Kelly At Large # 128 The Kentucky & Derby Edition
On horses, home, and biscuits. Complete with recipe.
Hello from Paris! Where probably no one but me celebrates Derby Day. And even when I do, it’s a day late and a dollar short, because who’s going to stay up to 12:57 a.m. for a race that lasts two minutes top?
Derby Day, anyway, is less about the race than a celebration of spring, an ambivalent reminder of home where as a kid I’d run around at a party thrown by some grown-up neighbor who’d foraged in the market or their backyards for some mint which they muddled up with sugar and bourbon. We were only allowed sips of that, but we’d grab some strawberries which were dipped in chocolate, and sometimes pause in our games to watch the races on TV, or gawp at the ladies in hats which would do any coronation proud.
Sometimes I’d just sit in a lawn chair admiring the watery sunlight or, need be, lurk inside, laughing at the rain, which interferes some years, and is so ridiculous. How can we live knowing the sky can fall at any time?
I left Kentucky at 22 and I’ve never been to the actual Derby, though my grandparents used to work at Churchill Downs sometimes, and my grandmother took me once. I think she ran the elevator up to the fancy boxes for owners and trainers and their rich pals, while my grandfather mostly cadged drinks and cigarettes out of sight of his very Southern Baptist wife.
Still, every now and then I sneak off to the races at the hippodrome at the bois de Vincennes in a kind of fake nostalgia. When I left my region, half of the men I ran across would joke. “Kentucky? Isn’t that where they have fast horses and pretty women? Or have I got that the wrong way round? Pretty horses and fast women! Har har!” Though I preferred them to the people who figure there’s a KKK robe in every closet, or make inbreeding jokes about marrying our cousins, which is pretty much a pre-condition for being royal (see Victoria, Queen), so I don’t know why it made me so ashamed.
Every now and then, when we were still in New York, I’d have my own party and put on a display of hillbillyism that would wow my guests with its corniness, and epicurean delights, maybe confecting a Derby pie rich with chocolate and pecans.
But what I did this year was watch soccer with the Girl. And half-heartedly make biscuits, slapping ham inside. And having recently learned that chocolate pudding was really only fancy creme patisserie, whipped up some of that with strawberries on top. And when the day was over cut several sprigs of aggressively spreading mint for tea.
It didn’t feel the same as other years. Maybe because my ties to Kentucky are fading with both parents dead. Or maybe the ritual like salt has lost its savor. I marvel at the horses’ speed and strength, but also their frailty, and it is no longer seems like an accomplishment, but an affront, for the puny human mammal to master the wind.
Lazy Dyke Derby Biscuits
What you do is open up your ancient Joy of Cooking, and then loosely follow the instructions using whatever ingredients you have in the house, and whatever steps you’re motivated to indulge in.
In my case, that meant getting out a medium-sized bowl and dumping in about 1 ¾ cups of flour made up of half whole wheat and half regular, with a packet of baking powder, a pinch of salt, and some chopped up rosemary fresh from the plant which is looking pretty good these days since I liberated it from the overbearing mint and strangling winter savory. I ground up some black pepper, too. And briefly considered adding some pecorino, but was feeling too lazy to grate it, so that’ll be another day.
After whisking that together, which breaks up the lumps and aerates it a little so you don’t have to sift anything, I sliced in some cold, salted butter, maybe about 3 or 4 tablespoons worth, though the recipe says you can add anything between 2 and 7, and quickly rubbed it into the flour, essentially squishing it between my fingers, until some pieces were like sand, other butter chunks were like big flattened peas. You don’t want it to melt into the flour, so be quick.
I put it into the fridge to chill the flour a little, while pre-heating the oven to 230 C. (450 F)
When I figured the oven was almost ready, I got the flour mixture out, and used a fork to mix in about ⅔ cup of cold milk to which I’d added a good slug of vinegar because baking powder loves sour things, and no way am I buying a whole thing of buttermilk to make biscuits once.
When that started to ball together though it was still pretty crumbly, I got a hand in there and scooped one side over the other, squished it down, then did it again. After three or four more folds, I put it on a floured board, smushed it into a rectangle, flipped it, so it was floured on both sides, folded it once more, smushed it down once more, straightening the edges by pushing against them with a butcher knife, and then cut the dough into nine squares. You can of course, cut out biscuit rounds with a cutter or a glass, but that’s just one more thing to wash.
Those, I baked on parchment paper for I don’t know how long, pulling them out when the edges were brown and they’d risen pretty well. So maybe ten or 12 minutes.
They were reasonably light considering the half whole wheat flour, and really very good, which just goes to show that you don’t need fancy, fussy techniques, and a pound of butter to make something worth putting in your gob.
Long Reads
The classic Hunter S. Thompson piece, The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved.
The Only Way Out of the Child-Gender Culture War, The U.S. is becoming an outlier. Punitive bans won’t help. Better evidence will.
I wanted to make the case to the right that the bans (12 states so far and counting) are unduly punitive, counter-productive and might have unforeseen consequences—such as children with severe mental health needs not seeking treatment, or doctors afraid to give it to them.
But I also wanted to make the case to the left that the U.S. is becoming more of an outlier in terms of the approach it favours (“affirmation”), the frequency with which it turns to medical solutions, and the ages at which doctors are allowed to perform surgeries.
“Across the world, doctors are expressing caution over side effects, acknowledging the experimental nature of medical interventions, and entertaining the possibility that the recent surge in teenage trans identification is socially driven rather than solely evidence of previous underdiagnosis. That has put much of Europe on a different path from the United States. Either these countries—including some of the most progressive and LGBTQ-friendly nations on Earth—are secretly as right-wing as [Texas governor Greg] Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, or they know something America doesn’t.”
Welp, that’s it for this time.
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Disgruntledly yours,
xoxo K
Hello. :-) And your Derby Day party way back when was great! I'm opposed to horse racing, having witnessed an on-track death during my only time at a racetrack, but I can get into just hanging with friends over biscuits, Derby pie, and a mint julep.