking genius Virginia Willis’ Oven-Fried Chicken Breasts with Pecan Crust with some fingerling potatoes, haricot verte and Willis’ Vidalia Honey Mustard Dressing. 

Miss Willis kindly has the recipe online here, and if you do everything she tells you, it should all work out. Although I will say if you don’t enjoy jamming out to El Camino while eating Fresh Market’s Wasabi Wonder mix in close proximity to your oven, choose smaller chicken breasts that won’t require more time and checkin’ up on.   

Once you try this Vidalia Onion Honey Mustard Dressing with the potatoes and haricot verte, you’ll need this link too. After I bought this cookbook at one of my favorite bookstores, E. Shaver in Savannah, I carried it around with me to people’s houses and coffee shops for a good week. I even woke up with it next to me one morning. 

You’ll need…

• 1/2 Vidalia Onion (Sweet or Walla Walla will work if you live up North and can’t find those awesome bags of Vidalias they bring out once a year with Blake Shelton and Carrie Underwood on the label)
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons honey (Sourwood, Tupleo or Orange Blossom work best)
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• Salt-n-pepa 

Rev up the engine on your food processor and pulse the onion until smooth. Add the vinegar, honey and mustard until combined. Add the oil in a steady stream until you have reached emulsification. Taste and adjust with salt, sugar and pepper. The dressing will keep for three days and tastes good on about any salad you can come up with. 

The third option from Ina Garten requires you to have access to a whole mess of garlic. Literally, as in you will have garlic peels all over your sink and/or floor. So if you’re not too tired after finding 40 cloves of garlic and peeling each one, we can start Ina’s increable Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic, which is a pretty common French recipe, but I think Ina’s contains the best ingredients. Zut Alors!

All this typing has made my chicken fingers ache, so I’m going to direct you to the Food Network’s compendium of recipes for the directions. If you read the recipe four or five times and design a game plan, it actually isn’t that difficult. The next time I make this, I plan to use just legs and thighs. My boyfriend and I rarely fight, but I was pretty steamed when he took the last piece of dark meat. Also, the sauce that is born out of this recipe is so good, you’ll dream of wading in a kiddie pool filled with it.

I found a cookin-sized bottle of Hennessy at Shivs, the only liquor store open on Sunday in Savannah. I normally don’t frequent places named after prison weapons, but I had a deep hankering for this recipe. It turns out Shivs is actually a fairly decent purveyor of booze. 

Good-quality olive oil like Partanna, which was recommended  by Bar La Grassa Chef Erik Sather (who is awfully good lookin’) at a cooking class I went to, really makes a difference in this recipe. 

It’s very important to get your chicken skin browned before you leave it to stew in its own juices, but don’t go crazy unless you happen to be listening to Prince, which I also highly recommend for cooking music. 

Ina uses so much thyme in her recipes that it’s a good idea to have a Barefoot Contessa Festival for two or three days so you can use up all the fresh thyme you’ve bought/grown/stolen from your neighbor’s herb garden. 

It’s definitely not the Adriana Lima of chicken dishes, and the awful lighting in my house at night sure doesn’t help matters, but it’s so so so good. The garlic cloves become sweet and mashable after they are roasted and taste great mixed with potatoes and asparagus. 

If this novella of a post doesn’t convince you to give chicken a chance, I don’t know what else I can do short of writing a three part song about these recipes with Paul Simon or flying to your house to make you all three.

Ask not what your chicken can do for you. Ask what you can do for your chicken. 

Now if you’ll kindly excuse me, I have half a lemon chess pie* that needs celebrating. 

*Pie was originally covered with plastic wrap. Settle down.