When I get a hankering for something, I become a relentless researcher.  In a way, it's a hindrance--I believe there is one perfect way to make what I want using the ingredients I already have, and I look through every book and website I can find, sure that it will appear.  That rarely happens, but that's how I end up making my own versions of things.  (Sometimes it would be nice to just look up a recipe and buy what it calls for, though.)

Paul has been busy lately re-seasoning the cast iron skillet, and it's more beautiful than ever; it's got that slick, midnight-black, nonstick coating that it never really achieved before the last time it got caught in a little flood in the basement.  We were anxious to get some good cracklin' cornbread going in that thing, although we didn't have cracklins, we just had bacon. And I didn't have milk, I just had buttermilk. And I wanted a little tiny bit of sugar and some flour along with the cornmeal, so we didn't have to eat cornmeal hockey pucks. The search was on. I never found a recipe that used the exact size of skillet we possess (9") and hot bacon drippings and buttermilk, etc., so I ended up adapting John Besh's recipe from his book My New Orleans.  Luckily--and it was truly lucky, because I never really know what's going to happen when I alter recipes for baked goods--it was just what we wanted. A little chewy, very savory, and crispy on the edges from the screaming hot skillet.

continue reading...

[sweet potato grits and deviled chicken thighs]

My name is Jennifer, and I am a cookbook junkie.  Recently our library underwent a complete cleaning, reorganization, and shelf-ification, and a few discoveries were made: Paul and I have duplicate copies of many things.  We don't have much in the science genre.  And I have approximately 250 cookbooks.  Cookbook collecting is definitely a habit for me, and reflects my evolution as a cook.  Consider the first cookbook I ever bought, The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, in 1991.  I had my first apartment at O.U., and though I wasn't a vegetarian, I was deathly afraid of poisoning myself by preparing meat improperly; thus began a long period of collecting vegetarian books.  Or my long-lived low-fat obsession, punctuated every Christmas with the latest Cooking Light yearbook. Thankfully, Cooking Light has lessened its low-fat strictures somewhat and is more about well-balanced eating, so I still follow it.  And in recent years, my focus has been Louisiana and Southern cooking, resulting in enough volumes to fill an entire shelf.  The latest purchase, Basic to Brilliant, Y'all, by Virginia Willis, is a great collection of Southern-based recipes with solid cooking techniques built in to each recipe (Willis is classically trained).  It joins the ranks of my favorite cookbooks that actually teach you how to change the recipes into something else, which is equivalent, in my mind, to a private cooking lesson (How To Cook Without a Book, The Art of Simple Food, and In the Kitchen with a Good Appetite are similar books).

continue reading...