Mayhaw Man

Of course you would. I am going to Acme for a business lunch today. I will, of course, be eating a dozen raw and a po boy. I am a creature of habit. And I almost forgot fried softshells. I like them grilled, steamed, sauteed, any old way-but I really like them fried. On a po boy. At the Jazz Festival. With extra Crystal Hot Sauce dripping out of it.

Taquitos In the warehouse store pack. I love these things.

Well, it could be several things: 1. This 2. this or 3. this While # 1 and two had a reputation of getting fried occasionally, #3 is what I was talking about.

Yardbird-once a week Fried Oyster Po Boy- once a week Fried Shrimp-Once a month (we eat shrimp once or twice a week, but rarely fried) Fried eggplant pirogues with crawfish stuffing-not enough times a year That's about it Southern stereotype? Sure. Delicious. You bet.

Nope. Everybody gets to vote. Even the ignorant. Okraland is a truly democratic society. We welcome everyone and everyone gets to participate. (behind the scenes, OIA agents are working hard to tally the naysayers as we will be keeping them under careful observation-as hatred of okra probably indicates some other behavioral and social issues that may be bubbling below the surface -we like to think of it as "okra profiling")

Well, we have a whole new batch of people who I am SURE are eager to weigh in on this burning topic. I had a count going for a while, so now I will be forced to go in and figure it out again. Remember, as you are voting "no" you are only showing how ignorant you really are. Pretty much you are showing that you are completely unadventurous and have no working taste buds in your mouth. Go ahead and vote however you want, as we are running an honest poll here-just remember what you are saying about yourself if you are misguided enough to vote no.

Dammit! I screw that up every time. I was thinking about New Iberia and writing about Abbeville. Anyway, I know how to get there. That's what's important. And the Gumbo is good.

I like it on the thin side myself. There are absolutely two schools of thought on this, and in the right company down here a fight can break out among the thick vs. thin crowd. I am of the opinion that the best thing about gumbo, any kind of gumbo, is the way that all of the flavors blend together, but can still be tasted as individual components. In my opinion, the use of too much roux, especially really dark roux, masks the great ingredients that you used to make the stuff in the first place. So that's where I stand on thick gumbos. Not that I don't like them or anything, I just prefer something else. On the other hand, fricasee, as has been mentioned above by FFOR, is a fine thing and it is usually thick as mud (which, not oddly, is often called gumbo here if the base happens to be red clay, as it often is). Generally made with a roux that is somewhere around peanut butter shade, and traditionally with chicken, or goame, or tougher cuts of meat, this dish should almost be able to be SCOOPED out of the pot with an ice cream scoop. It should damn near SIT on top of white rice. like a proud crown of meat, spices, flour, and butter. Thick has it's place, but in Gumbo I like it thin. An excellent commercial example of this is available at Black's Oyster Bar in Abbeville, LA. Most people who go there eat oysters and never get around to ordering hot food, but their loss can be your gain the next time you are on the banks of the Bayou Teche. It's a great bowl of gumbo.

It's pretty funny how this works. I told my wife, Robin, about this conundrum and she said that I was all mixed up (this is totally without looking, and she was laughing at herself}, she said, "no, no, no. 'Grasse burgers are for when teenagers arrive' and 'men love Grand Potatoes'" Damned if she wasn't right on the money.

Sure it does. But no big deal in that regard. The issue to me is a bit more deep than that. Everyone, even writers from here, to some degree anyway, tend to talk about "fried food" as it is some kind of local invention. The thing is, we do it well and we do it probably with more frequency than in many cuisines, but it is hardly the most common cooking method. Pick up any of the much discussed "church cookbooks" or "Jr League books" that you see often discussed in these forums and the variety, non fried, is pretty astounding. No offense to the good folks in other parts of the country but it is a safe generalization to say that the average church cookbook from St Francisville, LA is about 50 times more interesting and diverse than one from the same group of church ladies in Dubuque, IA. It's just a fact. And when you peruse those books, take a look at the in meat sections first-while you will almost always find the usual "Gramma's Best in the World Fried Chicken", and along the gulf coast, all kinds of fried seafood recipes, the rest of the offerings will be broad and not fried. We just do it better than everybody else, so we get the recognition. The vegetable section might include fried okra or eggplant or something like that, but generally there will be many, many more recipes that are stewed, boiled, sauteed, steamed, or casserolled (new adverb, you heard it here first ). It's all about stereotyping. That's what I take issue with. While I can always go find a brogan wearing rural type without a whole bunch of trouble, I can also find 10 times more sophisticated home cooks here that I can find in the same demographic in any other part of the country. We have cooks here, even if they don't recognize themselves as such, who have a much broader range of culinary expertise than their counterparts in other parts of North America. Much of it has to do with the food that is, or heretofore was, available in the South year round. Thanks to modern transportation and shipping techniques much of this is just as available in Minneapolis as it is in Mobile, it's the end result that counts and the average skilled home cook in the South can deliver. Am I talking about fast food? Nope. We have the same offerings as everyone else, by and large, although I remind you that for every Krispy Kreme and Kentucky Fried Chicken started in the South there are two or three chains that started elsewhere-McDonald's, In and Out, Jack in the Box, etc. We do not have the corner on food that is bad for you, and that is where this whole argument gets to be kind of stupid. Part of the argument is that many of these foods have only become unhealthy through the change in the labor force here and the change in the household incomes in the Deep South. We burn less calories as the daily labor level has moved into the late 20th and early 21st century-primarily because farm related labor and factory labor has gone by the wayside, much as it has elsewhere in the US-we can't burn off the calories the way we used to. The second part is that, with families working two incomes and having more money but less time, there is alot more fast food consumed here-just like everywhere else. Fried chicken, for example, used to be an expensive meal in the relatively poor and agrarian South and was eaten on Sundays and special occasions. Now it is available all the time, cheap, and as it is good and in fact, (stereotype or not) a prefferred food here-we eat lots of it. Popeye can whip Old McDonald's ass any day of the week, in my book. You know, some of the largest Urban areas in the US are now located in the South. We are no longer toothless rednecks behind a plow. We are urban and, sadly in my mind, but whaddya do, and much more like the rest of the US than we were 25 years ago and certainly more than 50 years ago. It's just that the writers from other parts of the country come here-see what they want to see-and them go home and write about it. So yeah, it is unfair, but not entirely innacurate, to say that we eat more fried food than everybody else. On the other hand, it is wholly inaccurate to say that fried food is all that we eat.

Why must one admit something that is not a fact? That's like starting out with a statement like, "One must admit that all Frech food contains stunning amounts of butter", "all italian food has pounds of garlic in it and always involves pasta", or one like, "All food in Britain is bland and tasteless mush". Perhaps a more accurate statement might be, "One must admit that the general perception by those not acclimated to the diverse offerings of the Southern U.S. is that all food is fried-even the vegetables. These people have never spent any time with Southern cookbooks, or in Southern households, and have no clue what the daily fare of the average Southerner who cooks at home is. These people have no idea that the giant array of vegetables available, for large part, year round in many Southern Farmers Markets are not taken home and floured and thrown into a big boiling vat of lard (not that it is a bad idea, just that it is not an everyday thing), but many of them are lightly stewed, steamed, baked, etc. While frying is certainly an option, and when done well it is a tasty one, the Southern United States is also the center of the BBQ world, where meats are slow cooked over various kinds of heat sources to tasty, and many times, healthy results." I would say that this is a more accurate statement and I will be glad to admit to that. Sure we fry alot of stuff, and in fact, what most tourists seek out are fried offerings, as that is what they expect and they can't find these sorts of food done well back home. But to say that all Southern food, even most, is fried-is not true. At all.

I'm convinced -- I'm ordering from Jacob's tomorrow morning (I'd much rather call than send them my credit card information via email ). ...though if you think one of the others you mentioned would be a better place to start, please speak up. I'm just assuming that you mentioned them in order of (personal?) preference. ← I am lucky enough to be able to regularly drive to everywhere I mentioned. Jacob's is about 20 minutes from my work (in a big faceless office building with a great view of Louis Armstrong International Airport and the big, giant swamp behind it), and I still will drive an hour and a half to Poche's. The place has been open since they invented pork and smoke. It's an amazing place with products that generally exceed all expectations-and I have been eating this stuff all of my life. Jacob's is good and very, very traditional-holding up their end of the German Coast on the banks of the river between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Hebert's excels at the stuffed poultry helm, as their shrimp stuffed boneless chickens are the SUPERIOR fast food on this or any other planet. I am given, naturally, to excessive bragging about native products-but seriously, you can't buy this stuff anywhere else. It's worth the price of shipping. Get a bunch of stuff and share it with your friends,. Make a group order. Get some sausage, some andouille, some tasso, a couple of chickens, maybe some boudin (although it really doesn't travel that well-it's a rice casserole and it gets kind of mushy in the reheat process-but it's still damn good). Edited to add-order from Poche's over the phone. It can be kind of fun if you get the right person. You may end up chatting for a while. It's what we do.

You know, not that I am trying to promote local products or anything , but there are a number of places here, Jacob's, Poche's, Hebert's, etc. that ship at very reasonable prices and pretty much, no matter what you are buying there, you will not get the real deal unless it is coming from some country grocery down here. Andouille, for one thing, when properly made is more or less large chunks of spiced hame stuffed into a casing and smoked at very low temps in a wood smokehouse (here they are generally made of long lasting, termite and rot proof cypress wood). The links themselves are very large in diameter and weight, most of the time about 10 inches long and weighing in at about a pound each. C'mon, order the real deal. Help what's left of our third world economy. Buy the best. Buy Louisiana Made.

It is newly published. The first printing was sold out very quickly. Apparently, the second will be a much larger run and will go into general release. The Folse Website is still selling them, but I believe that the actual situation is that they are taking orders and waiting on reprints. This fabulous book was published by Folse's Publishing Company, so distribution, initially, seemed to be primarily in the Southeastern US and online. It's worth the wait. Really. If you want a signed one you can order them from Folse himself. The site is listed above.

I will be glad to help you with this, but I need some detail that you might not want to cough up on line. email me and we can try to get it together. Several expats last year did the same thing, and it worked out. If you really have the shipping figured out, it's no big deal at all and won't even be particularly expensive. Brooks

I didn't know that I had any cousins in NYC. That's great! Especially Absinthe drinking cousins. Even better. Although I am thinking with the reference to Central Grocery and the absinthe photo that you might be from more Southern climes. What gives?

Nothing wrong with that. Brownies on cereal make perfect sense to me. In fact, Brownies and Cheerios sounds pretty delicious.

Coffee, in fact, in some combination with other liquids, can often be great as a braising liquid. In fact, I may speak to the headmaster about using it in one of our class projects. He is a very exacting individual though, and may not allow it.

Prunes can be a great foil for chicken. For example, an old line Southern Favorite, Country Captain Chicken, often has prunes or currants in the recipe. I love the stuff, but I probably would have never come up with it on my own. This one has currants in it, and is pretty close to the one that I use. I also use very spicy madras curry. That stuf is awesome in everything. This recipe has raisins in it. More Raisins

I will reply with photographic evidence of why you should take your time. Think. Plan. Look at kitchens. Get prices. Pray over it. Whatever. Just don't do ANYTHING on spur of the moment/ I am still working on mine, 6 months later. I will be ordering cabinets this week from the same place that Dean got his (I can pick them up, so that makes them even more of a bargain). Just think about it for a while. I would kill for your kitchen at the moment, as I am pretty much dealing with a disaster area right now. It will be great when I get finished, but the last few months have been tough on my family (including a major marital rift that was pretty damn ugly for a month or two). Get everybody in your families opinion and make sure they know what the process is going to be and make sure that you have everything lined up before you pull one single tile. I learned the hard way-and this is after many renovations. YOu would think that I would have learned by now, but I don't take my own advice very well. Sadly.

Some things should not be combined. Ever. And I won't do it. Seems like a crime sometime. But you never know until you try, I guess. I had one of those experiences this afternoon. I was supposed to be up in the Delta eating Tamales for an magazine piece that I am working on, but the weather was crummy and my partner, my 15 year old, really wanted to go to the party (lots of teenage chicks in attendance seemed to be the attraction more than the food). So we blew off the Delta and headed off to the party. I just left a party populated primarily by movie art guys and their families who are currently flush with money thanks to the large number of movies being filmed in town recently (you can tell they are loaded because the tequila selection was a few cuts above the usual Torada that is usually being consumed. They are usually all broke, networking for art dept. jobs on sets, and mooching free beer and borrowing cigs). There was a guy making fish tacos out of fried redfish filets, sweet potato paste, really good english sharp cheddar, grilled red onion, on really good corn tortillas that he had bought at some latin grocery in Kenner, and finally topped with a very spicy pico de gallo that he had just made from both green and red ripe toms.. Amazingly good. I never, ever would have thought that fried fish and sweet potatoes would be a good combination, but this was an incredibly good dish. This will now become part of my repetoire. Delicious. What are some of the stranger combos that you have run into that seemed like a terrible idea and worked out great? Another one for me is avacado, grapefruit, boiled shrimp and butter lettuce salad with poppy seed vinagarette. Joe's Restaurant in Livonia, LA uses this as their signature salad and it's a knockout. What works for you that shouldn't?

Gorgeous. Wonderful! I add tomatoes to seafood gumbo almost every time that I make it. In fact, I have found that Rotels work pretty well. I never drain them. What's a little more liquid? Nice work on the photos, as well.

That would be a fight I would pay to see. And as far as the vegetables go, I err on the side of alot of them, and how I chopthem depends on what I am making. Chicken and some kind of sausage? Chunky veg. Seafood? Fine chopped. Gumbo Z'herbes (which I am making in the morning for a friend who is preg and a bit anemic-lots of iron in all of those greens)? Hardly chopped.

I suppose, that if it was super lean meat, you might be able to skip the browning part-but why would you? That's all part of the taste of the dish. I'm with Fifi, I'm just not that ready or that lazy.

Actually, in Gumbo Z'herbes, english peas might be a nice addition. THey are green, and delicious-pretty much meeting the requirements for that fine dish. Thanks for the suggestion.