Jambalaya

I went to visit my parents for about a week and a half and picked up this little gem while I was back home. This is my dad's jambalaya recipe, which is more in the creole school of cooking than the cajun. (Here's a good article highlighting the strong points of both.) Jambalaya is a great dish to show the difference of the two cooking styles. Creole jambalaya is red and has an emphasis on tomatoes. Cajun jambalaya is a more grayish color and has an earthy, homey taste to it. Here we go:

Cook two cups raw rice in chicken stock.

1 stalk celery
1 large onion
2 bay leaves
3 cloves garlic
1/4 c bell pepper
1 14 oz can diced tomatoes (drained)
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
1 lb andouille sausage (kielbasa is an adequate substitute)
1 lb raw shrimp (peeled)
Chicken as desired

to taste:
salt
black pepper
white pepper
Tabasco
Tony Chachere's

Sauté vegetables until tender. Add sausage and shrimp. Sauté til shrimp are pink. Add tomatoes and tomato sauce. Bring to boil.

Mix sauce with cooked rice and let simmer over low fire for 10 minutes.

——

After I copied this recipe down from my dad's near-illegible scrawl, he asked me, "So you know how to make it now?"

"Yeah. I got the recipe, and I watched mom as she was cooking."

"No. It's made with love," was his response.

I groaned a little on the inside. My whole life he told me that "love" was the secret ingredient in his Nana's cooking, and I always chalked it up as sentimental southern mysticism. But then I started thinking about it, and I think my dad is right. There are three kinds of love that play into good cooking, and I feel like how my brother cooks fried chicken exemplifies them all: a love for the tradition of the dish, a love for the ingredients, and a love for the company. This is what makes his fried chicken the best I've ever tasted.

My brother calls his cooking "ancestor worship." I think all of us Wyatt kids have a deep love for the traditional cooking of our forbearers, and we feel a strong duty to get those dishes right. It's our job to pass down our great-grandmother's étouffée recipe and keep creole cooking alive in our family. You should see Jake fret over his fried chicken. He constantly reassesses the time that each cut of chicken should be in the oil and how best to cut the chicken. If he weren't so concerned with preserving and presenting the fried chicken recipe bequeathed to us by our ancestors, I don't think his chicken would be half as good as it is.

Next, Jake has a love and respect for the ingredients he's using. He does not buy the chicken already cut—he gets the chicken whole and parts it himself. This is probably is unnecessary, but it shows a love for the experience of cooking with chicken. This is how I cook my fricassee as well. Yes, it's more work to part a chicken yourself, but I feel that it's a more intimate way of cooking. And if you show that level of respect to such a pedestrian ingredient as chicken, you're going to give crab, crawfish, shrimp, and oysters the level of respect they deserve. And your dish will be all the better for it.

The third type of love is what my dad was trying to communicate to me through the years, and that is a love for the people that you serve. When Jake fries chicken, he invites all of his friends and family, and everyone rejoices together. He's incredibly open-handed with the chicken, and Kathryn is always right there with equally stunning potatoes and pies to back it up. Under these conditions, I think it's impossible for anyone to harbor ill will. Cooking for someone is helping them to fulfill a basic survival need in an elegant and satisfying way. In the grand scheme of things it may be a small contribution, but you're helping them to sustain their very existence. It is an inherently magnanimous endeavor.

Just because you've heard something all your life doesn't mean it's untrue. As cheesy as it sounds, I do think "love" is the secret ingredient in good cooking. Love of tradition, love of ingredients, and love of people. It's a difference you can taste.

King Cake!

Mix:
1 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. dry milk
1 package rapid rise yeast

Add: 1 cup hot water & stir


Add: 1 cup flour
1 egg
1/4 c. oil

Add: 1 to 1 1/4 cup flour. Knead until spongy. Let rise 25 minutes.

Separate the dough into two and roll them out until they're long and about 4 inches wide
Mix: ½ stick melted butter
1 cup brown sugar 
1 tsp cinnamon 
1 T flour
Roll up – pinch – seal well
Braid the two rolls together
Let rise 15 minutes. 


Bake at 350º, 17 min.

To decorate the cake, mix up a simple frosting with a lot of powdered sugar and a little milk (I also add vanilla extract). Add the frosting while the cake is still hot and sprinkle purple, gold, and green sugar on top. You can find the sugar at most craft stores like Michael's and Hobby Lobby.

As for king cake babies, you can buy them online, or if you're lucky, you can find them in some party stores with the stuff for baby showers.

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.

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.

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.

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.