It Just Never Gets Old

Our quasi-adopted, full-grown son spent the night with us again last night and surprise, surprise...I roasted a whole chicken. Actually I roasted two since Sanford also brought his Mississippi First co-conspirator, Rachel Hicks with him for dinner and we had all three boys at home. I made a pan sauce by reducing the drippings with some wine, peach preserves, apple cider vinegar and a paw-full of pecans. It was a great meal and we had a fantastic time. The boys were quite entertained listening to all of us growed-folks tell stories about when we were in high school. I don't know what I would eat if they stopped making whole chickens. I just cant get fired up about the whole boneless, skinless thing.
Bon Appetit!

~Tom

Meal Inspired by a Facebook Message

I got a facebook note from my friend Rose Casano (yes, of Rose & Peter Fame). She gave me the huge compliment of rating my food above that of the venerable New Orleans institution, Galatoire's. Although I'm more of an Antoine's guy, I certainly appreciated the sentiment of her post. One of my favorite dishes from Galatoire's (their version is actually better than Antoine's) is Chicken Clemenceau. The dish is très Français and takes its name from Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), a French statesman who became the French Premier in 1906. It has few ingredients, but is complex to perfect and when done properly is a real delight. The traditional dish is chicken (bone-in) cooked with mushrooms, potatoes and peas. The only chicken I had in the fridge was boneless, skinless chicken breast so I improvised the dish and made a pasta-homage to Monsieur Clemenceau. Everyone was pleased with the dish and I was able to take a brief mind/mouth-vacation to the Crescent City.
Bon Appetit!
~Tom

Dinner with Monte & Amy

Kitty loaded up the car with Katharine, Zak and the puppy and headed out for a weekend in the Delta yesterday. The two big boys abandoned me for more exciting plans with people their own age, leaving me to fend for myself, alone in the big scary world. No need to fear, Monte and Amy came to the rescue and in return for them preventing me from being so all alone, I cooked them a new recipe that I dreamed up yesterday. I'm still working on the proportions, so I'll post the recipe later. For now, here are the photos of my Asian Chipotle Shrimp over Salsa Fresca and Cayenne Chocolate Mousse for dessert.
Bon Appetit!
~Tom

Pizza Quesadillas

Last night we had a house full of little boys. For his birthday party, Zak wanted a spend-the-night-nerf gun-war-tent-in-the-basement party. Who wouldn't want that? What do you feed a bunch of Nerf Warriors? Certainly not Red Bull and Skittles. I enlisted the help of my aspiring chef and oldest son, Stuart and we made Pizza Quesadillas. The process is easy and the kids love the fact that they get to pick whatever toppings they desire. The boys were eating them hot and right out of the pan, so we didn't get a photo, so here is the picture we got from the police sketch artist.
Bon Appetit!
~Tom

Pizza Quesadillas

Ingredients
Corn Tortillas (you can also use flour tortillas if you prefer)
Mozzarella Cheese
Pizza Sauce
Pizza Toppings (pepperoni, sausage, peppers, onions, mushrooms etc.)

Heat a flat bottom skillet over medium heat. Do not add oil or cooking spray. Place a tortilla in the skillet and spread a thin layer of pizza sauce on top of the tortilla. Add cheese and desired toppings and wait for cheese to melt. Add a second layer of cheese and top with a second tortilla. Flip the "pizza" over and cook until the bottom tortilla is browned and all cheese is melted.

Simple but Good

The protein closest to the front of the freezer a few days ago was an English beef roast. Simple, tasty, foolproof. I rubbed it down with some Ivy & Devine Coffee Rub, browned it in a big black-iron skillet, slipped it in a hot oven and didn't think about it again until it was time to eat. I whipped up a creamy horseradish sauce, some julienned vegetables and some boiled potatoes and voila! Dinner was served.
Bon Appetit!
~Tom

Italian Slow Food and an American Movie

Our daughter Katharine returned home from George Washington University yesterday afternoon and our "Other Son" Sanford was also in town for a Mississippi First board meeting. So, even though Whit and Zak were not home, we still had a full table for dinner. I made the most out of our nearly-crowded house and made some chicken thighs in a red sauce and served them over roasted slices of eggplant. It's one of those dishes that has lots of steps and takes all day, but the end result is fantastic. After dinner, we sat around the living room and watched The Hangover. I'm still laughing today. It was a great night of family, friends and laughter. Nights like that are the reason I cook.

Bon Appetit!

~Tom

Another Quick Lunch

I returned home from a delightful interview with Cynthia Walls from Mississippi Digital Daily and a great visit with my friend Josh Hailey (who just returned from eating his way across Argentina) and I found Stuart sprawled out on the sofa, watching Law & Order with his injured leg elevated. He was hungry and looked far too sad to eat take-out so I did the next best thing...I made fast food Tijuana style. 

All across Mexico, you can find little trailers and carts with a flat-top griddle, a tortilla press and a couple of folks slinging out great eats for very little money. What they offer is simple, tasty meals of tortillas, some type of meat cooked with aromatic spices, and perhaps some onions and peppers sautéed alongside the meat.  They take your order, assemble what you asked for and hand it to you, unceremoniously and without a plate. When you eat at a place like this, you don't bother with a table and instead just stand there on the street corner and stuff your face before returning to whatever it was you were doing before you got hungry. 


One red onion, one chicken breast and several tortillas later, Stuart was full and I got to play Matamoros short-order cook for a little while. Everyone was happy.


Bon Appetit!
~Tom

Self Administered Comfort Food

After some bitterly disappointing news on Friday, I figured I needed some comfort food, and nothing takes my mind off of misery more than spending the day in the kitchen working on huge batches of food that must be prepared lovingly and from scratch. Since I thought the Karma Police might descend on my house for having a pitty-party/anger-fest, I figured the first comfort food to make would need to be for someone else. Earlier in the week, I learned that a new friend of mine had undergone bypass surgery. The surgery didn't kill him so I wasn't about to let a diet of hospital food take him out either. If there is one singular truth borne of the kitchen it is that sick people need soup. Luckily, there were a bunch of chicken carcases in the freezer and with the help of some angry chopping and Zen-like stirring, four hours later they were transformed into Chicken and Wild Rice Soup. My friend was appreciative and the black cloud over my heart lifted a bit seeing him smile at the thought of enjoying something made with care and full of chickeny goodness. It turns out that now-a-days, getting your chest bone sawed in half and your heart literally taken out of your chest only rates a four day stay in the hospital. My friend was heading home on Saturday and his soup would make the journey with him.

On Saturday, our friends Rose and Peter were in the mood for some slow cooked food, good wine and great company. Peter picked me up around noon and we trekked over to McDade's for beef short ribs. When we got there, we found that they didn't have quite enough ribs for eight people, but they did have ox tails. We filled the basket with cheap cuts of meat, aromatic vegetables, potatoes and the ingredients for one of our favorite desserts, Root Beer Floats.

The prep time took about twenty minutes and after browning off the ribs and tails, tossing in the vegetables and filling the massive iron skillets with a bottle of wine each, Peter and I had the rest of the day to lounge around, or so we thought. Rose had a Purple Martin house that needed to be relocated to Laurel Park, Kitty had a job interview (leaving me in charge of Zak) and the boys had numerous adventures in mind. At least the food was on autopilot for the next six hours.

Erecting the birdhouse presented its own particular set of challenges that we were able to overcome. If you want to see out handiwork, it is proudly on display towards the back of the big open field in Laurel Park. Because of a break in the pole and a longer than expected pole that fit into the original shaft, Rose's Purple Martin house in Laurel Park is probably one of the tallest structures in Belhaven.

Back at the house with all of the kids in tow, Peter and I watched curiously as the guys tried their hand at "Free Running." Obviously, this clambering over obstacles and jumping over furniture is now an internet-video-fueled "extreme" sport. When I was a boy we just called it "running around." My first thought of "This will certainly end poorly." was confirmed when I heard a thud like a wooden bat hitting a cantaloupe. From the corner of my eye, I saw Stuart fall into a crumpled heap behind a stone wall and walked over to investigate. I fully expected to see a massive head wound or a bit of bone sticking out of some limb. I was relieved to see that the injury, though serious, would not require a spatula, a helicopter or an MRI. Stuart had managed to whack his shin so hard that he smashed a dime-sized hole in the skin and through it, you could see the sinewy covering of his shin bone. The force of the blow was so hard that he wasn't bleeding since the skin was both cut and sealed by the impact. Peter's reaction was, "C'mon Stuart. We need to stitch that up. Let's get you up to the kitchen."

"Is it really gonna hurt?" Stuart asked.

"You bet." Peter confidently replied.

A few minutes later, Stuart was disinfected, numbed and closed and Peter and I still had a few hours of downtime before the girls arrived to eat supper. (Click here if you really must see pictures of the stitches. I'd rather not put them on the same page with braised ox tail.)

The meal was rich. The wine was plentiful. The conversation was lively. And now Stuart will have a cool new scar to show off to teenage girls. I can't imagine a better way to heal my damaged heart.

Bon Appetit!
~Tom

A Preview of Spring

Yesterday afternoon, my friend Peter picked me up to make a grocery store run for our dinner. I enlisted Peter and his wife Rose to help me test a specific dish that I've been working on for a project. They had been one of the first people to try the dish back in the fall so I thought they were the perfect couple to give it one last try before I unleash it on the public. Since the practice dish is only an appetizer, I agreed, as part of the bargain, to cook whatever else they wanted as a main course. At the grocery store, Peter said that Rose's only request was that the dish feature olive oil and be Mediterranean. That really wasn't much help, but the the "M" word got me to thinking about spring. To get my brain going in the right direction, we went directly to the meat/seafood section of the store, bypassing our usual first-stop in the produce section. There were no gulf shrimp, the lamb didn't catch my eye, but tucked in the corner of the fish case were some beautiful, giant scallops. I asked to see one and upon my inspection found them to be sweet, aromatic and fresh. The Orange Rougy in the case also looked and smelled quite good. That settled it. We were going to have a seafood night with a Mediterranean flair. With our protein in hand, we swung back through the produce section and Peter must have been reading my mind when he asked if we could Julienne some vegetables to go with the fish. We grabbed peppers, onions, corn, yellow squash, zucchini and carrots. For the sauce, I wanted something bright with a lot of citrus punch so we grabbed lemons, limes a couple bunches of cilantro, parsley, garlic and green onions. With a few more ingredients gathered, we headed back to Belhaven and set to work on the beauty you see below. The recipe will be up later, but I couldn't wait to show off the picture.
Bon Appetit
~Tom

How did I forget to write about this steak?

Earlier this week, Kitty and I found ourselves in the enviable situation of no dinner guests, no class for me to teach, no clients in town and best of all...no kids. Sorry boys, we love you, but absence makes the heart grow fonder. In a grocery excursion the prior week, I made my usual stop at the "Manager's Special" section of the Kroger meat department. It's generally a nice place to grab a few pork chops or some ground beef that needs to get in the freezer on top of some heat before the almost meaningless "sell by" date. On this trip however, I found cheap shopping Valhalla. Nestled between some pre-formed burgers and a sad-looking flank steak were two absolutely beautiful dry aged steaks, the stuff that usually goes for $14.99 per pound. These were marked down to a paltry $3.99 per pound. Less than bologna! Less than Doritos for that matter! I rang the bell and asked the singing butcher if there were any more of these gems to be found, but alas, these were the only ones.

With only two of these steaks in the freezer, I had to wait for the right time to bring 'em out. It would have been rude to serve the boys Bachelor Dinner while Kitty and I noshed on these so we waited until just the right night.

Flash forward to earlier this week. Remember...the no kids night? I dropped by Kat's Wine Cellar and picked up a nice, jammy, Chilean Cabernet, and grabbed a couple of acorn squash from McDade's. When Kitty got home, I met her at the door with a glass of wine and gave her the good news. No kids, big wine, big steaks. Since it was still too cold for grilling, I seared the steaks in the black iron skillet and finished them in the broiler. the brown bits in the skillet were transformed into a sublime pan sauce and I finished off the plate with a neat little Basmati rice timbale.

Bon Appetit!
~Tom

This is a Breakfast

In the mad-scientist lab that is my kitchen on Devine Street, I've been developing a mutated strain of grits that will actually cause your arteries to slam shut instead of clogging over time. I like to call them Grits Cochon et Plus. I found that my recipe for Grits Cochon was sorely lacking in the heavy cream and sausage topping department. As you can see, they are beautiful to behold.

They do have one, minor, unfortunate drawback. The photo below was taken of my son, Stuart, just before eating his first helping of Grits Cochon et Plus.

Everything was OK, fine and really hunky-dorry until he made the mistake of going back for a second helping. Shortly after consuming the second bowl, I heard a scream from the living room as my lovely wife, Kitty, walked into the living room to find this.

Apparently, the proper dosage for Grits Cochon et Plus is ONE serving. Stuart was sent to Dr. Drew Pinsky's Grits Rehab Center in Bettendorf, Iowa and fed a 28 day program of corn flakes and overcooked roast beef. Now he is back to his normal self. Well...almost. But I don't think the grits are at the root of this sartorial gaffe.

Grits Cochon et Plus

1 cup quick grits (not instant)
1/2 lb. bacon
1 1/2 cups whole milk
2 cups ham stock
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 cup Monterrey Jack cheese (shredded)
1 bunch green onions
2 cloves garlic
1 lb. country smoked sausage
1 stick butter
1 tsp. Creole seasoning
Salt
Pepper

Prep
Slice Sausage into 1/2" thick rounds. Chop green onions. Finely mince garlic. Chop bacon into small pieces, no larger than 1/4". Slice butter into 1 Tbsp. pats.

Cook
Heat a large saucepan over medium high heat and add 1Tbsp. butter. When the butter foams, add bacon and garlic and cook until lightly browned. Add grits and all liquids and whisk aggressively to prevent clumping. Raise heat to high until mixture comes to a boil. Reduce heat and continue cooking, whisking frequently to prevent sticking and clumping. Add cheese, Creole seasoning and remaining butter and whisk until all ingredients are fully incorporated. Taste and add salt or pepper as desired.

Cook Sausage rounds over medium heat in a large iron skillet until browned around the edges. REmove from heat and pat away excess grease with a paper towel.

Plate
Serve grits in a shallow bowl, topped with green onions and sausage. Charge defibrillator to 200 joules and standby.

More Roasted Chicken

I just love to cook whole chickens. They are so easy and just taste so good. I think I made this one Saturday night with Yukon gold potatoes and baby lima beans. The recipe is the same one as I used in the chicken video lesson.
Bon Appetit!
~Tom

Steak Salad...on Sunday?

I don't know what got into me on Sunday. I didn't have my usual hankering for fried chicken and since I made soup earlier in the week, there were no leftovers in the fridge for omelettes. For some unknown reason, I really wanted a steak salad. Kitty nor any of the boys objected so I rubbed down some flank steak with my coffee seasoning, seared it in a big 'ol black iron skillet and put it atop a crisp green salad with buttermilk dressing. I'm sure my chicken craving will be back next week. You probably don't need a recipe for this one, but if you do just shoot me an email and I'll put something on paper for you.
Bon Appetit!
~Tom