The Price of P-Funk

If you’ve been reading Gourmet Squatter, you know I love my wines, funky. By funky, I mean I like my dry reds Virginia Woolf-deep, wines that provoke the androgynous mind, compelling you to take a second glance at the color, wines that make you stick your nose in the glass over and over again like a child at the beach, digging through the wet sand in search of treasure. You know you have arrived when you smell the earth at her most vulnerable. Some folks use words like wet cellar or wet leaves. But in my experience, these wines can smell like everything from stinky cheese and wet soil to armpit, sweaty socks and lovemaking. These wines possess Sly Stone-swag, your descriptors getting more and more creative as they unravel in the glass. When I think of the essence of grape funk, I think, Pinot Noir, and like all the things worth having, this grape is called the heartbreak grape as it is difficult to grow. It’s also difficult to find a really well-made bottle for under $25. Last year, when my budget took a boost, I bought several bottles between $20 and $35 mainly from Oregon and was really bored. The aromas were flat, vacant and uninspiring. Today I got off work ready for that good P-funk, so I told the wine dondadda at one of my favorite wine stores, that my budget was $30. He recommended the 2009 Soléna Grand Cuvée Oregon Pinot Noir as a supremely aromatic wine, but the bottle I had was aromatically dead. I tried and tried to smell something, but there was nothing there. A couple weeks ago I bought a bottle of 2009 Sonoma Cuvée Russian River Valley Pinot Noir for just over $20. P-funk jumped out of my glass along with aromas of braised short ribs and marionberries. On the palate, there were dark plum, stewed fig, clove and anise flavors that glided through the lush, cashmere body. I bought the ’08 vintage this evening which wasn’t as interesting, but sometimes, you have to hunt the P-funk.

 

Heaven-Bound Oxtails

On January 2, 2002, the greatest Jamaican oxtail stew cook to ever walk this earth died. Her name was Coralee Ivadney Vaughn, and she was my grandmother. That same year I wrote a poem called “Heaven-Bound Oxtails,” and the poem would go on to win $500 in some bootleg poetry competition. But Moms (my grandmother) would have been so proud. I often think of her preparing Jamaican oxtail stew for God and all the angels. I imagine everyone from Bob Marley to John F. Kennedy, Jr. chewing bones and laughing, those sin-tender oxtails taking their palates to places way beyond the firmament. I know there are many Jamaican take-out spots serving mediocre oxtail. Shame on you! When oxtails are made with love and care, the dish becomes foie-gras- delicate. This isn’t Moms’ recipe as she died before I got a chance to get hers, but this is pretty damn good, too. Enjoy!

                                         In loving memory of Coralee Ivandney Vaughn

                                                        Sunrise: August 4, 1916

                                                       Sunset: January 2, 2002

Ingredients:

3 pounds of oxtails

Nature’s Seasoning or your favorite meat seasoning (dry jerk seasoning works too)
Season to taste (2 tablespoons recommended)

2 chopped large onions

8 chopped cloves of garlic

12 thyme sprigs

4 ounces Gravy Master  

15.5 ounces of canned butter beans

1 tiny piece of chopped scotch bonnet peper

Preparation:

Season oxtails with Nature’s seasoning, half the chopped onions, half the chopped garlic, 6 thyme sprigs, and 2 ounces of Gravy Master. The longer the meat marinates, the better. Try to marinate overnight.

Put oxtails in pressure cooker.

Put enough water in the pressure cooker to cover the oxtails.

Place pressure cooker on stove top over high heat.

Pressure meat for at least 45 minutes or until tender.

Transfer meat from pressure cooker into Dutch pot or large deep pot meant for stews.

Place all the remaining chopped onions, garlic, scotch bonnet pepper and thyme in pot. Taste oxtails to see if they need more meat seasoning.

Cook over medium-high heat for half hour or until the gravy has reduced.


Drain canned butter beans of all juice then add to stew.

Remove meat from stove stop.

Serve with Busha Browne banana chutney.

Serves 3 people

The Song Picker’s Barbecue

Today someone asked me how I came to write about food. I always struggle with this question and so my answers are usually silly and unsubstantial. I love food is usually my go-to response. But the question I ask myself on those frustrated, ink-constipated nights is: Why am I still writing about food?  Aren’t there more important stories to tell?  Is this what God called me to do—to chat about foie gras and Pinot Noir? Then I walk through Carol City, The Song of Solomon chapter of Miami barbecue. I watch  those fiery rhythms wind up to the sky as slabs of old southern recipes straddle pits the way they always have and always will. And I get to tell those old stories that begin with some great, great grandmother who can recall history’s history—the song pickers who made damn good barbecue with trees on their backs. Then I’m relieved for a moment.    

In the Land of No Ice Cream Cones

I was having one of those days. You know what I’m talking about—avalanching bill collectors, late checks, forgotten invoices, and nothing but everything in the fridge. A day when you find out that the harvest will be late and that the road is even longer than you knew it was.  I was feeling weary and the last thing I wanted to do is post anything on my little blog, but then I ran into this photo I took during a Christmas mission trip to Manchester, Jamaica. I remember this little man—dusty with poverty, rich with charm, oozing the swagger of a true Wailer. He and a bunch of his comrades joined me for popsicles at the local bar. They didn’t serve ice cream cones, just Red Label wine, Red Stripe and popsicles.

Bareback in Vacqueyras

I’ve been in smorgasbord-heaven for the last five days. I deserve it. The year is ending, taking with it the pangs and woes, victories and defeats, answered prayers and unanswered prayers, good bottles and bad bottles. For me, it’s been a year of staring mortality dead in the eye, leaping bareback into oblivion and emerging like a ravenous tiger. I know you know what I’m talking about. You lost jobs. You found jobs. You lost loves. You found loves. You paid bills. You didn’t pay bills. You slept. You haven’t slept. You passed exams. You failed exams. You lost faith. You found faith. But you’re still here—sticky-fingered, messy, pissed-off, and rejuvenated. So am I. Enough sermonizing. What about the wine? At first, the 2006 La Cuveé du Président Vacqueyras tasted like a 40 year old man on the brink of a mid-life crisis. The dark fruits were still there, but they were dull and sluggish, like they were hanging on to lives already lived. But I was patient. Most men need coaxing, right? So I decanted it and waited 45 minutes. Those repressed dark fruits began to emerge with flavors like mushroom and black pepper. There was some dark chocolate, and the body wrapped around my palate like cashmere. But I do believe this wine is in its last and closing days of time. But you aren’t. And that's what’s important. 

Cooking for the Jam-American Sadists



A black pepper dry salami mixed green salad precedes this year's gluttony showdown



In my family, I’m considered “The Black American.” If I do anything distinctly un-Jamaican, my mother, an old-school, Jamaican kitchen-magician is quick to explain my peculiar behavior: She was born in this country. You know how dem stay. I’m a first generation Miamian, and so for my pre-dominantly Jamaican-born family, I’m usually the go-to reference for all things black American. My mother loves to hear the southern, ghetto, black American idiosyncrasies that drip from my mixed Jamaican-Brooklyn-Miami-white-girl twang. She loves when I precede our now adult conversations with: Girl, she said this or he said that. That said, Thanksgiving is considered my holiday. I took the cooking-torch from my mother back in 2000, vowing to bring black America to our Kingstonian table that usually begat dishes like curry goat, rice and gungo peas and jerk turkey. As a child, I secretly envied my friends whose Thanksgiving tables boasted macaroni-n-cheese, honeymoon salad, homemade buttermilk biscuits, peach cobbler, sweet potato pie, and those turkeys that looked like the ones in the Crisco commercials. I hated our desserts which consisted mainly of “puddin’ ”—a dense sweet potato dessert that I’m still not crazy about. But there’s a lot of pressure to please these Jamaican flagged palates that can season meats blindfolded and transform the blandest dish into a boisterous score of rhythmic flavor. My mother and aunts are amazing cooks, and if you don’t meet their expectations, they’ll growl in disapproval. A few years ago, a very dear friend joined us for Thanksgiving and had a full-on, face-buried-in-my-sheets panic attack when presenting her crab stuffing to the flavor sadists. It was a hit, though they complained about having to wait so long for its completion. My cooking reviews have been good though my mother would never entrust her beloved rice and gungu peas to me.