Mississippi Famous Foods

One day, I want to develop this into a much fuller piece.  Here are some of my notes so far.  I'm gonna use ya'll to help me work out the kinks and give me some ideas.

Comeback Dressing

Comeback dressing was invented by Mr. Alexander Dennery at the Rotisserie Restaurant at five points in Jackson sometime in the '30s and '40s.  Both the Rotisserie and its successor Dennery's are closed now, so the reigning comeback champion is The Mayflower Cafe in Jackson, using a recipe by Mr. Kountouris.  Both Kountouris and Dennery were Greek immigrants, but Comeback Sauce is much closer to French remoulade sauce.   Put it on salads, fries, burgers, hell, just pour some on saltines.  Everybody in town has their version of Comeback now.  Besides the Mayflower, try Scrooge's, Hal and Mal's, Crechale's, and CS's.  

Hot Tamales

This was my dad's favorite.  So much has been written about Delta Hot Tamales I don't know what I can add.  I've never found a Delta Hot Tamale at a Mexican restaurant.  Look for somebody who serves them in coffee cans if possible.  They should come tied in bundles of three.  

Best Choices; Sollys in Vickburg, The Big Apple Inn in Jackson, and Doe's Eat Place in Greenville, but that's just the tip of an enormous iceberg.  There's some discussion about whether they should be wrapped in corn husks or parchment paper.  I like them both ways, but some insist the corn husks add something the paper doesn't.  

This part is controversial, but Hormel makes a decent canned hot tamale.  They're based in Minnesota, for God's sake, and I have no idea how they came to produce a Delta hot tamale, but they're not bad.  Serve warm with saltines just like regular tamales.  They're good in a hot tamale pie too.

Mississippi Mud Brownies and Mississippi Mud Pie

A 1927 recording of Bing Crosby with the line "beat your feet in the Mississippi mud" might be the origin of this dish.  There are two versions of this dish.  As best I can tell, the first is the Mississippi Mud Brownie which is a chocolate brownie topped with marshmallow and ganache.  It was in many cookbooks in the sixties and seventies.  The second is the Mississippi Mud Pie, which comes in a pie shell, often with a chocolate wafer crust, and replaces the marshmallow with vanilla ice cream.  Both versions are sinfully good.  

Biloxi Pressed Po-Boy

The Po-Boy (poor boy) may be a New Orleans invention, but the Biloxi version, which is pressed like a panini, is far superior.  Primos Northgate used to have one of the best I ever tried.  They would press it, then wrap it tightly in butcher paper which helped unify the sandwich. 

Pig Ear Slider and Red Hot Slider

Big Apple Inn, on Farish Street in Jackson, MS, is home to two uniquely Mississippi dishes that are reasonably famous now.  Pig Ear Sliders are actual pig ears, cooked in a pressure cooker until soft, then served on a slider bun with mustard.  At least try one before you turn your nose up.  Red Hots are Red Rose sausages by Magnolia meats stripped out of their casing, then cooked on a griddle and served on a slider bun with mustard.  

Fried Dill Pickles

It's possible fried dill pickles were invented in Arkansas.  I'll cede them that.  I insist they are far more plentiful in Mississippi, though, and the recipes are far better.  For my taste, the very best fried dill pickles in Mississippi come from Cock of the Walk on the Pearl River Reservoir (I don't use its official name) 

Kool-aid Pickles

This one really is Mississippi Specific.  Kool-aid Pickles are easy.  Take a regular jar of pickles and mix in a packet of cherry Kool-aid and some sugar.  Where to find them?  Gas stations and roadside stands in The Delta.  Don't turn up your nose.  You've had sweet pickles your whole life if you're from here. These are just red. 

Fried Catfish

You don't think fried catfish is Mississippi-specific? Fight me!  Yeah, they have catfish all over the South, and yeah, lots of people fry things, but Mississippi is the catfish king and always will be.  Best catfish in Mississippi?  Boy, I really am looking for a fight, huh?  Let's try Jerry's in Florence and Cock of the Walk on the Rez.  Your opinion may vary. 

Fried Buffalo

Often caught in the same waters as the catfish, the buffalo (Ictiobus cyprinellus) is prepared, dusted with cornmeal, and fried, just like a catfish.  Some people consider Buffalo a trash fish, and to try one you often have to go to an older, more run-down establishment.  Give them a try though.  They're tasty with flaky white flesh,   They don't clean as easily as catfish though, so beware of bones.  

Cheese Straws

I might get some blowback on this one.  Cheese wafers are made all over the South, but I insist that Cheese Straws made with a piping bag are a Mississippi creation (or at least perfected here).

Coke and Peanuts

I can't really claim this is a dish unique to Mississippi, but you've most likely seen it if you're from here.  It's just a bottle of cold Coke with a packet of salted peanuts dumped through the mouth of the bottle. You drink the Coke, then tilt the bottle back to get the peanuts.  The salt interacts with the coke, and the coke interacts with the peanuts, creating a profoundly southern synergy. 

Boiled Peanuts

I would love to claim boiled peanuts as a uniquely Mississippi dish, but they're found all over the deep south.  Peanuts originated in South America, then made their way to Africa, where they were called "goobers" or "pindars" and served boiled, then imported back to America via the slave trade.   The best source for boiled peanuts is roadside stands found all over the state in the summer.   

You might have heard that you can only make boiled peanuts using "green" (un-dried) peanuts, but truth be told, you can use the same dry raw peanuts you use for roasting, but soak them for 24 hours before boiling, just like you would dry red beans for red beans and rice, and they'll boil up just fine.  They freeze really well, and they're good for you!  Try making them with crab boil, lemons and MSG added to the brine.

State Fair Taffy

Malone's State Fair Taffy candy is based in Byram, Mississippi but sold at state fairs and carnivals all over the South.  It comes in one flavor: vanilla, and softens quickly in the microwave.  Off-season, you can get it from their website.

Mississippi Pot Roast

Slow cooker pot roast with pickled jalapenos and a packet of ranch dip mix. This dish is said to have originated with Mississippi State tailgate parties.

Mississippi State Cheese

In 1938, Mississippi State University Dairy Science Professor F.H. Herzer imported ten teakwood molds from Belgium to teach cheese production.  His Edam cheese soon developed a reputation for quality, and now they can barely keep up with demand (and often can't).  Mississippi State cheese is only sold at Mississippi State University, either through their website or from the campus store.

Hiney Ho Smoked Sausage

Produced by the Hinds Community college meatpacking department, you can only get it at the Raymond campus store in Porter Hall.  It's especially good with biscuits or on a hoagie roll with mustard.

Barq's Root Beer

Edward Charles Edmond Barq Sr. first bottled Barq's Root Beer in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1897.

Cathead Vodka

I wanted a spirit, and this is a good one.  Also, their distillery on South Street was the original home of the Mississippi School Supply Company, where my dad once upset the world by hiring a black secretary and sitting her out front where people could see her.  

Inez Burger

Technically a chili burger with queso sauce and pickled jalapenos. The Inez Burger from CS's is much more than that if you're from here.  Get it with the cheese fries and give Inez a hug from me.

Slug Burger

Slug Burgers are indigenous to Corinth, MS, where they have an annual Slug Burger festival.  Slug Burgers use potato flakes or other fillers to extend the ground beef, then the patty is deep-fried and dressed simply with mustard and pickles on a bun.  

Primos Brownie (Fudge Squares)

I wanted to include a recipe from Pop Primos, but which one?  The caramel cake and the gingerbread men were contenders, but the Primos Chocolate Brownie is legendary.  

Pirouline Cookies

Pirouline Cookies might have a European flavor and sensibility, but they were invented in 1984 by Peter DeBeukelaer and produced in Madison, Mississippi. 

Pimento Cheese

I can't really posit that pimento cheese is a uniquely Mississippi dish.  I can say though that the best Pimento Cheese I ever had came from the Woodland Hills Jitney.  Some people make a vicious version using Mississippi State Cheese blended with cottage cheese too. 

Sliced Tomatos

This is another one that isn't unique to Mississippi, but is ubiquitous here.  The concept is simple.  A whole ripe heirloom or beefsteak tomato, cut in one-half inch slices (use a serrated knife) and served with salt, pepepper and a simple vinagrette or mayonase (dukes preferred)  Try a scoop of cottage cheese or pimento cheese for a Mississippi Caprese Salad.  

Pine-Sol

Ok, so this isn't food, but if you have a kitchen or a bathroom, you're familiar with Pine-sol.  Harry A. Cole of Jackson, Mississippi, invented Pine-sol in 1929.  In 1948 Dumas Milner acquired Magnolia Chemical Company producing Pine-sol, and in five years, they increased sales to twenty million bottles distributed in eleven countries.  In 1963, Milner sold Pine-Sol for $17 million, and production moved from Jackson, MS, to New Jersey.

What If Jesus Wasnt Real

Every Christian must answer the big question in their own mind: what if none of it is real?"  Absolute faith is incredibly difficult.  I believe no one who professes faith can navigate this life without ever facing the possibility that it was all wrong.

Let's consider Occam's razor.  Paul and the other apostles say Jesus came back from the dead and made eternal life possible for all of us.  Historians and politicians contemporary to Paul said the followers of Jesus stole the body to keep their movement alive after the death of their founder.  Which opinion is more reasonable?  Which is more logical?  

Nikos Kazantzakis, the author of Zorba The Greek, faced these issues in his novel The Last Temptation of Christ.  In it, he faces the problematic issues of the Jesus story by presuming every fantastical and miraculous element of the story is very real but explores the possibility that Christ falters and accepts Satan's last temptation and uses his powers to come down from the cross and live like an ordinary man.  

As you might imagine, this proposition didn't sit well with many Christian readers.  In 1988, Martin Scorsese struck out to make a film adaptation of Kazantzakis' book, with the result being one of my most loved films, both as a cinephile and as a Christian.

In it, he cast Harry Dean Stanton as Paul.  Stanton plays Paul much as I imagine he was in real life: a charismatic evangelist trying to share this fantastic story with the people trying to survive the sometimes difficult path of the first century.

Jesus, in his post-crucifixion life, confronts Paul during one of his sermons.  "None of what you're saying is true!  I'm alive. I didn't die!"  I cannot write Paul's reply nearly as well as Stanton portrays it in the film.  Please take a moment to consider what he says:

The Rocky Springs Tiger Trap

Forty burgeoning adolescents, four parents, one teacher, and one bus driver, in the woods, with a ghost town and a graveyard overnight; what can possibly go wrong? 

The tiger trap is a device said to be of Indian origin, consisting of a deep pit dug in the ground, then covered with enough vegetation to hide it.  Tigers would walk on the leafy covering, and fall into the pit below where they couldn't escape.  The Viet Cong used the tiger tap with some success against our forces in Viet Nam.

Antebellum Graves in the churchyard

Rocky Springs is a ghost town attached to the Natchez Trace in Claiborne County, Mississippi.  The State of Mississippi maintains a popular semi-primitive campground there.  

My Scout Troop used the site a year before, and I learned you could use a burning ember from the fire to light your own farts.  There's no merit badge for that, but there should be.  

My Junior High Class had a very loving and very optimistic parent group who got the idea that we could manage a co-ed camp-out there and make it back home with everyone intact.

Mr. and Mrs. Lyle were itinerant and experienced campers.  They would keep us alive.  Mrs. Seargent was our young history teacher.  She was who all the boys dreamed about, and all the girls wanted to look like.  She must have loved us because she took us to Washington DC by bus the following year.  I hope someone reading this can remember the name of the school's Haitian bus driver.  He was a super sweet guy who also drove us to football practice every day.  Rounding out our team of fearless leaders was Mr. and Mrs. Jones.  They tried to get me to call them Tim and Sarah for forty-five years.  It's still not happening.

The plan was to take the bus from school to Rocky Springs, make camp, have lunch then explore the old trace.  We were to have dinner while the sun was still up, then visit the ghost town at dusk, come back to camp for the night, have breakfast the following day, and take the bus back to Jackson.  That was the plan.  We were never that great at sticking with the plan.

Early on in life, I recognized there was something about Mr. Jone's eyes telling me he was a fellow member of my tribe.  He must have noticed the same thing because we had a few adventures together.  

In the little abandoned town of Rocky Springs was an old church with an ancient graveyard.  The plan was to hike as a gang from our campsite to the old cemetery at dusk, have a spooky adventure among the antebellum graves, and return to camp with flashlights in the dark.  That was the plan.  

Mr. Jones had the idea that he and I would sneak ahead of the bunch and hideout so that as they were hiking back in the dark, we could jump out and scare the bejesus out of them.  It would be so funny and so cool.  That was the plan.

On the way there, we spied a circular split-rail fence with a placard saying "Old Homesite"  with some bushes and kudzu overgrown in the center.  That would be my hideout.  This was a great plan! 

The old church and graveyard among the Spanish moss dripping trees was a pretty great adventure, with lots of giggles and dares as we awkwardly tried to figure out the best way to navigate inter-gender conversations in the dark surrounded by confederate ghosts.  

With the sunlight fading, Mr. Jones and I sprung our plan into action.  We quietly slipped away from the rest and headed toward the fenced "old homesite" to set our trap.  "Hurry!" he said before the rest of the class began their way back.

This was going to be SO COOL!  They were gonna be SO SCARED!  With a hop, I was over the split rail fence.  One step, two steps, one more, and I'd be hidden in the bushes, ready to pounce!  This was such a great plan!

By "old homesite," they meant this was the site of an old home as part of the little town of Rocky Springs.  The wooden structure was long gone, but the root cellar remained.  Nobody told Mr. Jones or me about the root cellar.  That eight-foot-deep root cellar lay completely hidden among the bushes and kudzu.   The split-rail fence was supposed to keep us out of it.

One step!  Two steps! Three... WHOOSH! and I was in total darkness with a thud.  I can only imagine the look on Mr. Jones's face as I vanished into the greenery.

"Boyd?"  I could see him looking over the edge down at me with his flashlight.  "Are you ok?"  I was absolutely unhurt.  The bushes and kudzu vines themselves cushioned my fall.  It took a few seconds for my brain to process what happened, then I bust out in uncontrollable laughter.  So did Mr.  Jones.   

Moments later, the rest of the class caught up to the site of our misadventure.  I could see their shocked and amused faces peering down at me over the edge of my pit with a dozen flashlights illuminating my predicament.    

I was already over two hundred pounds by junior high school and bench-pressing over three hundred.  Getting me out of this tiger trap wasn't going to be easy.  As we had no rope, a human chain made by nearly the entire class was chosen as the best option for rescue.

Soon, Mrs. Seargent's hand reached down for me.  In her twenties and deeply tanned, Mrs. Seargent was just about the prettiest thing I ever saw.  Touching her hand was way out of my pay grade, but I had no choice.  

With a solid tug in unison, my class rescued me from my antebellum dungeon.  I plucked kudzu leaves from my hair, pants, and shoes on the way back.  The plan was to scare the class, but in the end, the only ones who got scared were Mr. Jones and me.

And, that's the story of how the eighth-grade class saved me from my own eagerness and an ancient tiger trap. 

Photo By Kim Wita

photo by Kim Wita

The Pearl River Reservoir

I don't use the phrase "Ross Barnett Reservoir."  I don't use it because Ross Barnett was an asshole, and I"m embarrassed of him.  It's difficult to convince people Mississippi is changed and evolved beyond our racist past when they hear the largest body of water in central Mississippi is still named for our most famous racist.

Ross Barnett wasn't a great man and certainly no great leader.  What did he ever accomplish as governor other than fighting to keep Mississippi segregated?  The only reason I can imagine that anyone would want to name anything after him is that there must have been some guys in the legislature who were still pissed off about Washington forcing Mississippi to integrate, and this was their "fuck you" to the Kennedys.

Barnett approved the plan to send Freedom Riders to Parchment, ordering them strip-searched to humiliate them and taking their beds away to intimidate them for the crime of sitting in a bus station. Barnett hated the black-and-tan Republicans and fought any development of a two-party system in Mississippi.

Barnett would have you believe he fought integration with every fiber of his being. If you listen to the recordings of him and John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy's recollections of the Meredith affair after the fact, it's clear that Barnet knew he couldn't win.  He hoped to use the whole matter to ingratiate himself with the anti-integration factions in Mississippi.

It might be a legend, but the story goes that after the court order to admit James Meridith to the University of Mississippi, Barnett stood at the door to the registrar's office at Ole Miss, with scores of white protestors and even more white national guard troops beyond.  Meridith ascended the steps to complete his court-ordered registration, flanked by white guards and white lawyers.  When he reached the door, Barnett reportedly said, "Which one of you gentlemen is James Meridith?"

Showboat, all of it was a showboat.  Barnett had no intention of leading Mississippi; he only wanted to ride the wave of our hate and cultural shortcomings to enrich himself and inflate his legacy.  

After his term as governor, Barnett sought to rebuild his previously successful plaintiff's law practice.  He sued my dad when a fella ran into a truck making deliveries to the Crystal Springs furniture plant.  We made a fair offer to settle, but Barnett refused.  "While I was serving the great state of Mississippi, my law partners stole every bit of my practice, and I need a big victory to restore my reputation," Barnett told the judge.  The judge advised Barnett to reconsider and settle because Bill Goodman was making a fool of him in court.  Barnett settled.

I've heard noises through the years of re-naming the reservoir, but nothing ever came of it.  I don't know if there was ever a bill to rename it.   None are pending now.  I've heard the opinion that the Pearl River Valley Water Supply District board could rename the reservoir without legislative action, but I have no idea if that's accurate.  If they can do it, they should just do it quietly one day and let that be that.  Until someone makes an official name change, I will continue to call it "The Pearl River Reservoir" because it's accurate, and there's no adverse history associated with that name.