Georgia Scallops

I came up with this recipe a few weeks back and have made it three times now.


Sauce:
1/2 stick butter
1 T crushed garlic
2–3 shallots
6 small mushrooms, sliced
1 cup white wine
3 sprigs tarragon
1 pint cream
Worcestershire Sauce
Tabasco Sauce
dried basil


Scallops:
12–20 scallops
olive oil
salt
pepper
1 lime


Sauté the garlic, shallots, and mushrooms in the melted butter. When the shallots are translucent, add the wine and tarragon (tear the leaves off the stems, but don't worry about chopping the leaves). Gradually add the cream over the next ten minutes, stirring regularly. Season as you go along.


The trick is the scallops. You must use a non-stick pan. I tried to do it with the smoothest of cast iron pans, and it was a disaster. Get the pan literally smoking hot, then add the olive oil. I was going to write out all the details of how to sauté them, but it would just be a pain for you and me. So here's a video that shows you how to do it perfectly:








The only difference is that I use the lime to sprinkle the scallops instead of a lemon.


Plate rice and place 3–5 scallops on top. Then spoon the sauce on top of the rice. Garnish with torn parsley and serve. Serves four.


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I first made these scallops for my sister, after whom they're named. She's the one that recommended I serve this over rice. I'm grateful for all my siblings, and I love to cook for them. I appreciate these lines by Christina Rossetti:


"For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands."

Chicken Fricassee and Fecundity

Different countries have entirely different takes on this dish. There are even significant variations within Louisiana, but this is the one I go with.

1 whole, raw chicken
2 stalks celery
1/2 bell peper
1/2 onion
4 medium carrots
1 cup Sherry
1/2 cup parsley
salt
——
2 sprigs rosemary
2 T garlic
salt
——
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup olive oil
——
3 sprigs tarragon
more Sherry
Tony Chachere's
Tobasco

Part the chicken. Here's a great video for how to do that:



Keep the breasts, legs, and thighs, but put the rest of the chicken (including the entire carcass) in a large pot full of water. Add all the ingredients from the first list and cook it down until you have about 3/4 of a gallon of stock left.

While that's going on, cook the breasts, legs, and thighs in a hot pan of olive oil, garlic, rosemary, and salt. Don't worry about cooking the thighs all the way through.

Wash out the pan and make a roux with the oil and flour. Follow the same procedure as the gravy here. After it's done and cooled off a bit, ladle in some stock.

Now, strain all the solids out of the stock. Put back in whatever meat you can get off the carcass and wings. Stir in the roux and the pan-cooked chicken. After a few minutes, pull the legs and thighs out, cut it off the bone, and toss it back in the pot. Tear off the tarragon leaves and add them in. Then just season to perfection. You may want to use some cayenne pepper or a bit of crab boil to give it a little kick.

Serve over rice.

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Chicken Fricassee is a pretty inexpensive but delicious dish. I remember when I was a little kid that for a while, my dad was between jobs pretty regularly. We didn't have a lot, but we still ate well. One night, we were supposed to feed these missionaries from our church, so my mom decided to make fricassee since it is plentiful and cheap. We were just planning on two guests, which would have made seven at the table.

But suddenly, all of Christendom converged on our house. Naturally, my mom was worried that there wasn't going to be enough food. For one, people were scarfing it down (to this day I have not had better fricassee than that night's). For another, we weren't anticipating nearly that many people. It was double what we'd planned.

But somehow, there was plenty of fricassee in the pot, and even a generous amount left over. Since then, I have always associated fricassee with generosity. It is good to give, even when we don't have much to give. If you do good, things have a way of working out.

Shrimp & Artichoke Soup

1/2 stick of butter
1/2 onion (diced)
2 t minced garlic
1lb boiled shrimp
1 pint half and half
1 can cream of celery soup
1 can artichokes
Tony Chachere's, Tobassco, crab boil, white wine, and parsley to taste

Sauté the onion and garlic in the butter. Add shrimp. Place in a soup pot. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook for 15 minutes on low heat. Do not boil. Serves 6.

How to Chop an Onion

This pretty much changed my life:

Wyatt Gravy

A holiday is just not a holiday without this gravy. Once, since I was born, have I not had this gravy for Thanksgiving or Christmas. It is unstoppably good. Here's how it works.

Lots of water

2 stalks of celery

2 carrots

1 bell pepper

1 onion

2 T minced garlic

chunks of animal

——

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup olive oil

Stock

First, start off by filling your largest pot up with water and placing it on high heat. Then toss in all the ingredients in the first list. If you're making a bird-based gravy, use the neck liver, heart and gizzard. Just toss the meat in the pot and let that cook for hours—until you have a little over a gallon left. Remove everything out of the stock, but toss in the meat from the neck. (If you're doing a beef gravy, boil some spare ribs in the pot and chop up the meat and leave it in the stock.)

Roux:

While the stock is boiling down, in a frying pan mix the flour and oil together and cook on medium heat. This will take a while and all your attention. Continuously stir the mixture. It will go through a few phases. At first it will be a blond color, then caramel, then chocolatey, and finally it will look like really dark chocolate. Take it off of the fire just before it gets to that dark chocolate stage since it will cook for a little while after it's removed from heat.

This takes hours to make, but it is so worth it.

Wassail

Okay, this is my grandmother's recipe. I'm aware that most wassail recipes are apple-based. My feeling is this: if you want cider, drink cider.

1 cup sugar
6 cups water
1/2 tsp ground cloves, or 5 whole cloves
2 sticks cinnamon
——
2 cups grape juice
1 cup pineapple
2 lemons squeezed

Cook the water, sugar and spices on low for a half hour. Then add the rest and serve hot. If you're being really fancy, you can throw in lemon slices to float around on top.

Salmon Pasta

I kind of made this up today. It was well received, so I'll post it.

olive oil
2 T minced garlic
3 T capers
1 large tomato
1 smoked salmon filet
1 package thin spaghetti or Angel Hair

Warm up a frying pan to medium heat, then add olive oil. You want enough to coat the entire pan very well. This will wind up being a sauce of sorts, so be more generous than if you were just going to sauté an onion, but don't put in so much that the pasta would get greasy. When the oil is hot, add the garlic and capers. Cook this on medium heat for about five minutes, then switch it to warm while the pasta cooks.

Cook the pasta. Don't let the spaghetti get fat and soggy. Drain pasta and add to frying pan. Add in the salmon and toss. In another pan, sauté the chopped tomato in a little more oil and garlic. Cook it until it's just about to fall apart. Lay the cooked tomatoes on top.

Here's an optional mediterranean sauce you can add:

1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup milk
1.5 T fresh dill

1 T fresh parsley

.5 t minced garlic

1 lemon's juice (don't worry about getting every last drop out)
lemon zest from 1/2 a lemon's peel

Basically, just mix these ingredients together and you have a nice dill and dairy sauce. It goes really well with the salmon. I would recommend making this a little bit earlier, and letting it get to room temperature so you don't cool the pasta down too much when you add it.

Ronnie's Ribs

One of the best cooks I know is Ronnie Abel. He is a man renowned for his mini-muffalettas as well as a host of other dishes. Plus he's a long time family friend. I doubt he remembers this, but he actually taught me how to barbecue chicken. My dad is also a great cook, but I thought Ronnie's chicken was a lot juicer than my dad's, so I asked him to show me his technique. That's still how I barbecue chicken. Anyway, this ribs recipe comes from Ronnie's blog. I made it this past weekend, and it was a huge hit.

The nice thing about this recipe is it really requires no grilling. So if you live in an apartment like me, or if winter sets in and you start to crave some hot barbecue, this recipe is a lifesaver. The process is simple: rub the ribs, put them in a crock pot, and then broil them.

3 sides pork ribs
1 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup Tony Chachere's
1 T garlic powder
1 liter Coca-Cola
1/2 bottle of barbecue sauce

Mix the dry ingredients to make a rub. Cut the ribs into three or four piece segments. Rub the ribs down then place in a crock pot. Pour Coca-Cola over the ribs for moisture and flavor. Cook on high for about four hours. Remove from crock pot and place on a pan so that the ribs arch meat-side up. Paint them with your favorite barbecue sauce (mine is Bull's-Eye), then broil in the oven until the sauce cooks in (about five minutes). Serves about 10.

Brie and Spinach-Stuffed Chicken

This is yet another recipe I've adapted from OLOGC 2008. There it's listed as "Prosciutto-Wrapped Chicken," but I've changed the stuffing of the breast so as to put the emphasis there, rather than on the accessory bit of pork. Here are the necessaries:

1/2 c. frozen spinach
brie cheese
pinch nutmeg
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
4 prosciutto slices
3 T. butter
3 onions
2 1/2 c. sliced mushrooms
1 T. flour
1 cup white wine
1 1/4 chicken stock
salt
pepper

Thaw spinach and drain. Mix in cheese. (Works better if it's warm. If it's not mixing, just stuff it in the chicken later without mixing it.) Add nutmeg, salt, and pepper to the mix.

Slice open each breast from the side so as to make a pocket. You can expand the pocket by working it with your fingers. Stuff them with the mixture and wrap the prosciutto around them. If you want, fasten the prosciutto with toothpicks. (There will be some flipping of the chicken.)

Heat up a pan with butter and brown the breasts for two minutes on each side. Move the chicken to a baking dish.

Cook the onions and mushrooms in the pan with the remaining butter until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms are slightly browned. Stir in flower and gradually add the wine and stock. Bring to a boil. Pour sauce over breasts and cook uncovered for 20 min. in a 400º oven, then turn them over and cook for another 10 min. Take out the toothpicks, if you used them.

Grammy's Spaghetti Sauce

My whole life, there has only been one spaghetti sauce that I've craved—my grandmother's. She's from Idaho, so this has got a western American twist to it, but don't turn your nose up just yet, even though this varies sharply from the classic Italian tradition.

I remember being about four years old and puzzling over why no one else's spaghetti tasted as good as Grammy's. When I was about ten, I spent a week at her house in the hopes of unlocking the secret. I thought that if I could learn this recipe, I'd be set for life. It looked too complicated for me, so I just gave up.

Today I tried again, and I unlocked the incredible, mellow blend of this bolognese. Here's what you need:

6 medium carrots
1 onion
1lb ground beef or Italian sausage
3 cans tomato sauce
1 tsp garlic salt
1 tsp celery salt
1.5 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp baking soda

Skin the carrots and cut them into 2 inch slices no more than 1/2 inch thick. Dice onion. Boil the vegetables for about an hour. Drain, then mash, then drain them again. Brown beef with salt, pepper, and garlic. Add to vegetables. Add tomato sauce, spices and herb. Here is the secret: up to this point, all the flavors will be there, but it will taste far too bitter and will have too much of that canned taste. Add a bit of baking soda and that flavor goes away!

If there is one recipe that epitomizes my grandmother, it is this one. The idea to use baking soda to mellow out the sauce is brilliant. What you're actually doing is adding a base to a rather acidic mixture. The resulting chemical reaction neutralizes the acid and allows the flavors to blend, rather than compete. That kind of precision in thinking and a determination to get it all to work is the very portrait of my grandma.

Oysters Paltron (à la Wyatt)

This recipe comes from my aunt (first cousin, twice removed, actually) Mary-Elizabeth Paltron. Once, for my birthday we decided to cook oysters three ways using three of her excellent recipes. I like this one because it is so simple and delicious. She has it listed as an entrée served over saffron rice. I like it as an appetizer with hot french bread. Your call.

She asks for two dozen oysters in the recipe. If you're in the South, go for it. If you're in the West, you're probably using oysters from Washington or Portland. These oysters are typically much larger than the ones in the South, so you probably only need to use somewhere between twelve to eighteen. Just use your own judgement. Also, her recipe calls for dried herbs; I use fresh, mostly because I think it looks better on the sliced bread. It really doesn't matter.

1 stick butter
3-4 small cloves of garlic
1 stalk green onion, chopped
1/4 tsp. dried basil
1/4 tsp. dried oregano
Worcestershire sauce (several dashes)
Tobasco sauce (several dashes)
salt
pepper
2 bay leaves
white wine
oyster water
Parmesan cheese
Italian bread crumbs
chopped parsley

Sauce:
In sauce pan, melt butter and sauté garlic and green onion until transparent. Then add herbs, sauces, salt, pepper, and bay leaves. Cook until blended.

Oysters:
Lay oysters in a baking dish. Do not stack them. Lightly salt and pepper oysters, then pour in the sauce. Wash the pan with white wine and add to dish along with spare oyster water. Sprinkle lightly with Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs. Bake in 325º for fifteen minutes, or until it starts to bubble. Add parsley and additional cheese when done baking.

Ratatouille

Here's the second (of many a) recipe I've modified from The Friends of Our Lady of Good Counsel 2008. It goes well as a side or a main dish. Modify the quantity of ingredients based on the size of your baking dish.

String beans, snapped
potatoes, sliced
eggplant, sliced
crimini mushrooms, sliced and sautéed
zucchini, sliced
bell pepper, chopped
onion, sliced and ringed
tomatoes, sliced
basil
oregano
salt and pepper
Chachere's
Tobasco
olive oil

Sauté the mushrooms in butter, garlic, and spices. Layer vegetables in the order listed with the beans on the bottom. Tuck different spices between layers, but save the basil for the tomatoes. Bake covered for about an hour at 375. Sprinkle grated parmesan cheese on top. Servings vary on the amount of vegetables.

Lamb Stuffed Bell Peppers

This is a recipe I modified from The Friends of Our Lady of Good Counsel 2008 cookbook. It's great for larger parties.

12 bell peppers of various colors
3 lbs. ground lamb
1 1/2 cups cooked rice
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
3/4 cup parsley, chopped
1 chopped bell pepper
2 cans of stewed tomatoes
1 cup grated parmesan
1/2 cup mozzarella
Italian bread crumbs

Sauté onion, garlic, bell peppers, and green onions in either butter or olive oil. Add lamb and brown. Mix in parsley and stewed tomatoes. Stir until mixed. Add cheese. Stir again. Remove from heat. As the meat mixture cools, cut the tops off of the remaining bell peppers and clean out the insides. Stuff with meat filling and coat the top with bread crumbs. Place peppers in a deep, glass baking dish. Add a 1/2 inch layer of water at the bottom of pan, cover with aluminum foil, and cook for one hour. Remove foil for the last 15 minutes of cooking so the tops will brown. Sprinkle with more grated parmesan. Serves 12.

Shrimp/Crawfish Étouffée

I thought I'd start this blog off right. This is my favorite dish in the world and the recipe that gets requested the most. It's remarkably easy to make and absolutely delicious.

Ingredients:

1/2 stick butter
1 tbsp. minced garlic
1 medium onion
1 chopped bell pepper
2–3 chopped celery stalks
2 lbs. peeled tails (shrimp or crawfish)
2 cups chicken or seafood stock
1 1/2 tbsp. corn starch
Tobasco, Chachere's, crab boil to taste
1/2 cup chopped green onion and parsley mixed

Boil tails in crab boil (peel the tails after they're cooked). Sauté the garlic, onion, bell pepper and celery in butter until translucent. Add tails and cook for about five minutes. Add stock. Move down to medium heat. Cook another two minutes. Add corn starch mixed in with water. Add spices and cook for about ten minutes on low heat. Garnish with green onion and parsley. Plate over rice with hot french bread. Serves about 6.