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Last Supper, Florida-Style
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Published: September 28, 2008
A favorite parlor game, "Last Supper," asks guests to consider their final meal. Not to be confused with death row inmates and their fondness for final repasts of tacos and cheeseburgers, this version of Last Supper asks you to contemplate a life well-lived expressed by your most sensual food memories.
As a chronicler of Florida and a food devotee, I applaud the cornucopia provided by Florida agriculture - and the result of a milestone in world history.
For starters, imagine mounds of Ruskin tomatoes, Belle Glade lettuce, Oviedo celery, Immokalee radishes, and Wauchula cucumbers, with slices of Frostproof oranges.
A secular search for Florida's Holy Grill properly ends at Big John's Alabama BBQ establishment on 40th Street near Hillsborough Ave. Heavenly smoke beckons serious eaters to sample Jackson County porkers fattened on goobers and sacrificed to the altar of the food gods. A slab of ribs or chopped pork butt glistening and hissing from hours of slow-cooking is homage to patience - and glorious fat.
But in deference to the state's cattle industry, a sizzling rib eye or smoked brisket provides tasty variety and regional balance.
Greenville watermelon, Valrico sweet potato pie and Islamorada key lime pie, garlanded with hibiscus, complete the all-Florida food fantasy. A vintage merlot - or citrus wine - deserves a proper toast: "Cent' anni" - May you live a hundred years!
This dream feast was made possible by powerful forces that created Florida and the modern world. Every ingredient, from the larded pie crust to the sprigs of hibiscus, from the Iberian hog to the Hereford cow, originally came from someplace else. The "Columbian Exchange," begun by Christopher Columbus in 1492, is a story of how pigs, cows, wheat, milk, tomatoes, wine, and oranges came to America and Florida.
Floridians can take pride in knowing that a meal worthy of a last supper could be divined from native foods and animals. What gourmand could walk away from a table laden with Apalachicola oysters, Cedar Key clams, buttonwood-smoked mullet, broiled Charlotte Harbor pompano, a Vernon wild turkey, Immokalee-roasted corn, Chattahoochee pumpkins, Bealsville squashes, and swamp cabbage (legally harvested in La Belle), a feast finished with fritters made from coontie roots and turtle eggs? Fritters batter-fried in bear fat (illegally rendered), drizzled with Wewahitchka Tupelo honey, Plant City-raised strawberries, roasted Jasper pecans, and boiled peanuts from Jay complete the politically incorrect and legally misguided meal.
The ultimate Florida meal is described by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in her classic 1938 novel, "The Yearling." After a disastrous encounter with Old Slewfoot, the orneriest bear in the Big Scrub, Penny and Jody Baxter join the straight-shootin' but hell-raisin' Forrester boys for one of literature's great hunting stories. Heart-pulsing chases, baying hounds, and unerring marksmanship culminate in a feast for the senses.
Rawlings sets the scene under the canopy of the Big Scrub.
"Penny cut the backstraps from the fattest buck and sliced them for frying for supper. ... He improvised spits on which he hung the wild-cat carcasses. He sliced the wild-cat and panther hearts and livers and stuck them on sticks and propped them over coals to roast. The smell was enticing. ... They passed the bottle once more. Mill-Wheel's swamp cabbage was done. Penny emptied it on a clean palm frond. ... Penny made hush-puppies of meal and salt and water and fried them in the fat the venison had cooked in."
'Buck said, 'Now if I knowed they'd feed you this good in Heaven, I'd not holler when I die.'"
Gary R. Mormino directs the Florida Studies Program at USF St. Petersburg. He can be reached at gmormino@stpt.usf.edu.
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