Gentrified Camp Mountain Lake Red-Eye Gravy
Everyone else but Heather and I were off fighting about line-cutting at the folding table buffet. He called us over, pulled us into conspiracy. “You want to try this.”
Will was a ready-made friend assembled off-site and brought in as a palliative by my parents. Mom and Dad made us move. There was no consultation. The new house wasn’t that far from the old neighborhood from their perspective, but they had a Buick. I knew the distance by a twelve-year-old’s bicycle reckoning. My old friends were a crow’s fly mile away now but there were obstacles. Cahaba Road’s ups and downs, Montclair’s traffic, and a well perimetered country club enforced isolation. All my friends were there and I was stuck here. Will’s dad used to work with my dad and lived a few blocks away from our new place. They signed us up for the same soccer team.
It worked. Will was, and is, a good guy. I’m friends with his older brother Kevin, too. That last part wasn’t the case until much later. Kevin didn’t take to me at first. That wasn’t my fault. Our school went grades five through twelve. Kevin was a high school senior and Will and I were in sixth and seventh grade, respectively. Kevin had spent the summer tuning, buffing, and otherwise worshiping his powder-blue late sixties Mustang. The car was a showpiece, but in a muscular way, and would have ushered in a new age of Kevin high school ascendancy as he drove past the lower lot, slowly circled past main entrance, and eased into a reserved senior parking place. But his mom told him he had to drive me and Will to school with him every morning. We didn’t figure in the triumph.
The first morning he picked me up, I was told to get in the back with Will. Kevin glared at us. “I don’t hear a fucking word out of you two. Got it?” and Blaupunkt-ed The Producers’ “She Shelia” to crisp ear-shattering eleven. That was our morning every day for a month.“I don’t want to…” and Blaupunkt Producers followed by “Piece by Piece” by The Tubes. The woofers thumped my braces. We only lived a mile and a half from school so I never found out what mixed tape magic followed at the three spot.
Come early October, I bailed and decided to skateboard for the rest of the year. As a result, I met a ton of older kids. Damn near every student en route to school would slow and ask if I wanted a ride. I was in seventh grade, but a minute’s worth of vagabond travel a day in this or that upperclassman’s car in the morning and seniors would pass by me and my friends in the halls with a “Hey, Ben.” I was known by older kids. I felt cool. I also picked up on schedules and knew when to thank for but refuse a ride because “it’s a nice day” if there was a better chance of hitching along with Jenny of the tight sweaters and large chest. She had blond hair and a comfy red BMW 318i. There was a spell where she dated a fellow senior who drove a cherry red late sixties Mustang—not quite the equal of Kevin’s—and he was covetous, I guess, because on mornings when he drove her to school they’d zip right by. She’d wave as they passed. That’s something. I endured their short affair and slipped back into accepting the kindness of less attractive strangers. I was thrilled when they broke up. She ended up at Harvard. Her kid and mine have been in a few plays together. Unbelievably nice person.
Outside of situations where having a younger brother and his dork friend spoiled a summer’s worth of garage work and distracted from acid washed sunglasses, Kevin was a pretty good guy to hang around with. The summer following our move to the neighborhood, I went off to camp with Will and another guy named Will from the other end of the street. Kevin was one of the councilors. The three of us would sign up for all Kevin-led trips and activities because he treated us like lieutenants.
Near the end of the month long session, you’d go off in groups of ten to twenty with three or four councilors for a two night, three day delve into the woods, in one direction or another, to cook hot dogs on the end of a stick and maybe put your arm around a girl’s shoulders by the camp fire. Kevin led a hike to a waterfall, a trickle, really—we were expecting some grand Niagara-like wall of noise and spray the way they talked it up—dropping nine or ten feet into an icy cold swimming hole. Somehow, he arranged it so the Wills and I got horses. We needed to ride up ahead and scout or some nonsense. I don’t know how he conned the administration, but we had four saddled and two packed. Will, Will, and I did almost all of the unnecessary galloping across open spaces.
One night I almost kissed a girl named Heather. Her friend, a girl named Mickey who smoked, told me Heather liked me and I should give it a try. I did put my arm around her at the campfire and we decided to go together for the remainder of the term until we all went home, which was maybe four days.
As an aide-de-camp-councilor, I helped screw together the scaffold to set over the fire. On that, we set metal grills for burgers and steaks at night and iron skillets for messy eggs and bacon in the morning. My proximity to power impressed Heather. It was a good gig.
One morning, Kevin, who is now a chef in adulthood, made a spectacular amount of bacon and a resulting spectacular amount of grease. After he pulled bacon and set it in buffet pans, he poured a half a pot of coffee in to the smoldering skillet, making a few pops and a lot of steam. Everyone else but Heather and I were off fighting about line-cutting at the folding table buffet. He called us over, pulled us into conspiracy. “You want to try this.”
He tossed a bit of butter in and stirred. Next, he pulled a bag of white bread from the mess box, took a few pieces and passed it to us. We all dipped and ate. Heather didn’t like it. There were cracks that would have shown had we not gone our separate ways. Kevin called it red eye gravy and I thought he invented it.
More than a few red eye recipes claim to be original or authentic. I don’t believe there’s an original recipe. Cooks deglaze with liquid. A pan sauce made from coffee and grease was inevitable and doubtless discovered on every trail and through every pass since Sufi monks invented jitters in the 15th Century, or whatever other story of the first brewed coffee is ascendant of a moment.
Camp Mountain Lake went to hell a few years after I left. The place shut down and was abandoned. A Facebook page popped up so old campers were able to trade snapshots from endless summers. A few intrepid alums explored the old site and posted archaeological pics of overgrown cabins and barely recognizable boathouses. Someone bought it a few years ago, redid and repaired the place, and reopened as a glamping compound. Hipsters got it.
Below is red eye gravy made at home by older people with air conditioners. Full stop. Hipster takeover of my former camp is coincidental and not to be extended metaphorically to besmirch the recipe.
Gentrified Camp Mountain Lake Red-Eye Gravy
1 shallot, minced
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
8 oz. Pancetta, diced
handful flat leaf parsley, chopped
2 cups coffee, or more as needed
chicken stock, if needed
unsalted butter, as needed
flour, all-purpose is fine
optional: some heat – pepper flakes, cayenne, Tabasco, habanero – whatever you like and however much you choose
Finely chop the shallot, garlic, and parsley.
Set a skillet over medium-high heat. Get it good and hot, add pancetta and make grease.
Cook the pancetta until it’s ready to eat. If you’re not a frequent pancetta cooker, it doesn’t take much. You’re basically browning cubes of bacon so firm it up and let it develop some darker colors—a little char is nice. Add the shallot, and continue, stirring everything around now and then for thirty seconds. Add the garlic and continue stirring for thirty more. Pour in the coffee, let half or so boil away. Sometimes I add chicken stock if the coffee is too astringent, sometimes I don’t. Make that call yourself. Throw in the parsley and whatever heat, if any, you prefer. I used a pinch of cayenne and added a pinch more after tasting at the end.
I’ve gotten lazy with roux and that’s made a difference in my life. I used to fret over ratio, wonder if this or that calls for toasted flour, and overall make like I’m fete-ing Cajun royalty rather than trying to get whatever’s in front of me to stick to the back of a metal soup spoon. Now I put a few pats of butter on a cutting board, pour a little flour over it, and mash it with my thumb. It’s a little more involved than I make it sound. There’s pinching with one or two other fingers, but that’s about it.
I don’t care how much pseudo-roux I make as long as it’s enough. Take a few chips or flakes of roux and whisk it in. Repeat until it looks thick enough. After that, taste for salt and pepper and serve.
This was great over chicken thighs but not terribly photogenic. Here it is in glory with a polenta cake.
Upscale campfire grub. Yell “Come and get it!” and dance a chuckwagon cookie jig while dressed like Fred Astaire.