Talk About Food

It’s been a while since I updated this blog and for this I humbly apologize.  I’ve been working diligently to finish a book manuscript and it’s been finally put to bed.

Apart from working on the book, I did go to Beaumont to teach three cooking classes, which were all sold out.  I thank all the great people who attended the classes at The Kitchen Shop.  We had a grand time!  The menu included tasso and leek soup, crab chops (cakes) served on fried eggplant and topped with tartar sauce, spinach bake, sensation salad and les oreilles de cochon (pigs ears), which aren’t really pigs ears but rather little fried pastries drizzled with cane syrup and sprinkled with toasted pecans! 

The radio show on KKAY 1590 AM continues to roll along.  Don’t forget to tune in via the Internet.  On the home page of this website, there is a link on the right hand side so click on it and you can listen to a live feed every Friday from 3:20 to 4:30 p.m. 

This weekend I’m off to Charleston, S.C.  It’s a great city and so very much like New Orleans.  There are some great restaurants and I hope to enjoy a couple of them.

Christmas is fast approaching so if you need recipes or want to share your favorites, send me an e-mail.  I love hearing from you.

It’s hard to believe that fall has officially arrived.  While we’ve had a few cool (not cold) days but I’ve noticed a few signs that autumn is here.  The leaves on the bald cypress trees are turning brown.  The willows across the bayou from my house are shedding their leaves as well, but I’m still waiting for a real cold front that will inspire me to make a gumbo of chicken and smoked sausage.  There’s nothing better, in my book, on a cold, blustery day than to put together a gumbo—make a roux, add the vegetables, stock and let it simmer for a good part of the day.  The aroma as it cooks is better than any perfume!

A couple of weeks ago I partnered with my friend Chef Patrick Mould for a cooking class at Vermilionville, which is a recreation of a historic Cajun village, which portrays the way of life of the period of 1765 to 1890—an ideal setting for a class where we cooked (and served) crab cakes made of sweet lump crabmeat binded with bechamel sauce and a bit of bread crumbs and fried to a golden-brown.  A salad of baby greens spiked with a balsamic vinaigrette and roasted hot-sauce flavored pecans complemented the crab cakes.  Pig’s ears (called les oreilles de cochon) is an old-time treat—fried pastries that resemble pigs’ ears drizzled with pure cane syrup and scatttered with chopped pecans.  Also on the menu was another Cajun favorite—gateau de sirop, a cake made with pure cane syrup, mollasses and topped with Creole cream cheese ice cream!

Last week I judged the American Culinary Federation of Baton Rouge Culinary Competition.  Wow, what great food!  I judged the soup category and one of the winners was a smoked tomato, lobster and mushroom bisque and it was one of the best and original combinations I’ve had in a while.  Other winners in other categories included a salad or marinated crab and avocadoes with roasted red and yellow bell pepper coulis, pecan pesto biscuits, trio of pork, lamb and game, glazed veal chops stuffed with morels and chanterelles, Dixie duck with bing cherry bang, bang sauce—and a dessert of pistachio tuile mousse cake with Godiva anglaise. 

My co-host and I have been having a glorious time on our Friday afternoon food/talk show (click on the KKAY link on the home page of this website) from 3:20 to 4:30 for a live feed).  Local chef Don Bergeron called us from South Africa where he and his crew cooked a seafood gumbo at a local festival.  He told us that he was able to get all of the necessary ingredients there—okra, shrimp and oysters—that he needed.

Mike Gonzalez called in to discuss his technique for making his prize-winning chicken jambalaya.  I applaud the contestants in this cook-off—they have to cook over a wood fire and that can be rather tricky when cooking such a dish.

This week I’m off to Baton Rouge to speak to high school students about the history of both Creole and Cajun cuisine.  Also on my agenda in the next week is to prepare a meal for a Master Gardeners’ group—my menu will include farm-raised organic tilapia (pan-fried and finished with a lemon/lime butter flavored with lemon thyme), organic salad greens with herbed vinaigrette, rosemary cookies and ice cream!

I would love to hear from you, so feel free to respond to this blog, post a recipe, give me some feedback!

My R&R at the beach in Destin was great!  We ate boiled shrimp, roasted pork loin stuffed with rosemary and garlic plus all the casseroles I brought along, but long walks on the beach burned off a lot of those calories!

But it’s now back home and heading into fall.  Football season is in full swing and just about everyone is into their tailgating mode.  In south Louisiana, that means lots of food—anything from barbecued chicken and pork shoulders, to grilled burgers, red beans and rice, and of course, jambalayas and gumbos.  Hopefully the cool weather will soon arrive!

I’m now into my sixth week of my food/talk show on KKAY 1590 AM radio.  If you want to listen to a live feed, go to the home page of my website, and click on the KKAY link that’s on the right hand side in the green margin area.  We’re having a lot of fun so please join us and give us a call. 

It’s been a long, hot summer and a busy one for me—traveling to Natchitoches, La. (for a piece that will appear in the November/December issue of Louisiana Cookin’ magazine), participating in the Tales of the Cocktail conference in New Orleans, making several personal appearances at various events, premiering my food/talk radio show, and keeping up with all my deadlines—so I and my husband are heading our this weekend for some R&R on the beaches of Destin, Fl. 

I’ve made a large spaghetti casserole, a shrimp and eggplant casserole and a Creole tomato casserole to bring to the beach house, but I’m also looking forward to getting fresh grouper and a few pounds of shrimp to enjoy for dinner while lounging on the deck overlooking the water.  I am a grouper fan—fried grouper sandwich dressed with fried green tomatoes and lots of homemade mayonnaise is my personal choice.  New Orleans-style barbecued shrimp with French bread to sop up the pan juices will be great for an evening supper.

We are also hoping to take a ride to Criolla’s, a restaurant in nearby Grayton Beach, that has a delightful tropical ambiance and great food.  I like to begin with a blood orange margarita, then follow that with Kobe beef quesadilla, and perhaps the pan-seared grouper, and end the meal with their Key Lime cheesecake! 

Other than that, I’m not going to do much else but take long walks on the beach early in the morning, catch up on my reading and kick back and chill.

My weekend in Winnsboro, La. (a small town in the northeast section of the state) was a most enjoyable one.  My husband and I stayed at the Jackson Street Inn, a delightful and comfortable cottage that featured a front porch (cooled by ceiling fans) from which to watch the world go by.  In the rear of the house is a screened-in porch—ideal to watch birds, read the newspaper and enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning.  The full kitchen was well stocked with several types of coffee, snacks and soft drinks.  In the refrigerator there was a bowl of beautiful fresh fruit, bread pudding, and juice.  For breakfast we enjoyed a creamy, cheese grits soufflee and chocolate muffins along with more fruit.

On Saturday, Wade Walley (owner of All Occasion Gifts in Winnsboro) treated us to giant , delicious cheeseburgers and curley-q fries at Big John’s on the town’s main drag.  In the evening we attended the Hot August Night gala at the home of Senator Noble Ellington.  The beautiful home sits under large shade trees and overlooks a large lake stocked with catfish (fried catfish is a specialty in this area) and other freshwater fish.

The event was a fundraiser for the town’s Main Street Association, and local chefs offered such things as pulled pork (tender, moist and delilcious), filet of beef tenderloin done to a turn (prepared by Carl Broussard who was displaced after Hurricane Rita),  creamy pasta (prepared by Byron Robertson of Cafe Ferranc), delicious Grand Marnier ice cream and assorted sweet delights.  Scott Knight prepared my sausage bread, spinach bread and fig cake—thanks Scott.

Although it was hot, hot, hot, large water-cooled fans kept us comfortable and the temperature didn’t deter people from dancing to great music provided by The Chill band. 

On our way back to south Louisiana, we stopped at Lea’s in LeCompte for their specialty ham sandwiches and a couple of wedges of their great pies (blueberry and apple). 

The temperatures have been hovering around 100 degrees and what with the high humidity I feel like I’m breathing gumbo when I’m outside.  But the heat is not going to keep the locals from enjoying good food.  This weekend I’m going to Winnsboro, La. to participate in their Hot August Night fundraiser for their Main Street Association.  I’m looking forward to enjoying a weekend in North Louisiana and I’m anxious to see what good food they’ll be offering to the guests who will be gathering to mix and mingle! 

This Wednesday, August 15, I’ll be attending the annual National Day of the Acadians event in my hometown of St. Martinville, La.  My participation will include a talk on my experiences cooking with my mother, who grew up in a large family on a farm, and with my father, an avid sportsman and Boy Scout leadeer.  The two had very different philosophies on cooking so I had the best of both worlds.

I’m back from four glorious days at Grand Isle, La. where my husband, and two other couples landed over 100 speckled trout the first morning we went out fishing.  It was overcast and the Gulf was as flat as glass when we jockeyed for a position among several other boats along a grassy marsh beach.  I was the first in with my line and immeditely brought in a 1 1/2 pound speckled trout!  It was non-stop after that.  Most of us used live bait (shrimp and croackers) but my friend Pat Caffery and his wife Sweetie chose to use artificial bait called tsunami and caught their fair share.  By 9:30 a.m. we had an ice chest filled with 108 specks.  We noticed a thunderhead moving in from the East so we headed back to the marina and just in time—a line of thunderstorms moved in and poured down over 3 inches of rain in about 1 hour. 

The next morning we headed out again to the same spot but word had gotten out and there were over 20 boats hovering along the beach.  We didn’t do as well as the day before but were able to bring in about 40 fish before the sun got the best of us and we headed back to the camp.

When we arrived back home last night we couldnt wait to broil some trout with lemon butter that we had with boiled potatoes tossed with butter and fresh parsley from my garden.  A green salad and a tart lemon pie rounded out the meal.  

Happiness is fresh fish from the Gulf of Mexico!

This Thursday I’ll be heading out to Grand Isle with Rocky and Brenda Landry (owners of Don’s Seafood & Steakhouse in Lafayette), Margaret and Pat Caffery from New Ibera and my husband, Rock, in hopes of catching our limit of speckled trout, redfish, or whatever we can snag on our lines.

There’s nothing better, in my book, than fresh fish and I’m looking forward to cooking what we catch—maybe a courtbouillion, or perhaps a bouillabaise, or perfectly grilled trout drizzled with lemon butter.  There is also the possibility of picking up fresh shrimp or crabs with which to make a shrimp and crab stew!  Then again, we could make crab chops (cakes) and fry up some of the shrimp to dab with a tart tartar sauce.  The choices are endless.

I’ll give you a full report next week!

The Natchez Food and Wine Festival last weekend was a grand success.  At the Tastings of the River Friday night  guests mingled, sipped on featured wines, danced to the music and tasted offerings from local restaurants, caterers and food services.  

To those who attended the dinner (for which I prepared the meal) at Pleasant Hill, I say thank you for being such a delightful group.  I enjoyed meeting and chatting with you.  If you want the recipes for the dishes that were served, use the "contact us" form on this website.