Eggs well-beaten with red pepper flakes and salt
Panko or coarse bread crumbs, spiced with different spicy seasonings
Nana’s secret ingredient (mixed colors)
Hot honey or ghost pepper ranch dressing (for dipping) DIRECTIONS Coat special ingredients in flour
Dip in egg mixture
Roll in breadcrumbs
Fry until crispy
Devour
I’LL START BY THANKING all of you faithful readers, incarcerated and otherwise, for the incredibly heartfelt outpourings as my execution day is upon me. It’s been my pleasure to have, ahem, served you (see, I haven’t lost my sense of humor!) over the years as my appeals dragged on until every avenue dead-ended at the chamber where I’ll draw my last breath. It has been a wild ride, and sharing the various gourmet and not-so-gourmet offerings I have prepared over the years has been a wonderful outlet for the inspirations I have taken from my work in the kitchen and at the typewriter—and more recently, the computer I’ve been allowed as a special dispensation.
I’ll think back on how I regaled you with tales of the prison kitchen, where my skills at making lasagna and meatballs won me favor—and favors—with the other inmates. When the general population found out I knew my way around seasonings and sauces, I was immediately seen as someone to protect. So, I’ve not once had a hand raised to me, nor have I been forced to my knees or all fours. Prisoner and guard alike have seen to it that I get the ingredients and seasonings that I need to work my culinary magic, and the warden has exploited my talents whenever he and his wife host parties. Remember that famous movie about the accountant who went to prison because he was falsely accused of murder and, when his special talents were revealed, he was afforded courtesies in exchange for doing taxes and cooking books? My culinary abilities afforded me similar courtesies—extraordinary for one in my, shall we call it, special circumstances. At first, I was closely supervised and strip-searched after I completed a shift to assure I had not absconded with cutting tools, but I eventually was afforded a level of trust because I prepared lavish meals for the warden. When cooking for the warden and his A-list roster of guests, including two senators and at least one pop star, I limited myself strictly to surreptitious substitutions of ingredients. More on that later.
For those of you on the outside, I hope you have gained some appreciation for the innovations I’ve demonstrated in the kitchen, supplementing ingredients supplied courtesy of the state prison system to serve up three squares. To this, I must acknowledge my collaborators on the inside. There are too many to single out, but their names have graced this publication and they require no introduction. Well beyond the stereotypical creations that literature and film present—Jailhouse Slop 67 showed you how the preparation of DIY alcohol is a painstaking process designed to achieve the correct balance so that the drinker is not blinded or worse—the can-do attitude of my incarcerated brethren has enlightened me time and again. We’ve exchanged techniques, and I’ve jiggered their recipes to become more flavorful.
With one exception, I will mention a name, and with somber purpose. As of this issue of Jailhouse Slop, my hundredth, I pass the blog to Johnny Partridge. He’s in here for killing a meth dealer and his family, a troublesome bunch of community menaces. If you ask me, Johnny did his trailer park a service and should be, as we say, a short-timer. But the powers that be believed otherwise, and he’s serving four consecutive life sentences—one for each of the meth dealer’s wife and three children. Johnny is a quick study, and rose easily from dishwasher to prison-kitchen sous chef. I’ve taught him everything I know, and he’s ready to take the tall hat. Jailhouse Slop will be in excellent hands.
As for me, I think it fitting that I speak about my last meal, which I will, of course, prepare under the watchful eyes of the guards. I go this one alone; no need to involve others when I need all my attention to do this last meal in keeping with my high standards. Since it is the last thing I will eat on this mortal coil, it might as well be a masterpiece.
I’ve taken the liberty of sharing the menu with you here:
• Spicy jailhouse ramen soup with pork, green onions, and a hardboiled egg
• Cheesy garlic tube biscuits with gourmet herbs and hot honey butters
• Cellblock odds-and-ends salad with kicked-up bottled blue cheese dressing
• Spaghetti and meatballs, with special sauce
• Grilled steak with asparagus and mushrooms
• Chocolate coconut cake, which I will share with the guards
• Blood orange hibiscus iced tea
And as a special favor, my favorite dish as prepared by my still-living Nana. She doesn’t get out, or around, much, but, with the family pitching in, she was able to pull together all the ingredients for her Extra Special Crispies and is allowed to prepare them in the conjugal visits trailer under guard. My sister has accompanied her to act as sous chef, and I’ve been led to understand that they are busy preparing the snack as I write this. When you’ve finished reading this issue of Jailhouse Slop, you may wonder, What kind of grandson is he? Be assured, my Nana won’t be implicated. She is terminally ill, and has made arrangements for an assisted suicide. She’ll be dead before anyone sees the first word of this—let’s call it what it is—confession. My sister, you will soon discover, knows nothing of what Nana and I share, and is blameless for our activities.
I’ll not retrace steps here; you’ve read these recipes and reflections in different blog posts. But, for those who might need a gastronomic reminder, I’ll mention a few highlights.
Ramen is a wonderful template/base for just about anything. You can break it up to add crunch, add a handful of instant rice and a sprinkling of hot sauce for a heartier soup, and mix it with proteins and cooked vegetables for a pasta dish. You can also season it yourself for a less-sodium version. As a bonus, the unused flavoring packets work nicely with microwave popcorn.
Tube biscuits are marvelously versatile things, fit for filling, flattening, even frying. Be sure to puncture them with a fork so that your melted garlic and herb butter gets into the nooks and crannies.
Odds-and-ends salad is a godsend for those who don’t want to waste food, a mindset that more people should adopt; the convicts certainly do. There are unique flavor profiles to be experienced. The best items to use are the harder vegetables that few want: broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts. Grate them into small strips, mix with remnants of other salads (coleslaw works exceptionally) and you have a hearty and, in many cases, healthy option for those days when you want to eat vegetarian.
Don’t let anyone tell you that a box cake mix is wrong. If you prepare it properly with an extra egg you will get a thick, springy, and delicious dessert base. When you go to punch holes in it to receive the ganache, use chopsticks or thick straws; the bigger the hole, the better.
Meatballs are best baked; use a muffin tin. And don’t forget to wrap the meatball mixture around a hunk of mozzarella or parmesan. Do not use provolone; that’s best for sandwiches.
Anything in a jar or can can be elevated; be sure to rinse canned vegetables gently in a colander to remove excess salt, and then re-season to your liking before cooking.
Those were great to write, and better to eat, I can tell you. In here, no one has complained to me directly about what I put out for them, thanks to my devotees and their methods of dealing with, let’s call them, dissatisfied customers. People do have a nasty habit of dying in this place from things other than sickness and old age. Occasionally, secondhand reports have reached my ears, suggesting that my food may have disagreed with some of my fellow prisoners; one particularly troublesome character who ended up in the infirmary after one of my meals claimed I had poisoned him. I take food and its preparation far too seriously to demean it by lacing it with something that might make someone sick. I cannot, of course, speak to what some might do to it before they take it to others.
In any event I hope you excuse the protracted reflection on the experience; I promise now that the “meat” of this blog post is imminent since my last meal is nearly ready to come out of the oven and I don’t want it to get cold.
I learned most of what I know about cooking in the kitchen of my Nana, who had seemed old even when I was very young, but who nevertheless possessed energy and a meticulous nature when it came to the preparing meals. I willingly pitched in, taking care to learn proper knife skills with my Nana’s guidance. Nana taught me how to achieve an even dice, how to julienne with precision, and the proper thickness to slice any ingredient for frying. But my best memories of cooking are from the times I stayed with Nana when my parents were off on their weekend getaways, which sometimes extended into the next weekend. Nana and I would shop for ingredients, taking care to obtain the best cuts, even if we were buying the cheaper sorts of beef, or chicken pieces. Nana could work magic with cast-off ingredients or imperfect produce.
“It’s all going the same place, baby boy,” she would say, carving away a blackened, rotting bruise on an apple. “And, once it’s prepared, you won’t even realize that it was uneven or had brown spots.” That perspective served me well in the prison kitchen, where fresh ingredients were often an afterthought.
I was twelve when she introduced me to the Extra Special Crispies, and from that day until my arrest, they were a staple in my weekly meals.
We both liked spicy food, often competing with each other to see who could eat the most hot peppers (she always beat me) or withstand the hottest condiments (we came out even in this category, owing to my ability to handle sweet-hot, which Nana didn’t care for). The correct seasonings were a joint venture—lots of experimentation before coming up with the right balance of heat for the breading. Nana loved her fryer; it is older than I am and no one else in the family really appreciates it, or handles it as well. I hope it doesn’t go into the trash, because it’s definitely got the essence of thousands of meals baked into it. I think it was called a Fry-Luxe. It was this huge thing that looked like a pressure cooker. Heavy metal with a dial on the front that always correctly set the temperature for oil or grease.
Nana treated her grease like holy manna, straining out the impurities so she could use the stuff indefinitely. It was almost like sourdough starter. She’d take a little and add more fresh lard or oil to it, and let it combine. In all my time working in the kitchen with her I only remember changing the oil a few times. She also rarely cleaned the vat, letting months, even years, of cooking embed itself on the vessel’s surface. That’s where the special flavor came from; it imparted an extra level of taste in everything. Chicken essence in French fries? Sure, sometimes Nana would even throw in some un-breaded chicken when she cooked fries. Tempura? Of course, she would spice up the beer batter a little with something exotic in the oil. Calamari? One of her most popular dishes that preceded Sunday supper. And then there was the best of all: the Extra Special Crispies. I’m the only one who knows Nana’s secret ingredient.
You are probably wondering why I have not yet addressed the secret ingredient. Since Nana’s preparation will die when we do, I will get to it, I promise. There is just so much to reminisce about within this recipe.
I remember well the first time that I encountered the raw rings of meat—various colors, mostly pale white, but with some darker shades, floating in a bowl of salted water. Nana carefully dried each one, coating them individually and forming a large pile of breaded things resembling fat calamari. She then transferred the pile into the hot lard in the fryer—Nana told me that lard always added an extra layer of flavor to any food, especially spicy offerings. I watched them sizzle and slowly float to the top, breading browned and crispy. She fished them out and placed them on a wire rack with paper towels underneath, letting the excess oil drip off.
When she put them into a serving bowl and sprinkled a chef’s kiss of spices on them, it was all I could do to not dive in face-first; the smell drove me mad. But I was patient, and she set out various dipping sauces. When it finally came time to taste them, she handed me one and took one for herself. And then she told me the secret.
It was an eye-opening conversation in many ways, illuminating vistas on exciting possibilities for new recipes, ingredients, cuts, and preparation. That moment determined the path that led me to this point, a path that you may have read about or viewed in the movie they made about me (though upon the revelations here, I expect an updated version of the film will shortly follow my demise).
And, yes, I did let my baser instincts out once or twice during my stay in this state-run Hilton, mainly in instances where the warden forced me into cooking a multicourse dinner for the aforementioned senators in an attempt to secure more funding for prisons, most of which would go into his pocket in the form of consulting fees. Those politicians, and their high-toned wives, will soon discover that the cuts of meat they swooned over during dinner were not the specially-ordered wagyu beef they’d been promised. That beef was intercepted and served to the inmates. I substituted flesh harvested from the bodies of inmates who had passed or been killed. The inmate who assisted the visiting doctor managed to get me some choice cuts, usually thighs and buttocks, but occasional cheeks and earlobes. Those all went into that wonderful dinner that I prepared at the warden’s behest, and those of us who had the wagyu got a good laugh over the story when I told them.
But I hear timers going off and I see the guard approaching me with a covered dish that I can smell from where I type this. The bowl is put in front of me and the cover is lifted. I nearly swoon. Nana’s Extra Special Crispies. She has outdone herself.
The bowl is heaped high with the delectable little rings, perfectly and evenly golden, not a speck of excess grease. The guard places two small dishes, one containing hot honey, the other the familiar red orange color of my Nana’s specially prepared spicy ranch. I take one of the breaded delights and hold it to my nose, savoring the bite to come. I always take the first one without dipping; one must experience the unadulterated flavor of the treat first. I shove the golden ring into my mouth; it’s still hot, but I chew and taste the flavor profile as it washes over my palate. The yeasty level of the breading, the multiple layers of heat, and finally the sinewy chew of the ring itself.
I offer one to each of the guards. The first follows my lead and pops it into his mouth without dipping; the second dips his in hot honey and declares it “tastes like pork rinds.” I’m a bit put off by this, but I say nothing.
We make short work of the treat, my last connection to Nana, and since the rest of my meal is before me, I’ll tell you the secret ingredient.
It was quite simple. Nana knew a doctor in the neighborhood who delivered babies and did other sorts of work on older men. His work involved precise excision of an intimate nature, and he was careless with disposing of the snippets. Nana, always on the lookout for new ingredients, found the discards and began experimenting. She soon involved me in the harvesting, evolving beyond cast-off odds and ends to going “top to toes” on the long pig—a clever euphemism, if I may say so—not letting anything go to waste. One good kill fed me and Nana for several weeks, and we would never repeat the same menu. I fondly recall the first time she let me create and prepare my first bill of fare. She was thorough in her praise and constructive in her critique. The menu went thus:
A consommé made from a variety of marrow, with leeks and garlic. Nana liked the lightness of this dish, and complimented my handling of seasonings.
A raw dish fashioned after poke; I used lips, earlobes, and cheek meat. There wasn’t much more than a couple of mouthfuls for each of us, and Nana suggested that I harvest more protein, especially from the second lips of women.
Our main course was a grilled thigh pounded partially flat and crusted with coarsely ground coffee and herbs. I made a refined sauce using blood. This was, unfortunately, the least successful part of the meal because I pounded the meat a little too flat and it overcooked slightly. Nana liked the seasoning, thought the sauce was too salty (I did, too), and suggested rolling rather than pounding the meat the next time.
My potatoes were spiked with the finely sliced skin of breasts, pan-fried like bacon. It was impossible to tell the difference.
I made a stew using root vegetables, kidneys, sweetmeats, and the liver. The flavors didn’t unite, and Nana experimented with it, turning it into a Bolognese if I recall.
I used more blood to make a pasta, which came out wonderfully and added a pop of color on the plate. Nana marveled at this addition, and stole the recipe from me.
My successes in preparing this meal inspired me, and it led me down the path that brought me here. I became infamously known as the Gastronome, and, yes, I terrorized the surrounding states as a cannibal killer, a crime I was never suspected of. All who knew me saw me as a self-trained chef, a kitchen prodigy. Someone you wanted to have cook dinner for you. What they never realized is that those special meals sometimes incorporated parts of my victims, carefully rendered to masquerade as protein. I’ll go to my grave knowing that I supplied hundreds, maybe thousands of men, women, and children, with their first taste of long pig. And I know they enjoyed it; they all told me so. It’s almost comical that I am not on death row for any of this. I’m here because I killed a drug dealer who supplied my staff with cocaine. The dealer happened to be the son of somebody important who sought revenge through the legal system. I was convicted though they never found the body. I’ll spill the tea; the dealer had been run through an industrial meat grinder after being deboned. He was sold as ground beef, or Biff, since that was the name he used.
I’m down to my last few sentences since the first course is now growing from hot to merely warm. I sincerely hope I will have room after eating the lion’s share of Nana’s Extra Special Crispies, or, if you prefer, deep-fried spicy foreskins. To the guards who watched over me during my last meal, you had the pleasure of eating the ends of penises, and you enjoyed it.
As for me, I go to a fitting end, myself bound for frying. I’ll admit, a little part of me hopes you don’t waste the meat.
Bone appétit!