Weekly Dish

To celebrate our Mardi Gras vacation from school (we’re off until Thursday!), I decided I should make a meal using the rich culinary heritage of southern Louisiana. Crawfish season is well underway here–they usually become widely available in January–so they seemed an obvious choice. Having already learned how to make the more traditional etouffee, I wanted to try something a little different.

When I worked at the Brick-Oven Cafe in Jackson, we served a crawfish pasta dish that was one of our most popular. The sauce was laden with cream, butter, and cheese, and I didn’t want anything quite that heavy, but the distinct Louisiana flavoring, I remembered, came from the combination of the crawfish and the Cajun-spiced ham called tasso.

After finding tasso in the deli at my neighborhood grocery store, David and I set out for the famous fish market here in town, Tony’s. This was our first trip there, and it was quite an experience. We entered a loud, concrete-floored room and met a tank of fresh lobsters on our left and catfish swimming in water-filled troughs on our right. On the back wall are two counters–on the left side you can buy already-prepared dishes like crawfish pie and jambalaya, and on the right, you buy crawfish, shrimp, and other fresh fish. I wanted to buy the crawfish live, so that we could boil them ourselves, but only the already-boiled ones were available.

To make the pasta, I peeled the crawfish, tossing the heads and tail shells into a large stockpot, and the tail meat into a separate bowl. I boiled the shells with a lemon and salt to make stock, and then gathered the other ingredients to make the sauce.

Two tricks make this dish full of flavor: the first is that you cook the tasso in a little olive oil in the pot you are going to use for the roux. The ham gives off its spicy flavor and provides a little bit of fat so you don’t have to use so much butter. The second trick is to boil the pasta in equal parts water and crawfish stock. The stock is rich with the spice from the crawfish shells and imparts that flavor to the noodles.

The results were delicious, if I do say so myself. The ridges in the rigatoni provided the perfect place for the sauce to stick, and the consistency of the sauce worked well to evenly coat the crawfish, ham, and noodles. Add a piece of crusty bread and a glass of dry white wine. . .and we had ourselves a very happy Monday-before-Mardi Gras indeed.

Cajun Crawfish Pasta

3 pounds crawfish, cooked
1 lemon
1 pound rigatoni
1 t. olive oil
1/2 pound tasso
2 T. butter
1 T. olive oil
1/4 cup flour
1 yellow onion
3/4 cup chopped tomatoes
1 T. Kosher salt
2 cups stock

For the stock: Shell the crawfish, piling the heads and shells into a large stockpot. (Reserve the tail meat). Add a quartered lemon and a palmful of salt and cover with water. Bring to a rolling boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for at least 20 or 30 minutes (the longer you simmer, the more flavorful the stock will be). Strain off the liquid and discard the solids.

Cook the pasta in equal parts stock and water (I used 2 cups of each for a pound of rigatoni). Drain when al dente and set aside.

Heat a teaspoon of olive oil in a large pot or skillet over medium (I used the same pot I cooked the noodles in). Add the ham and cook, stirring until the pieces are a golden brown, about 10 minutes. Remove the ham, but reserve the fat. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil and 2 tablespoons of butter. When the butter has melted, stir in the flour. Cook over medium-low, stirring, until the roux turns a light brown. This step took me about 10 minutes. Add the chopped onion and stir to coat with the roux. Cook over medium until very soft, 15-18 minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes and cook for another couple of minutes. Season with salt.

Stir in 2 cups of stock and cook, stirring, until smooth. Stir in the crawfish tails, the ham, and the pasta. (Note: If you want the pasta to be saucier, you can always add more stock; I wanted a thick consistency that would coat the noodles and meats rather than a thin sauce.) Cook for about a minute until everything is nicely blended and warmed through. Serve immediately.

Whenever I visit my parents in Mississippi, the first thing my dad wants to know is what I want him to cook. For our holiday visit over Christmas, I thought it was high time that I learned to make a proper etouffee, seeing as how I now live in the land of fabulous Cajun cooking. Dad complied, and so I am pleased to share the recipe with you, as I diligently took notes during each step of the preparation.

One of the things I noticed as I was watching him (and we’ll see this later on when my Grandmother teaches us to make dressing) is that I come by my “cook by feel” method quite honestly. There’s very little measuring that goes on in the kitchens of these folk. I did insist that we measure some things, as you will see from the recipe, but both Dad and his mom say that the best way to figure out what your dish needs is to taste it and then add some stuff. Not very scientific, I know, but the more you cook, the more you learn this trick.

When I first started cooking regularly, I tried to follow recipes exactly because I was afraid of screwing up our dinner. If the recipe called for celery, I’d use celery, even though I don’t usually like celery that much. Since then, I’ve become more confident at making substitutions and leaving things out entirely. All I can say is that it comes with practice. Of course, having these techniques in the family doesn’t hurt either. You just have to pay close attention.

Dad’s Shrimp Etouffee

3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup butter
4 stalks celery, small-diced
1 bell pepper, small-diced
2 medium onions, small-diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 green onions, white and green parts minced
3 bay leaves
3 small tomatoes, chopped
2 pounds shrimp, in their shells
Tony Chachere’s
Salt
Cayenne pepper

First, peel the shrimp. Put the shells into a large stockpot to make the shrimp stock. Add the trimmings from the onions and celery; cover with water. Season with Tony Chachere’s. We didn’t measure here, but my guess was about a tablespoon. Bring the mixture to a boil, and let it simmer until you need it. Put the peeled shrimp into a bowl; season them wtih Tony’s as well (dust lightly). Set aside.

Next, make a roux with the butter and flour, stirring them together in a large saucepan or cast iron dutch oven over medium to medium-high heat, until the mixture begins to turn golden. Dad agrees with Emeril: the roux takes 2 beers to brown. Just keep stirring, so that the flour doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn. When it’s ready, it should look like this:
Once the roux has browned properly, add the celery, bell pepper, and onion; coat the vegetables with the roux. Cook until all vegetables are very soft and translucent. Season with salt and cayenne pepper (a good bit of salt, and as much cayenne as you can handle; Dad likes it hot! Just remember that the Tony’s has both salt and cayenne in it too.) Add the garlic, tomatoes, bay leaves, and green onions (reserve some of the green onion for garnish). Stir into the roux-vegetable mixture.

Here’s where the measuring goes out the window. You add the stock, a little at a time (maybe a half cup per addition), stirring so that the roux and the stock become thoroughly blended. You have to wait until you think the mixture has come back up to temperature before adding more stock (it should simmer a little–that’s how you know). All in all we ended up adding one quart of stock for this amount. The key is consistency: you don’t want it to be too thin (like gumbo), but you also want it to be pourable, so not too thick. Cream sauce consistency is what you’re after. When the thickness is right, add the shrimp. Dad also added some worcestshire sauce and Tabasco while I wasn’t looking, so I have no idea how much. He topped ours with crab meat, but that’s not really necessary. Right before serving, taste for seasoning. Serve over rice, and garnish with the leftover green onions.

Cake and fry, that’s what. One of the ways that I manage to get dinner on the table in the midst of, well, life, is through recipes that use up leftovers, like this one. Leftover paneed fish all by itslef is no treat, but if you shred it, add a couple of eggs, a handful of bread crumbs, a bit of mustard, and a smattering of fresh vegetables, it morphs into a whole new dish. I serve these cakes over a bed of lettuce with a simple lemon juice and olive oil dressing and a sprinkle of cracked black pepper. Because I had it, I also topped these with the cilantro pesto from the night before. How I do love using things up in my fridge! The fish cakes are basically crab cakes made with fish instead–crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. While it’s hard to beat fresh crab cakes, these are a pretty good substitute for a weeknight dinner. And I imagine they would work with any kind of fish.

Leftover Fish Cakes

About a pound of cooked fish
2 eggs
1 cup green onions, minced
Half a red bell pepper, minced (or a whole one–half is all I had)
Zest and juice of a lemon
1/3 cup bread crumbs, plus more for coating
2 tablespoons Creole mustard (or mayonnaise)
1/8 t. cayenne pepper

Beat the eggs in a large bowl. Shred the fish with a fork, and add it, along with everything else to the bowl. Mix thoroughly. Form into small balls, and then flatten (you’ll flatten them further with your spatula during the cooking, so leave them a bit round for now). Spread more bread crumbs on a plate, and coat both sides of the cakes. At this point, they can be refrigerated until ready to cook. When you’re all ready, heat about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a very large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the cakes until very brown and crunchy on the outsides, turning once, about 4-5 minutes per side. Serve on salad greens and drizzle with equal parts lemon juice and olive oil.

This week’s menu:

• Monday: Paneed tilapia with spicy lemon spaghetti
• Tuesday: Flank steak with cilantro pesto and roasted acorn squash
• Wednesday: Fish cakes with red and green tomato tart
• Thursday: Butternut squash soup with spinach salad

This week marks my post-holiday return to regular meal-planning and dinner-cooking. In thinking about the new year and our diets, I like to think of things I can include in the menu, not things I should take away. For instance, I tried to do the low-carb thing a couple of years ago, but I found myself imagining pasta dishes and big loaves of homemade bread all day, and I went through a phase where I really didn’t want to see meat at all. It’s purely psychological, I’m sure–I was probably one of those kids who never wanted to touch the stove until my mom told me not to. (Over at Sweetnicks, she’s encouraging food bloggers to participate in the same kind of logic by including more Antioxidant-Rich Foods in our diets on Tuesdays. I don’t think this recipe qualifies; maybe next week!)

The two things I have decided we need to eat more of (which automatically means we will eat less of other things, right?) are fish and vegetables. Last night’s menu was a stab at the former; the rest of the week, I’ll concentrate more on the latter.

In the past, I have had a difficult time with fish in my kitchen. I’ve tried different kinds and different preparations, but rarely liked the fish that I cook. For this dish, (armed with inspiration from Beyond Salmon, a delightful blog about fish) I followed all the rules: I bought very fresh fish, cooked it the same day I bought it, seasoned it well but simply, and didn’t overcook it. I’m happy to report that it was a success! Paneeing the fish gives it a nice, brown crust, and leaves bits of the crust stuck in the pan perfect for a deglazed wine sauce. I paired it with a simple lemony garlic pasta topped with toasted Parmesan and finished the whole plate with the wine sauce.

By using the same skillet to cook everything, the vegetables that you cook to flavor the pasta will also flavor the oil for the fish, giving everything a nice consistency. The toasted Parmesan is optional; it’s a trick I’ve been wanting to try and thought the cruch might be a nice complement for the pasta (I’ll use the leftovers to garnish the soup later this week). It was…but definitely not necessary.

The trick to paneeing is to get the pan really hot–the fish will cook quickly, especially if you have thin fillets, so make sure your pan is hot enough to brown the crust before adding the fish. I also use mostly olive oil with a tiny bit of butter for color and flavor, but any combination of fat will do the trick. You have to be careful if you use all butter because it will burn easily if you get the pan too hot.

If you are trying to watch your carbs, this fish would also sit nicely on a bed of spinach, which I imagine you could wilt and flavor with the garlic, jalapeno, and lemon zest in the same manner as the pasta. Maybe I’ll try that next time and hit both the fish and vegetable in the same night!

My favorite part about the dish is that once you get the prep-work done, it cooks very quickly. I’ve written the recipe for the fish and pasta out in steps because that’s how I had to think it through in order to have everything ready at the same time.

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A few weeks ago, David and I had lunch at Chelsea’s, one of my favorite restaurants in Baton Rouge. The atmosphere is very pub-like, but every time I’ve eaten there, the food has been excellent. On this particular Friday afternoon, I ordered the fried green tomatoes with grilled shrimp. The tomatoes were crisp and light and tangy, just like I like them, and they contrasted so nicely with the sweet, meaty shrimp, and creamy remoulade dressing. The dish was so good that I came home and started trying to figure out how to recreate it. Apparently, I got so excited that I forgot to write down what exactly I did! I will try to describe my process, as best I remember…

One of the vendors at the farmer’s market has had green tomatoes the past few weeks; I bought them on Saturday and let them sit in the kitchen window for a few days to soften just a little. A few hours before I planned to start cooking, I sliced the tomatoes, and laid them in a shallow dish of buttermilk. I salted and peppered them well and left them to soak.

When I returned, I mixed up a plate of flour, cornmeal, chopped fresh basil, and seasoning salt (I use equal parts flour and cornmeal). I heated some canola oil in a frying pan, dredged the soaked tomato slices in the flour mixture, and fried them in oil until they turned golden brown, being careful not to let the oil get too hot. They didn’t have to cook very long per side, maybe 3 or 4 minutes? I lay the tomatoes on paper towels to drain while I prepared the remoulade sauce.

Remoulade sauce is another one of those recipes that comes in many varieties. I’ve made it different ways; for this version, I used the leftover cocktail sauce, homemade mayonnaise, a few cloves of garlic, and some spicy cajun mustard, and blended it all up in the food processor. Instead of grilling the shrimp, I used the leftover boiled ones from dinner Monday, so once the sauce was made, my meal was ready to plate. I must confess that my tomatoes and shrimp were not as good as Chelsea’s. I think my sauce was a little too strong–maybe too much garlic–and their tomatoes were more flavorful. Next time, maybe I’ll get it right…and remember to write down my method!

I know boiling shrimp is generally a summer tradition. But, the shrimp at the Farmer’s Market last week were such a good deal that I had to buy some. And, really, it reached 90 degrees here last week, so if I didn’t have a calendar, I might think it was August instead of November.

If I buy shrimp fresh, I really feel like I owe it to the little creatures to eat them in the purest way possible, protecting their sweet delicate flavor as best I can. To me, boiling them is the very best way to get the most unadulterated shrimp flavor. Boiled shrimp is also one of the quickest meals I know–throw together some cocktail sauce, a salad, and some buttered bread, and you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and dig in.

Everyone (especially here in south Louisiana) has his or her own favorite method for boiling shrimp. Some people like to use beer; other cooks use lots of different spices. Like most other recipes, I prefer mine simple. Some people object to using prepackaged spice mixtures, but I really like Zatarain’s liquid shrimp and crab boil–a tiny bottle lasts forever, and I think the flavor is subtle enough to provide a nice spicy kick without overpowering the shrimp.

Truth be told, boiling shrimp is one of those things you just have to do until you find the flavor combination that suits your taste. I offer my method here, along with my (ultra-simple) recipe for cocktail sauce, but the most important thing about boiling shrimp is not to overcook them. Texture is key, so don’t let them get soggy!

Boiled Shrimp with Cocktail Sauce

2 quarts water

1 T. liquid shrimp and crab boil

2 lemons, halved

3 cloves of garlic, halved

1 T. Kosher salt

A handful of black peppercorns

2 pounds shrimp, heads and shells on

In a large stockpot, add shrimp boil, lemons, and garlic to the water. Boil for 15 or 20 minutes. Add the shrimp, and boil for 3-5 minutes. As soon as the shrimp begin to turn pink, remove the pot from the heat, and immediately drain off the water. Let the shrimp cool in the colander a bit, and then cover and refrigerate until ready to eat.

For sauce:

1/2 cup ketchup

Juice of 1 lemon

4 t. horseradish

Stir to combine. Peel shrimp, dip, and eat!

Mom, look! Do you see all of those green things on my plate? I ate them, every one.

I used to not like vegetables. Especially green ones. There’s a semi-famous story in my family that involves me at the dinner table refusing to eat my green beans, claiming I would be sick if I did. Like all good parents would, mine did not buy that plea, and forced me to eat them anyway. And I threw up. On the table, or so the story goes. My mom still claims I willed myself to do it. Of course, this is the same woman who doesn’t believe in medication of any sort; once when my brother was home with a severe toothache, he had to take some Midol we found in my sister’s purse. It was that or whiskey.

Medication or not, I have learned to like green vegetables. Or at least some of them, if they’re cooked the right way. These two, lemony spinach and Parmesan zucchini, are pretty unobtrusive as green vegetables go, and they complement this buttery lemon catfish dish quite nicely. The catfish recipe comes from Come On In!, which I received as a wedding gift from four separate people. Obviously, it was meant to be a staple in my collection. The zucchini is Ina Garten’s, from Barefoot Contessa Family Style, and it remains one of my favorite ways to prepare this abundant vegetable. The spinach is the basis for the spinach pie filling later in the week, but it is also good by itself.

Additionally, Eileen in the wine department at Calandro’s recommended a buttery Chardonnay to accompany this meal, and as usual she was right on target. The Mark West Chardonnay from Sonoma was a perfect match for the subtle citrus and butter flavors of this meal.

Crunchy Catfish with Lemon Butter Sauce

4 thin catfish fillets

2 eggs, beaten

2 T. water

1 cup butter-flavored crackers, crushed

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

1 T. Greek seasoning

2 T. butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Mix the eggs and water in a shallow bowl. Combine the crackers, cheese, and seasoning on a plate. Dredge the fillets in the eggs and then coat with the cracker mixture. Place in a greased casserole, and drizzle with the melted butter. Bake for about 30 minutes.

For the sauce:

1/2 stick butter

Juice of 1 lemon

1/4 cup green onions, sliced

Salt and pepper

Melt the butter over low heat; add the green onions and juice. Season to taste, and simmer for a few minutes. Serve over the fish.

–From Come On In! by the Junior League of Jackson, Mississippi, 1991.

Lemony Spinach

3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

Juice of 1 lemon

3 cups fresh spinach leaves

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Saute the garlic slices in olive oil over medium heat. Add the spinach, a handful at a time, stirring until it wilts. Keep adding it until it is all wilted. Add lemon juice and season well with salt and pepper. Reserve any extra for the spinach pie later in the week; if you know you’re going to make it, you can even double this recipe and be a step ahead.

Zucchini with Parmesan Cheese

1 yellow onion, diced

2 medium zucchini, sliced and quartered

Butter and olive oil, 1 T. each

Salt and pepper

Freshly grated parmesan cheese

Cook the onions in butter and oil over medium heat until the onions begin to brown. Add the zucchini slices in batches, being careful not to overcrowd the pan. You want them to brown on both sides, which they won’t do if you put too many of them in the skillet like I did. Sprinkle with lots of Parmesan cheese when they finish cooking, and serve with more on top. Serve this meal with a nice, buttery Chardonnay, and enjoy eating your green vegetables.

–From Barefoot Contessa Family Style by Ina Garten, 2002.