Wish you were here

...oh but you are.

Damn it, I'm Gumbo

I think of New Orleans all the time...well maybe not all the time...but a lot, and its awesome food. Nothing like a yummy gumbo to warm up a cold winter night. I remember eating at The Gumbo Shop on our last night in New Orleans way too many years ago; I had red beans and rice even though it wasn't Monday and it was awesome, so was the place.  We sat in the courtyard and I could just hear Stanley screaming: Stellaaaaaa!!!!! Aw, the memories.

So I went and got me some shrimp and some andouille sausage and made us some gumbo. OK so I didn't use a recipe from the Gumbo shop which I usually do but I used the one from the New York Times Magazine a few years ago when they had an article on Eula Mae Dore, and boy oh boy, this woman could cook: Here we go y'all.

Andouille Sausage-and-Shrimp Gumbo

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 pound andouille smoked sausage, cut crosswise into 1/4-inch slices (chorizo may be substituted)

2 tablespoons flour

1/2 cup chopped yellow onions

1/2 cup seeded and chopped green bell pepper

1 clove garlic, minced

2 cups chicken broth

2 cups sliced fresh okra or 1 (10-ounce) package frozen sliced okra, thawed

1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

1/8 teaspoon cayenne, plus more to taste

1/2 teaspoon Tabasco

2 bay leaves

1 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined

1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions, green parts only

Cooked long-grain white rice (optional).

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and cook, stirring frequently, until brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the sausage to a bowl.

2. In the same skillet, heat the remaining tablespoon of oil over medium heat. Stir in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, until the roux is light brown, about 2 minutes. Add the onions, bell peppers and garlic and cook, scraping the brown bits from the bottom, until soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in the broth and bring to a boil. Add the sausage, okra, salt, cayenne, Tabasco and bay leaves. Cover, reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 20 minutes.

3. Reduce the heat to low, stir in the shrimp and green onions and simmer just until the shrimp turn pink, about 5 minutes. Remove the bay leaves and season to taste with more salt and cayenne. Serve in soup bowls, over hot rice if you choose. Serves 6 to 8.

This does not make 6 to 8 servings by the way, probably 4 if you're lucky so make a lot.

Max is still not amused. His little head is saying "OK, enough with this shellfish stuff, and what the heck is okra? Ugh it's so goopy, disgusting"

Father Knows Best

I must have been 3 or 4 years old trailing after my dad as he went into the orchards with a basket. He was going to pick peppers from his cherished plants and I was going to help. We walked through the thicket of bushes and as we went by he picked all the peppers he could and threw them in the basket: every once in a while he'd pop one in his mouth and savored it as if it were the most delicious thing on earth. I stared up at him and my mouth watered, hmmm that looks delicious and pretty too, they were these little red things. Oh Daddy can I have one, please? Please Daddy please! He said no, he didn't think I would like it, I insisted and insisted as only a 3 or 4 year old can...relentlessly. He looked down at me and said "are you sure?" I nodded enthusiastically, I was ecstatic. He popped one in my little tiny mouth and suddenly I was on fire, my eyes were crying but I wasn't; what was this? Yuck, I spit it out and wiped my tongue, he laughed "I told you so". He used to put up jars of those same peppers which he had pickled in the top shelf of the kitchen cabinets and check on them adoringly until they were "ready" and then once they were he'd add them to his salad, I knew better by then. My Dad could make anything, and I mean anything, look delicious; he ate with amazing gusto and savored every bite. I remember staring at him as he ate the big bowl of quaker oats my Mom would make for him on weekend mornings. He ate the plain kind with a little cinnamon on top, I had it once, thought it was bland but continued to stare at him with envy as he ate his. When I was 13 he had a heart attack and they put him on a strict diet, no fat, no salt, no butter, no sugar...While he was recuperating at home my job was to make his lunch when I came home from school which consisted of a very plain hamburger patty which I sauteed in a dry skillet only in its own fat. I would serve it up with some lettuce and tomato on the side, no bun, no condiments, not even the beloved peppers. I would make one for myself so he wouldn't eat alone and the two of us would sit there and eat this tasteless lunch. He looked like he was having filet mignon. Today would have been his 96th birthday; in four days it will be the 36th year that he has been gone. Or has he? I can still taste that little red pepper.

He loved homey dishes so I will make this today for my Daddy-o

Fabada de Lentejas

1 cup of lentils, picked over.
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 spanish chorizos,chopped into small cubes
1 large baking potato, peeled and chopped into small cubes
1 medium tomato, not too ripe, chopped into cubes
½ to 1 cup chicken broth
salt to taste
pepper to taste
cumin to taste

Heat oil in a small skillet over medium heat and add the chopped chorizo. Cook stirring for about 3 minutes. Add onions, garlic and potatoes; season with salt pepper and cumin and cook stirring about 5 minutes. Add tomato and ½ cup of chicken broth and cook stirring now and then until potato is cooked through, about 25 minutes. Add additional broth if mixture becomes too dry.

Meanwhile, bring 4 cups of salted water to a boil, add lentils lower heat to medium and cook until lentils are cooked through, about 20-25 minutes. Make sure they don’t get mushy. There should be a little liquid remaining with the lentils. Lower the heat, add contents of the skillet and stir to incorporate. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Mussel spasms

I love mussels.

They make me feel warm inside, something I need a lot of these days. They bring back great memories of weekends in Little Deer Isle, Maine where they just wash up on shore and dot the sand like jewels. I always wanted to grab bunches and bunches of them to bring home but that was never feasible since we were usually staying at a bed and breakfast and it would be days before we got home and hours of driving which meant definite rot. I remember staring down at them thinking what a waste. They remind me of France and that's enough to make them exceptional. They remind me of one of our most memorable meals at Rouge in Philadelphia when we walked in for lunch on a freezing new year's eve afternoon into a warm and cozy room and sat down to a huge bowl of mussels and even bigger platter of frites cooked to perfection. So when I needed mussels for a recipe that Saveur emailed me, http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Salmon-a-la-Nage?cmpid=enews120610 I didn't hesitate. Since for this dish I only needed about a dozen I figured I'd have lots left for one of those giant bowls and frites, hmmmm. But alas, it was not meant to be. Frank wasn't in the mood for that and I only had sweet potatoes so he suggested a paella using just mussels. OK!
I added chopped chorizo to the sofrito.

then made the paella using the same method as the vegetable paella then adding all the mussels
and covering the pot until they opened which takes anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes.

Max on the other hand doesn't think much of mussels, he'll eat just about anything but not if there are shells involved. He'd rather eat his foot.

Brrrrr

So now we have a cracked and leaking boiler, and everybody says the same thing. "Why does it always happen in the Winter?"....cause we don't use it in the Summer maybe. Max is cold.

He wonders when it will be fixed

So do I...

Let's try this again

So I ordered a new camera which will hopefully be here soon so that I can continue to play. In the meantime life goes on and things have to be done. For example: I went to the unemployment office yesterday for my mandatory appointment. This was actually not half bad; first of all I took the PATH to 9th street where I haven't been in about a hundred years and just walked down 6th Avenue until I reached Spring Street and walked one block west figuring that by then 7th avenue had turned into Varick, which it had. Yes! I had plenty of time since my appointment was at 8:45 AM and I arrived at about 8:20 so I walked as slowly as I am able in New York in the nice sunny breezy cold morning which was exhilarating...yes it is...try it. The "appointment" consisted of a whole bunch of people, newly unemployed just like me, sitting around for a presentation on what the Labor Department can help you with and so on, this lasted 20 minutes or so. Then they call you and you are "interviewed" by a counselor for a grand total of about 5 minutes. While you are waiting to be called you chat with those around you; the girl across from me was a stand-up comedian and I am still perplexed as to how she is able to apply for unemployment but I figured she's probably not very funny, parumpum! She didn't much appreciate my joke when I said that, luckily they called my name. So this was pretty painless since I was outside in the cold breezy sunshine by 9:50 AM. Not bad. I called Frank and said I was on my way and called Amanda leaving a message that I wasn't waiting around for her until 2:30 PM (whole other long story) and started my walk/stroll back to the 9th street PATH station. Before leaving I stopped at Citarella (used to be Balducci's location) which is the last place an unemployed person living on unemployment benefits should stop but old habits die hard. I bought a Margherita pizzeta for lunch and of course had to stop at the bakery department and drool, and purchase a little chocolate cake with chocolate mousse and chocolate souffle filling and then decided to go radical and got a pistachio and black cherry tart. Yes that is correct. When I got home we had the pizzetta and shared the pistachio tart, since then I have devoted every waking moment (OK, not every) to finding a recipe for this most amazing little delicacy. I have found these  two :http://doriegreenspan.com/2010/06/pierre-hermes-cherry-pistachio-tart-the-recipe.html,
http://www.cooking-ez.com/recette.php?id=340&unite=us. Not exact but close enough and figuring out which one we like best should prove fun if not fattening. I am also spending time trying to decide what I'm going to bake for Christmas gifts...why does my life revolve around food??? I ask Max, he can't answer since he's too busy trying to figure out how he's going to get some cheese of the counter, looking really cute helps;

and so does pleading with your big brown eyes.

...but it doesn't always work.

Broken camera, ughh.

So now I can't take still images...Darn and I was having so much fun, so I take tiny little videos and see how that works. Please bear with me.