AfterTaste (by Sherry)

Last Saturday I had my own little Kentucky Derby party, New York-style. Isn’t the Derby this Saturday, you ask? Yeah…so?

The point is I wanted to throw a fun, festive dinner party and someone suggested Kentucky Derby as a theme. I’ve rarely had a chance to cook Southern food so I jumped at the opportunity to test out some Southern recipes on my guinea pig friends.

I typed the menu out pretty quickly after a whirl around the Internet researching typical Derby/Kentuckian food, not comprehending how much work it would be.

Menu:

• Mint Juleps (naturally)
• BBQ Sweet Potato Chips
• Benedictine Finger Sandwiches
• Southern Fried Chicken Wings
• Sticky Honey BBQ Pulled Pork Bar with Cole Slaw and Baked BBQ Beans
• Citrus Asparagus Salad

Quite ambitious, no? Made all the more ambitious by my debilitating Spring allergies that decided to freak out in full force these past two weeks. At one point, oh, I’d say around 11am Saturday morning, as I began gearing up for this bash and really began cooking, I thought to myself, “WHAT AM I DOING? I CAN’T EVEN TASTE. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO COOK?” Nothing is more important to a home chef than her taste buds, not dexterity, not vision, just that precious tongue. But I already had 10 hungry people depending on me for bourbon and dinner so I pressed on.

With “My Old Kentucky Home” and “The Gambler” blaring, my friends and I munched our way through pounds and pounds of crunchy fried chicken, sweet asparagus, dainty cream cheese sandwiches, and crisp cole slaw (my way). The biggest hits of the night were the fried chicken, cole slaw, and the mashed potatoes.

For the chicken, I followed Paula Deen’s recipe on foodnetwork.com. It came out great. The only changes I made were that I used split chicken wings and that I seasoned the flour with salt and garlic powder in addition to the black pepper that the recipe calls for. The next time I make this (and if Matt and my friends have any say in it, there will be a next time and soon) I will try double dipping the chicken. Meaning instead of doing one round of chicken-in-egg-mixture and chicken-rolled-in-flour, I’ll do two.

I’m posting the cole slaw and mashed potato recipes, because they were the most popular and are truly my own, especially the cole slaw which I was particularly proud of. I normally hate cole slaw for its heavily sweet, one dimensional mayo-y flavor. Even the vinegar based cole slaws are always still a little too sweet for my tastes. So I made cole slaw the way I wanted: spicy and tangy. And judging by everyone else’s reaction, it’s the way they wanted it too (but never realized it).

And They’re Off!…Pigs.

Spicy Sherry Slaw

1 package pre-shredded cole slaw mix (cabbage and carrots)
2-3 scallions, chopped
4-5 tsp. reduced fat mayo
3 tsp. Dijon mustard
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbs. white vinegar
3-4 dashes garlic powder
5-6 dashes onion powder
3 dashes smoked paprika
2 tbs. Frank’s Red Hot Sauce (or however spicy you’d like it)
2 dashes Worcestershire sauce (optional)
Salt and Pepper

Serves 6-8.

1. Whisk together all the ingredients besides the scallions and cole slaw mix. The dressing should be a pale, pale yellow-y pink and should be thin. Use the above amounts as a general guide, but you might like it slightly sweeter or less tangy or more spicy. Feel free to go nuts.
2. Toss the dressing with the cole slaw mix and scallions (reserving a pinch of scallions as a pretty garnish).
3. Chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour. Toss once more and garnish it with reserved scallions right before serving.

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

1 lb. Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
1/4 - 1/3 cup heavy cream or half and half, room temperature
6 cloves garlic, unpeeled and whole
4 tbs. unsalted butter, room temperature
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Serves 4.

1. Heat oven to 300 degrees. To roast garlic, place whole cloves in foil and cover in olive oil. Loosely wrap foil around the garlic, leaving it open a bit. Roast garlic in oven for approximately 20 minutes or until garlic is very soft when you poke it.
2. Put peeled and diced potatoes into a large pot of salted water. Place pot over high heat and cover. When water comes to a boil, check the potatoes for doneness by inserting a knife into the middle of a couple of the cubes of potato. The knife should go cleanly in and come out easily. By the time the water has been boiling the potatoes should be done.
3. Drain the water from the potatoes and place the potatoes back in the hot pot they cooked in so the heat from the pot dries up the water clinging to the potatoes. Begin mashing potatoes. Add cream, butter, garlic, salt and pepper. Taste for salt content and creaminess. Add more butter if not rich enough. Add more cream if too dense or if it’s not coming together smoothly. Add more salt if…well, you know. Finish mashing until smooth.

Mint Juleps Noo Yawk Style

5 cups water
3 cups sugar
1 bunch fresh mint
1-2 bottles Kentucky Bourbon (Jim Beam)
Tub full of shaved or crushed ice

Serves anywhere from 1 (yikes) - 15.

1. Boil sugar in water over medium high heat until sugar completely dissolves. This is not the ratio for a typical simple syrup, which is usually 1:1, but when I did that initially it was tooooooo sweet and syrupy.
2. When sugar is dissolved, take syrup off the heat and drop in six or seven mint leaves while the syrup cools. The mint will turn brown. That’s okay, just make sure to fish these out after the syrup is room temperature (brown floaty things in your drink ain’t pretty). Add six or seven fresh mint leaves in syrup again. Put syrup in the fridge. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
3. Serve mint julep in a small cup (preferably a silver one) by piling ice high in the cup, pouring in about one shot of bourbon, and filling most of the rest of the cup with mint syrup. Garnish with mint and a short straw (I bought flexi-straws and trimmed them with scissors). I say short straw because as the drinker sips from the straw, your nose is pushed into the mint garnish and fills with the beautiful scent of mint…which then masks the horse poo smell.

Other Tips for a Derby Party:

• Buy paper plates from a children’s store or some party supply store with horses on them. They exist, trust me. Just avoid the ones with cowboys on them. Unfortunately, Manhattan has a severe shortage of party supply stores so instead of horses I just got some pretty pastel green plates with very genteel white ribbon and flower patterns on them and striped pink and white and green and white napkins that reminded me of seersucker.
• If you’re dying to make fried chicken but can’t deal with making that much chicken, make fried chicken wings. They’re just as delicious and taste the same, just in miniature.
• Decorate the house with red roses (like the wreath thing that the winning horse wears).
• Wear a seersucker blazer or a giant flowery hat with a flowery sundress.
• If you can’t get silver julep cups, get small silvery paper cups. Please, no 16 oz. blue Solo cups.
• Make as much ahead of time as possible, but of course that goes for any type of party.

Mr. and Mrs. Derby