Gumbo Z'Herbes

Veggies that don't suck, Volume II.

Gumbo Z'Herbes is traditionally made a little deeper into Lent, but I decided to give it a whirl. We got a whole mess of greens from the Hollygrove Market, plus we had some dandelion greens in the fridge, so we needed a way to use them up. Gumbo Z'Herbes is the answer.

Greens shit takes over the kitchen

The first quandary is what recipe to trust. Pistolette didn't like the paper's recipe but mentioned Emeril's. I went through my cookbooks and found one in Commander's and in Foose's "Screen Doors and Sweet Tea". Martha Foose is actually a family friend who catered a great meal at a family friend's house while I was evacuated for Katrina. This is the first meal out of her book I've tried and I like the results.

The first thing to do once you settle on a recipe is sharpen your knife. Trust me, you've got a whole lot of chopping to do.

Start Chopping
The way to make Gumbo Z'Herbes is chop up a whole bunch of onions, garlic, and greens and make a sort of green-stock.

After it simmers for a while, make a roux.

Add the non-boiled veggies (1 bunch parsley, 1 bunch green onions, etc.) and then start skimming the greens out of the stockpot.

Once that mixture has cooked down for at least 30 minutes (smelling quite nice in the process) add your vegetable stock/broth. I left out a couple of cups worth because I thought it needed it and I think that was a good move. Give it a couple more hours to simmer.

Serve over rice with with about a 1/4 teaspoon of Filé dropped into and spread into the serving bowl. Never add it to the pot, because if you boil your main batch again, you'll get a goopy mess.

The gumbo was very, very different. It was almost like a green soup. The dandelion greens were very spicy and gave it kick. If I were doing it over again, I'd probably use more collards and kale and ditch the dandelion greens.

UPDATE- Here's the book that the recipe is based off of:
Screen Doors and Sweet Tea: Recipes and Tales from a Southern Cook by Martha Hall Foose

Cole Slaw

It's Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. While I'm not Catholic, I wanted to lose a little weight so I'm going to go easy on meat. I'm very scared of seeing a 2 as the first digit for my weight.

The goal for Lent is less meat, no beef (for the most part, not cutting out Pho Tai), and no soda. We'll see how long I can make it. I'm cutting my Lent a week short to the wedding date.

To make it through, I'll need veggie recipes that don't suck. The easiest way is add a little pork, especially bacon. That makes the greens so much better. Right now, I'm trying some Gumbo Z'Herbs and I'll let y'all know how that comes out.

A couple of weeks ago, we made some Cole Slaw from scratch that was pretty good and pretty easy.

Here's how I made it:

1/2 a head of cabbage
1 carrot

Chop these as finely as possible. Soak in salted water for about an hour.

The soak in salt water sort of "cooks" the veggies and softens them up

When done, rinse to get the salt off and dry them off on some paper towels

Sauce:
1/2 cup mayo
1/2 onion, small dice
1 Tbsp. vinegar
1 Tbsp. Creole mustard
Pepper

You like-a da sauce, eh?

Mix thoroughly and let stand for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Should last 3 days or so.

After about 30 minutes of sitting in the fridge, we tried it and it was incredibly fresh and delicious. I don't know if I've ever actually had cole slaw that fresh before. Usually, it's made the night before at hot lunch places and it gets a bit goopy. This was anything but.

In Honor of Bora and the Saints, The Perfect "Pain Perdu"

Happy Bora
Originally uploaded by Noladishu

This is a photo of Bora. She's been a part of the family ever since I was born. My grandfather first hired as a sitter to help take care of his wife as she was going downhill fast from Alzheimer's. I was born just a few months before my grandmother died.

Paw-Paw liked her a lot and since he was getting up in years, wanted to keep her around. At first, his excuse was to help take care of me (and later my little brother). She taught us Creole French. She took us on the streetcar all over town. She was like a second mother to me and my little brother. As we got older, she took care of my grandfather more and us less.

When Katrina hit, her house in New Orleans East was ruined. She had insurance and Road Home money, but to this day, it's not rebuilt because she can't quite come up with the last chunk of money to finish it. I also think one of her contractors screwed her over and took the money and ran. She misses New Orleans every single day.

She still lives in Houston, where she evacuated to shortly before Katrina. She's in her eighties now, but still going strong. She's coming to our wedding in March if I have to drive there and pick her up myself. And she still watches the Saints.

Dear Saints, please win this one for Bora.


******************************
The Recipe: Bora's Perfect Pain Perdu

2 eggs (beat)
1/2-cup sugar {can be cut in half if you wuss out}
1/2-cup milk
1-2 tablespoons vanilla
Cinnamon (eye it; enough to form a slight crust on the mixture)
Stale Bread {3 day old French bread sliced 3/4" thick is about perfect}

It took me a while to really get this recipe down. I asked Bora for a recipe, but being an old Creole woman, she knows nothing of recipes or measurements. I actually had to talk her through it while holding up measuring cups to try and nail it down.

Beat the eggs and add the sugar, milk, vanilla, and cinnamon. Once it's all nice and mixed up, start soaking the bread.

Get out a big cast iron pan and get it real, real hot. Melt some butter in the pan and take the thoroughly-soaked bread and plop it in the pan. It should be really noisy when you drop it in.

Don't worry if it smokes a little. If it isn't smoking, you're doing it wrong. It doesn't take very long per side. Only a minute or two (depending on size of bread, how much you crowd the pan, etc.). If you run low on sauce, don't be afraid to stretch it with a little milk. The recipe was designed to be poor-people food.

Pile up your Lost Bread and take to the table. You can coat it with cinnamon-sugar, maple syrup (if you're a Yankee), or good 'ole powdered sugar.

What to do when the cold drafts overwhelm your heater...

Make stock and French Onion Soup

Internet recipes

Candice and I cook a lot. If you were born and raised in New Orleans, you love good food and you like to cook, whether you're a man or a woman. Sometimes, no matter what cookbooks you have, you have to scour the internet for additional ideas and here are some that worked out well. Both recipes also made a lot, but cut down nicely. I tend to be the food photographer, so here are a few photogenic things that I've whipped up in the kitchen from recipes found on the internet.

Paprika Home Fries

Recipe from All Recipes
This is a nice one to fix while you're doing lots of things at once, because it'll stop you from moving around the fries in the pan too much. The keys to this dish are Hungarian Sweet Paprika and adding the butter to the potato in stages. The potatoes can absorb almost infinite quantities of butter if you add it all at once and then you'll burn the fries.


Roasted Radishes and Greens

Recipe from Food and Wine
I love bitter greens. We've been picking up the boxes from the Hollygrove Market. It's a CSA-style setup, so you don't get to pick what you get and it takes a bit of creativity to use all that you are given. What the hell are you supposed to do with radishes? We were hunting and hunting around for how to use radishes (other than raw in salad). Candice found this one and I liked it. The bigger radishes were a little on the bitter side, which is fine by me, but Candice thought we could have cut the bitterness with sugar. The small ones were delicious, though. I suppose if you wanted, you could just use the ones that are about the size of your thumb and put the bigger ones in something else. They keys to the dish are SALT (breaks down the radishes and complements the bitterness nicely) and cooking the hell out of the greens once they're put into the pan. If you use the stalks of the greens, don't forget to chop the stalks into small pieces and put them in before the leaves, because they take a bit longer to cook.

UPDATE- Here's the green mashed potatoes before they went in the oven (none after- they were consumed too quickly):