Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Easy dip, spread, dressing

For nearly thirty years, I've been trying to cobble-up something like the superb dip that my mother used to make for shrimp -- with no luck at all until last week. And her great shrimp dip wasn't even on my mind at the time -- I just wanted something to dip my deep-fried chicken-breast nuggets in. What I came-up with reminded me of her shrimp dip. Still not the same but close enough for now.

Stir together equal amounts of Contadina Italian (tomato) Paste and your favorite barbecue sauce. My first mix used Arby's sauce, but equally good flavor should come as well from Kraft barbecue sauce, either mesquite-smoked or hickory-smoked. I aim to try both. The tomato paste makes the mix thicker than the barbecue sauce, and the barbecue sauce thins the paste while boosting its flavor.

The Contadina-Arby's mix was awfully good on the chicken nuggets and on a couple of roast-beef sandwiches. I'll also try adding a little of this and some of that from time to time, but this simple mix is pretty yummy with just its two basic ingredients -- tomato paste and barbecue sauce.

Of course, half-and-half isn't sacrosanct, either -- other ratios could be worth trying -- more than half barbecue sauce for spicier flavor, less than half to moderate the spicy flavor.

Yummy and easy -- a hard combination to beat!

Ken,
Can I assume from this post that you can eat again?? If so when do you want me to send that Stein's cane syrup?

No, still can't swallow.

But the old taste buds are as healthy and appreciative as ever, so I give 'em a treat every day -- chew something especially tasty until it's mush and the taste is gone, then spit it out. It isn't as satisfying as eating, but it's worlds better than tasting nothing day-in and day-out.

Haven't tasted good ribbon-cane syrup since -- when? -- can't remember when!

Well Ken you let me know when and it will be in the mail the next day. I always have an extra bottle or can or two around. Yours when ever you say. Maybe I could even jump in the pickup and deliver to you. Think I'd like that.

I'm suprized to hear Steins cane syrup mentioned here . The best there is . Grew up on it . Will not eat pancakes without it . Makes great popcorn balls . The Steins syrup in the can is better than the syrup in the bottal .

That's an even better offer! I'd like that too -- with or without the syrup. You could "test drive" my latest version of deep-fried chicken for me. Any time -- just let me know when to expect you.

Here is a favorite dip around these parts, I use two ripe avacodos remove meat from skin and mash up in a glass or stainless steel bowl do not use reactive bowls or containers. Mix in a teaspoon of lemon or lime juice, this keeps the avacado from oxidizing and turning brown. Next a few dashes of Tabasco some onion chopped up fine as well as some garlic. I say some because the amount is up to your taste. The same goes for crumbled bacon add as much as you want or as little if any at all. i have used crab and/or shrimp too. Now put in a cup of plain yogert. mix real good. i like to use a hand held Braun Blender. Once mixed the bacon will show up almost like pepper. this is the time to add some tomato chopped up to suit you. I like mine very fine. You can use sour cream in place of Yogert but to me it is too rich. Sort of greases the roof of your mouth, the yogert is slighty acidic and seems refreshing.

Bullwnkl.

I assume that we're all talking about Steen's (not "Stein's"). For the uninitiated among us, Steen's is the last source -- that I know of -- of genuine open-kettle ribbon-cane syrup, which is not the same as molasses, sorghum, or blackstrap. It's lighter, with much better flavor -- worlds better than the reconstituted sugar water you get in the stores.

When I was growing-up on it in the Thirties and Forties, it was available locally. I cherish memories of the mule-drawn mills that squeezed the juice from the cane, and drinking hot cane juice dipped from the kettle. Dad made superb biscuits 'most every morning, and we kids loved to poke a finger into the side of a hot biscuit, wiggle it around to open-up the inside, then drop some butter and pour some cane syrup inside to make little away-from-the-table hand treats. That was prime eatin'! We seldom had pancakes, only occasionally waffles (they took too long). Breakfasts with either hot biscuits or hot corn bread, buttered, with real cane syrup, put a lot of the real good in The Good Ol' Days and helped immensely to make the sorrier aspects of those days easier to bear. Just the thought of Steen's -- a brand unknown to us in the days of yore, in bottle or can -- makes my mouth water.

Wonder how it'd do to roll chicken-breast filets in, before breading 'em with corn meal and seasonings and deep-frying 'em in peanut oil?

Yes we are speaking of Steen's, working nights, not sleeping during the day to well and things get flakey here sometimes. My brain knows what it is thinking but the fingers sometimes won't follow along.

BTY my mother was born on a cane plantation as was her whole family. The family worked the fields and the house until LSU deveoped the machine to harvest cane. Most lost their jobs to the machine. My grandfather on my daddy's side was the mule herd for the plantation and he also was the ditch bulider. Used to "build" them with blasting sticks. Daddy moved the family to New Orleans where I was born but all my siblings were born on or around that plantation. It was called "The Marys" owner's mother's name was Mary as was his wife and his first daughter so..... When I came along the place had been purchased by the Gauhaux (?) Sugar Company. The place is still planted in cane but I think Domino owns it now, house and the company town are all gone now. Just the big oak tree that we played in is there. I love cane syrup on lots of thing most people don't think of. Like you it served to liven up a very plain food menu. I love it on all the thing tthat come readily to mind. You chicken idea sounds like it would "fly". Think I'll give it a try this weekend let you know how it turns out. My all time favorite way to have Steens is with "smothered" potatos. You brown some salt meat and chopped onions in a iron pan until the salt meat starts to render some fat. Then you add some chopped spuds and a goodly amount of black pepper, let it brown real good then stir over and do the same thing, and again. When you have a good amount of crisppy brown spuds add just a bit of water cover and "smother". Momma would serve that with hot pan bread and eggs. I would always put syrup (at that time it was Bere Rabbit) on my spuds. The sweet of the syrup and the bite of the pepper is just a taste I really enjoy. Still have it at home but use Steens now.

Didn't ever manage to drink too much of that fresh squeezed cane juice did you Ken? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Crawfish, was that blue or brown lable Brer Rabbit? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />


BCR

wink - That sounds pretty good. I never did get one of those out board motors to whip up stuff, but there's more ways to do it.

Regards, sse

Never got enough. "Too much?" Impossible! Just a sip to less than half a cupful was all that Dad would let me have on one visit. Always hankered for more -- even though a full cup of that rich stuff would've been a lot.

Br'er Rabbit? In the Thirties, local stores in southern Alabama sold local stuff. In the Forties, we ate Log Cabin syrup -- until they started cutting it with corn syrup. Later, all the store-bought stuff was either sugar-water (cane sugar boiled back into a syrup) or sugar-water with corn syrup -- pale, thin, unsatisfying imitations of real cane syrup -- sweet but thin and devoid of those familiar old cane flavors. The Br'er Rabbit cooking syrups were never the same as the syrup that we got from the plantations. My mother used 'em in recipes, but they weren't much 'count on hot biscuits or corn bread.

This thread has my taste buds squalling -- might hafta order a few cans of Steen's to calm 'em down!

Going to have to give up all my secrets. At the time I was boy in New Orleans all the Br'er Rabbit was being bottled by that sugar plant that I spoke of outside of Raceland. There were three grades (but it was really six) Pure cane, table (mix cane and corn) and molasses BUT what was sold in the stores was not the same produce that you could get from the company store in Raceland so there were really six kinds. Even the table syrup from the company store was better than the pure cane from the local city stores. My mother's family still at that time worked for the sugar company and my grandfather still look after the mules but they were only used to pull Mardi Gras floats at that time , all the work in the fields was being done by machines. We would make the trip from N.O. LA. once a month to stock up. My uncle Uyseb was, if I remember correctly, the swing shift syrup house pusher. He would have his crew pull off first batch syrup for the plant manager to bottle up as give away stuff. Some of that first batch ALWAYS ended up in glass gallon Gallo port wine jugs and there they would be waiting on my Aunt Flo's kitchen table for us poor souls who had to live in THE CITY. There would, depending on the season, be fresh black and white boudin, hog's head cheese, Creole cream cheese and for the grown ups home made cherry brandy (grandfather had a still) or cane juice rum. Grandpa took off the back wall of the house in 1956 when he did too much taste testing on a batch of Apricot brandy, never heard him speak English always Cajun French

Crawfish ain't it good to remember. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> I bet there are few who remember how to cook syrup and what it is supposed to look like when it is done.

Ken your daddy was a wise man. I had a cousin, city boy, who came to visit when we were cooking syrup one time. It was hot of course with the fire and all and there always was a dipper gourd hanging by the tin spout that funnled cane juice from the roller mill into the barrel. Anybody was free to take some whenever. It was cool and sweet sweet. Jerry was tapping it pretty regular and all Pop said was "Better not drink too much of that." I already knew.
At supper that night Jerry didn't eat much, said he was full. We went to bed. Long about middle of the night Jerry started moaning and from across the room I swear I could hear his guts going gooogle gooogle. He jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom and it sounded like somebody had turned on a fire hose. Gashoooos "Ohhhh" gashooos "Ohhh"
Then he come back to bed. Then gooogle gooogle run run "Ohhhhh" gashooosh gashooosh "Ohhhhh" all the rest of the night. He used up a whole roll of toilet paper in about six hours.
At breakfast he was pale as a ghost and weak as a kitten and not hungry at all. Pop looked at him over the rim of his coffee cup and said," I told you not to drink too much cane juice."

I think I know a guy that still cooks ribbon cane, at least he did last year. You want some that I guarantee you will put Steens in the shade and isn't cut with corn syrup holler at me.

BCR

I have no idea what you guys are talking about. But here's how I used to make syrup. We had (and still do) exactly two sugar maples in our yard, one was huge, the other medium size. Come late winter I would scrounge two or three spiggets (sic). They would come with little "s" shaped hooks for holding the bottle up, but I usually just used wire from a coat hanger to do the job. I would take one of those hand crank drills and put two holes in the big maple and one in the smaller, if I had that many spiggets, which were easily tapped into the hole. The jugs were those gallon size clear glass ones that were quite heavy. They usually sold cider or cherry juice in them.

Before getting on the school bus and if the weather was right for the day, sun shine, just above freezing, I would hang the jugs. After school, the jugs were usually overflowing with clear, cold and slightly sweet sap. If I got home near or after dark there was usually a layer of ice on the mouth of the jug sometimes down the throat, too, which was a delight. From there just pour the sap into a large pot and boil on the stove until reduced. Each day would yield about a half inch worth in a mason jar kept in the fridge. This was not good for the wallpaper in the kitchen. Neighbors had a bigger operation and tapped only on the weekends and would boil the sap outside over a wood burner. Good stuff.

Regards, sse

Sounds like a pretty good description of the night that put one of my sorrier shipmates at the Naval Photographic Center in the sick bay. The guy made a habit of cruising the darkrooms, prospecting for goodie boxes sent by folks back home -- which the crew in each darkroom usually shared openly with each other (within each darkroom). Sam Barrett and his WAVE wife decided to cure his habit. Mrs Barrett baked a shoe-box-full of "chocolate chip" cookies using two or more whole packages of Ex-Lax, which they put-up in a shoe box and wrapper from another goodie box from home. Everybody in that crew, and everybody (except the glutton) who came into that darkroom was warned. In one day, the guy emptied the shoe box -- ate all those cookies. And in one night, emptied himself.







Consider yourself hollered-at.

Which in turn brings to mind a patient whom my uncle treated one night.

The late Julian P Howell, MD, made house calls long after all the other doctors had quit doing so. At his clinic and among his county-wide house calls, he had a slew of black patients. Late one night, he went to a home where the man of the house lay abed, bound-up so tight that a package of Ex-Lax, a box of epsom salts, and a bottle of mineral oil had had no loosening effect. Figuring (correctly) that he was dealing with a muscle spasm, Uncle Julian gave him a shot of relaxant. Soon, great beads of sweat broke-out on the poor fellow's forehead. Suddenly, he leaped upright in bed, jumped over the footboard, and ran from the room -- leaving a brown trail.

He was weak when he came back. His wife in the meantime had cleaned the bed and put-on fresh sheets, and helped him get clean and into clean pajamas. He got back into bed, and the roomful of his buddies were exulting over the success of his relief. But Uncle Julian wasn't so sure it was all over yet. It wasn't. Twice more, the scene repeated itself. Finally, the fellow was too weak to walk. His buddies carried him, cared for him, and poured him back into the again-clean bed.

As Uncle Julian was checking his vital signs, the man looked intently at him ("... with admiration shinin' in his eyes," Uncle Julian said) and said "Docta Howell, you sho' do know how to make a [bleep] s---!"

That one got me to gigglin', Ken. Thanks.

As a little boy before I turned 7, my family moved to Alaska on my 7th birthday, I had the job of tending the juce press between changes of buckets. My grandfather had 60 acres of grapes and a grape juice plant. In the fall it was a family afair to make several hundred or more gallons of grapejuice. Gramps had this big press about 4ft by 8ft that cooked grapes would be poured into then squeezed until no juice was left the juice would be collected in big copper wash boilers to be heated again before bottling. Between wash boilers I got to collect a bit of juice that would drip out, just a way to keep track of me around all this home made equipment. OSHA and the health department would not only shut that place down today but would probably bulldoze it. Hot grape juice and a 6 yearolds constitution makes for interesting results, purple squirts.
Gramps also squeezed several hundred gallons of raw grape juice that much of went on to his still or was sold as wine. I did not get into that stuff until I was a teenager. Green wine has much the same results as hot grape juce with the added effect of producing a monster headache. FRUIT OF THE VINE WHY DON'T YOU LET ME GET SOBER.

Bullwnkl.

Boggy, FWIW, the technical term for that sound and the process that makes it is borborygma. I've found it to be a useful concept and term on a few occasions -- like referring to certain especially inane opinions as so much borborygmic blather, for example.

It looks to me like an onomatopoetic word -- even medical doctors can have a creative sense of humor, apparently, however wry or dry.