The Artful Evolution of Hal & Mal's by Malcolm White

Author:Malcolm White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2018-12-03T16:00:00+00:00

Aunt Myrtis’s gumbo

L.A. was the business manager at Perkinston Junior College and was always involved in something. He never had any trouble recruiting his kids, Larry, Genene, and Terry David (known as Tiger), as well as Hal and me to work on his projects: clearing land, building weekend cabins, digging lakes, organizing this or that adventure. The best one was the houseboat and camp on Mary Walker Bayou, a brackish waterway connected to the magnificent Tchoutacabouffa River, which flows thirty miles south to a wide mouth just north of Biloxi Bay. Noted Mississippi potter George Ohr dug most of the clay for his exquisite and otherworldly masterpieces from the banks of the Tchoutacabouffa, which takes its name from the Biloxi Indian word for “broken pot.” We also loved the local lore regarding how the bayou got its name. Mary Walker was supposedly a “lady” from New Orleans who came to live in a fishing and logging camp along the waterway but was subsequently extradited back to Louisiana to account for her alleged misdoings.

In addition to the old houseboat, which was rigged with a full kitchen for long weekends out on the river, Uncle L.A. and Aunt Myrtis’s compound featured a waterfront pier with john-boats and ski boats. At this weekend and holiday paradise, my cousins, brother, and I were drawn to the “Big Oak,” a massive live oak tree perched on the banks of the river where we tied up our watercrafts, set up day camps, and spent summer days skiing, fishing, swimming, and lazing around. Our friends the Cooks and the Davises also kept camps at Mary Walker. Billy and Mary Cook were like our family—we spent enormous amounts of time with them and their kids and accompanied them on many memorable summer sojourns to the Great Smoky Mountains and the emerald beaches of northwest Florida.

Mary Walker is also where Hal and I first tasted Aunt Myrtis’s gumbo, which I now think of as fish-camp gumbo (meaning that it uses whatever has been caught that day) and which we serve today at Hal & Mal’s. Aunt Myrtis caught and picked blue crabs, bought or netted local shrimp, made a magical dark roux of pork fat and flour, and then slowly added sausage, ham, okra, onions, tomatoes, peppers, a bay leaf or two, and a handful of herbs and spices. Hal and I always got tickled when customers called us to their table to complain about the leaf in their gumbo: “Yes, that’s a bay leaf we use for seasoning, and it’s a good luck charm for the patron who ends up with one in their bowl. Like the baby in the King Cake, the recipient gets to host the next party!”

On our first Hal & Mal’s menu, I wrote that our Aunt Myrtis’s gumbo recipe was created and learned at Mary Walker Bayou, near the hamlet of Vancleave. One day, Sissy Anderson, widow of well-known Ocean Springs painter Walter Anderson, lunched at the restaurant and summoned me to her

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