I just couldn’t resist. I finally broke down and bought an enameled cast iron Dutch oven. I didn’t need it. I have a perfectly good Lodge Dutch oven that I use for gumbo and jambalaya, but I’ve wanted one for a long time so I bought it online once the price got close to reasonable and broke it in with a basic beef stew, no wine, just stew meat and veggies and beef stock.
I also plan to use it to roast a quartered duck over diced new potatoes so the potatoes basically cook in the duck fat. Then I’ll make the mashed potatoes and maybe whip up a fig or blueberry gravy with lots of onions and sliced portabello mushrooms.
I think I will also at some point throw down a cioppino. The best thing about it is it has nice handles that make transitioning to the oven from the stove top much easier. As you can see, I dusted the meat with a little flour and seasonings before browning it and then adding the veggies, all the while scraping the bottom and splashing a little beef stock in when things got too sticky. I didn’t bother with roux or corn starch slurry but mixed the rremainder of a quart of beef stock with some Knorr brown gravy mix and let that serve as the thickening agent. Great out of the pot, but even better the next day reheated after settling overnight in the fridge.
My, the times they are a changing. Way, way back when in Mike Anderson’s kitchen on Lee Drive there would be daily boombox wars between the fry guys and the oven men. Fry tended to be heavy metal or hard rock. The oven crew for some reason were exclusively punk. Go figure. Some mysteries just cannot be explained. Back then there were no earbuds or noise cancelling Bluetooth headphones just boomboxes like the one pictured, only crusted with grease and grime. Max volume. Enough to drive Michael Ryan crazy stuck in between working the expeditor table. Point being, music was essential to the kitchen then, and it’s essential in my kitchen now. Amazon Echos and Echo Dots let you seed your whole place with music and the app has advanced to where you can play the same thing everywhere in your house without being a millionaire that had a synchronized sound system built into the place when you first raised the walls. And I’m pretty sure you can listen to any station you want online for pennies a day. My favorite is Handcrafted Radio which used to be called Okemos Brewing Radio. They are very good at finding obscure and wonderful live versions of classic rock tunes. While I’ve been writing this I’ve heard Traffic, Creedence, and the Moody Blues. Heard an excellent Frampton tune this morning. Not sure I can really separate cooking and music. I know I don’t want to. Doobie Brothers playing now. China Grove. Rice is almost ready. Time to get up and make gravy.
Diner style burgers are fried in their own fat on a flattop grill. At home you would use a skillet on the stove top to achieve the same effect with an 80/20 beef patty or even a mix of ground beef and ground pork. A diner is pretty much defined by red vinyl upholstery on straight back chairs and fixed stools set before formica topped tables and counters with some chrome trim to complete the picture.
Also black and white tile floors and upright stainless steel napkin holders and plenty of condiments on the table. Both Louie’s and Dearman’s do a fine job with their burgers so we’re just doing a little compare and contrast to remind you which one to pick to fit the mood you are in. Call it fine tuning. Louie’s offers a 4 oz and 8 oz patty while Dearman’s falls right in between with a 6 oz. Both use a nice, seedless white bread bun with lettuce, pickles, and tomatoes. Dearman’s uses a slice of yellow onion raw, while Louie’s onions are diced and sauteed. Both come with mustard and mayo on the standard dressing setup, but Louie’s offers a choice of alfalfa sprouts instead of lettuce and also has avocado available as a topping. Louie’s also has cheddar cheese where Dearman’s does not. What Dearman’s does have is a drugstore legacy of sodas, malts, shakes, and root beer floats that Louie’s does not have. Louie’s tends more towards beer these days to go along with the late night omelets and pancakes and waffles since Louie’s is a 24 hour shop and Dearman’s is open from 11 am -8pm.
We’re not trying to pick one over the other. They are both worth a visit just for their dedication to an old school delivery of a fat fried burger. In fact, either one is a perfect place to start your personal perfect burger survey to see which burger in BR is your favorite. I guess my favorite burger of all time was the one at Bonaventure’s Landing on False River. I tried for the longest time to duplicate that gooey, run down your wrist goodness until I finally had the insight to set all the fixings out on the counter before heading off to run errands for a couple of hours. Everything reached room temp so when the patty was done and everything was slapped together there wasn’t a crisp or cold element involved. Super tasty. And very messy. One of the reasons I really like Louie’s Big Cheesy Lou is you can get it with sprouts and avocados which is close to the Austin Special they used to serve at Mad Dog and Beans on Guadalupe right by UT back in the early eighties. That one was charbroiled with fresh guac, sharp cheddar, and sprouts. The last time I was there when Mad Dog and Beans was still around, I had a feeling the girlfriend I was going to Austin to visit and I weren’t going to last much longer, so I ate three Austin Specials since I didn’t know when or if I would ever be back. Good move since that did turn out to be my last visit.
Omnivore means you’ll eat anything, whether it has any nutritional value or not. Not always the best plan. Ideally you would only eat whole foods you prepared yourself. We all know that’s not going to happen unless you totally commit to a meal plan for whatever reason. Most of us are constantly making it up as we go along, so for me the goal is to always have better choices available. Yes, it would be fun to eat fried chicken every day, but not for long. It would also be fun to eat out at every meal. Also not practical. I love to eat out. I love to cook at home. But I’m going to eat at least 21 meals a week, so if I want to avoid the easy answer of junk food, I need quick and easy options. And luckily for all of us, our obsession with food has made each and every grocery a world bizarre of easy to serve prepared foods. Even gluten free, dairy free, organically grown, non-GM0 prepared foods are still prepared foods. Yes, Amy’s soup is probably better for you than Campbell’s soup, but really, how much better? That’s something you really can’t be sure of unless you’re a food scientist, but we all kind of figure either one is better than a Big Mac Meal Deal. And that is the algorithm that counts. You don’t have to be a hard ass with yourself to score a few victories a week just by picking a better meal, or putting off the Popeye’s for one more day. And there really are some easy to throw together options out there.
I’ve tried the cauliflower crusted pizzas and they are quite good. Pop one in the oven as soon as you get home and it’s done by the time you’ve changed clothes and looked over your tv options. A mushroom onion gravy over wild rice doesn’t take much more effort than that. Especially if you invest a few bucks in a rice maker. Measure the water, toss in the rice, press the button, then start the gravy. You can even buy your mushrooms sliced if you want. Fast, And not absolutely horrible nutritionally. And one of my favorite fall back options is pre-made tortellini or ravioli juiced with a little garlic EVO and sprinkled with Parmesan. It’s got a nice shelf life in the fridge and can sit there most of the week if things come up and you have to change your plans. And that really is my point. Food and nutrition in our world today is kind of like white water rafting. A whole lot of fun. Best laid plans, And a lot of room for bad decisions. You owe it to yourself to keep a couple of better-than-junk food options readily available.
Where to start? If you are parents, you should definitely teach your boys and girls how to shuck early on. Anyone who can show up on time and shuck reasonably well will always be able to get a job in the restaurant industry right away. Especially with the recent popularity of charbroiled oysters, shuckers are always in high demand and offered a lot more scheduling leeway than other employees. That makes it easy to just shuck a shift or two a week, or shuck at different restaurants, or whatever you need to do to supplement your income.
It is my belief that if you do not have an oyster bar, you do not qualify as a south Louisiana seafood restaurant.
Restaurant style charbroiled or chargrilled oysters are shucked first, thrown on the grill, and topped with a seasoned garlic butter and parmesan mix and served with toasted french bread. That’s one way to do it. The other way to do it is to toss the oysters on the grill and let them steam open in their own juices. This is a little easier and faster at home than shucking the oysters before you grill them. You need a heavy glove to grab the oyster off the grill and shuck it into your own pan of garlic butter. Up in New Roads we would rake some coals from the fire and place the oysters right on top.
Oysters go good with pig. Years ago we were roasting a pig at the Our Lady of Carlotta apartments when some guys from East State brought over a couple of sacks they had intended to shuck the night before but got rained out. It was still misting and drizzling that day, but there was a cinder block open carport still standing back then and we set up under what was left of the roof. It was a nice crowd. After the original keg of Milwaukee’s Best was gone we passed a hat and got $238 dollars. I remember that figure because an eight-pack of Miller ponies went for $2.10 back then so that was an amazingly successful beer run.
I’m not going to tell you where to go to get someone to shuck oysters for you. There’s any number of options in Baton Rouge now. Parrain’s (pictured), Acme, Jolie Pearl, Mike Anderson’s, The Bullfish, Drusilla’s, The Chimes and Chimes East, Ralph and Kacoo’s, and even Phil’s is back in business now over in the Southdowns Shopping Center. Where to go for oysters is a deeply personal decision and has as much to do with memories of good times past as anything else. Everyone does the best job they can with oysters even though the raw are loss leaders with very little margin. Shops do a bit better with the charbroiled since the demand doesn’t dip in summertime like it does for the raw and you can generally get a bit more for a dozen charbroiled. But now that sacks and boxes of oysters are packed 100 oysters instead of 200 it is even easier to get together enough folks to have a party. And the kids need to learn how to shuck. And if you are going to fire up the grill to charbroil oysters, some pork chops or ribs will go very, very well with your oysters. Laissez le bon temps rouler.
I was right about the coleslaw. It is the same not sweet not vinegary slaw they serve at Eliza. The shrimp and grits comes with a 4 oz cup of slaw and a couple of slices of french bread. The shrimp is lightly seasoned and grilled in butter on the flattop while the garlic grits are dressed up with bacon and cheddar and green onions. It’s a lot to eat and perfect for a chilly day. Now that I know about the slaw, I’m looking forward to trying one of the two poboys that are dressed with slaw. There’s a fried catfish and a pulled pork. I still need to try the smoked alligator poboy an the old school oyster loaf as well. I guess you can tell I like Jed’s Local a lot. It will definitely be part of my regular rotation. And I need to stop back by Eliza soon. So many great places to eat; so little time.
Ham and bread and mustard. One of the most basic food groups ever. I know everyone has heard the tale of the Earl of Sandwich, and maybe that is how society at the time relearned casual card table dining, but it is hard to believe that ham and bread did not naturally come together as soon baked bread and cured meat were both available. There are a lot of other ways to buy ham than the ham steak. I love it because it is the thickest cut you will get without committing to a whole picnic. There are reasons and seasons to buy a whole picnic ham, not the least of which is that you get to keep and freeze the ham bone.
ham and eggs
One of the most important things my father ever taught me was to season my fried eggs with black pepper. He also showed me how to bust the yoke with the pointy end of my buttered toast before cutting the eggs up and to always save a triangle to mop up the last of the yolk left on the plate. And because my mother loved to buy whole picnic hams to make her famous white beans, we often had some pan seared ham to go with.
fig and pig biscuits
My father also highly valued fig preserves, and they would often be a part of breakfast as well. Maybe that is where I first paired fig and pig, but what really cemented that grouping for me was a day out on Pointe Coupee Road at my buddy Chris Morrison’s place. I had brought a classmate from grad school to meet Chris and enjoy a day out in the sticks. Joey was from Little Rock and everything in Pointe Coupee Parish was a revelation to him. The river, the borrow pits, the endless fields of cane being hacked and burned and harvested at the time. During an afternoon old-Ford-pickup tour of the levee, we stopped at Mr. JP Hotard’s place right down the road from Morrison’s for more beer and something to cook for dinner. JP sold us on pork roast since he had a fresh hind quarter in the cooler. He pulled it out and threw it on the table saw and cut us a four inch thick roast that reminded me of an oversized ham steak, though this meat was fresh, not cured. It immediately got me thinking of rubbing it down with honey, so when we got back to the house I dug through the pantry looking for fresh garlic and honey and instead ran across a jar of fig preserves. I had made the switch to Jack Daniels by then so I poked holes and stuffed the roast with garlic and green onions then mashed some fig preserves and Jack together and slathered it all over the pork before finishing with salt and pepper and wrapping it in foil and tossing it in the Chambers oven low and slow. When I went back outside, Chris had Joey up on the tractor riding the fallow fields right behind the house. We cranked a pecan fire as the sun headed down and dug some new potatoes from the garden to mash and Chris had some left over green beans and soon we were all set to head to the table when I pulled the roast out of the oven and set it on the stove top. It smelled so damn good we immediately started picking at it and we never made it to the table, just had our dinner straight from the stove top. Getting back to ham steak, another friend, the late, great Big Frank Finucane, used to toss a ham steak on the grill as an appetizer before the chicken or steaks or whatever was the main item of the day, much like leading with smoked or hot sausage or even bacon wrapped chicken livers. Another example of not making it to the table. Ham steak sliced up on a cutting board passed around among the lawn chairs and finally landing on a picnic table. Here’s something I wrote in Frank’ memory after we lost him.
This grouping has recently become one of my favorite sides for shrimp and fish. The bok choy texturally is like having a celery/spinach plant. I always save the leafier greens for the last minute of stir fry. Everything else can hit the pan at the same time, but you might want to stagger them to fit your ideals of crispness or doneness. I usually go one of two ways with the seasoning, and that is totally influenced by what I’m thinking for the shrimp or fish that will be joining it on the plate. The Far East treatment starts with roasted garlic olive oil, soy sauce, and sesame oil. The soy brings enough salt for me, so I will follow with five spice powder and wasabi and occasionally, if I am feeling teriyaki-ish, more garlic and ginger. The Right Here Right Now treatment also starts with roasted garlic olive oil then Lea & Perrins, Tony’s and black pepper. Sometimes I will switch out the Tony’s for another creole seasoning, say Zatarain’s or Slap Ya Mama, or back way off and go basic with just some salt, butter, and white pepper. Obviously I like this dish enough to continue to play around with it and research all its possibilities.
On this occasion I paired it with some previously frozen halibut that was on sale for Prime Members at Whole Foods. It is a fish I love fresh, and the industry does flash frozen so well now that you don’t lose everything to the process. Halibut is the same sweet firm white category as fluke and flounder and sole and it responds really well to “blackening” an old cast iron technique that Prudhomme exploited all those many years ago. But he did not invent the process. When I was in grad school I wanted to write a coffee table book (i.e. physical blog) called Catching ‘Em and Cooking ‘Em and I’d already lined up the independent study to get it started when my advisor made me rewrite my thesis which sucked up what little time I would have had available for the project. I did get best thesis that year and it still sits on a shelf somewhere in Middleton and I am finally getting around to writing the food stories I wanted to write back then. That book was going to concentrate on Louisiana’s freshwater lakes. Old River, False River, Lake Verret–how to fish them and the best ways to prepare the fish, both old school and more recent techniques. The story I was going to lead with was told to me by Miss Jo, an older neighbor of my parents who lived a few camps down Island Road from them in Ventress. Miss Jo liked to come down to our pier late at night to fish for bass with plastic worms. She was quite good at it too. At any rate, she told me that her daddy would take fresh caught sac-a-lait, scale and score them, then soak them in salt water for an hour or so before dumping the water and starting over with another salt water soak. When he was ready to cook the fish, he would heat a cast iron pan until it smoked then throw the fish straight in the pan for a quick turn and burn. I had never heard of brining fish, and to tell you the truth, I’ve yet to try it that way, but the story does illustrate that “blackening” fish was around well before Prudhomme and Lagasse capitalized on our way of life.
This little 8″ cast iron skillet is also good for roasting whole garlic
Blackening is a very effective technique for sealing the fish quickly and keeping it moist inside. It’s not that different from cooking over a mesquite hard wood fire like I did at the Fish Company on Kinney Street in Santa Monica. We had exhibition grills and the fires were super hot and we cooked halibut and trout and sturdier fish like shark and swordfish as well. The same thing applied. Let the fish finish on the plate. You are going to get a really good sear and then the fish will keep cooking after you remove it from the heat. It does take practice to get it right, but it is well worth the effort. As to seasonings, you don’t really need to use all the cayenne and paprika that commercial blackened seasonings use. In fact, once when I was up in Maine at Christmas with my ex (before we married and she could even qualify for ex status) we got some fresh halibut from a fabulous market that was right over the water in Portland and took it back to her mother’s house to cook. I “blackened” the fish with a touch of extra virgin olive oil and a healthy dusting of salt and herbs de provence. She and her mother were macro-biotic at the time, so I’m sure there were also fresh greens involved. It might have even looked something like this dish turned out.
I don’t always eat at Saltgrass Steakhouse, but when I do, it is always at lunch and either the Beef Tips with Mushrooms or the Chicken Fried Steak. And it is usually chilly outside. They do a great job with both of these lunch offerings and I really like their Mac & Cheese and Herbed Rice and the garlic mashed potatoes that come with both dishes. The Shiner Bock Beer Bread with honey butter is a great start to any lunch. I can’t say anything about the rest of the menu because I’ve only eaten lunch there and I always go by myself and sit at the bar. It is hard to go there without missing the Blue Coyote which I did visit with friends for impromptu margarita nights with chips, salsa, tacos and tamales. Superior Grill fills that space now, but those were some very good times and the two story wall of tequila bottles behind the bar was always an impressive sight. To me there is always a lingering nostalgia when one restaurant concept replaces another. Round the Corner/Pizza Hut/Serrano’s/Barcadia on Highland Road at the south gates of LSU is a good example of tenants passing through. The Colonel’s Club/Trinity’s/Chelsea’s/Kalurah Street Grill is another venue haunted by it’s past.
I would like to say that duck eggs are so much richer and creamier than chicken eggs, but that just hasn’t been my experience. They are larger and milder and it feels really cool to use them instead of your regular eggs, but that’s about it. I find the cracker cut cheeses that are showing up in some markets are perfect for omelets. They keep better than shredded cheese and offer that same convenience of one less step at breakfast. Breakfast is one of the easiest meals to settle for eating crap foods and I think it is worth a little planning to have whole food or at least not-as-bad-for-you options in place. Also, it may be time to address the elephant in the kitchen. Eggs and cheese are excellent vehicles for delivering protein, and that is paramount when you are doing radiation and chemo. We are all going to encounter cancer at some point, whether it is one of us or someone close to us. And one of the hardest and most important battles is eating enough to fuel the fight. Chemo and radiation can deeply effect your sense of taste, but also texture. I loved my morning omelets, and like my nutritionist at the time told me, a cheese omelet cooked in real butter and paired with fruit was almost a perfect meal as it hit the necessary triad of protein, fat, and fiber, but during my treatment of combined chemo and radiation, the omelets were just too dry. Luckily, I was fine with sunny up eggs and started to combine them with instant grits and cracker cut sharp cheddar and that was an okay, if temporary solution. Eventually I was down to smoothies only, but I think every real meal I was able to power down before that point was a win. And I am still here. I am very sorry for all of us who know someone who isn’t.
So it’s easy to see how even more protein can be added to these eggs. Fully cooked link and patty sausages are readily available now and are perfectly fine after a one minute nuke. This is also a place for both meal prep and leftovers. A pound of your favorite sliced mushrooms sauteed in butter and white pepper with bit of salt will keep for several days and can be added to omelets, grits, and the remainder can join an onion gravy for a lunch or dinner side later in the week. This is also a good place to incorporate any left over veggies or pico de gallo. Recently I’v been boosting instant oatmeal with fried eggs and green onions. And there is always the old stand by, the fried egg sandwich on white or wheat with ketchup. Back to the elephant in the kitchen: we haven’t addressed all the different ways to cook eggs, fried, scrambled, coddled, poached, hard and soft boiled, but it is very much worth your while to experiment with all of these. Just in case.
