Cooking blog

I’m getting old. You’re getting old. We’re all getting old. And with getting old, being tired always comes. I’m exhausted. All. The. Time. I have more than my share of health problems. Two years ago, I had a partial thyroidectomy because of cancer. And my surgeon thinks I have it again. Tiredness and extreme fatigue come with thyroid cancer. And I struggle with it. Every. Damn. Day. But my family still needs to eat.

Enter the Yankee shit that sometimes goes down in this house. Being married to a Yankee, I’ve started to open my mind to cuisines that tend to have Northern leanings. I tried pasties for the first time a few months ago. They were good, but could have used some Tony’s Creole Seasoning. I’ve been looking at ways of making chowders, soups and stews, in between gleaning over PhD programs in system engineering. I was re-watching an episode of Big Love the other day revolving around a funeral. Lorday, those Mormons love them some casseroles for funerals. And someone mentioned a tuna casserole. Tuna casserole? Sounds easy, which is music to my tired-ass ears. I’ve concocted the easiest tuna casserole that tastes halfway decent. I’m not saying that I’m ready to trade in my scapular for Mormon garments, mind you. I’m just saying that eating casserole never came up in Vatican II.

1 lb. wide egg noodles or dumpling noodles, cooked per package directions

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

1 1/2 cups evaporated milk

Large can or 3 small cans tuna fish, drained and flaked (just mash it with a fork)

12 oz. package frozen peas

1 1/2 cups plain bread crumbs

3/4 stick of butter

Combine tuna, milk, soup, noodles and peas in a large bowl then transfer to a casserole dish. Melt butter and mix with bread crumbs. Spread bread crumb mixture over the top of the casserole dish. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 or 25 minutes, but check on the topping often. The bread crumbs will brown quickly—don’t let them get too brown.  I’m still trying to wholly accept this dish into my culinary repertoire, but with burnt bread crumbs on top, it ain’t gonna happen.

My ten-year-old’s school has quite the variety when it comes to the lunchroom: chicken alfredo with broccoli, beef burritos with Mexican beans, pepperoni calzones, Salisbury steak, and (always, at least once a month) some jambalaya dish. Okay now look, my mother didn’t cook jambalaya. My grandmothers didn’t cook jambalaya. My aunts didn’t cook jambalaya. And my great-grandmother didn’t cook jambalaya. I didn’t grow up eating the stuff, but Lili wants some, so I’m trying different kinds of jambalaya. Every time I see a “jambalaya cookoff”, I gotta roll my eyes.  Do you know how many different varieties of jambalaya there are? I’d sit there and calculate it using combinatorics I learned in my discrete mathematics class in graduate school, but let’s save time and just say “a whole lot. Like a LOT.”

I personally eschew combining meats and seafood normally, and every jambalaya dish I see combines shrimp with something else. Nope. Not in this house. Hell to the neaux. I can’t tell you how tight my sphincter gets when I see “shrimp and andouille PASTAlaya with cream sauce” on a restaurant menu. Don’t get me started. The only combination of shrimp with meat I can forgive is chicken and shrimp gumbo. That’s it. But shrimp and andouille? Nope. Shrimp and tasso? Negative. Shrimp and sausage? You get the picture, now get the F outta here with that nonsense. The following recipe is shrimp jambalaya. Not shrimp and sausage jambalaya. Not shrimp and anything else jambalaya. I’m already out of my comfort zone making jambalaya. Give me a damn break.

2 or 3 cups chopped onion

1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper

1/4 cup butter

3 cups vegetable broth

1 1/2 cups uncooked long-grain rice

2 teaspoons of creole seasoning

1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

2 cans (14 1/2 ounces each) diced tomatoes, drained

2 pounds cooked shrimp (I like to use the large or extra large.)

Saute onion and bell pepper in butter until tender. Add broth, rice, creole seasoning and Worcestershire sauce.  Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cover. Cook for 15-20 minutes until the rice is tender. Stir in tomatoes and shrimp and heat through.

Anybody that knows me knows that I’m not a baker at heart. I’ve got friends that make the cutesy Pinterest-worthy cupcakes that would make you barf from all the glittery fabulousness sprinkled all over that shit. Not this girl. Nope. I bake this cake for my Uncle Pie because it’s the only cake he likes, and he LOVES mine. This is a recipe for a cake made from scratch. Let me find out you tried to use a box mix for this……  But seriously, if I had the time, I would make the cakes and y’all could just come pick ’em up because cooking is my only true “Me” time, but alas, there are bills to pay, a job at which to show up, and a daughter to raise (not in that order.)  It’s not that difficult. If I can do it, you can too!  A word about buttermilk. I hate buying a whole damn quart of buttermilk when I only need a cup or two at most for any recipes. It’s simple to make your own: For every cup of buttermilk needed, add a tablespoon of white vinegar to a cup of whole milk and let it sit at room temperature for about 10 or 15 minutes. Give it a good stir before you use it. That’s it. I’m sure Borden ain’t THAT hard up for your money to have to buy a whole quart when all you need is a cup.

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 3/4 cups sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature (and don’t get me started on the importance of using BUTTER, not margarine or oleo. I ain’t got the strength tonight…)

1 cup canned sweetened cream of coconut (you can find this in the mixer/liquor section at Walmart or Albertson’s. I use the Coco Lopez brand.)

4 large eggs, separated

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup buttermilk (make your own–see above)

Pinch of salt

Cream Cheese Frosting (3 cans)

4 cups sweetened shredded coconut

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour (or use shortening instead of butter) two 9-inch-diameter cake pans with 2-inch-high sides. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon salt in medium bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat sugar, butter and sweetened cream of coconut in large bowl until fluffy. Beat in egg yolks and vanilla extract. On low speed, beat in dry ingredients and then buttermilk, each just until blended.

Using clean dry beaters, beat egg whites with pinch of salt in another large bowl until stiff but not dry. Fold beaten egg whites into batter. And when I say fold, I mean fold it into the batter by hand. Don’t you dare just dump it into the bowl of batter and use the electric mixer, because that just tells me that you just ain’t got what it takes for this cake. If that’s what you’re gonna do, dump the whole bowl into the trash and go sit in the corner.

Divide cake batter between prepared pans. Bake cakes until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40-45 minutes. Cool cakes in pans on rack 10 minutes. Run small sharp knife around pan sides to loosen cakes. Turn cakes out onto racks and cool completely (at least an hour—frosting sliding down the sides of a still-warm cake is an ugly thing).

Place one cake layer on cake plate. Don’t worry about making a “crumb coat.” Any imperfections/cake crumbs/gremilles in the frosting will be hidden by the shredded coconut, and you don’t work at Guidry’s Cake Shop in New Iberia, do ya?   Spread almost one can of  cream cheese frosting over cake layer. Sprinkle 1 cup sweetened shredded coconut over. Top with second cake layer. Spread remaining frosting over top and sides of cake. Sprinkle remaining coconut over cake, gently pressing into sides to adhere.  If desired, add a cherry or cherries on top.

Hey there, folks! I said I’d make a post about rice, so here it is–the short and skinny of it  (well, not skinny. Ain’t nothin’ skinny about a rice-based diet.) I’m pretty sure there have been epic arguments about rice resulting in a lot of butt hurt. There’s quite a few types of rice out there, and yes, there are certain dishes which are better with a particular type of rice. For most Cajun and Creole dishes, the preferred rice is plain white rice, either short, medium or long grain. The length of grain is a matter of personal preference, but I find that gravy “sticks” to short or medium grain rice better because of a higher starch content. A lot of restaurants use long grain rice because it’s better for presentation. There’s also a lot of varieties out there, including crossbred types. Some are more fragrant and aromatic than others. Some are more starchy than others. My favorite aromatic blend comes from Hoppe Farms called Jazzman. It’s a jasmine-basmati crossbreed called jasmati.

I cook Indian food as well as sushi, and the rices I use for these two cuisines are vastly different. Basmati is my go-to for Indian dishes, but extra-short grain rice (usually labeled as sushi rice) is a requirement for sushi since the starch content allows for soaking up rice wine vinegar to make it sticky–else your sushi rolls will fall apart. Quel haunt.

No surprise that our diet down here is rice-based. Rice grows really well in our wet climate. Potatoes…..not so much. Unfortunately, diabetes is as rampant as our rice cultivation in this region, and I was not immune to it. Every time I eat regular white rice in rice-and-gravy dishes, I want to take a nap afterwards. I get a “sugar crash” after consuming that much carbohydrates at one time. And I crash hard. I mean I had weekends where I’d go on a “rice bender” and have it at every single meal and just sleep the weekend away.  I had a love/hate relationship with white rice until my mom started using parboiled rice. At first, I turned my nose up at it because the texture and the taste are a little different, and I didn’t think it was up to muster for my dishes. Well, folks, I’m here to tell you that after my mom’s constant putting-it-in-my-face (thanks, mom!), I tried parboiled rice. In rice dressing, no less. And I didn’t need a nap afterwards. Color me shocked as hell. When I started looking into it, I found the glycemic index of parboiled rice is 39–which is pretty low compared to the 89 that white rice presents. Bazinga! THAT’s why I didn’t crash. I could eat rice and not suffer the consequences of carbohydrate overload! It does take some getting used to, but it is brutally honest and unforgiving with regards to your gravy. If your gravy isn’t thick enough, there is no way in hell it’s gonna stick to this rice. It’ll sink down to the bottom of your plate, and all your sides are gonna be swimming in it. If you make rice dressing with it, don’t be mixing it with that frozen stuff (even the Harold’s brand), because your family will never let you forget it. Do yourself a favor and get some fresh dressing mix (I highly recommend the dressing mix at Joyce’s in St. Martinville), and make a roux, for God’s sake. Just because you’re skimping a little on the rice doesn’t mean you can skimp on the labor of love that is rice dressing. Give it a try. Every little effort to make dishes “healthier” is worth it in the long run. It’ll keep your family around a little longer.

Phytohemagglutinin! Sounds like something an ancient Viking would scream before chopping your head off, doesn’t it? Don’t know that word? It’s alright. Hardly anybody does. But you should at least know what it can do to you. Phytohemagglutinin (PHA) is a toxic chemical produced by plants in their seeds that act as natural pest control. It prevents bugs from destroying seeds (i.e. beans.) Different types of dry beans contain different levels of this toxin, and dry red kidney beans have some of the highest levels of it. Toxins in muh beans, you say? Pish posh. Um, nope. There’s a reason why dry beans sometimes cause loads of gastric distress. This is it. PHA attacks the epithelial lining of the intestines. The body, recognizing the toxin, attempts to flush your lower half out, and sometimes your upper half, resulting in diarrhea and vomiting.

Don’t fret! This chemical is easily broken down. The key is to boil the beans vigorously for at least ten minutes in plenty of fresh water. Even if you are going to use a slow cooker, you MUST boil the beans first!!! Personally, I simmer my beans on the stovetop for a couple of hours, but I still boil them first. A change of water isn’t necessary. Once the PHA is broken down by the heat of boiling, the components are harmless. Of course, this isn’t necessary with canned beans. The canning process includes boiling them, so we’re all good to go when we pop open a can of Trappey’s. No judgement here—I’ve been known to pop open a can of Trappey’s black eyed peas when I’m the only one eating them. I’m not gonna slave over a hot stove cooking my creamy black eyed peas from dry beans for just one serving.

So, if you’re so inclined and I haven’t scared the shit out of you enough, here’s my technique for making red beans. I’m going to be constructing a post on the uses of rice varieties in the near future, so I’ll leave the decision about the rice to you in this one.

1 lb. red beans (as I’ve said before, I use Camellia brand, but understand that if you use the cheap stuff, quality is going to be different)

2 tbsp. vegetable oil

1 large onion, minced

1 tbsp. minced garlic (or a couple of toes of garlic, minced)

Salt to taste (I use sea salt—I find it doesn’t take as much and has a lighter bitter taste)

½ lb. sausage, bacon, tasso, or other seasoning meat (about 1 link of Savoie’s smoked sausage per pound of dry beans—thinly sliced) Of course, you can make this Lent-friendly and just omit the meat if you need a good hearty meal for Fridays during Lent and you’re not planning to gorging yourself on crawfish, crabs and shrimp.

Rinse and sort beans. Add 8 to 10 cups of fresh water to beans in a large pot. Bring to a boil. Boil vigorously for at least ten minutes. In a separate skillet, cook the meat on medium heat, reserving any drippings. Add onion, garlic, salt, vegetable oil, meat and drippings. Lower heat, cover, and simmer for about two hours, stirring occasionally. About ½ hour before it’s done, mash about half of the beans with a potato masher or you can just use a spoon. This will release a lot of starch and thicken the liquid up and make it nice and creamy. If the liquid is not thick enough for your tastes, you can add a tablespoon of corn starch to about 1/2 cup of warm water and dump into the pot to instantly thicken it up. Enjoy over hot cooked rice. Or quinoa. Or whatever the beatniks are eating this week. Just kidding. Don’t you dare serve this over quinoa. I’ll hunt you down.

Note: beans freeze VERY well, so once you have your technique down, cook two and three pounds at a time.

Yes, folks, it’s been a while! I’ve been awfully busy over the last two weeks because…..life! I had some leftover French bread that had gone stale over a few days last week and I decided to make pain perdu. I guess you could use regular sandwich bread that’s gone stale, but it’s so much better with French or Italian bread! You can even use those Italian loaves at Walmart (the ones without seasoning or sesame seeds, of course). It doesn’t HAVE to be French or Italian bread, but the French and Italian loaves are able to better stand up to a soaking in milk and eggs than regular sandwich bread would.

2 eggs

1/2 cup milk

pinch of salt

2 tsp. sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

6 slices of stale bread

3 tbsp. butter

1 tbsp. vegetable oil

powdered sugar, for serving

Whisk milk, eggs, salt, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon. Slice the bread at least 1 inch thick a couple of days before. You can let them sit in an open bag or on a plate on the counter to let them go stale. Toss the slices in the milk/egg mixture until it’s all absorbed (may take about 5 or 10 minutes.) The key is to completely saturate the bread. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Heat butter and oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Lightly brown the soaked slices about 2 minutes per side. Don’t brown them too much, because you’ll be baking these slices of gold! Transfer the slices to a baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees F for 10 minutes. Turn the slices over and bake for about another 5 minutes to brown the other side. Serve with powdered sugar. Or syrup. Or fruit sauces. Or whatever blows your skirt up. You got to eat it, not me.

Greetings, folks. Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I’ve been keeping busy because….life. When life keeps you busy, sometimes you just gotta let your slow cooker do the cooking. The simplest recipe for something substantial in a slow cooker is probably my pork roast. Life moves fast–and sometimes, you just don’t have the time to give meal prep your undivided attention (until it’s time to eat.) This recipe will allow you to eat like you’ve worked and slaved over a hot stove all day without the burn marks or frizzed hair.

2-3 pound boneless pork loin roast or 2 pound pork tenderloin (if you use the tenderloin, try to remove the silverskin.)

1 packet onion soup mix (you can use the cheap Walmart stuff)

3 tablespoons minced garlic

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1 3/4 cups water

black pepper to taste

Place roast in slow cooker. Add water, onion soup mix and soy sauce, turning the roast to coat it just a bit. Spoon garlic on top of the roast, add pepper to taste–it won’t take much–and just let it sit there on top. Don’t mix the garlic in with the liquid. The flavor will make it’s way down.  Cook on low for at least eight hours. I usually cook mine for ten. The resulting roast will fall apart and is fork-tender. Store any leftovers in the liquid from the slow cooker. This is great paired with good ol’ mashed potatoes (just get the stuff in the packet–no need to boil potatoes and all that shit. It just defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?)

Just a quick post on this New Year’s Eve. I just made a wonderful dinner for myself and my family. Lili and I went to Albertson’s intending on getting a filet mignon steak for each of us to pair with a baked potato for our New Year’s Eve dinner. While kind of browsing the butcher block, Lili spotted lobster tails on sale for $5 a piece. I thought “Man, surf and turf tonight would be awesome!” After consulting with her (because you know, she’s the boss), we decided to get each of us a lobster tail also. She wasn’t crazy about the steak (she’s still forming her palate), but the lobster tail disappeared off her plate. She’s a lobster monster. Lawday, she must think they’re crawfish on steroids. But they are not. The meat isn’t as sweet as crawfish, but still greatly enjoyable nonetheless. And they’re easier to cook than you think.

I think the easiest way to cook lobster tails is steaming them. They don’t dry out, and they’re easy to prep for steaming.  It works best when you have a steamer insert for a pot with a tight-fitting lid. I have an Oneida pot such as this that I have used for years to cook cous cous (which is best when it’s steamed.) It’s deep enough to steam snow crab legs or lobster tails.

For prepping, use kitchen shears to snip a line down the back of the tail from the opening to just before the tail fan. Using your hands on either side of the opening, gently push the opening edges apart until you hear it “crack”. You should see the vein. Remove it. Separate the flesh of the tail from the shell with your fingers.  Gently pull the tail up through the opening, but don’t separate it from the tail fan. Lay the meat on top of the shell as shown in the picture above. Put enough water in your steamer pot to within one or two inches below the steamer basket so that the lobster tails stay out of the water, but are close to the steam. Bring the water to a boil, adding a little salt, maybe a teaspoon for every quart of water. Add the tails to the pot and tightly cover with the lid. Steam for 4-6 minutes. Do NOT oversteam. Chewing on rubbery overcooked lobster is not an enjoyable experience. If you have a meat thermometer, the internal temperature of the tail meat should be at least 134  degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the best test to see if the tails are done. Don’t cut into the tails to check if they’re done. Trust your thermometer.

Serve the tails with clarified butter for dipping. Common side dishes are baked potatoes, steamed baby potatoes, or a nice risotto, and asparagus or Brussel sprouts. Quite an elegant dinner for a little more than what you’d pay for an extra value meal at Mickey D’s. No offense to Mickey D’s, but Jesus help anybody who’d pick that over lobster for dinner. Unless you have an allergy. And in that case, you probably shouldn’t be eating Mickey D’s anyway. Just sayin’.

Without a doubt, the most widely favored home made candy in south Louisiana has got to be pralines. I have found that there are two varieties: Cajun and Creole. The Cajun kind is more sugary-crystalliny-crumbly while the Creole type is more creamy. Both contain pecans. The variations available between the two, however, differ greatly. I have seen a chocolate version of the Cajun kind, and that’s about it. The Creole type, containing extract of some kind, can vary widely in flavor. My particular favorite is the rum-flavored. The buttery-rummy-creamy flavor of the ones I make are to die for. And they taste just like the ones from Aunt Sally’s in New Orleans.  But that’s MY thing. You might want orange extract in yours. Or chocolate. Or just vanilla. Whatever blows your skirt up is what goes in your kitchen.

I’m about to make a whole slew of ’em to send up to Michigan to a friend of my dad’s that he served with in Vietnam. This group of guys (199th, Co. A/5/12–the Redcatchers) have been in constant contact thanks to the internet and they reunite every Memorial Day weekend in Washington D.C. and in Fort Benning, Georgia, where they did basic training, every fifth year. This year, daddy happened to send his friend B.J. some highly spiced pecans from some company in Lafayette. They were a little too spicy for B.J., so daddy asked me to make him some regular pralines to send up to him to “cool him off.” LOL

A note before you start making pralines (or any other kind of candy):  It would be wise to check the weather and make sure that the atmospheric pressure is at least 30 mB or higher. Lower pressure makes for much slower evaporation of water in your syrup and high humidity makes for faster breakdown of sugars and can’t evaporate any more moisture–making it fall apart and not able to “set” as it cools.  You ever see your grandmother making pralines in summertime? Me neither. That was always reserved for cool, crisp, dry days of fall and winter. Maw Maw is slicker than you think, bruh.

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar

1/8 tsp. salt

1/4 lb. butter (Here we go again. I said butter.)

3 cups pecan halves

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon rum (or whatever other flavor) extract

1 cup evaporate milk

1/2 cup whole milk

Mix sugars, salt, and milks in a large saucepan with a thick bottom. I use my Magnelite 5 quart saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Using a candy thermometer, when the temperature reaches 228 degrees exactly, stir in butter and pecans and cook (stirring the whole time) to 236 degrees. Add the extracts and beat the hell out of it with a whisk or a wooden spoon (wooden spoons are preferable) until it coats the pecans, but still remains glossy. Drop the mixture, 1 heaping tablespoon at a time, onto greased aluminum foil, a slab of confectioner’s marble, or wax paper laid out on a cool surface. Allow to completely cool before serving. Also makes for a delicious cake coating in lieu of frosting. (Make a bundt cake, completely cool, place in the fridge for an hour or so, and then drizzle this stuff on it. Yummo!)

Okay, guys. I said I was going to do a post about making blackeyed peas for New Year’s Day in my smothered cabbage post, so I’m making good on it today. Making blackeyed peas is simple. The more crap you put in it, the more questionable the taste. The only meat I put in mine is either salted pork or pickled pork, but if you use pickled pork, make sure you rinse it well before cutting it up and putting it in your blackeyes. I learned a hard lesson when I lived in Independence, LA. I cooked a whole mess of blackeyed peas using pickled pork and never rinsed the excess pickling stuff off of the pork before putting it in the pot. Well, my intestines didn’t take too kindly to the onslaught of vinegar/citric acid and they took their revenge the next day. I was on my way back home to Independence from Baton Rouge on I-12. We all had to exit the interstate because some genius hauling rocket fuel wrecked and spilled it all the way across the interstate. So, the masses, including me, pass on highway 190 through all these tiny charming little towns with the local police directing traffic (because redirecting traffic from I-12 to 190 is like shoving a watermelon through a straw). Well, that made for a LONG trip home and by the time I got to Albany, my intestines had built up a good bit of gas. I don’t need to tell you folks about the laws of physics. They basically work the same in space as they do in your abdomen. More room out than in. And out it started coming. I was the sole occupant of my truck, so my friends and family can thank heaven for that. Now, normally, I enjoy bathroom humor. Fart jokes, etc. crack me up. Folks, I am here to tell you that this flatulence was no laughing matter. The odorous emissions that were coming out of me curled my nose hairs. I couldn’t even stand my own brand. It was astounding. I had to roll my windows down and hope that the noxious fumes didn’t knock out the poor town cops that were directing traffic as I passed by.  By the time I got home, I kept the windows rolled down just to air out the cab of the truck. I have rinsed my pickled pork ever since, and I suggest you do the same. Normally, I have an iron constitution and I’m not very susceptible to the cliché stomach ailments, but this threw me for a loop. I can laugh about it now (and so can you), but back then, I was NOT amused.

1 lb. Camelia brand blackeyed peas (you can use off brands, but be forewarned that the quality is going to be lower. I have found small stones and rotten beans in other brands, but never in Camelia packages.)

1/4 to 1/2 pound of salted or pickled pork

small yellow onion, minced

2 tbsp. vegetable oil

salt, to taste

Rinse and inspect beans. Place in a large pot with the meat, onion, oil and salt. Add 8 to 9 cups of water. You may have to add a little water while it simmers. Bring to a boil. Lower heat to a vigorous simmer and cover. Simmer for 2 to 3 hours, stirring occasionally. The beans are ready when you can easily mash them in a spoon with a fork. When the beans are tender, using a large serving spoon (I mean like a gumbo spoon–not a tablespoon), mash the beans in the spoon with a fork. Repeat a couple of times. This releases the starch from a few of the beans and makes them nice and creamy. If the beans are still too thin, you can stir a tablespoon of corn starch into 1/2 cup of warm water and add to the pot to thicken it up. Repeat if necessary. Beans cooked like this freeze extremely well, so you can cook them ahead of time.  Happy New Year!

New Year’s is coming up. Y’all know what that means–cabbage and black eyed peas! I can never remember which signifies what: it’s either cabbage signifying money and black eyed peas signifying health or vice versa. Whatever the correct symbolism is, these two dishes are wholly expected at every Cajun household on New Year’s Day. I don’t care whatever else you’re cooking. I’m thinking either chicken & sausage gumbo or crawfish etouffee. And we’re gonna have cabbage and black eyed peas. No. Matter. What. I will post about black eyed peas in the coming days.

The way I cook my cabbage (usually) is smothered. My husband adores it, sometimes to my dismay. It helps to have a very large Magnelite (or Wagnerware) roaster. You need a lot of space for the cabbage when it’s first cut up, but then it reduces down to almost nothing. The list of ingredients is short, and it’s a fairly simple dish to cook:

1 large head of cabbage

1 large or 2 medium onions, chopped

1 stick butter (don’t get me started. I said butter, damnit.)

12 or 16 oz. package of bacon–just get the cheap stuff, and not thick-cut. It’s just to season the cabbage.

Tony Chachere’s (or other seasoning), to taste

Melt butter in large roaster with lid over medium heat. Cut bacon into 4 or 5 pieces across the strips so it yields squares or small rectangles of bacon. Put bacon in roaster piece by piece and render it on medium to medium-high heat until the fatty parts are pretty much cooked all the way through. Add chopped onions. Coarsely chop the head of cabbage. You’re going to use every piece (even the hard white pieces) except the stem. A good technique is cutting the stem out of the entire head first, discarding it, and then chopping up the rest of the head. When the onions are “clear”, add the cabbage in the roaster and cover. Stir every twenty to thirty minutes. When it’s reduced to about half the volume it was in the beginning, add Tony Chachere’s for seasoning to taste. Continue smothering the cabbage until you can easily cut through the thick hard white veins in the cabbage. If the thinner pieces of cabbage start to brown a little too much for your tastes, you can always add 1/2 to 1 cup of water at a time so that the harder white parts can continue to cook. This stuff will last for a few days in the fridge, so if it’s not all eaten on New Year’s Day, you can continue to delight your spouse with continuous noxious effusions from your butt for days to come by eating a little every day until it’s all gone. At the very least, cabbage is great roughage for your intestines!

Hope you all had a good Christmas day today.  I decided to do this post when my cousin told me that she used my recipe for mac & cheese and it was a grand hit–her son loves it! Now, we all had an abundance of food. My family takes that shit as a challenge. We had enough food to feed an army. Some of us ate twice–including myself. I crashed so hard on the carbs, I came home and had to take a nap. And I’ll be back at mom’s tomorrow for leftovers. And I’ll probably have to take another nap after that.

A short word about macaroni & cheese: I have seen macaroni salad at the grocery store deli that made me wanna barf. I’ve seen recipes for mac & cheese that had fifteen ingredients, I swear, and all I could think was “for something so simple, why is it so complicated?” This recipe has macaroni, milk, cream, cheese, salt, pepper (optional), butter, and that’s it. There is nothing complicated about this recipe. It’s a simple dish that calls for simple ingredients, and I have no idea why in the hell people just want to complicate it by adding a bunch of useless stuff in it: relish, onions, olives, paprika (what the actual foxtrot), etc. Just don’t. For the love of Mike. Don’t.

Cook 2 pounds of elbow macaroni according to directions on the package (usually boil it in salted water for 9-11 minutes.) You can also use rigatoni or ziti if you want to have something different.

Add 2 cups of evaporated milk and 2 cups of heavy whipping cream to a pot on medium-low heat. Chunk up a 2 pound loaf of Velveeta and add to the pot, slowly melting it. Add 1/4 pound (1 stick) of butter to the Velveeta/milk and slowly melt it. Add 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon pepper (optional.)

Spray a disposable aluminum turkey roasting pan with cooking spray. Dump cooked macaroni in it and mix in the Velveeta/milk concoction. Top with about 3 or 4 cups of shredded sharp cheddar cheese. Bake at 350 degrees, uncovered, about an hour. This will make the cheddar cheese form a nice slightly crispy crust on the top. Enjoy. See? That was easy. Unless you make it difficult. Just don’t.  It’s not worth seeing disappointed faces when you think you’re being all cute and epicurean and shit by added olives or pimentos. Nobody thinks that shit is cute. Save that crap for a charcuterie platter if you wanna appear uptown. Mac & cheese is not an uptown dish. Trust me–this dish is the tits if you make it just the way I told you.

I got introduced to Vietnamese cuisine when I lived in Houston. There’s every sort of variety of restaurant there: Cuban, Vietnamese, Mexican, Ecuadorean, Ethiopian, Egyptian, Moroccan, etc. Man, if you can’t find a restaurant in Houston that serves what you like, you ain’t hungry.

I particularly like the fresh spring rolls. It’s clean eating, filling, good for you, and delicious! I’ll admit that it’s a good break from all the rich Cajun food that flows in this house!

The ingredients aren’t terribly hard to find. I found hoisin sauce and rice paper for the rolls at Walmart, believe it or not. Both of these are in the Asian food section. Albertson’s has the rice vermicelli (also in the Asian food section). Other than that, it’s lettuce, shrimp, peanut butter, oil, and minced garlic.

Starting with the shrimp, I buy shrimp already deveined, but uncooked. You can buy it frozen–ain’t no judging goin’ on here. Don’t get anything larger than the “extra large” size, which is 26-30 count per pound. Anything larger, and you run the risk of ripping the rice paper because the shrimp are so large. Also, don’t get anything smaller than medium shrimp. Salad shrimp ain’t gonna cut it. You’d have to pile it on so much it would make it impossible to properly roll.

Defrost the shrimp if you bought it frozen. Get a pot of lightly salted water boiling, with enough water to cover the shrimp. Once the water is at a rolling boil, add the shrimp and boil for 3-4 minutes max. Don’t overcook the shrimp. There’s nothing sadder than overcooked shrimp except overcooked crawfish. Just cook it until the middle of the shrimp isn’t translucent any more. Drain and run cool water over the shrimp to stop them from cooking any longer.  A lot of cooks will tell you to slice the shrimp in half along the body to that it lies flat to make it easier to roll. That reduces the amount of shrimp in my damn roll, and I don’t need that kind of negativity in my life. Get the F outta here with that half-shrimp shit.

The rice vermicelli is cooked similar to spaghetti. While it may say “3 minutes” on the package, boil it a couple of minutes longer. Ain’t no such thing as “al dente” rice vermicelli, and you ain’t cookin’ at Alesi’s Pizza House in Lafayette. Boil that shit until it’s tender, ya hear? Drain and run under cool water to stop it from cooking.

Try to use only the green parts of the lettuce–discard the hard white parts. They are bitter and hard to roll and would make Mother Theresa cuss like a sailor when they’re ripping your rice paper apart while you’re trying to roll. It helps to sorta chop it up too, but not too fine. Shredded lettuce makes a mess when you’re eating it in a spring roll.

Some people like to add pork–I do not. However, if you MUST add pork also, get about 1/2 pound of pork roast and get it as lean as you can manage. Cover the roast with water in a pot and add a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of sugar. Cook on medium heat for about 30 minutes. It’ll float when it’s done and there’s absolutely no pink in the middle. Slice it thin, and I mean as thin as you can get it without slicing off the pads of your fingers.

Once you have all your ingredients assembled, it’s time to roll. Add some warm water to a plate so you can dip a sheet of rice paper in it. Leave it in there about 20 seconds–just enough to make it pliable. Lay it down on a DRY surface. I use a cutting board. Lay a bit of lettuce down first followed by about 1/4 handful of cooked rice vermicelli. From the bottom, roll the rice paper around the lettuce and vermicelli, tightening as you are rolling. Add three or four shrimp at the edge of that first rolling. Fold in the sides, taking care not to use so much force that it rips the rice paper. Continue rolling up so that the shrimp are only covered by one wrapping. Don’t worry about the flap–it self closes. No need for cutesy food grade fasteners or toothpicks.  The more often you make this stuff, the easier rolling will become. Like I tell my pistol students, practice makes perfect, except that making these rolls perfectly probably won’t save your life.

For the peanut sauce, saute two tablespoons of minced garlic in two tablespoons of vegetable oil until you can smell the garlic pretty well. Add two or three tablespoons of peanut butter, eight tablespoons of hoisin sauce and one cup of water. Heat until boiling, whisking it as it cooks. Once boiling, turn off the heat. Serve immediately. You can refrigerate this stuff, but personally, I reheat it before I eat it. If desired, you can add a dash of crushed peanuts to your sauce bowl. I just get a handful of dry roasted salted peanuts (even the cheap Walmart brand works) into a Ziploc bag and beat the crap out of it with my tapered French rolling pin. Sometimes I wonder if my husband thinks I’m just taking out my frustration on the peanuts.

Watch my short video on how to roll these things here.

Have you ever eaten at the Cuban place on Bertrand in Lafayette? Yeah. Café Havana. It’s heavenly, I tell ya. It wasn’t unusual for me to eat there two or three times a week. Their Cubano sandwiches are the best this side of the Mississippi, and their Cuban-style red beans are delish!  Every seated customer is offered the Cuban chicken soup. Take my advice: accept it. It’s unlike any “chicken noodle soup” you’ve ever had before, unless you’ve been to Havana recently. I’ve learned to cook this new comfort food of mine, and I’m willing to part with the recipe, because the good cooks will share knowledge. All others are just assholes.

3-4 thinly cut chicken breast filets (or you can use chicken thigh filets)

6 cups of water

1 medium onion, chopped

1 tablespoon tomato paste

3 garlic cloves, minced

1/4 tsp. oregano

1 can diced carrots

1 can diced new potatoes

about 1/3 pound of angel hair pasta, broken in half

1/2 cup lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

Salt chicken lightly at least a few hours before you cook the soup. Add water, chicken, tomato paste, onion, garlic and oregano to a large pot. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 40 minutes.

Add potatoes and carrots. Cover and simmer another 15 minutes, just to heat the vegetables through. Add noodles, lemon juice, salt and pepper and cook until the pasta is tender. Careful how much pasta you add. If you’re like me, you’re wont to dump the whole damn box of pasta in the soup and then it ends up so thick that you could walk on top of the shit. You can always add more noodles later if you must.

 

I’ve seen my share of recipes for crawfish etouffee. Lemme tell ya. Some of them (even from highly-rated chefs) make me think “Jesus, take the wheel.” Like gumbo, everybody does their etouffee differently. I get it. You have your “thing” with etouffee. I have my “thing.”  What gets my panties in a knot is when your “thing” is tomatoes. Or Rotel. Or anything remotely related to tomatoes. It’s the kind of pet peeve that makes me want to go on an epic crusade against all who combine crawfish and tomatoes in any dish. I mean fist-swingin’ swashbucklin’ St.-Nicholas-punching-a-heretic-in-the-face kind of crusade. Stop that nonsense. Too late for Jesus to take the wheel, cher. You done wrecked yourself by putting those two things together. Crawfish has very delicate flesh and even more delicate fat.  When I was young, the peel shacks in Catahoula (and everywhere else too–I use Catahoula because I grew up there. Calm your tits.) used to save the fat in separate packets that would be included in every package of peeled crawfish. That’s what my grandmothers and great-grandmother used to start the base of their etouffees. Not a roux. Not a mix. Pure, unadulterated crawfish fat. Nowadays, due to the infinite wisdom (sarcasm) of the FDA/food-gods-that-be, the fat is just included in the package bathing the crawfish tails in that luscious golden nectar of the gods. Our problem is getting that fat to cook in our sauce longer so that the flavors can mix. You can’t cook crawfish that long, else you’ll end up with small grey shriveled little specks resembling a tail….still unappetizing nonetheless.

Introducing water as a transport. I buy my crawfish tails direct from Dale Barras’ peel shack which used to be Carl’s Seafood on the Catahoula Highway. Theirs is by far the cleanest and fattiest I have seen. Still, I like to generally check each tail to make sure an errant spinnerette leg didn’t accidentally make it into the package. What I do is dump the crawfish in a bowl and rinse the bag with warm water—and dump that into the bowl also. Add more warm water to the crawfish–enough to cover it. Run your fingers through the tails and kind of shake them up in the warm water. The fat will either float on the water or partially emulsify into the water. Either way, it is removed from the tails and in a medium that you can easily reduce to a nice, rich etouffee sauce.  Put the crawfish tails after they’ve been checked into a different bowl and stick it in the fridge. Reserve every drop of liquid you used on the tails. For the sake of simplicity and the fact that not everybody has 40 people at a time coming to eat at their house, I’ll give you the recipe for two pounds of crawfish–enough to feed four Yankees or two of us.

2 lbs. crawfish tails

4 large yellow onions, diced/minced (but don’t get the squat fat ones–those are Vidalias and are entirely too sweet)

2 tsp. minced garlic

1/4 lb. (one stick) butter (See my previous posts about butter–I mean BUTTER)

salt–don’t even start with me about how much.  Everybody likes different levels of salinity in their dishes

Tony Chachere’s (or Slap Ya Mama Seasoning or whatever)–see previous note about how much. It’s to taste. YOUR taste. Just shake the seasoning over the pot until the spirits of our Cajun ancestors tell you to stop.

Melt butter over medium heat. Add onions and garlic and saute until the onions are “clear”–we really mean translucent. This will release a lot of water from the onions, and that’s okay. Better to have too much water than not enough. Add the water reserved from checking the crawfish. At this point you can add the seasoning but taste as you go! If you’re absolutely not sure how much seasoning to put, use 1/2 to 1 teaspoon at a time, stirring and then tasting after every addition until it gets to the level of seasoning you like. Yes, you might have to taste it a whole lot. Yes, cooking like this will probably make you fat, but I’ve always said to never trust a skinny cook. Reduce this liquid/onion/garlic/butter concoction down to roughly 1/2 to 1/3 of its original volume. Add crawfish tails and cook 15 to 20 minutes but DO NOT OVERCOOK THEM. If the sauce seems a little thin or you didn’t reduce it enough, simply mix a couple of tablespoons of corn starch into about 1/2 cup of warm water and add this slurry to the pot. It’ll thicken up almost immediately. Repeat the starch slurry if necessary.

A side note about color: if the color is a little too orange-y for your tastes (and that sometimes happens due to the variety of crawfish and the crawfish’s varied diet of different baits–the color of the fat changes a little), simply add good ol’ Kitchen Bouquet, a splash at a time, stirring between each splash until the color doesn’t make your sphincter tighten every time you look at it. Kitchen Bouquet is a great color adjuster in a lot of dishes. You have no control over your raw ingredients, but you do have control over how much Kitchen Bouquet you can add to your dish. It adjusts the color without changing the taste one iota. You can get the small bottles at Walmart, but I usually buy the institutional-sized one at Joyce’s.

Another note about the supplier of your crawfish. If you live in the city and can’t make it out to the peel shacks in BFE, that’s okay. Albertson’s and even Walmart sell crawfish, but caveat emptor: READ THE PACKAGE CAREFULLY. Make sure it’s not imported from China and just repackaged here with somebody’s Cajun surname on it. If you even try to cook with that shit, you deserve whatever just deserts the universe hands your sorry ass. If you can’t support our communities and buy local because you want to be cheap and save two bucks a pound……then God help you. Maybe you should live on Taco Bell. Peace out, Girl Scout.

Snow. It frickin’ snowed here this past Thursday night. So what the hell do I do? Gumbo. What did everybody else do in Acadiana? Gumbo. I don’t know about everybody else, but when I cook gumbo, I cook a shitload of it–because it freezes well. Here’s my recipe/technique for cooking about 25 quarts of gumbo–enough to feed a small army (or my family) with enough left over to send home with everybody and enough to freeze for myself!

A few notes about MY gumbo before we get started…..I only use chicken breast filets. I’ve almost gotten into fisticuffs with people insisting that you need the bones for the “flavor” and that you can always take the bones out later. These people obviously have never seen a child or a dog choke on a chicken bone. I have a lot of people with small kids coming to eat at my house. If someone insists on dark meat, fine. I get boneless skinless chicken thighs. No sweat off of my tits. But I’m not going to have bones in my gumbo. If YOUR gumbo requires that you use boned chicken, I suggest that you review your recipe because mine has always tasted just fine with nary a bone in it. Ever.

Sausage. I’m surprised there hasn’t been a frickin’ civil war in Acadiana over sausage. I’ll tell you straight up that I use two types of sausage, and one of those has two brands I can depend on. For the smoked sausage, I use Richard’s or Savoie’s (although I do prefer Savoie’s.) The fresh sausage is always chourice from Joyce’s. Always. If I can’t get it at Joyce’s, it ain’t going in. Chourice is getting hard to find (and no, it’s not chorizo–don’t make me throat punch you) at grocery stores. I’m sure there are mom-and-pop grocery stores here and there that has it, but it ain’t Joyce’s. I don’t know if Lowell puts crack straight up in that shit or what, but with every gumbo I have ever cooked, the chourice is the first thing to disappear. Every. Single. Time. If you can’t get to Joyce’s to get chourice, maybe it’s time for a road trip. If not, you can substitute more smoked sausage. I ain’t gonna judge, but I probably ain’t gonna eat ya gumbo, either. Just kidding. Kinda.

Another point—don’t EVER feel bad or less of a Cajun for using jarred roux. Yes, I can make a roux. I can make all kinds of roux. Why stink up my  house making roux when I can get it in a jar? My house smells like roux for almost a week after I make a roux in my kitchen and no amount of Scentsy, essential oil or Febreze shit will EVER take the smell out before it’s ready to leave.  That’s like going through the pain in the ass of making mayonnaise from scratch when Blue Plate’s got it going on. So for folks who want to put on their fancy shoes and be purists by insisting on a roux from scratch, feel free to lace that bitch up and wear it–at YOUR house. Not judging as long as you don’t judge me, Judgy Judgerton.

Ingredients:

3 large Walmart packs of chicken breast filets (about 13 pounds or so if you’re not getting it at Walmart.)

4 lbs. chourice-plain

4 lb. box smoked sausage, pork, mild, Savoie’s or Richard’s

Six pounds onions, minus 1 or 2 medium onions

Small jar dark roux-Savoie’s (don’t let me see you using Kary’s, either)

Tony Chachere’s to taste

Kitchen Bouquet to adjust color

Trim, cut up and season chicken breasts the night before—very important. You need to give the seasoning a chance to proliferate throughout the meat.

Bring 12 quarts of water to a boil in a 40 quart pot (or maybe 35 quart pot if you don’t have a 40 quart). Add jar of roux (yes, the whole jar) and whisk into boiling water until the roux is dissolved and there are no more lumps of it sitting at the bottom of the pot. Add onions cut up in a food processor. You can also add 4 or 5 tablespoons of minced garlic. Cut chourice into two- or three-inch links. Add to water. Slice smoked sausage thinly and add to water. Boil for about 45 minutes.  Add chicken breasts. Boil for about an hour or until chicken breasts are fork-tender. At this point, the gumbo may appear a tad too light in color. I use Kitchen Bouquet to darken the gumbo without changing the taste.  Add Kitchen Bouquet to adjust the color and Tony Chachere’s to taste–but not too much! A lot of the seasoning comes from the chicken breasts.

Let it completely cool before trying to pack it away into Ziploc bags by the gallon for your freezer. Nobody likes cleaning up wasted gumbo on their kitchen floor at 10 PM because they were an impatient ninny and the hot gumbo melted the bag. Chill out for a little bit. Have a beer. Have a smoke. And if you can’t do any of that, then you’d better buy some VERY large Tupperware/Rubbermaid containers!