Mardi Gras Southern Food Party 2010

Remainder of the Pretender-to-the-Throne CakeSo this past weekend I had myself a little Mardi Gras party. It was a chance to cook a bunch of Southern and Southern-ish food and then have some friends come over and eat it. 

I’m not exactly sure when I got the bee in my bonnet to have a Mardi Gras party, but I think it was when I was sitting at the Kingfish Café with Rachel and Jason on their most recent Seattle trip in early January.  The Kingfish is a popular Seattle restaurant that serves Southern-influenced food, and my visit with Rachel and Jason was my third time there.

Until recently, despite all my cooking curiosity, I’d never really cared about Southern food.  I didn’t know much about it, and what I did know didn’t seem interesting to me. Baby didn't really get into the spirit.Then back when I was at the cooking school, I worked a class once with the chef of Kingfish, Kenyatta Carter.  Her food was not what I was expecting. I guess I’d always thought that Southern food would be heavy, gloppy, fatty. But Kenyatta’s food was so delicious, fresh, bright and flavorful.  I realized my ideas about Southern cooking might be off, and my curiosity was piqued.

It took me a while, but again, I think it was this last trip to Kingfish was the one that finally made me think, “Hey, I’d like to cook some of this stuff.”  Mardi Gras was coming up, it seemed a perfect time to have a party. 

This was party planning on a budget, and I think I want to do a few entries on the mechanics of that, but in the meantime, wanted to get up a post with the dishes I made in case anyone is looking for some fun Mardi Gras recipes to celebrate with this week.  I have to say I was really happy with almost all of the stuff I made, and think some of these recipes are tasty enough to make on a regular basis.

Here are two of the books I got from the library and used a lot for this.

I highly recommend them both. Beans, Greens and Sweet Georgia Peaches has a lot of interesting little tidbits about Southern cooking and culture. Frank Stitt’s Southern Cooking is more focused on a refined version of Southern flavors, and has a lot of beautiful-looking dishes. I didn’t get to make all the things I wanted to make from them, and think they are definitely worth a look if you are interested in Southern cooking. 

And this book - DamGoodSweet - about New Orleans desserts came in on my library hold list too late to make it into the mix, but definitely looking at some recipes in it for the future.  Some of the author's recipes are featured on Epicurious right now, but there are more in the book that look intriguing. Like...Cane Syrup Ice Cream, Brandy Milk Punch Ice Cream, Lemon-Herbsaint Poppers, Sweet Corn Cake and Root Beer Syrup…crap, I might need to have another Southern food party sooner than next year's Mardi Gras.

But first, a look back and some good recipes to try if you are cooking for Mardi Gras. Here’s what was on the menu (the little icon means it’s an offsite recipe); I can genuinely recommend all these recipes. Even the ones that didn't blow my mind were solid:

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Appetizer/Hors D'Oeuvres Recipes

Pickled Shrimp stagesFrank Stitt’s Pickled Shrimp - These were nice, with the pickle adding a bright, lemony flavor. I think the recipe as written might be a little underseasoned for my palate. If you're accustomed to or like a little more pop, I'd add a smidge more salt.

Muffuletta Olive Spread w/Toast - This little bite was just an "extra" for me, an easy way to incorporate another NOLA food, but I wasn't expecting much. But it was a little overachiever that exceeded those expectations nicely.

Chipotle Cashews - Yes, the same nuts I'm always exclaiming about.

Frank Stitt’s Spiced Pecans - But omg there's been a coup and these have possibly usurped the top nut spot in my roster of recipes.

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Entrees

Gumbo Z’Herbes – I really liked this dish, a rich stewy thing full of greens. It might not be what one expects from a Roux development for the Gumbo gumbo as it was a special kind made during Lent and was originally (and in the version I made) meatless. Despite that, it’s exceptionally satisfying and flavorful.  I used my Roasted Vegetable Stock and made the Chow.com Cajun Seasoning listed in the recipe. Here’s a bit of interesting folklore about this dish from Grist: “Some say the dish should be made with at least seven greens. Others say as many as fifteen, but definitely an odd number for good luck. Most agree the more greens, the merrier, because for every green that cooks put into the gumbo, they’ll make a new friend that year.”

Etta's Cornbread Pudding stagesEtta’s Cornbread Pudding - I don't know if this is remotely Southern, but oh well. I'd made it before and liked it. I do feel like the cornbread was almost a little too sweet, so next time I might add less honey to it and a little more salt and pepper to the custard.

Mirilton Ettouffee - Tasty AND I learned what a mirliton is.

Perfect Rice - I used this for serving with both the militons and the gumbo. I prefer brown rice - even if it's not really traditional - and enjoyed this recipe made with brown basmati rice. I also used Roasted Vegetable Stock for this.

Creole Deviled New Potatoes - Very very tasty and a surprise hit. Uses Maison Louisiana Creole Mustard that is a delicious new foodstuff I learned about through this party.

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Desserts & Drinks

Ice cream trio

Sweet Potato Ice Cream with Praline Pieces - My sweet potato aversion made me initially not care for this, but upon a second tasting, I liked it better. Even for a sweet potato dish. Sweet potato fans seemed to like it without reservation.

Bourbon Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with Chocolate Chunks - My new go-to ice cream.

Chicory Coffee Ice Cream - I accidentally made this with regular chicory coffee instead of instant. It still tasted good, but not as intensely coffee-flavored. However, if that's all you can find, I'd say make it anyway and maybe add some chopped very dark chocolate or even chocolate-covered espresso beans to add that hint of pleasant bitterness to offset the sweet one wants in a coffee ice cream.

Hurricane Punch - I just made this virgin and left the rum out for folks to add. It was nice, although it was definitely more about following the New Orleans theme than necessarily being that mind-blowing of a cocktail.

Also, John and Patricia Eddy of Cook Local & Seasonal Cornucopia were kind enough to stop by and brought a delicious Bread Pudding with Grand Marnier Sauce that would be a hit with any menu. In what was either a happy coincidence or their own contribution to the Southern theme (I forgot to ask), they used Black Arkansas apples, an apple called for in another recipe from the Frank Stitt book that I'd intended to make but ran out of time.  The bread pudding was wonderful, so check it out on their site too.

(And as you might have guess if you know anything about King Cake, that picture up there is a FAR from authentic King Cake. I was going to make this Chow.com recipe, but ran out of time. Instead I made a cake from a box, stuck some babies in it and some Mardi Gras colors on top of it and called it a day. Even I have my limits.)

Short & Grown-Up Sweet: Pineapple Rum Cilantro Sherbet or Granita

Continuing with my series of burning off somewhat boring but potentially useful posts, here's this one in time for your holiday partay.

I had a bunch of cilantro left over the other day, and the answer to "What do I do with this now?" was, as it so often is: frozen dessert.  

I looked around and found this recipe for a Tequila-Cilantro Sorbet.  I didn't have enough lime and no tequila, but I did have some leftover cans of pineapple juice and some rum, so I made up this recipe for Pineapple Rum Cilantro Sherbet (cuz to my American mind, sorbets don't have dairy).  

It worked really well.  While the rum does make this more a grown-up treat, I wouldn't skip it as it helps keep the texture smoother.

If you don't have an ice cream maker, there's also a granita method below.

Ingredients 

• 1 1/4 cups whole milk
• 1 1/4 cups water
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped cilantro
• 3/4 cup pineapple juice
• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice
• 3/4 cup rum
• Pinch of salt

Process 

1. In a saucepan, bring milk, water, and sugar to a boil, and stir to dissolve the sugar.
2. Remove from heat and add cilantro.
3. Chill overnight in fridge.
4. Strain mixture through a fine sieve set over a bowl.
5. Stir in pineapple and lime juices, rum and salt.
6. SHERBET: Freeze the sorbet in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.
7. GRANITA: Pour mixture into a chilled 9x13 baking dish. Freeze for about 2 hours or until the mixture has frozen around the edges.  Use a fork to break up the ice crystals around the edge and draw them into the middle.  Repeat this process 3 or 4 times, about every 1/2 hour or so, or until the mixture is completed converted to ice crystals. (The goal of the breaking up is to keep those crystals small to make the mixture smoother.)
8. Serve!

Refrigerator Pickles: Well, Why Not?

There is an episode of the Simpsons with a relatively brief joke that has become my go-to metaphor for getting blocked by too many things.

Montgomery Burns goes to the Mayo Clinic for his first check-up in ages, where they have some rather alarming news for him.

Here, why don’t I let Wikipedia do the work for me? Crowd-sourcing, it’s what all the writers are doing these days. If it’s good enough for the New York Times, it’s good enough for me.  

"Burns discovers that he not only has all existing diseases (including pneumonia, juvenile diabetes and a little bit of hysterical pregnancy), but thousands of diseases the doctors apparently have just discovered in him. However, the sheer amount of diseases prevents any one disease from actually doing harm to him (a condition the doctors call 'Three Stooges Syndrome)."

My tendency towards excess often runs directly into my separate tendency towards getting confused into immobility by excess.  So I get a lot of mileage out of this imagery.

I am at that point with posts for this site. I have a few posts that just need some editing to be ready, a bunch of dishes I’ve photographed that I could write about, and some new recipes to post that can then be organized into Menu Ideas. I also keep trying to develop a narrative or some kind of structure (salads! eating meals!) and then that doesn’t happen in an orderly fashion and I become even more confused.

So when trapped on the phone today for work I edited some photos and decided to maybe just start sticking some stuff up here regardless of the narrative tidiness.

In this case: Refrigerator Pickles. Mainly: why not?

I mean, pickles are actually kind of expensive for what they are (mainly water).  You have to imagine that what you are really paying for is the cost of transporting heavy glass jars of liquid.

And, it turns out, refrigerator pickles are pretty easy and quite tasty. Summertime is cucumber season, so if you, like me, have never tried making fridge pickles, I say go for it.

The recipe I tried was this one for Dill Chips from Martha Stewart. I didn’t have the dill seed so I skipped that, but think I’ll use them in the future for even more flavor.

The process is simple, salt the cukes for a bit to get rid of some of the excess water and rinse them.

Put them with the dill weed in a jar, boil the other ingredients, and pour it all over the vegetables.  Stick it in the fridge and in a week you have made pickles, my friend.

By using the fridge, you don’t have to deal with the frightening elements of botulism. (Recently went to a canning class where I was terrified out of my Laura Ingalls Wilder dreams of a dark and cool root cellar with walls lined with shelves full of preserves. Any activity that requires your attention to never wander, like neurosurgery, or stunt driving or, apparently, canning, is off the list of options for this space cadet.)

You have to wait a little while for them to be ready, and yes, fishing them out of the dill-filled brine is a bit like navigating a particularly sea-weedy beach.

But delicious, and with a least a mild frisson of Handy Homesteading.

I especially enjoyed these pickles on a sandwich with sharp light Irish cheddar, some avocado, mustard and tomato.  They were also great diced in an egg salad as a more flavorful alternative to the usual celery.

It's 10 PM on Sunday, Do You Know Where Your Next Meal Will Be?

I don't mean in the sense of "It's a recession and we're all stretched thin." I mean in terms of actual location.

Well, I'm hoping I do. I'm hoping it's at this cleaned-off table.

I'm about to do a post about another recent happy marker of progress in the Learning How to Cook process that has been this blog thus far.

But with all the progress I've made in the cooking arena, there's really one area where I remain shamefully troglodytic: eating.

I'll spend all this time cooking and then revert back to old, haphazard, disorganized, thoughtless, careless eating.

As mentioned in some of my original posts about why I started this blog, I don't have a personal history of organized, structured, actual sit-down-at-a-table meal-eating. And while I've learned some great meal preparation techniques through the learning process of the past few years, I still do not have an organized, structured, actual sit-down-at-a-table meal-eating life.

And one can't help but wonder: what good is learning how to cook great meals if I don't actually sit down and eat them like a civilized human being instead of grabbing a piece of something and trying to keep the crumbs off my keyboard because I didn't even put it on a plate?

I overeat for many reasons, but I've been realizing lately that one of those reasons is that my brain is not registering the experience of eating because I'm not truly conscious of doing it. So I'll eat a meal with 90% of my brain elsewhere, and then later, have a feeling I need to eat and so I will, even though I'm not technically hungry.

You are supposed to listen to your body for cues of hunger in order to know when to eat. But that, in my experience, isn't the whole story. And telling yourself that story is one surefire way to feel like a failure if you ever try to reduce your food intake for weight control reasons.

I am starting to think lately that having a certain kind of conscious emotional experience of eating is probably just as if not more important than the actual physical experience of it. So many diets and weight loss schemes seem to approach the problem as though those emotional needs are to be somehow ignored, tamped down, burned through with sheer willpower and machismo. But then those same plans fail, so maybe it's not really effective to think that emotional needs are somehow inferior to physical ones.

I don't know enough about the Harry Harlow wire monkey/cloth monkey experiment beyond the broad brushstrokes, and I'm really too sleepy right now to try to tease out the connection to this burgeoning personal hypothesis I'm forming, but it's in there somewhere: my dinner table! terrycloth monkey! comfort and food! These ideas are on simmer, they're not quite ready for consumption yet.

But in order to help narrow things down, this week I'm tweaking this whole experiment a bit. What I'm focused on this week isn't really the cooking, it isn't using up all the produce in some perfect matrix, it isn't learning some new culture and cuisine. It's just eating actual meals sitting at an actual table.

In order to make that a little easier, I did a bunch of pre-work this weekend.

Made a bunch of stuff so that the actual meal prep can take less time, leaving more time for the meal-eating.  So now, it's just a question, really, of keeping that table cleaned off this week so that I can sit at it and eat some of the above like a civilized person.  Wish me luck, I think this is actually going to be a lot harder to do than any cook-a-thon.

Scallion Pancake Dipping Sauce aka Condiment Crank

From a recent episode of A&E's Intervention.  This is a woman named Dawn.  She is high on meth and talking about voodoo and bad things that happen in jars.

I watched this episode right as I started on my third batch of Scallion Pancake Dipping Sauce, the previous batch having been compulsively and quickly eaten, and I looked at the sauce in alarm:

Scallion Pancake Dipping Sauce is also made in a jar.

(The darkness of the sauce gives you a clue as to the abyss into which you are about to be sunk)

Well, okay, that's just some narrative tidiness, actually I make it in a bowl or a big measuring cup and STORE it in a jar, but you know, me and Dawn, we're really just taking some poetic license to communicate something about some substances we have some strong feelings about.  What we're just trying to say is IT WILL OWN YOUR SOUL.

Or maybe not.  Maybe the combo of pungent soy sauce and rice vinegar, the pingy tang of the scallions, the kick of the red pepper flakes, the brightness of the ginger and the subtle nuttiness of the toasted sesame seed won't be perceived, by your brain, to be a heady and addictive elixir.  

I mean, to each his own, but I'll just say this: most of the time, I'm writing about ice cream or dessert here.  Does it seem in character for someone like me to be saying regularly: "Hey, let's have some brown rice and broccoli for breakfast?"  Or, how about that on one of the rare opportunities I have to cook for people, the thing I always want to do, I'm glad my friend has to leave early because that means more Dipping Sauce for me?

People's behavior changes when they get into the hard stuff.

And it's not like there weren't signs of trouble before.  Here's my quick history with the stuff, a la Intervention's usual montage:

When I lived in NYC, I was a casual Scallion Pancake and Dipping Sauce user.  They were cheap, they were vegan or so the restaurant staff liked to reassure me.  

I think one of my first attempts to figure out how to reverse engineer a recipe was that sauce.  I am baffled now by what I must have done to try to figure it out.  There were no foodies around then, no google searching.  I probably attempted to ask and got no info from the staff and back then, it never would have occurred to me to endlessly pester random cooking people info like I have no shame about now.  But I tried, I failed, and it added to my underlying belief that irresistible tastiness is something you leave the house for.

Then I moved back to Phoenix, which was not only a geographic desert, but also a Scallion Pancake desert! None to be seen anywhere that I could find.  Maybe not enough Mandarin-cooking folk had yet settled there to start a restaurant.   So my desire went dormant.

Moved to Seattle, found Snappy Dragon, I returned to being a casual user.  The expense and logistical challenges of getting it kept it from turning into a big habit.

Then we had a Chinese-themed book club, and while we were ordering from SD, I figured, hey, why not attempt my own Scallion Pancakes and Dipping Sauce while we wait for it to get here.

My pancakes, not so good, but my sauce I was pretty pleased with.  Some of the gals mentioned they liked it better than Judy Fu's, but I thought, well, you know, they might have just been being polite.

I wanted to try the pancakes again, so I did, realizing SD has a Scallion Pancake recipe on their website (and here's my version below with pics of the method). This second batch of pancakes were more successful.  

I tweaked the Dipping Sauce just a bit, and had a bunch left over after the pancakes were done, and so I tried some on brown rice.

And that's where the trouble started.  Now I can't stop. I can't stop.  I mean, I guess all it does is encourage me to eat a simple meal of steamed broccoli, brown rice and a generous glug of the Dipping Sauce.  

And, I guess it's better than eating fried dough, which, I've realized, isn't even the best part of the Scallion Pancake and Dipping Sauce.  Nevertheless, I must caution you strongly.

Please note: part of its addictive quality for me is the perfect amount of burn of the red pepper flakes.  If you are not wired to feel a happy glow when you eat spicy stuff, go with the lower end of the range for that ingredient.

Scallion Pancake Dipping Sauce

• 8 tbls soy sauce
  
• 3 tbls Chiangking black rice vinegar (I've seen a couple recommendations to select this specific brand for this ingredient, so I am sticking with it)
  
• 1 tbl white rice vinegar
  
• 1 tbls finely grated ginger
  
• ¼ cup scallions
  
• ½ to 2 tsp red pepper flakes
  
• ½ tbl sesame oil
  
• 1 tbls mirin 

1. Whisk all the ingredients together.  Blammo, you’re done.  Store it, and your soul, in a jar in the fridge.  If it goes bad before you use it up, well, I don't know what to say.   Count your blessings, I guess, for your admirable restraint.

Recipe Creation Tips for Space Aliens

So maybe this is the start of an occasional series.  Part one was Shopping Tips, in case you missed that one, Space Aliens/People Living with CSD*.

Here's today's tip:

Let's say you google a recipe, and it's not some obscure, regional dish, or something one of the humans mentioned in passing and you're not even sure you're spelling it correctly. 

In fact, it contains three relatively common food words, maybe something like Honey and Meringue and Cookies.

If you do this, and you don't seem to find any results that match what you are looking for, there might be a reason for this.  Reasons like science.

I'm not saying you can't attempt to make up your own recipe.

I'm just saying don't be too surprised if the end result doesn't look like what you planned, and not in that, Oh isn't this an tasty surprise! kind of way.

You might want save this kind of activity for nights/days when you are not planning on eating/serving your creation right away.

*Common Sense Deficiency

A Spicy Heap of Vegetarian Mush

Last year, I managed to land an interview at a Well-Known Food Site. A second interview, even. Check me out.  I didn’t get a job (which wound up probably being for the best), and, in the usual not-getting-a-job process, I got no feedback and have no idea why.

But I have to imagine that my space alien way of relating to food probably doesn’t translate well to the standard job interview process.

For example, they asked me what I was most into cooking at that time, and since I was just in the midst of attempting some higher-level stuff (for me), I of course responded “Fancy times.” Because in my brains, that somehow makes sense.

Not Italian, not Seasonal and Local, not New American. Not anything that one would normally see as a tag or category on a Well-Known Food Site. (Except maybe Chow.  I could see Chow.com having that and that's one of the reasons I like Chow.com.  So, there's a clue.  It wasn't Chow.) 

No, I had to say "Fancy Times." Like I’m some sort of poorly-programmed robot whose speaking module includes a down-market translator from Mandarin to English or something.

And now I have a new poorly-programmed robot answer to the perennial favorite food-and-cooking question: what is your favorite kind of food?

You guessed it: a Spicy Heap of Vegetarian Mush.

It’s all I think about. I have to dedicate at least one half day a month to stocking my freezer with the Red Lentil Soup with Harissa Paste and Smoked Hot Paprika.

At any given moment of the day, I am wanting spicy Ethiopian lentils. Call me in the middle of night, ask me what I’m dreaming about and I will sleepily reply “I think it’s called Yemiser W’et.”

I ate through four boxes of Trader Joe’s Pav Bhaji in one 24-hour period. Dinner, breakfast, lunch, dinner.

I only stopped because I ran out of Pav Bhaji. And once I ran out, I started looking up recipes online.

It turns out that the Pav in Pav Bhaji actually refers to the bread usually served with the bhaji – the vegetable curry – but I guess one shouldn’t expect to learn Indian cooking traditions from a box.

The dish is considered a kind of street snack food, and contains enough butter to be of concern to healthy eaters. Which is appropriate: what is snack food without the frisson of sin?

It’s made on a tava. The vegetables are cooked with spices and continually mashed until they form a thick paste. A delicious thick paste.

I researched it and came up with a recipe that I thought would most approximate the stuff in the box (recipe in entry below). I tried it this past weekend, and while it doesn’t taste quite like the stuff in a pouch, it still tastes pretty darn good. This version could have used a few more tomatoes so the recipe posted has a higher quantity of those than this, so expect that to look a little looser than this.

I said it's a spicy heap, not necessarily a pretty one.

As mentioned, this is usually eaten with bread, AND there is an additional pat of butter added when served. But my goodness! I like a frisson of sin, not a whole cartload of guilt, so I swap out the carbs for the slightly less anxiety-producing brown basmati or some cross-cultural whole wheat couscous and skip the extra pat altogether.

I have no idea how this stacks up against the real Pav Bhaji, but until I taste that and learn better, I’m happy to have this stocked up in my freezer.

Next up: I attempt Yemiser W’et.