Ham Carbonara

This was a childhood favorite. It's slightly technical at the end but well worth it.

3 eggs
1 package of thin pasta
2 T butter
7 oz ham
2 oz sliced mushrooms
Minced garlic
2 T fresh parsley sliced
2 T cream
1/2 tsp marjoram
3/4 c shredded parmesan cheese
3/4 c peas

Put whole eggs in bowl of warm water before you start cooking.

Cook pasta (al dente) and drain.

Melt butter. Stir in ham, mushrooms and garlic. Heat through. Remove eggs from bowl, break and beat well, stir in parsley, cream, and marjoram.

Immediately toss hot cooked pasta with the ham mixture until well blended and add cheese. Serve immediately.

Cajun Jambalaya

This recipe comes from our family friends the Nickens. I have my dad's creole jambalaya recipe already on the blog, but both types are delicious.

4 onions chopped
3 green peppers chopped
4 toes of garlic
15 chicken thighs
4 tsp salt
2 lbs cooked sausage
6-7 c water
fresh parsley
2/3 bottle of Kitchen Bouquet
2 lbs Mahatma rice
1 1/2 tsp cayenne
bay leaves

Cook all veggies in 2 c water. Add cooked sausage and 6-7 cups water, salt, cayenne, Kitchen Bouquet, and chicken. Cook on top of stove 20 minutes. Add rice. Cook until rice swells. Cover and place in 375° oven for 20 minutes. Top with chopped green onions.

Cajun Crab Risotto

Here's a recipe I came up with for crab risotto.

1 cup arborio rice

4–5 ounces crab meat

1 1/2 cups chicken stock

1 dash Zatarain's shrimp & crab boil

Tony Chachere's

marsala cooking wine

green onion

parsley

Get a large non-stick pan hot and add a bit of olive oil. Sauté the rice for a few minutes, then add the chicken stock in slowly. Once the rice has absorbed the stock, add a dash of the wine and the other seasoning, and keep adding warm water slowly for the next 10–20 minutes until the rice is creamy and no longer crunchy. Stir constantly and vigorously. Shake that pan.

During the last round of water adding, splash a little bit more wine in, and once it's been absorbed take the pan off the heat. Add the crab and a bit of butter. Stir it around until it's mixed. Garnish with parsley, green onions, and any crab meat that might be left over.

Serves two.

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.

Power Brownies

Some people prefer anemic, from-the-box brownies. I don't.

1 1/2 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2/3 c cocoa (use Hershey's)
2 c sugar
2/3 cup oil
4 eggs
1 cup walnuts (optional)


Mix dry ingredients. Mix the rest together. Grease pan and bake for 30 minutes at 350.

Now was that hard? Nope. Not at all. So never make boxed brownies again. They really don't save time, and they're WEAK.

Trout (or Catfish) Meunuiere

4-5 filets
milk
salt and white pepper
2 T Worcestershire sauce
2 lemons
flour
1 1/2 sticks butter

Soak filets in milk for a half hour. Dry off with paper towels. Coat in flour and sprinkle with salt and white pepper. In a non-stick pan, melt 1/2 stick of butter and pan fry the filets until they're brown on both sides (2-3 minutes on each side). Place the filets on a plate in the oven, set on warm while the sauce is made. Add the rest of the butter, Worcestershire sauce, and the juice of one lemon to the pan. Cook for a bit, then pour over the fish. Serve with a garnish of freshly sliced lemons and parsley.

Also, it's nice to serve this on a bed of mashed potatoes. I recommend cooking the potatoes in the regular fashion but don't add any butter. Then sauté some garlic and rosemary in butter on the side, then mix it all together. When you pour the meunuiere sauce over the potatoes, you get a wonderful combination of flavors—lemon, garlic, rosemary, Worcestershire—it's amazing.

Ronnie's Stuffed Mirliton

Mirliton is a delicious pear-shaped squash that grows in southern Louisiana. I used to think that you couldn't get it outside of Louisiana, but I recently found that the grocery out here in Utah is selling it under a different name—"chayote." So if your a displaced cajun, look around and you might be surprised. This recipe comes from Ronnie Abel (with a few modifications).

6 mirlitons
1/2 stick butter
1 medium onion
1/4 cup diced celery
1 T minced garlic
1 lb shrimp
2–3 cubes chicken bouillon
1 1/8 cup water
4 eggs
1 3/4 cups Italian bread crumbs


Boil the mirlitons for 15 minutes, then peal and cube (be sure to cut out the seeds). Sauté the onion, celery, and garlic in the butter for about five minutes. Add the shrimp and cook until pink. Then add the water/bouillon. Beat the eggs and temper them with the hot shrimp sauce. Mix it all together with the bread crumbs, and then bake for 30 minutes at 375. It's delicious.