25 August 2022

When it comes to dishes inspired by US states, we could lay quite a spread:

We’d start with California Rolls, Maryland Crab Cakes, then move on to Kentucky Fried Chicken with Texas Toast, finish with a nice slice of New York cheesecake and wash it all down with a Blue Hawaii.

I can’t think of another state that has several dishes with its name in it, and the one I can think of is Mississippi. Mississippi Mud Pie/Cake. Mississippi Mule cocktail. Mississippi Pot Roast. It is this last that concerns us here, for herein lies a tale, so horrifying, so bafflingly improbable, that I caution you not to read it before bed or after taking caffeine. Proceed with caution.

Last Sunday our family was gathered at my brother’s house for Mississippi Pot Roast, a dish I remembered having lots of Pepperoncini in it, and perhaps some vinegar. I have a recipe in a newish cookbook featuring American Regional food, and I recall not only making it, but inviting a friend from the South (assuming he’d had it before?) to eat it with me.

When our party walked into the house on that rainy Sunday afternoon, our nostrils filled with a rich, savory, marrow scent. I asked the Chef de Cuisine the secrets of her recipe, which was a slight alteration of the “original” recipe, which is itself an alteration of an earlier recipe that dated from the late 1990s. I was surprised to hear that Ranch Dressing packet is a typical ingredient, and something clicked in my head. Something was not quite right. Hmmm….well, maybe the recipe I was using made its own Ranch spices, because I can’t recall buying a packet of Ranch.

The finished product was marvelous. Sapid. It was much more balanced and beefy than the one I’d made, which was piquant and tangy. Hold a moment, just as an aside, if I ever start my own children’s puppet theater, my flagship characters will be called Piquant and Tangy. OK, back to the mystery.

Later that evening, when children and parents were snuggling into their beds, I sat at the bar, nursing a icy glass of Rosé, formulating my thoughts for this very essay. I was concerned, for the Mississippi Pot Roast tasted nothing like what I remember and was so good surely I would have remembered. Then what could I have been thinking of that had beef and pepperoncini and the word Mississippi attached to it? I quickly referenced the website where I keep all my cookbooks organized and indexed. I typed in Mississippi Pot Roast and got back zero results. What? i thought. I have made this dish, I have made a dish like it, right? Mississippi Roast. Nothing. Pot Roast brought forth several dozen recipes none with pepperoncini as an ingredient. Finally, I just typed the word, Mississippi.

This brought up the very cookbook I thought the Pot Roast I made was from. It had two recipes with the word Mississippi in it, mud cake and mud pie. Next to the Mississippi Mud Pie title, was a check mark, meaning I had designated it made, and apparently enjoyed it. I gave it 4/5 stars. I have no recollection of making this dish whatsoever.

The nearest I can come to it, is that I read an online recipe for Pot Roast, intended to make it, described it to a friend and something or other, but Oh my stars and gardens I don´t know what made me think I made that pot roast. So, you see, the moral of this story is that that psychiatrist is right, we do forget things and make other things up in our minds and decide that they really happened exactly the way we remember them happening, but they didn´t really happen that way, right? Get it? Anyway, make the Mud Pie. It´s good.