It was just a few weeks ago – I was a real neophyte when it comes to Comeback Sauce. So much a neophyte that I’m like a dummy falling off an okra truck, if you get my drift. In other words, I’d never even HEARD of it. My ears perked up at the phrase. Actually, I was watching the Nate Berkus Show, and he had two of the stars on his show from The Help, and they did a cooking segment with Aaron McCargo, Jr. of the Food Network. Aaron had made a sauce and one of the guests said “oh, it’s something like Comeback Sauce.” Huh?

So, within half an hour I’d gone online and researched all about the stuff. What it is, is a cross between a remoulade sauce and Thousand Island dressing. The common denominators of nearly all of the recipes are: mayonnaise, ketchup, chili sauce, lemon juice and pepper. And sometimes Worcestershire sauce. I visited half a dozen Southern websites, and yes, I found a few boring-looking-sounding versions. Mostly they were equal quantities of mayo and ketchup and a ton of finely ground black pepper. None of those appealed to me, so I kept researching. I looked in my meager Southern cookbooks (no recipes for it there). But finally, I clicked on an online search result for Deep South Dish, a blog just chock-a-block full of Southern down home recipes. And sure enough, Mary had a recipe for a much more sophisticated version she calls Mississippi Comeback Sauce. She and I had a several-day email conversation about it and I promised to let her know once I made it. She also said it was fine if I put her sauce up here on my blog.

Assuming you enjoy reading all of this kind of extraneous trivia I bring you on this-here blog, you’ll need to humor me now as I explain a bit about the history of this sauce. It’s Mississippi born and bred. There is no wikipedia entry for it (at least not yet – Mary, you ought to start one!). I found an article written in the Clarion Ledger (the daily newspaper in Jackson, MS) back in 2001 which documents (sort-of) what they know about the sauce. It seems that it originated in a Greek restaurant called The Rotisserie in Jackson, Miss. a long time ago. It’s mentioned in newspaper archives back in the 1920’s and 30’s. But the sauce came into its own at The Rotisserie, and within a few years all of the other Greek restaurants in Jackson also had it on their menus too, or at least it was served in all of these other restaurants. Originally it started as a salad dressing. As time went by the restaurants began using it as a universal sauce – a dip for fries, a condiment to be served with onion rings or fried mushrooms, a dip for crudités. Eventually the sauce spawned to other non-Greek restaurants and it even became a side dipping sauce for french fried dill pickles. According to Mary, the sauce can be used on EVERYTHING. Sure, it can be a salad dressing if you enjoy the thousand island variety. I might use less of the ketchup if I were using it for salad dressing.

So, the other day I just had a craving for a BLT. Rarely does that kind of food craving take over – not that I don’t like BLTs, I do, but I try not to eat much bread if I can help it. We won’t talk about the fat in the bacon, or the mayo! Just the bread! In this case I just couldn’t help it. My DH made a trip to a little local bakery that makes lovely, thin-sliced soft white bread. While he was gone I decided to whip up the Mississippi Comeback Sauce according to Mary’s recipe. I used it to slather on the bread, and made the sandwiches with gorgeous heirloom tomato slices, Trader Joe’s thick-sliced bacon and some lovely purple-green-leaf lettuce. Here’s the photo:

The dark/black part in the photo at right is the purple lettuce. Under that the tomato, and the bacon on the bottom. You can barely see the Comeback Sauce slathered on the top and bottom slices of bread. But it’s there. And it was delicious. I should have toasted the bread. Just plain forgot!

Mary suggests it on a fried bologna sandwich, as a dip for fried green tomatoes, fried oysters, boiled shrimp or fried shrimp. None of those things are regulars on my dinner menus. Well, maybe some kind of shrimp, but not fried. There’s a restaurant here in our local area called Nieuport 17 that serves a luncheon dish – I think they called it Open Faced Shrimp and Avocado Sandwich. It’s a thin slice of bread, slathered with remoulade, topped with big halved shrimp slices, thin slices of avocado and a little bowl of remoulade on the side and a lemon slice to squeeze over the top. I’ve not been there for years for lunch (it used to be a great place to take customers) but I’ve been a fan of that sauce for years anyway. Now, the switch to Comeback Sauce should be an easy transition. Thanks, Mary!

What I liked: how easy it is to make; it’s really tasty. Yes, it’s a bit peppery, but not overly so. It’s tangy and tart at the same time. I can see it being a great drizzle on top of summer sliced tomatoes.

What I didn’t like: nothing at all.

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A couple of weeks ago my good friend Darci (who happens to be our decorator too, pictured below) told me about a grilled pork chop dish she’d made with a lemon shallot relish on top. She liked it so much, a week later she made it again and served it to 18 people. I asked more questions and since we have a lemon tree, I knew I wanted to try it. The recipe comes from the Food Network, from Aaron McCargo, the guy who won last summer’s Food Network star. His show appears on the online Food Network site, but it’s not showing at all on the West Coast. At any rate this was his creation, and it’s inspired, for sure.

At first, I didn’t think the topping was actually a chutney. But, after reading all about chutneys at wikipedia, I’ve had to change my thinking. What we, as Americans or Western Europeans, know as chutneys comes from the type of fruit-based concoctions that originated in India (like Major Grey’s jarred chutney). These are generally fruit, vinegar, and sugar cooked down to a reduction. That’s certainly my thought about the contents of a chutney. Wrong. Well, maybe not wrong, but partly. Really, a chutney can be vegetables too, and they don’t have to be cooked. They can be savory or sweet, spicy or not. And they can be dry also.

So, back to this recipe, now that we’ve verified that yes, the lemon shallot mixture is a chutney. But, you can call it a relish. Or even a salsa. Whatever, just make it, okay? It takes but a few minutes to mix up, providing you have fresh shallots, lemons, some fresh tarragon, fresh chives (both herbs I had in my garden) and a little glug of olive oil. The recipe calls for Meyer lemons (they’re sweeter than regular lemons, remember) but am sure you could use regular ones – you’d just need to add more sugar or sweetener.

First you need to make the lemon supremes – that means cutting off the peel and gently slicing toward the center on either side of each membrane to release the little wedge of luscious fruit. I used just one Meyer lemon for our 2-person serving, but my Meyer lemons are very big (meaning I halved the recipe).

Then add the thin slices of shallot (yes, leave it raw), chop up some chives and fresh tarragon, sugar, salt and pepper. I tasted it at that point and added a bit more sugar because I thought it needed it (actually I used Splenda, but you could use any kind of sweetener like agave too). Then I added the olive oil, salt and pepper. That’s it. Easy, right?

According to Aaron’s recipe, this can be served on top of pork, fish or chicken. So I veered off a bit and used it on top of a nice thick slice of leftover pork roast. I cut it thick so it would sort-of replicate a pork chop. By the way, if you want to make the pork chop part of Aaron’s recipe, just click to the website for that part. I heated the leftover pork in the microwave for about 40 seconds (I didn’t want to cook the pork any further), then spooned the relish on top.

How was it? Absolutely delicious. And once I spooned the relish on top of the pork there was a bit left over, so I drizzled that over some fresh tomato slices I was serving with dinner. That was fantastic! With the juicy lemon supremes in the mixture, and the added olive oil, this was a vinaigrette. Delish. MAKE THIS!

What I liked: everything about it – piquant, sweet, savory all at the same time. The fact that the juice leftover made a delicious vinaigrette to drizzle on fresh tomato slices. Or any kind of veggie for that matter.

What I didn’t like: not much of anything, really. Adjust the sweetness to suit your lemon-tartness. And I think I’d cut up the supremes into maybe halves or thirds – just because eating a whole supreme of lemon could be puckery!

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With a glut of fresh peaches on my kitchen counter, and having made a couple of peach desserts already, I decided to make a chutney that I’d serve with a grilled pork roast dinner we were going to have a few nights later. It used up 3 of the 8 peaches, 2 onions and a few raisins. The rest of the ingredients are normal kitchen shelf staples.

Finding the “right” recipe was the trick. I went to my favorite resource – Eat Your Books – that online listing I’ve made of most of my cookbooks. It told me to look in about a dozen of them. I discarded a few and was surprised to find this one in my cookbook, The Thrill of the Grill. It’s an old cookbook of mine (published in 1990) but one I turn to often when I’m going to barbecue.

I chose this particular chutney version because it wasn’t loaded with spices or herbs. The pork roast I was making was covered in herbs and I didn’t want the chutney to take away anything from the grilled pork.

The chutney itself is very easy to make. Onions are cooked, peaches are added, some salt and pepper, brown sugar and molasses plus some vinegar and lemon juice and it stews away for a short time. You don’t want to overcook this as the peaches would turn to mush, but cook just enough to soften the peaches. Raisins are added (I only had golden) and it was done. I chilled it for a couple of days, although you could use it immediately, I’m sure.

If you have some peaches you need to use – make this and freeze it for a later date. I’m going to need to do that with what I have remaining – even after a dinner for 6, I still have about 2 cups left. It may not get used in time, so freezing is a good option. It will keep for about 6 weeks, according to the recipe.

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Two years ago: Cocoa Crème Fraiche Cupcakes
Three years ago: Wellesley Chocolate Chip Cookies
Four years ago: Spinach Salad with Mango

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Sometimes – or maybe most of the time – as everyday cooks we may just steam or sauté some veggies and we’re done with it. We’re rushed or just not in the mood to make a simple veg something special. And sure, I do that all the time. Last night we had onions and bell peppers roasted on the outdoor grill with nothing but some canola oil on them. And they were delicious. No balsamic sprinkled on. No sesame seeds. No herbs. Not even any salt or pepper, actually. And they tasted fine.

But then there are times when you’d like to do a really SIMPLE sauce that will make a fresh, seasonal vegetable sing! That’s what this recipe is all about. Sue, my friend in Denver, made this little sauce that was drizzled over roasted asparagus. It was just scrumptious. Easy. Can be made ahead and reheated. You don’t make much of the mixture anyway, but it’s enough to give oodles of flavor for a vegetable for 4 people. In the picture you can’t exactly see the sauce – but it provided a bit of brown speckle (look closely) and just lots of flavor. Worth making. Do watch the butter so it doesn’t get too brown!

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A year ago: Moroccan Lamb Chop Sandwiches
Three years ago: One Bowl Thin Choc Chip Cookies (my favorite CC cookie to date)
Four years ago: Shepherd’s Pie with Chipotle Sweet Potatoes

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Whenever I fix a pork roast or thick pork chops, I like to serve some kind of sauce, or relish, or something to go with it. When we were in Denver recently, my friend Sue did a delicious small pork loin roast and had made the chutney you see in the photo, to go along with it.

She didn’t remember when or where she got the recipe, but she has tweaked it a bit – and she did so for us to try to reduce the amount of sugar in it, so Dave could enjoy more of it. It was absolutely delicious. I think it was great the way it was, so would be happy anytime with this version.  I haven’t made this myself, so can’t really attest to the ease of making it, but it doesn’t look to be very complicated at all. If you make it ahead, just reheat over low heat and serve on top and on the side. It’s a full-flavored kind of compote (mostly from the balsamic vinegar) – so you will use just a little of it with each bite of meat. Thanks, Sue, for a great new recipe.

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A year ago: Fresh Corn Confetti Salad
Four years ago: Mojito

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With a lovely double-thick pork chop to grill, I searched for a rub or glaze to go on it and found this one, a VERY easy glaze to slather on the meat half an hour or so before grilling. It’s a Bobby Flay recipe, although I found it at The Way the Cookie Crumbles, and she found it at Smitten Kitchen’s blog. About the only change I could discover was the addition of fresh rosemary. Since I have a huge supply of that in my garden, I definitely wanted to include it!

The glaze has a pronounced mustard-i-ness – the most important ingredient is mustard. But not the yellow ballpark stuff – we’re talking grainy mustard and Dijon both. And once mustard grills, it really hardly tastes like mustard anyway. The photo at right shows the dry stuff:  garlic, smoky Spanish paprika, rosemary, salt and pepper. But that’s it. It takes about 3-4 minutes to put it together. I slathered it on the pork and let it sit at room temp for about 30 minutes before my DH grilled it to 150°.

Result? We loved it. The glaze had a ton of character and flavor. Bobby Flay says you can use this on any kind of meat (beef, pork, chicken, lamb). I’ll be trying it again on a different type of meat. You can also cut meat into cubes, marinate it in the sauce, then push the pieces onto skewers to make kebabs. You do want to use a relatively quick-cooking meat with this glaze.

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A year ago: Black Raspberry Ice Cream Float
Two years ago: A photo of a Riddling Rack used as an herb garden
Three years ago: Lemon Oregano Vinaigrette

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Wanting to do something a little different as a side relish or sauce for pork, I went through countless cookbooks, hunting for a recipe for apple sauce, or apple relish, or apple chutney, that seemed right. I used that online tool that I like, Eat Your Books, but found nothing there (it searches my own cookbooks to tell me which ones contain recipes that meet the criteria). Finally found one that appealed to me when I looked at an online recipe created by Ann Burrell of the Food Network.

Her recipe was just a little bit different. I used Granny Smith apples (and one Golden Delicious, which mostly disintegrated in the cooking). There is no sugar in this side dish – just a little bit of cinnamon, some butter, apple cider (I had an open bottle of sparkling apple cider), a splash of cream, and walnuts. What a combination. Do not eliminate the cream – it’s amazing what that little bit (1/4 cup) does to this dish! Our grandchildren loved it too (of course, what’s there not to like about applesauce, right?). It went with the grilled rack of pork with rosemary, garlic and sage that I made a week or so ago. I’ll be making this again, but I’ll make a whole lot more than I did this time – the four apple recipe just wasn’t enough!

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A year ago: Mushroom Galette
Three years ago: Mulligatawny Soup (a delicious combo of chicken, curry and a bit of apple)

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This recipe has been part of my repertoire for so long I don’t even remember where I got it. When our kids were growing up, often on Sunday evenings we’d barbecue a big hunk of top sirloin – about 2+ pounds worth. Dave was the maestro at the grill and brought it, sizzling on a big, long white platter, into the dining room with a moderate amount of ceremony.

Dave loved telling stories to our kids about Sunday family dinners when he was growing up, and much to his grandmother’s consternation, his grandfather would throw slices of bread from one end of the table to the other. Far more interesting than passing a bowl or plate, he must have figured. Frisbees weren’t invented yet when this took place, but the stories were passed down through the family about Grandpa’s spinning the bread from where he sat at the head of his dinner table to whoever was requesting a slice. He preferred to sail the bread to the opposite end and let those people pass them on. Family sagas are made of this.  And although our dining table wasn’t as long as Dave recalls his grandmother’s was, Dave has been known to toss a biscuit or a roll – much to my consternation and warnings. Everybody laughs – and still laughs when Dave brings it up. My embarrassment was if anyone else was visiting (friends of ours, or friends of our kids) to think that’s the way we behaved at our daily dinner table.  My job as a mother was to instill decorum at the dinner table and teach our kids good manners. They’ll likely not remember my words of wisdom, but they’ll surely remember their Dad throwing a biscuit. Ah well, throw propriety out the door. Laugh and have fun, right?

Dave enjoyed cutting off the serving-sized hunks of the steak and putting them onto the plates stacked at his place at the head of the table. And when we were done with all the steak – it always got eaten in full – our daughter Dana wanted the juice – blood – that was pooling on the white platter – that was her favorite part. I think she still craves that part of any steak dinner at her house.

Usually I’d make baked potatoes because we all liked them. Once in awhile I’d make twice-baked potatoes, if I had the time. But this topping combines all the good stuff you like to have in a sour cream and butter topping (for baked potatoes) and puts it all in one bowl. And makes it easier for passing around the table. There’s nothing more to it than sour cream, butter, green onions (with a bit of preparation to them) and salt and pepper.

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We were having a little farewell gathering with an old group of friends – a gourmet group – that started out trying to be a “healthy” gourmet group. This was a few years ago. After meeting about 3-4 times we threw out the “healthy” part and just went with gourmet group. Anyway, one of the couples, our good friends Sue and Lynn, are moving to Colorado.

What with everyone’s busy summer schedules, we managed to get a date on the calendars just before they left. I said – let’s just do steaks and everybody bring side dishes. I made baked potatoes, but I also wanted to make something for people to put on their steaks. I turned to my favorite, new barbecue cookbooks by Steven Raichlen, and found this compound butter.

You know what compound butters are, right? Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it: A compound butter can be made by whipping additional elements, such as herbs, spices or aromatic liquids, into butter. The butter is then reformed, usually in plastic wrap or parchment paper, and chilled until it is firm enough to be sliced. These butters can be melted on top of meats and vegetables, used as a spread or used to finish various sauces.

?Pictured left, top to bottom: the ingredients (onions, bacon, mustard, butter and black pepper); the bacon and onions cooked through and slightly caramelized; and the soft butter mixed with mustard and pepper.

Once I combined all the ingredients (after the bacon and onion mixture had cooled to room temp) I plopped it in a long log-like pile on plastic wrap, then gently rolled it up, using the plastic wrap to mush it into a round shape, and chilled it until needed. That’s the photo you see at top.

The log will keep in the refrigerator for several weeks, so if you don’t use it up at your next steak fry, save the leftovers for some juicy hamburgers (the ideal match, the cookbook said). I think it would also be delicious over fresh vegetables – ones that would be good with bacon, like green beans, broccoli, leeks, cabbage, even dark greens like kale, Swiss chard, etc. So, there are plenty of uses for the butter if you have some remaining. I ended up using some of it on top of two servings of pan-fried salmon steaks. Delicious. And as I write this I still have some left.

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A year ago: Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Garlic and Rosemary
Three years ago: Lentil Soup

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This is one of those OMGosh items. When I read about it online at Monica Bhide’s blog, I was totally intrigued. It was the ingredients – lentils (she wanted red – I had yellow), canned crushed pineapple, lemon juice, a bit of sugar, cumin and red chile. If you go over to Monica’s blog, she showed hers on a piece of pork roast (or maybe it’s roast turkey). Monica is a published author – she’s Indian – but everything I’ve read about her indicates she adapts American tastes with her Indian background. I think I’m going to have to order her most recent cookbook Modern Spice: Inspired Indian Flavors for the Contemporary Kitchen now that I’ve tried this recipe!

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