Peggy Brown, meet e-commerce.
Brown, 74, chef/owner of Peggy’s Heavenly Home Cooking restaurant, is now selling “Ms Peggy’s Just Heavenly Good Gourmet Fish Breading” online at mspeggysjustheavenlygood.com.
Her breading comes in four flavors:
Hot and Spicy — “I cannot tell you everything that’s in it,” Brown says. “It’s got cayenne pepper in it, let’s put it that way. Black pepper and cayenne.”
Cajun — “A little spicy, but not too spicy. Cayenne and paprika in it.”
Lemon Pepper — “Basically, it’s got salt, black pepper, and it’s got dehydrated lemon peels in it.”
Regular — “It’s got the flour and the meal. Got white pepper and seasoning salt.”
And that’s all she’s going to reveal about the ingredients in her fish breading, which went online about a month ago.
“Well, the history of the fish breading is it’s been in the family for two or three generations. Back in the day, my dad and them ground up their own meal. And my grandmama made her own fish breading. Back then we went to the pond and fished and fried fish and everything. My grandmama cooked fish all the time. Most of the time bream and catfish.”
Her grandmother made her fish breading out of yellow meal, self-rising flour, salt, black pepper, and red pepper. “My grandmama would mix it up in a big old bowl and when dad and them would get through cleaning fish and washing them, she’d put them in that bowl and roll them around in that meal and drop it in that big black skillet and fry that fish.”
Brown used that same recipe until she got a job as a cook in the employee cafeteria at The Peabody in the early 1990s and met noted chef/journalist Burt Wolf, who was the hotel’s head chef. “He told me all about different spices. All kinds of different spices you could mix together that have a good taste.
“When I got my restaurant, I started mixing the fish breading together, but I added different spices. And everybody has loved that fish breading.”
Customers always ask where she buys her fish breading, Brown says. “I told them I didn’t buy this. I make it.” And their response usually is, “Girl, you need to be selling this stuff online.”
“I decided to put it online. I made up my mind I wanted to do it over a year ago, but I never put it online. So, a friend of mine was eating fish and he said, ‘Miss Peggy, you need to get this stuff online.’ He decided he would do the website for me. Ronald Jackson did the website. He bought the domain for me.”
They went online and Jackson picked out the plastic bags. And he designed and printed the labels. “But I told him how I wanted it.”
She wanted angel wings on the label to go along with the “heavenly” in the name. “I told him I wanted wings on the side, but he decided to put the wings on me. I just wanted the wings basically on the packaging. He said, ‘No, Miss Peggy. I got another idea.’”
Brown wants to eventually get her products in Kroger and other stores. “I’ve got a couple of things going on.”
For now, her fish breading is available online or at her restaurant at 326 South Cleveland Street.
Brown isn’t stopping with the fish breading. “Oh, we’re going to put other products on the website. We’ve got a lot of people who love the turnip greens. We got people that drive all the way from Nashville to Memphis to get these turnip greens. They have a fit about these turnip greens. They said, ‘I can’t find any turnip greens like these. They’re the best I ever put in my mouth.’ They want me to put those turnip greens and candied yams online.”
Which is do-able, Brown says. “Now greens and yams, I can freeze them and ship them anywhere in the country. You can freeze greens. You can freeze yams.”
She wants to package them in two and four-pound containers. But, she says, “This is something we aren’t doing yet.”
Brown is working on getting a Midtown kitchen space, where she can prepare and package her products. It also will serve as as a store. “We’re going to have a kitchen, but we’re also going to have a retail space where you can come in and pick up your banana pudding, come in and pick up your greens, come pick up yams. I’ll cook them. All you do is order them online. Or call me and I’ll cook them.”
Her famous banana pudding is an item that will strictly have to be picked up. She can’t ship it. “Banana pudding is something you can’t freeze. If you freeze banana pudding, it isn’t ever the same when you thaw it out. When you freeze bananas and thaw them out, the bananas usually turn dark.”
