Click through for the recipe
Laissez les bon temps roulez!
Country Kitchen Defender
A HOME FOR THOSE WHO LOVE THE OLD FASHIONED TRADITIONAL KITCHEN, defending against cheaters in the marketplace, featuring news and cookbook reviews, and a few favorite recipes. Please browse around, make yourself at home, many informative and entertaining articles here! Follow on the FaceBook page to keep up with new reports -- just hit "Like" below and then "Follow" on the FaceBook page, Thanks!
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Treasures Found in Mom's Cookbooks
I don't have copies of my mother's cookbooks, I don't think she had a big collection. I wonder if she had a file of clippings from newspapers and magazines.
I'll bet her mother had quite a batch, that grand old gal was head of a high school cafeteria for years and she could sure put on a feed.
Well, even if you don't have Mom's cookbooks you can pick up some vintage ones on the auction sites, and often you will find old recipe collections or scrapbooks offered. Here is a link to a fun story on the subject.
I'll bet her mother had quite a batch, that grand old gal was head of a high school cafeteria for years and she could sure put on a feed.
Well, even if you don't have Mom's cookbooks you can pick up some vintage ones on the auction sites, and often you will find old recipe collections or scrapbooks offered. Here is a link to a fun story on the subject.
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Come and Get It: Hawaiian, Irish and Mexican Delights
This beef,
carrot and pineapple stew is from a Del Monte promotional booklet issued for
its canned pineapple product. The title of the booklet: Luau Favorites and
Island Recipes. I believe it dates to the 1970s.
One lb beef
sirloin cut into thin strips
2T salad oil
½ cup diced
onion
1 clove
crushed garlic
1t salt
1/8t pepper
1 can
pineapple chunks
1 cup beef
bouillon
¾ cup sliced
carrots
½ cup diced
green pepper
½ cup
reserved pineapple syrup
2T
cornstarch
2T soy sauce
Saute beef in hot oil, remove from pan. Add onion, garlic, salt and
pepper, cook for two minutes. Drain pineapple, reserve syrup. Add pineapple,
bouillon, carrots and green pepper, cook five minutes, add meat. Dissolve
cornstarch in soy sauce and reserved syrup, add to meat and vegetables. Cook,
stirring constantly, until
Thursday, December 7, 2017
Nuts About Peanuts? Try This Stew
You can hear
it a hundred times but somehow it just doesn’t sink in. Peanuts aren’t nuts.
Peanuts grow underground and are a legume (in the family with beans and peas).
Well, whatever, they are a good thing, a source of protein, minerals and
vitamins.
I’ve often seen peanuts as an ingredient in African stews and soups. Some
concoctions are vegetarian, like this one, others feature chicken.
This simplest of recipes comes from Prime Eats, a cookbook
prepared by the booster club of the 355 Civil Engineer Squadron based in
Tucson, AZ. The book was published in 1999. It appears the booster club is
still active but has turned to golf rather than recipes as a fund raising
effort for the worthy causes it supports.
This recipe was contributed by
Saturday, November 18, 2017
Hometown Favorites II: Alligator, Chicken, Frogmore
Alligator.
It is said they are easy to catch. Seems the sport has become more popular due
to reality TV shows. You need 40 or 50 feet of line that tests at 700 to 900
pounds.
Though it is rare that alligators kill or even attack humans (they prefer small
prey), maybe you prefer your alligator already caught. You may find alligator
in an upscale supermarket. And I see it is available for about $20 per pound on
Amazon.
I got into this alligator thing when I wondered if there had been any follow up
publications to the Food Editors’ Hometown Favorites Cookbook, a book I very
much enjoyed.
I found one: Soups, Stews and Casseroles with recipes attributed to
several dozen
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Elegance in The Big Easy: Antoine's Restaurant
The wild and
crazy atmosphere of Mardi Gras has earned a carnival reputation for “The Big
Easy,” but there is most assuredly more to New Orleans -- there is dignity,
sophistication and tradition.
A prime example: the venerable Antoine’s restaurant.
My familiarity with New Orleans goes back more than 50 years. In those days I
was a young military man intrigued by the warnings of older and wiser troops
about the dangers lurking in the boisterous bars of The French Quarter.
My acquaintance was recently renewed when I received a copy of Antoine’s
Restaurant Cookbook from a friend. It portrays a far from boisterous or
dangerous French Quarter establishment, of that you may be certain.
The author is
Roy F.
Guste, Jr., a fifth generation family member who ran the restaurant for about
ten years. His association seems to have concluded in the mid-1980s when he
decided to pursue other interests, including the writing of more New
Orleans-focused cookbooks.
Guste traces the history of the place to the founder, Antoine Alciatore.
Antoine came to New Orleans from Marseilles, France, and was but 16 when he
opened the establishment bearing his name in 1840 -- at first a boarding house.
But Antoine had apprenticed as a chef and in short order his place became a
popular dining establishment.
It is safe to say the restaurant has grown over the years, through various
relocations. At the time the book was produced the restaurant had 14 dining
rooms.
Of the dining, Guste says “our cuisine is basically a seafood cuisine,
developed through a compatible marriage of French, Spanish and African
influences.” There is far more to the fare than seafood; elsewhere we are
informed that the restaurant features “the best meat available in the United
States and perhaps the world.”
Given the French influence we of course expect sauces. The book does not
disappoint. It offers quite an array of sauces: “The sauce is the lifeblood of
our cuisine.”
One such sauce which often makes an appearance in recipes is Creole Sauce. Here
is a recipe said to be similar, as I compare the two it seems exactly
the same as Antoine’s.
The book makes many claims to famous recipes originating with Antoine’s. Among
originals is Oysters Rockefeller -- but the secret of preparation isn’t
revealed.
Since the recipe is widely available from other sources this seems odd. But
those available recipes appear, from my survey, to depend on spinach. A friend
sent a group of these recipes as issued by the Junior League of Baton Rouge
over the years, all featuring spinach. Other guesses at ingredients range from
dandelion greens to parsley to watercress.
Guste denies spinach, saying only that the dish involves a variety of greens –
but no spinach.
According to the Lindaraxa blog, a 1986 laboratory analysis of Antoine’s
preparation done by William Poundstone in Bigger Secrets indicated that the
primary Rockefeller ingredients are parsley, pureed and strained celery,
scallions or chives (indistinguishable in a food lab), olive oil, and capers.
Antoine's is now run by Rick Blount, a great-great grandson of the founder. In 2014 a new cookbook was announced,
celebrating the 175th year of continuous operation as Americas
oldest family-owned restaurant, issued at $39.
I haven’t seen it but suspect the new book may contain a great deal from the
earlier book as it is by the same author and the focus is the same, history and
recipes.
As for the book in my possession, copies were available on Amazon and eBay in
the ten to twenty dollar range, more or less -- mostly more.
In conclusion, here is the Antoine’s recipe for Creole Gumbo, shown as it appears in the cookbook.
This recipe features shrimp, oysters and crabs and is billed as The Bouillabaisse of Louisiana. It is of course just one of a great many gumbo recipes, many featuring meats such as Andouille sausage.
Saturday, November 4, 2017
Edisto Island: Turtles, Clams and Sausage
Life as a
Loggerhead turtle isn’t so easy. For starters, only about ten percent of laid
eggs will survive to replenish the population. Predators of eggs include dogs,
raccoons, seabirds and others.
The eggs and resulting turtles are protected, to the extent possible, by local,
state and federal laws, as well as by voluntary citizen patrols. Fines up to
$20,000 can result from any interference.
If you have beachfront home on Edisto Island, SC, you must turn out any lights
showing on the beach and drape any windows, May through October. The lights
confuse the hatchlings and they can’t find their way to the ocean.
Edisto is a barrier island located about an hour south of Charleston, SC. As
recently as 2004 it was described as fairly laid back and off the beaten path,
unlike more popular spots like Hilton Head. Whether that still holds true, I
don’t know.
What drew my attention to Edisto is the cookbook, Cooking in the Low Country
from The Old Post Office Restaurant,
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New Orleans Barbecued Oysters
Click through for the recipe Laissez les bon temps roulez!
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Edisto Island: Turtles, Clams and Sausage Life as a Loggerhead turtle isn’t so easy. For starters, only about ten percen...
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Naturally, a defender of the traditional kitchen would be drawn to a book titled “ Mountain Country Cooking .” It’s the work of Mark F. Soh...
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Alligator. It is said they are easy to catch. Seems the sport has become more popular due to reality TV shows. You need...