Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins (41 page)

MOLLY WAS ALWAYS WILLING TO EXPERIMENT
with ethnic foods, so when I suggested we do a Cajun Thanksgiving, she was all for it.

As usual, the first order of business was mood-setting music, which required a search through Molly's extensive, intermittently alphabetized CD collection. Buckwheat Zydeco. Beausoleil. Wayne Toups. C.  J. Chenier. The Neville Brothers—all requisite listening for a holiday meal replete with, in the finest Louisiana tradition, entirely too much food.

The meal revolved around turducken, a-boned-chicken-in-a-boned-duck-in-a-boned-turkey concoction that has remained popular ever since Paul Prudhomme popularized it in the 1980s. Each successive bird is encased in its own layer of dressing—each different from the next.

Molly insisted we should make our own. I agreed, provided she read the six-and-a-half-page set of instructions from
The Prudhomme Family Cookbook
—calling particular attention to the fact that the recipe's prologue cautions right there on page 110: “Since the turducken takes 12 to 13 hours to cook, and it needs to cool at least one hour . . .” That doesn't include the time it takes to bone the birds and assemble it—or the hours invested in making the three dressings and packing them around each bird.

Common sense prevailed and we ordered online from Louisiana. Cajungrocer.com became our new best friend.

We e-mailed plans back and forth, establishing a timetable for either making or assigning the sweet potato casserole, carrots sautéed in brown butter and shallots, oyster dressing, sautéed spinach, macaroni and cheese, baby
Brussels sprouts in Dijon cream sauce, mashed potatoes, and a salad of baby lettuces, red onion, artichoke hearts, and hearts of palm.

The frozen fifteen-pound package arrived a week before Thanksgiving, allowing plenty of time to thaw it in the fridge.

We haggled over whether to buy additional dressing or make it ourselves and finally compromised: we bought the andouille-cornbread stuffing but made the oyster dressing ourselves. Side dishes were parceled out.

Linda Lewis was part of the preparation action. “Everybody was curious about turducken; nobody had ever eaten one,” she recalled. “I just remember going out on the patio to chop onions and celery because there were too many bodies in the kitchen. We did mashed potatoes with butter and sour cream, which was pretty funny because everybody was oh-so-diet-conscious until they glimpsed the spread.”

Iowa farm boy Doug Zabel brought a rich, creamy macaroni and cheese. Molly was always in charge of anything involving shallots, in this instance her precious haricots verts, briefly steamed and tossed with buttered shallots. I was responsible for making gravy and the baby Brussels sprouts. This three-hour bacchanalian revel concluded with three kinds of pie—cherry, pecan, and pumpkin. Real whipped cream and vanilla ice cream were also in the mix. Those able to rise from their seats draped themselves across wingback chairs, lay supine on the couch, or spread-eagled on the floor, experiencing the consequences of debauchery worthy of second-century Romans, who, sad for them, had no mac 'n' cheese, turducken, oyster dressing, or giblet gravy.

40

LOOKING BACK CALLS TO MIND
so many memorable meals. Old, new, borrowed—none, mercifully, blue. One of the borrowed hits originated in a kitchen next door to the Dallas home of Betsy Julian and her husband, Ed Cloutman. Their neighbor, microbiologist Harrell Gill-King, works primarily as a forensic anthropologist. And if you don't think he's got some tales to tell, think again. Let's just say he's frequently called upon to identify the dearly departed after they've been departed for a while. Only the strong survive detailed dinner discussions of his assignments, especially if it's a dinner where red sauce and noodles are involved.

The first time I had a bacon-spaghetti casserole at his house, I thought I'd died and gone to bacon heaven. It only seemed right to bring it immediately to Molly's attention. As was often the case, her response was cryptic—she really didn't like talking on the telephone. I learned over time to keep it short and to the point. So I started by saying, “I gotta tell you about this meal I had tonight.” I could hear her “make it quick” sigh at the other end until I said, “First you chop up and fry a pound of bacon, then you chop three onions and sauté them in the bacon grease. Meanwhile you grate two pounds of sharp cheddar—”

Whereupon she interrupted.

“When're you comin' down again?”

“I don't know. Whenever you're in town and feel like a bacon-spaghetti casserole.”

Suddenly there is silence save for the sound of pages rustling. Molly came back on the line.

“I got a bunch of stuff to do this weekend and I'm out of town the next. How about the weekend after that? Tell me what to buy and we'll make it that night. You comin' on a Friday? Let's make it Friday night.”

Once again I manufactured a reason to not return to the newsroom after Friday lunch and hit I-35 heading south. By 5:30 p.m. we were slow-frying bacon in a heavy cast-iron skillet—this is the South; we don't cook bacon in “frying pans”: we fry bacon in skillets, usually of the cast-iron persuasion.

There is an art to frying bacon low and slow enough to force maximum crispness—that point at which it surrenders as much cholesterol-laden fat as possible. Achieving this state of fried-bacon perfection requires patience. We took turns removing bacon bits as each piece crisped up, leaving behind those precious drippings—no,
grease
—in which we would sauté mounds of pungent onion, chopped not too coarse, not too fine.

Meanwhile the kitchen was getting steamy from boiling water that would bring spaghetti just to the al dente state. By the time Molly grated the sharp Cheddar (none of that prepackaged stuff for us—although it's perfectly acceptable for the person who lacks time, patience, or both), it was time for the finishing touches: a 28-ounce can of San Marzano tomatoes (although any brand will do), dumped into a big bowl and cut up as much as possible, then added to the onions. At last the ingredients were ready. With flourishes worthy of Leonard Bernstein whipping a downbeat on the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth, assembly began.

Molly would lay down a ladleful of tomatoes and smoosh them around the bottom of the casserole just enough to cover it, then add a sprinkle of black pepper. I'd scoop up a honking forkful of spaghetti and spread that around. She'd spread several spoonfuls of onion on top of that and I'd sprinkle bacon over the onions. She'd finish it off with a generous layer of cheese and a little more black pepper.

I always wished someone had been around to take a photograph of us from behind. It would show this very tall white-haired white woman assembling a casserole with this very short gray-haired black woman, both barefoot, both wearing T-shirts and matching shiny-butt black Travelers pants from Chico's.

The layering continued—tomatoes, spaghetti, onion, bacon, cheese, pepper—until the casserole topped out with the remaining cheese (warning: there's enough salt in the bacon and cheese that it's better for diners to add their own).

We popped that puppy into a preheated 350°F oven for 30 to 45 minutes, or until the cheese melted and the contents swelled and spilled over and darned near ruined the oven because we forgot to put aluminum foil or a baking sheet under the casserole. The luscious aroma of onion, bacon, and cheese was almost overwhelmed by the odor of incinerated spillover, but the flavor was fine.

We deliberately kept the number of guests to six, knowing there would be a substantial uneaten portion. There almost wasn't after folks went for seconds and we fashioned a to-go container for Elliott. The next morning we nuked casserole vestiges and topped each serving with an over-easy egg. It was one of the few times Molly sat me down and made me write out the recipe before I went home.

41

When I try to describe Molly to others, the best way I know is to characterize her as the Mark Twain of our time.

MAURA CLARE
,
Director of Public Affairs, Council on World Affairs, Boulder, Colorado

IN THE LATE
1970
S MOLLY
became the
New York Times
's Rocky Mountain bureau chief, an assignment possibly designed to get her out of the Manhattan office, but in the best Molly Ivins tradition, she turned that to her advantage. A staunch lover of chili, she organized chili suppers at her home and entered chili cook-offs.

Zeik Saidman, associate director of The Centers at the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver, has his roots in the communications and organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky, generally acknowledged to be the father of community organizing—which promptly qualified Zeik as an Ivins kindred spirit. Zeik met Molly when she hosted Ernie Cortes at her Dallas home. Cortes, also an Alinsky disciple, received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1984 for his innovative work on behalf of social justice initiatives, including efforts to bring drinking water, sewers, and flood management to poor communities in South Texas. Zeik fit right in with that milieu. He was sufficiently impressed with Molly that when he needed a powerhouse keynote speaker for a fund-raiser, Molly was a natural choice.