Category Archives: de rebus texanis

Black-eyed peas and Champagne for New Year’s day

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On New Year’s day, Tracie P cooked up some black-eyed peas with the ham bone reserved from the spiral ham Mrs. B had served on Christmas day. Her buttermilk cornbread (baked in her grandmother’s cast-iron skillet) was unbelievably delicious, especially when used to sop up the bean liquor (as it is called in the south, i.e., the beans’s cooking liquid). Neapolitan-style cabbage braised with onions gave the combined flavors just the right twang of sweet and sour.

And the perfect pairing for those creamy beans? Henriot NV Blanc Souverain, 100% Chardonnay. Ubi major, minor cessat: I am always one to agree with Ed McCarthy when notes that Chardonnay finds one of its greatest expressions in Champagne. This wine was an ideal pairing for the flavors of our New Year’s day meal: its acidity and white stone fruit flavors combined with its elegant fizziness were wonderfully refreshing against the richness of the cornbread, the dolce amaro of the cabbage, and the texture of the legumes.

Black-eyed peas for New Year’s is now a three-year-old tradition at our house and de rigueur in the south. I loved Jessica Harris’s NY Times op-ed on its origins as a New Year’s dish.

What did ya’ll eat on New Year’s day?

Frito pie, impossible wine pairing?!?

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chili frito pie

Above: The other night an excellent Frito Pie prompted me and my dining companions to contemplate the moisture retention quotient of the humble Frito, which, I learn via the Wiki, originated in San Antonio, Texas (where else?).

I think I might have Dr. V stumped. Chips and salsa may be tough, but Frito Pie?

If you’ve never had Frito Pie, it’s essentially a heap of Fritos drowning in Texas chili and then topped with cheese and sour cream.

I had never had Frito Pie before moving to the south. Since my life Texana began nearly 3 years ago, I eat Frito Pie — a true Texan delicacy — whenever afforded the opportunity.

The other day outside of Houston, Cousin Marty and I had what we both agreed was the BEST FRITO PIE EVER.

What did our sommelier pair with it?

As BrooklynGuy occasionally asks of his readers, you be the sommelier!

Please add your recommendations in the comment thread and I’ll provide the answer (it was brilliant, btw) on Friday along with a story about the amazing place where we were served the pie above…

Scenes from Boondocks Road, life on the bayou

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Sometimes on the highway of life, there are certain roads you just have to go down…

Driving back from East Texas yesterday, Tracie P and I decided on a whim to find out what lay at the end of Boondocks Road. Yes, Boondocks Road.

A sign told us about Leon’s Fish Camp. But we knew there had to be more to the story.

What we found was a beautiful bayou and friendly people who waved and smiled at us.

Because of the flooding that hurricane season inevitably brings, the houses are on stilts and many are connected to Boondocks Road by bridges.

The extreme weather of East Texas will most certainly put the fear of G-d in you.

Of course, everywhere you go in Texas, folks are proud of their state.

Until recently, as I discovered this morning on the internets, Boondocks Road was called Jap Road. The road had been named to honor early-twentieth century Japanese settlers who had taught their neighbors how to farm rice on the bayou. Today, rice is the predominant agricultural crop of this area. The locals greatly appreciated and recognized Yoshio Mayumi for what he had done for their community. But he and his family were forced to leave between the two world wars when the U.S. government forbade foreigners from owning land in our country (the 1924 Immigration Act; sound familiar?). Jap was not a racial slur at the time and was a commonly accepted abbreviation for Japanese (the historical entries in the Oxford English Dictionary provide hard evidence of this). In 2004, after more than ten years of lobbying, local activists were successful in their campaign to rename the road. The road’s residents chose Boondocks, after a catfish restaurant that had once operated there. (You can find all of this in the Wiki entry, including references to articles in the Christian Science Monitor and on the CNN website.)

Another hour down the highway of life, Tracie P had lox and latkes and I had white fish salad at our favorite Houston deli, Ziggy’s. Cousins Joanne and Marty and Aunt Holly and uncle Terry and cousin Grant joined. The white fish was delicious.

I’m glad they changed the name of Jap Road. But I wish they would have renamed it Mayumi Road, to remember the farm and the people that reshaped the agricultural landscape of East Texas in a more innocent and more earnest time.

But, then again, if it weren’t called Boondocks Road, we probably wouldn’t have felt the irresistible urge to go down it.

BTW, with this post, I’ve added a new category to Do Bianchi: de rebus texanis. Buona domenica ya’ll!