Twice, I've asked a native New Orleanian woman what her family's favorite thing that she cooked was, and been pleasantly surprised by hearing an answer that I'd never heard before in my short, sheltered life.  The first was "rice and gravy," and the second was "chicken and butter beans."  My road to understanding rice and gravy was a winding one, but I think I've got it down (I wrote about that experience for the Southern Food & Beverage Museum, which you can find a link to on my "Elsewhere" page).

Chicken and butter beans was something altogether different; I didn't even know what a butter bean was.  Lynn Becnel, whom I worked with at Tulane, said it was her husband's favorite dish of all.  I was eager to try it, and found some freshly packaged butter beans at a local vegetable stand.  I know my way around a bean, so I did what I always do with dry beans: I soaked them.  Take note here that butter beans don't need soaking.  You can do it, but you'll end up with a bunch of white beans shedding their tender skins as if it were molting season.  You'll also probably stand there over the bowl, wondering if you're supposed to help them by popping off the skins of those who still have them.  That's what I did.  Let's just say my beans disintegrated in the pot!

Now I've learned, through trial, error, and some good advice from Lynn, that you just don't cook butter beans very long (and certainly don't soak them).  They're tender, rich, and creamy--a perfect starchy addition to smothered chicken.  Smothered chicken is basically a chicken fricasee with some extra vegetables added, along with stock, to produce a thick gravy.  In other words, it's like a big group hug.  I jazzed this one up with a good dose of Tabasco Green Sauce, which is probably not as spicy as you think.  The Tabasco gives the whole works a shake up, like drunk aunt Mimi on Treme.  All group hugs should have one of those.

spicy smothered chicken and butter beans

This is especially good over biscuits, with a side of sliced red garden tomatoes.  You can also add chopped fresh tomatoes to the gravy in the skillet, if you like.

• 1 whole chicken, cut up into 8 serving pieces
• 1/3 cup Tabasco Green Pepper Sauce, plus 2 Tablespoons

• 1 cup dried butter beans (large limas), rinsed and sorted (or 1 15-oz can butter beans, drained)
• 1 bay leaf

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, plus more to taste
• 3 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 stalks celery, thinly sliced
• 1 green bell pepper, diced small
• 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme (or 2 sprigs fresh)
• 1 1/2 cups chicken stock
• 1/2 cup minced parsley

1. Marinate the chicken: Rinse the chicken pieces, pat them dry, and place in a large bowl.  Add 1/3 cup Tabasco Green Pepper Sauce and turn the pieces around in it to coat well.  Cover and refrigerate for 20 minutes, while you get the beans cooking.
2. Meanwhile, cook the butter beans: Place the beans and bay leaf in a medium saucepan and cover with water by 4 inches.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, for 40 to 50 minutes, until the beans are very tender when tested (the skins will pucker up and look frilly at first, but will stretch and relax as they cook). Drain and set aside.
3. While the beans are cooking, remove the chicken from the refrigerator.  Combine the flour, salt, and pepper in a bowl.   Lightly coat each chicken piece in the seasoned flour.
4. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet with deep sides over medium-high heat.  Add half the chicken and cook until browned on both sides, about 10 minutes per batch.  Remove chicken to a plate and repeat until all the chicken is browned.
5. To the same skillet, add the onions, celery, and bell pepper (add extra oil if the skillet is dry), and saute for 5 to 7 minutes, until softened.  Add the jalapeno, garlic, and thyme, and saute another minute or two.
6. Add the chicken stock and 2 Tablespoons Tabasco Green Sauce, and combine well.  Nestle the chicken pieces back into the skillet, skin side-up, and bring the liquid to a boil.  Reduce heat to a simmer and partially cover; simmer for 30 minutes.
7. Add the reserved butter beans to the skillet, replace partial cover, and simmer another 10 to 15 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and the gravy is thick.  Taste for seasoning and add more salt, pepper, or Tabasco Green if necessary (I added about a teaspoon more salt). Serve hot, sprinkled with parsley.

serves 6 to 8

Disclaimer: Tabasco compensated me for creating this recipe.

If you've never had or heard of grillades and grits, then I apologize for not mentioning them earlier.  They're one of the two most wonderful things to eat for brunch in New Orleans (shrimp and grits being the other).  I've never been to anyplace in town for brunch that didn't offer one or both of these goodies.  Grillades (gree'-awds) are made of beef, veal, or pork; I haven't encountered a rabbit version yet, but I won't be surprised when I do.  The beef is a thin, flat cut of top round or chuck--something that can withstand a long, slow cooking.  It simmers in a pot with the trinity (onion, celery, bell pepper), garlic, and a little jalapeno--not traditional, but I really like it--until the rich broth thickens and intensifies, so what you get is a powerfully flavored beef "stew" that is perfect over creamy cheese grits.  This is a great Louisiana recipe to try if you're hankering for some thick, rich goodness but you don't feel up to stirring a roux, because you don't have to.  The small amount of flour used in the browning of the beef will produce all the roux you need.

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Welcome to the third installment of my Christmas Hannukah bake-a-thon!

Have you ever had rugelach?  Ever heard of them?  They're these awesome, petite crescents of cream cheese and butter dough wrapped around a filling such as cinnamon, nuts, or preserves.  The fact that the dough is almost nothing but cream cheese and butter pretty much had me hooked.  But I also saw an opportunity to inject a little deep-south peppery twist on this classic cookie.

Pepper jelly. You know, the jalapeno-spiked stuff that gets poured over blocks of cream cheese?  Turns out it's a remedy for someone who bakes and eats lots of cookies and, quite frankly, needs a little help preventing palate fatigue (that's Melissa Clark's term, not mine, but it's well-put).  I was afraid these might be too spicy in the end, but they're just spicy enough, and a welcome change of spice from the typical holiday range of cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg.  I think you'll like them.  And let's forge ahead and put pepper jelly in all kinds of sweet things!  It'll be a revolution.

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Ah, September...I don't know what the weather's like where you are, but here in New Orleans, it's pretty darn wet.  But once the rains of Lee move northeast, we should get some fall-like weather, topping out around 75 degrees!  Practically winter.  I'm always ready to do some roasting as soon as the major summer heat subsides, and I'm jumping the gun a little here, but with good reason.  We're making this scrumptious jalapeno-roasted pork from Susan Spicer's wonderful cookbook, Crescent City Cooking, so we can use the leftovers in a Labor Day/Paul's Birthday jambalaya tomorrow.  Hooray!

[two pork shoulders (double recipe) about to go in the oven]

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Before the intense heat of this summer drives us all inside to eat nothing but cold sandwiches and ice cream, and before every last tomato has been incinerated by the sun, I want to share a special creation with you that we concocted at the beach: shrimp and okra stew with a secret.  The secret is chipotle pepper. (Italics is the typist's whisper).  Not that chipotle peppers in adobo sauce haven't been popularized in recent years--they're showing up in everything from hot wing sauce to salad dressing--but they're not indigenous to New Orleans cuisine.  But they really put this shrimp and okra stew over the top, I tell you!  Wowza!

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Happy 2011, everyone!  Carnival season is well underway.  About 5 weeks left til Mardi Gras.  Our garage has undergone an intense cleaning.  Arcade Fire will be at Jazzfest. We're going to try a small garden. It's shaping up to be a great year.

We were in Oklahoma over New Year's, and didn't get a chance to make our standard black-eyed-pea and greens feast that we've enjoyed since moving here...but here's a simple recipe for some down-home greens 'n peas that'll fit the winter soup bill and sneak in some luck before January's out.

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I'm a lucky girl. Lynn Becnel, my co-worker and an excellent cook, often shares fresh lemons from her trees, rosemary and basil from her garden, and even the bounty that others have brought to her from their gardens.  Recently, I left work with bags of okra, squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers she'd brought from a gardner friend with a bumper crop.  And when I see fresh cucumbers and tomatoes and it's hotter than hades outside, I think gazpacho.  This recipe started out as soup, but when I tasted the vegetables, before adding the tomato juice that would become the "broth," I stopped tinkering.  It was good.  It tasted like a handful of garden--who was I to cover up all that gorgeous flavor?  So gazpacho salsa was born.

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I have to be honest:  I'm a little down these days. It's normally a great time to be in this wonderful city--festivals, sno-balls, seafood everywhere you look--and of course, that's the reason for the blues.  The seafood.  No fried oyster po-boys, no raw oysters in some spots.  Fishing folk shuttling executives out to the rigs instead of pulling in hundreds of pounds of shrimp.  It's a crying shame.

I haven't even felt much like cooking lately, though I've been desperate to eat something homey and comforting.  I just couldn't think of what that was.  So yesterday I started scribbling, doodling, trying to get down to the basics of what would make me feel better, and I came up with one of my favorite childhood meals:  fish sticks, peas, and mac and cheese.  Have you ever had this, or something like it?  With a little ketchup on the plate, it looks beautiful, in a Crayola kind of way:  crunchy golden fish sticks, a big splotch of red ketchup, bright green peas (cooked from frozen in nothing more than salted water), and orangy-yellow mac and cheese from the blue box.  Every time my mom pulled the ingredients out for this feast, I got so excited.  It was happiness in one of its purest forms:  looking forward to something.  Plus, I liked the challenge of getting one of those straight macaroni on each of my four fork tines before I took a bite. 

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