We didn't even cook a Thanksgiving dinner at our house, and we still have mountains of leftover bits and pieces in the fridge! Part of the reason is turkey gumbo, or what I like to call the best leftover turkey invention EVER (here's Paul's recipe from my hibernating soup blog). But after the gumbo's been cooked, eaten, and frozen in Tupperware, there's a good chance you still have some veggies and sausage (or turkey or ham) lying around, looking forlorn. It's frittata time.
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Tagged with:
Eggs, garlic, breakfast, easy, onion, celery, frittata, gumbo, cheddar, oregano, thyme, feta, iron, andouille, Bell Pepper, skillet, pepperjack, leftover
Jot this down in your travel notebook, your vacation planner, your dream journal, or last year's Jazz Fest ticket: reserve a table for Sunday brunch at Patois next time in New Orleans. If you're into local, good, and hidden, Patois is your dream spot. The brunch menu (not to mention the dinner version) is so good, you'll spend about 15 minutes deciding what to order while you're nibbling the biscuits and muffins from the bread bowl. We looked over many brunch menus before deciding to meet up at Patois, and I think it was one of the best brunches we've had in the city.
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Tagged with:
Chicken, crab, fries, restaurants, pesto, mussels, sunday, brunch, fried, rabbit, Soup, pumpkin, octopus, okra, gumbo, uptown, broth, grits, biscuit, neighborhood, andouille, patois, grillades, succotash, black eyed pea
I've only lived in the South for ten years; before that I lived in Oklahoma. Even though Oklahoma technically isn't the South, my grandmother, Willie Ruth Abbott (or Mee-Mo, as my cousin Kitty dubbed her), was a true Southern cook, making fresh sausage gravy and biscuits every morning, pouring cornbread batter into hot bacon grease in her cast-iron mold. What I learned about Southern food early on in life was all due to spending time in the kitchen with Mee-Mo, crimping the edges of her fried pies. When I was growing up, we'd travel every few years to family reunions held at Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Durant, Oklahoma--a densely green and hilly area in the southeastern corner of the state. Long tables would be set up in the covered pavillion of the cemetery, loaded with every cook's most-requested dishes: fried chicken, dilly bread, peach cobbler, macaroni salad, angel biscuits, fried pies, baked beans, and several potato salads. Just writing this list makes my soul ache for those sweltering afternoons of paper plates weighted down with so much good food.
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Riz jaune has appeared in my life right when I really needed a new "dinner magic" kind of recipe--something cheap, on-hand, and easy to adapt to all sorts of quick dinner fixes. Riz jaune (say "ree zhahn") is basically a Cajun version of fried rice. You make a sort of trinity-plus-Pope concoction (that's onion/celery/bell pepper + garlic), add veggie bits or leftovers you have around the kitchen, ditto with meats (sausage is especially nice), and then you stir in cold cooked rice and eggs. Mix everything up, cook till the egg is firm and scattered all throughout, then eat it as-is or in dozens of other ways that I haven't even thought of yet. Here's what we have had: Riz-jaune-and-red-bean burrito, and gumbo served over riz jaune instead of plain rice. Good stuff. I can also see this being a great stuffing for vegetables or an interesting bed for some gravied chicken or pork.
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Eggs, mushrooms, rice, tomatoes, pope, Sausage, eggplant, gumbo, leftovers, burrito, trinity
Last weekend, I attended my first New Orleans food festival--the Seafood Festival, held downtown on Fulton Street. This was also my first experience with Drago's: their famous char-grilled oysters. On the bottom is their grill (which also happened to have the longest line at the party); top left is the finished product--tender oysters, romano and parmigian cheeses, pepper, lemon, and hot-hot-hot shells.
Crawfish cakes from Mr. B's and Paul's happy face.
Alligator sausage & seafood gumbo from Red Fish Grill and shrimp remoulade from Galatoire's. If you guessed "yum," you're right. Incidentally, this was also my first Galatoire's. It was a big day.
Tagged with:
seafood, festival, gumbo, oysters, crawfish, fulton, red fish grill, remoulade, galatoire's, mr. b's, drago's
John Folse is a famous Louisiana chef; I've watched him for years on PBS. He's also the author of several very large and luxuriously informative cookbooks, including
The Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cuisine. So when we happened by the freezer case stocked with his frozen gumbos, soups, and bisques, we just had to try one. It was really good, and I could argue that it's also worth the money.
Inside the tub, the frozen gumbo is packed in a plastic bag which you immerse in a pot of boiling water. I was glad for this technique--no one should have to eat overcooked seafood, and the bag helps you reheat the gumbo gently, protecting the crawfish and shrimp. The container says seven servings are in each bag, but they're 1/2-cup servings. Paul and I split the entire container (it's the gumbo part only, so you make your own rice to add--the best way to offer frozen gumbo, I think). We spent about $7, so about $3.50 per meal. That's a good price when you're comparing it to restaurant gumbos at $5 to $10 per bowl, but lousy when you're looking at a
huge homemade pot that will last a few days. But as far as convenience and quality go, Folse's gumbo was much better than I was expecting it to be.
How much does your gumbo cost, per serving?
