A Good Meal Is Hard To Find | Martha Hall Foose
A Good Meal Is Hard To Find: Storied Recipes from the Deep South
By Amy C. Evans & Martha Hall Foose
Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.
Martha Hall Foose: I'm Martha Hall Foose, and I've got a new book coming out, A Good Meal Is Hard to Find: Storied Recipes From the Deep South, with my good gal pal, Amy C. Evans.
Suzy Chase: Okay, let's do a quick quarantine question round. Number one, where are you living?
Martha Hall Foose: Right now I'm in Greenwood, Mississippi, which is about halfway between Memphis and Jackson, in the Mississippi Delta, right on the banks of the Yazoo River. We also have a farm that's the next county over, that's a family farm, and then I have a house out there in a place called Pluto, Mississippi. Lately, we haven't been out there too much except to go mow the grass because of a lack of internet connection, but we split our time back and forth between the two places.
Suzy Chase: What restaurant are you dreaming of going to after the quarantine?
Martha Hall Foose: Without question, The Beauty Shop Restaurant in Memphis, Tennessee. Karen Carrier is the chef there and I want to eat her dish called Watermelon and Wings. It's chicken wings with cashew dust and chili sauce and then slices of cold watermelon on the side. That's what I want more than anything.
Suzy Chase: I've been revisiting recipes that make me feel like home, things my mom used to make, like a simple bologna sandwich or potato salad. I know you have a reverence for passed-along recipes. I'm wondering what dish is getting you through this.
Martha Hall Foose: I know this sounds corny, but chicken pot pie.
Suzy Chase: No, not at all.
Martha Hall Foose: To me, it's just the ultimate comfort. In A Good Meal Is Hard to Find, we have an easy peasy recipe for one. When my son was little and he'd get mad at somebody, he would say, "You chicken pot pie," and so that always makes me laugh and feel at home, and my mom makes a great chicken pot pie. The other thing that seems to be a big comfort dish is just simple broiled catfish with tons of lemon and butter and Worcestershire sauce on it, just broiled with some rice on the side. For some reason, that's been something that we've been going to at least once a week.
Suzy Chase: Okay, now on with the show. As I understand it, this cookbook is a love letter to women and food and the deep South. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Martha Hall Foose: First, I love my collaboration with Amy Evans. She's a dear friend and also has been really inspirational to me. So the first love letter would be to my partner in this venture. I think a lot of times when people talk about Southern cooking, there are two extremes. It's either mamaw in the kitchen or it's some dude chef with a pig tattoo, and there doesn't seem to be much in the middle of people that, as Amy and I say and has been said before, of people that are trying to make a way out of no way. I think that's something that probably resonates with people a lot these days.
Martha Hall Foose: Also, Amy and I always found this sort of mystery of the names that are at the bottom of recipes that are in community cookbooks. A lot of times the woman isn't even mentioned by her own name. It's Mrs. J.D. Palam or something like that, and not even recognized by their own name. They were just the adjunct of whoever the husband was. That kind of rankled me and Amy, and so we wanted to give a voice to just the neighbors. Through that, we just created this whole community of imaginary friends.
Suzy Chase: Women were their husband's wives back then. They weren't an individual.
Martha Hall Foose Right. If there's a community cookbook from a church league or a benevolent society of some sort, for example, there's one recipe title that always stuck with me, called Mrs. Munson's Cold Tongue. It was this beef tongue recipe, but it wasn't even Lila Munson or whoever she was. We don't even know who Mrs. Munson's first name is. Things like that were a jumping off point for us.
Suzy Chase: Yeah, I remember my mom used Mrs. W.S. Chase up until I'd say the mid '70s and then she dropped it and she became Marilyn.
Martha Hall Foose: Yeah, and then sometimes it would be Mrs. George Jones, nee Snavely , so you could have her father's name, but you still didn't know her first name.
Suzy Chase: Yes. Oh my gosh. Food is a lens to society. When I think of Southern food, I think of a story that goes along with a dish or ingredients. You touched on this a little bit just now, but talk a little bit more about how community cookbooks or the Junior League cookbooks have influenced you.
Martha Hall Foose: Those were the first cookbooks that I really read. When I was a kid, they were always in our kitchen. Growing up in a rural area, like the Delta, everybody was trying to do a fundraiser for either the church building society or the missionary society or the Elks or the Episcopal church ladies. All sorts of fundraisers were always going on. Those were pretty much the first cookbooks that I was exposed to really, that and Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook or Joy of Cooking. They have a fond place in my heart just because they were the first things that I knew of what a cookbook was.
Suzy Chase: How did you meet Amy C. Evans?
Martha Hall Foose: We were both trying to figure this out. She had come down to work on an oral history project throughout the Delta and we think we met through that, maybe at the farmer's market here, which was just getting started and she was documenting the beginning of the new farmer's market here. That was I don't know how many years ago, over a decade I would guess.
Suzy Chase: Can you describe the first time you two sequestered yourselves at your farmhouse in Pluto, Mississippi to put this cookbook together?
Martha Hall Foose: I was so thrilled. I had approached Amy about this idea a couple of years before this initial retreat and kind of bugged her about it. Then I was like, "Quit bugging her about it, Martha." Then out of the blue, she called. She had been at a conference and one of the things was about collaboration, and then she finally warmed up to the idea. Then it was like, "Okay, let's get together and do this."
Martha Hall Foose: She came out to Pluto, which is 17 miles to a gallon of milk once you get out there. Basically you have to bring your own fun when you come. She was bringing her daughter, Sophia, who was pretty little at the time. I figured I needed something to keep her occupied, so I brought my cotton candy machine, which did a great job of keeping her busy. My cousin, Leanne, who is the inspiration for Lenore's Hot Tamale Balls, which is a recipe on page 82, her name is Lenore Ann, but we all call her Leanne, she came out with this. Leanne cooked for us and gave us inspiration. Amy and I sat at this sort of 1950s Formica table in the kitchen and stared out the window, and honestly drank a bit of bourbon and ate a lot of pie, and just started thinking about the wonderful titles to her paintings.
Martha Hall Foose: Some of the titles, let me get to the illustration page and I'll tell you a few of them that are my favorite. There's one called Loretta Put the Coffee on the Stove and Crawled Back in Bed to Find the Details From Her Dreams. She had already set up the first line, or the idea, through just the titles of her paintings. Then we started to talk and imagine these women's back stories. What kind of coffee was Loretta going to put on the stove? What was she getting in back into bed to think about? Or one painting is Marge Took Her Usual Measurements. I think that's the first recipe in the book. Actually, it's the second recipe I think in the book. We decided that that would be two fingers of vodka and some grapefruit juice that she was measuring.
Martha Hall Foose: We just got really into these women's back stories and then the more we talked about them, a lot of times the more tickled we got at ourselves, first of all, for just sitting there making up these ridiculous stories, and then second of all, some of them are a little poignant. Some of them are about heartbreak or remembering somebody that had passed. I mean, at some point it got to the point where we really felt like they were just pulling up a chair at the table and telling us about themselves.
Martha Hall Foose: One of the things we really wanted to be cognizant of is Amy's paintings usually just include three objects and sometimes they're very baffling, like the one that is the chicken pot pie recipe. The painting is a vintage Swanson's chicken pot pie box, an old rabbit foot keychain like you used to get out of the prize machine at the skating rink, and a dill pickle. Then it has a painting of a floral oilcloth on the side. We wanted to keep the stories that didn't just tell a start-to-finish story, that also gave you room to interpret the stories the way you wanted to and the way that these women, we made them up for the readers and home cooks to finish the story themselves so that they became their own friends as much as they had become our friends.
Suzy Chase: I'm curious to hear about Grace's Four-Cornered Nabs on page 85. Can you read this head note?
Martha Hall Foose: Sure. This one was inspired by Amy's grandmother. It's one of my favorite of Amy's paintings of all time. It features a old Samsonite-style train case with the outline of a large ham, with a comma and then a nab. For those that don't know, nabs are the little crackers named after Nabisco's little crackers like you find at a convenience store.
Suzy Chase: It looks like a Cheez-It.
Martha Hall Foose: It looks like a Cheez-It, but for those in the know about nab, there are two different types of nabs. If we were on a road trip and we pulled into a convenience store and I was going in, I would say, "Suzy, do you want some nabs?" and if you said yes, now I would say, "Do you want round or four-corner nabs?" Round nabs are the ones that are regular plain or malt crackers with cheese in the middle or peanut in the middle. If you say I want four-corner nabs, that means you mean the cheese ones with peanut butter filling.
Suzy Chase: Oh.
Martha Hall Foose: That's a little nab trivia for you there.
Suzy Chase: Can you read the head note, please?
Martha Hall Foose: Sure.
Martha Hall Foose: "Grace couldn't take any chances, so she fit all sorts of contingencies in her train case. This was, after all, the first time she was making the trip to visit her granddaughter all the way over in Texas. For all Grace knew, they ate brisket for breakfast, lunch and dinner. That just wouldn't do. No, ma'am. Grace made sure that they would have some proper Alabama staples within reach during her visit, so she packed some nabs at the last minute just to make the trip bearable."
Martha Hall Foose: Then it has a recipe for the cheese crackers and then a peanut butter filling.
Suzy Chase: Apparently, they're are proper Alabama staple. That's my favorite line.
Martha Hall Foose: Well, that and a good ham.
Suzy Chase: Yes. It's so funny, because I can vividly picture Grace in my head.
Martha Hall Foose: Good. That's what we were hoping for. See, now she's your friend, too.
Suzy Chase: You have a Notions and Notes section with every recipe, and this recipe, you included some ways to serve the crackers, other uses for the filling, and the best is if you don't have a decorative pastry cutter on hand, you can use a rotary fabric cutter with a scallop blade, but wash it before you return it to your sewing box. That made me laugh.
Martha Hall Foose: There are a couple of the notes that are pretty silly and then some of them that are actually geared to help the home cook complete these recipes. For the most part, they're really straightforward recipes. Most of them are only a page long. Things like notes on serving, if you want to make something extra fancy, or if you don't feel like making part of the recipe and you want to use a frozen pie dough or refrigerated pack crust, we're not going to shame anybody and be like, "Well, you've got to make your home pie crust or you're doing less." But sometimes a girl's just got to do what a girl's got to do.
Suzy Chase: Amen. I, like you gals, am intrigued by consumerism. This line right here in the cookbook jumped out at me, "How the throwaway matchbook can become a keepsake for a lifetime." Now, I remember when my dad remarried this lady who was from West Texas, her name was Wylena Joe. We called her Joe. Well, Joe loved her pastel-colored, modern '80s decor. She'd say, and I'm not even going to try to do a Southern drawl, she would say in her Southern drawl, "Suzy only likes old stuff." Can you talk a little bit about your hunt for stories at estate sales or resale shops? I live for estate sales.
Martha Hall Foose: We do too. It's the things in the back of the drawer that we love.
Suzy Chase: Me too.
Martha Hall Foose: I found this towel hook that's this small hand and it's so weird that it's like, first of all, who would buy this, and then second of all, why would you keep it in the back of the drawer because it's so awesome if you had it. It's questions like these that really sent Amy and I. We also love the sweet little gestures of people using things that they've got. Amy and I talk about she had done a wonderful oral history with Miss Streeter, Pattie Streeter that runs a farm right near here. At the farmer's market, she ties up her bundles of spring onions with little red yarn bows. It's things like that that Amy and I just love. We love everything from old Avon perfume bottles to, oh, don't get us started about a yardstick that advertises a hardware store. Who knows how many of those each we've got. It's those things that you're not ever going to see again. They're not making more of them.
Martha Hall Foose: I said this in my first book, that in a way we're sort of homesick for a place we still live. That's not saying we have some imagined idea of what good old days in the South were like, because that's not what we're saying. It's more of the community involvement. I guess during this stay home time for everybody, it's spending the time to do those little things and to appreciate small things, I guess, a little bit more.
Suzy Chase: Last night I made Clementine's H-Town Queso. It goes with the Crawfish Puppies, but I can't find any crawfish in New York City right now in the middle of the pandemic. I made this, and this dip was inspired by the old Felix Mexican restaurant in Houston. Can you tell us about this recipe?
Martha Hall Foose: One woman that Amy and I both are inspired by and love so much is Lisa Fain and her Homesick Texan blog and also her Homesick Texan cookbooks. Amy grew up in Houston and lives there now. Although Felix's is no longer a going concern, this queso had a cult following and is very regionally specific to the Houston area. As much as the recipe has a lot of characters that are in the Delta, we also wanted to make sure that Texas got a great representation and so Lisa was actually kind enough to share the recipe with us.
Martha Hall Foose: For those that are thinking this is the ubiquitous cheese dip that you found in a Tex Mex restaurant, it's got sort of a, how would you describe it, I would say sort of a garnet oil slick across the top of it.
Suzy Chase: Well yeah, because you use real cheddar cheese and I think that makes for the slick.
Martha Hall Foose: Yeah, yeah. It's got a little chopped onion, and diced tomatoes, and garlic, and chili powder, and hot paprika, and you use shredded cheese in it. I mean, it's just a good snack if you're hanging out on the couch.
Suzy Chase: Which we all are.
Martha Hall Foose: Yeah.
Suzy Chase: What I learned from this recipe is the secret ingredient is the paprika.
Martha Hall Foose: Kudos to Lisa, because I'm sure there was a lot of research that went into trying to get this thing just right.
Suzy Chase: Yeah, queso's a toughie.
Martha Hall Foose: She has a book, she has a book that's called Queso. If you want to broaden your queso world, you can to her book.
Suzy Chase: Speaking of cookbooks, now for my segment called My Favorite Cookbook, what is your all-time favorite cookbook and why?
Martha Hall Foose: My all time favorite cookbook is one that was published in the Delta and I think initially it was published in the '70s, but it's called Bayou Cuisine. One thing I love about it is because it's sort of brilliant the way it's put together, not just the way that the book is structured, but they used this comb binding that you see on so many community cookbooks. But this one has a time-release self-destruction, where after about five years the comb binding gets so brittle it breaks and the index falls off the back. The recipes aren't divided up by breakfast, appetizers, fish, poultry, in that kind of order, so there's no way for you to find the recipe unless you have the index. Then after the index falls off the back, you've got to buy a new copy of the book.
Martha Hall Foose: I think that's going to be my plan for my next book, is to put a self-destructing comb binding on it. But I think you can find copies of it online and I think they've put sort of a condensed version in a bound copy, but Bayou Cuisine, or as people one state over might call it, Bayou Cuisine. But in Mississippi we say bayou.
Suzy Chase: So it's spelled B-A-Y-O-U?
Martha Hall Foose: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Suzy Chase: Okay.
Martha Hall Foose: We're very specific down here.
Suzy Chase: I love it. Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Martha Hall Foose: There is a website that we're beginning, or Amy is beginning to get together, called AGoodMealisHardtoFind.com. As I get my social networking together, you'll be able to find all the links how to get in touch with us in any possible way. Also, there's a section for people to get in touch with us. As people make recipes, we'd love for them to send us pictures. In the end of the book, we say, "Thank you for visiting with all of us. Please do stay in touch, drop us a line and some snapshots of your favorite dishes when you have a minute. Amy, Martha, and the ladies. P.S. You can find us at AGoodMealisHardtoFind.com."
Suzy Chase: This cookbook is the perfect Mother's Day present. Thank you so much, Martha, for coming on Cookery By the Book podcast.
Martha Hall Foose: It was my pleasure. Y'all stay safe and tell some stories and cook a lot and be safe.
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