Mayhaw Man

Well, since you asked. I though about my recent visit to Starbuck's. It was caused by a burning need for the nearest wifi connection, and had little to do with their drinks-but as I was there, and I am a confirmed coffee fiend, I got a large (I don't say the words, I don't type the words) black coffee. I wanted it in a real cup, but that is just one more thing that they don't do at Satrbucks. Now, ladies and gentlemen, the results of our scientific survey: 1) I am nothing if not complicated 2) I do, in fact, have modest taste generally-although what I choose to modestly taste is usually of extremely high quality. 3) Uggh, wrong. Starbucks is the coffee equivelent McDonald's. I don't order their espresso because it is made by (I am generalizing here-there are exceptions) someone who doesn't have a clue how to operate the machine and often, more often than not, pulls a poorly done shot that does not taste good. 4) No one laughs at my language. Ever. Sadly, I talk like a sailor on leave and "friggin" has never crossed my lips. I should, at all times, have my mouth washed out with strong soap. 6) I have never seen an episode of America's Funnies Home Videos. In fact, I have probably watched a total of 10 hours of Network TV (excluding news and major sports) in the last 5 years. So there. I order black dark roast because it is safe and I am pretty sure to find something in my cup that I can enjoy. Even Starbucks has a hard time screwing up dripped coffee (although they often hold it too long, and they have no clue how to make a decent iced coffee-but that's another rant for another day). It is a great place to get a free NY Times though, as in my local (in the middle of suburban sprawl) plenty of people buy them, but don't take them home because they really aren't trying to read it anyway-it is just another coffeehouse prop. Edited to say that website with the survey is hilarious. Just start punching in drinks that are consumed by the people that you loathe. With the exception of the one for large black coffee they are all spot on. All iced mocha drinkers are strippers, for example. Who can argue with that?

The worst part was that all you guys have in your office are Macs. Not a proper pc in the place. And I was hoping to be able to pose with a giant bag of Cheetos and a bunch of empty cans of Mountain Dew, just like any real geek. Although in my case, I would have been more accurately posed with a giant cuppa Community Dark Roast and an oyster po boy. Tom Fitzmorris seems to be catching a fair amount of crap for dumping on the anonymous users that frequent his website. I thought his sentiment was pretty much spot on, although a bit on the hard side towards his users, considering how many anonymous users that he has. I also notice that there is no reference to it, that I can find, (and there was on Sunday night-posted by an anonymous user, of course) on his website. The other guys in the article seem pretty thrilled, judging by that amount of traffic that it has generated on their sites.

Anna, I use it for exactly what Robyn bought it for. I live in an old house in a very rural area and there are giant long leaf pines and huge live oak trees all the way down the road on both sides. The power goes out all the time. It's actually kind of crazy how mush it goes out. Tree limbs fall and out go the lights. When I said that you need some back up gas, I was talking about when you are depending on it in a weather situation (such as Robyn and I both have in our part of the world). It will do pretty much whatever you want for a few nights (how's that for exactly ), but if it is going to be all you have, you will need some back up. We use it for buffet stuff occasionally, and on low it will run a really long time. They are dependable and suprisingly, 8700 btus will do some serious cooking if you really want to. I have made roux on the thing a couple of times and that worked out just fine..

You've got more whips than most lion tamers!

I think of them as disposable. Serrated edges are really hard to sharpen and basically not worth the trouble, unless you take them to a pro, and even then they are not really ever as good as new. Thanks to everybody's to the thinking cook's anti hero, I bought one of these things-an Oxo Good Grips Natural Bread Knife a while back. I never, ever, would have picked it up off of the shelf, but since it was cheap and Bourdain said it was an interesting knife, I gave it a go. I love the thing now. Good for cutting bread and if the need ever arises, it would probably be good for a quick amputation or cutting brush off of a fence. They are really, really sharp. Scroll down to the bottom of the article to see the knife.

I have one of those, Robyn, and they work great, although they go through the gas pretty quickly, so I would reccomend stocking up. And Winsonoma's reference to Cabela's website gives me yet another chance to reccomend that place. Their outdoor cooking equipment never fails. You can bet that if it is in that catalog, it is going to be some high quality stuff. I have a meat grinder that I bought from them years ago and have been misusing ever since. That thing would grind a radial tire into a tasty link.

This one is not Brooksie's, but pretty close. This is the recipe of a Delta woman, my best friend's mama, who married a New York Dr. (Joe Baum's (Windows on the World) nephew, come to think of it) in Lafayette during the war. She could cook. Lord, she could cook. She had the first commercial stove in a home kitchen that I ever saw. She knew what to do with it. Sadly, she passed a few years ago, but her recipes live on. This one has no tomatoes. While I have some recipes that do, this is pretty close to the traditional deal, I think. (and yes, it's got a can of mushroom soup in it, and I use it, but if you just hate cans and can't deal with it make a white roux (beurre blanc) with 1/2 cup of butter and 1/2 cup flour -but the soups easier and better) Bess's Ettouffee- 2 lbs. cleaned shrimp 1/2 lb. butter 2 tbls. ap flour 3 large yellow onions 1 medium bell pepper (you pick the color, although green would be the normal) 3 ribs celery 1 can cream of mushroom soup 2 cups shrimp stock (or any other you have around, but shrimp is best) 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped salt to taste black pepper to taste good dash of cayenne paprika (hot kind if you have it) 1/2 cup green onion tops Season shrimp to taste with salt, pepper, and cayenne Melt butter and add flour, cook until incorporated, not dark and add the onions, bell pepper, celery, and garlic Cook til wilted Add can of soup Mix well and simmer few minutes until smooth Add shrimp and 1 1/2 cups stock and simmer 30 min or so Add the rest of the stock just before serving and stir til smooth Season with more salt and and pepper and add the paprika for color Add onion tops to top of ettoufee after it is placed over good white rice I highly reccomend some good rice for this. While certainly Konriko or something woud be traditional, a nicely flavored rice like Jasmine or Texmati adds much to the dish. Serve with salad and warm, crusty bread

The New Orleans Times Picayune had a feature in the business section today on bubble teas and bubble tea shops. I have to admit to an aversion to drinks with chunks of anything in it, but in the interest of research, I am going to go by and try one of these things again when I am in the city on Wednesday. Any favorite flavors that might be a good place to start?

It is important to look like a native. Semi sober, bad hair, expensive jacket. I don't live in L.A. I live in LA. (copyright BH-2004)

The Gambit has an article this week on internet food sites in New Orleans and elsewhere. eGullet is nicely covered in the article by Todd Price.

Saturnbar, No problem. I get corrected all of the time. It's my wife's hobby. I only meant that it would be a place to visit with your friends in peace, as I kind of assumed that is what she was looking for. I see now that I jumped the gun a bit, although I still stand with my rec.. for Clancy's in some form or fashion. I love that place. If only because they have the best bowl of mussels that I have yet to find in the city.

Butter and Salt Brewers yeast and dark soy Greek Seasoning Cayenne and salt BBQ Rub (really, it's delicious, especially if you pop the corn in bacon grease ) Think "puffy bbq"

Mother: North Lousiana (Family in US since arriving in Georgia in 1750's from Scotland) Father: South Arkansas (Grandfather was German, jumped ship in Savannah in 1901) Pies: Pecan Pie Chocolate Chess Pie Was there any doubt?

Good choice. Excellent, in fact. I aplaud your good sense and use of turkey stock.

Oh you urbane types. Cafe du Monde! Like this!

Gumbo. Really good gumbo. Turkey and sausage. Don't listen to these people. They are all very nice, but misguided. Don't let them guide you down the garden path. Stand on your own there in Music City, like a man. Soup?

Freeze it in precut portions. It freezes great. Just bag the stuff in portions in zip locks and pull and nuke when the urge hits you. Also, I know that this is going to sound kind of "he's Southern, they fry everything", but after you have fried a little bacon for breakfast, put a slice of that dressing in the pan and crisp it up a bit. Awesome! Glad that you enjoyed it.

I made crusty rounds of Italian bread yesterday afternoon while I was concocting a batch of Turkey and Andouille Gumbo. The carcass from the turkey, which had been brined and cooked on the Weber, made an awesome stock and gave the soup a nice, smoky taste. I cooked a huge batch of Jasmine Rice to which I added garlic juice (the best part about that prechopped, basically flavorless, garlic that comes in the little jars-the juice is worth the purchase price!) I fed 8 teenagers and three adults this stuff and there was nothing, nothing I tell you, left. Bread was used to scrape the bottom of the pot, and they were asking for more. A total success.

No Okra. Otherwise it looked pretty spectacular. Nice work and thanks to both of you for the great running commentary.

I think that is some of what I was getting at. Once that unique flavor is achieved, repeatedly, nothing else will do. I remember back in the late 70s or early 80s when we had a Pickapepper crisis. That was the era when every party had to have that block of cream cheese with the Pickapepper poured over it. I don't remember all of the details but I think what happened was the employees wanted to unionize or something so the owner just shut the place down. Closed it. Walked off. "See ya. I'm going to the beach." I was living in New Orleans at the time so I don't know if this was a local phenom but the phone lines were buzzing. (Pre-internet days, you know.) There was a run on Pickapepper. Folks went out to small stores in the countryside and cleared the shelves. There were ads in the classified section. "Just drove in from Georgia. I have Pickapepper. $5 a bottle." You can only imagine what would have gone on if e-bay had been invented. The drive time talk radio shows kept everyone informed of the labor situation at the Pickapepper plant. The whole thing was just nuts. ← I think that this may have been a New Orleans situation. Where else can you find a city that is, governmentally, such a mess-but can go into hysteria over Jamaican Hot Sauce? OTOH, on a regular basis, will come home and enjoy some Pickapeppa over a hunk of cream cheese with some decent wheat crackers, or better yet, the king of saltine like crackers-Captains's Wafers. I love that stuff. I know some people (primarily single, middle aged men with large record collections (you know the type) and messy houses, who eat out every meal) whose refrigerators often contain only the following items, as it's good to have a snack around for guests: Pickapeppa Cream Cheese Pickled Okra Beer (5 or 6 kinds and lots of it) Old quart of milk 1/2 Pint Half and Half Open, not sealed bag of CDM Condiments from chinese takeout We're talking fine cocktail eating here. It's good to be ready for guests, at all times. As far as everyday sauce goes, I am a Crystal man myself. Tabasco is a bit too concentrated and I really like the smooth, vinegary taste of Crystal. I have also, over the last few years, come to enjoy the entire line of products from the nice folks at Panola, way up in the Delta (damn near Arkansas). They make great stuff. Sriracha sauce is the only thing that will do on noodles, though. I love that stuff, especially the way that it coats the food in a thin layer of fiery pleasure and then proceeds to coat your palate with the same.

My mind's eye pictures groups of men outfitted in garish plaid slacks toting clipboards, laptops, and other implements of modern research neatly camoflaged in golf bags.

Good spot Al Some excellent info there! One way that I choose my spots is to make sure that I can dine while Blaring is something that I always look for first!

The Cotton Country Collection is a pretty amazing book. It was put together at a time when there were still older women in the Delta who knew the older recipes that they had learned from their mothers, grandmothers, housekeepers, and cooks and the younger group of women who put it together showed a great amount of respect and care in the assembly of this masterwork. The combination of the old Delta South recipes, the food of the piney woods of South Arkansas, East Texas (see, Texas, on topic ) and North Louisiana, along with many of the things that will be familiar to lovers of South Louisiana fare are sure to be pretty enticing to anyone who takes the time to thumb through it. The dessert, cookie, cake section is full of great uses for cane sugar and mexican vanilla, and the game section is second to none (ducks in olive gravy is one of the finest uses for wild game, of any sort, ever concocted). There are vegetable recipes that I have never seen anywhere else, as well as some interesting and really delicious "throwback" recipes to a time when a can of cream of mushroom or Rotel Tomatoes were not sneered at by discerning foodies. My mother was on the test committee and as a twelve year old I had the opportunity, nightly for about a year or so, to eat things that I love to this day and would have doubtlessly not tried for a very long time (if ever) had it not been for the publishing of this book. There are others, of course, River Road, Southern Sideboards, etc. are all great books, but in my mind none is as all encompassing of the food of the Central Southern United States as The Cotton Country. I highly reccomend it. I have a copy that is from the first publishing that I can't open up without a page falling out (actually, now that I think about it, I could probably boil it in some broth and it would make a tasty soup, given the large amount of stuff that is stuck to it's well thumbed pages). I particularly reccomend the Sweet Potato Casserole and the Lemon Loves, as they are credited to my mother and my grandmother. While I am certainly prone to a little bias here, this truly is a great book.

That's ok. It's always fun to find something that you forgot. This year my wife made this great cranberry relish stuff that has to made ahead of time to marinate (it has orange peels (I used satsuma peels) in it and the stuff is awesome) and we completely forgot about it. No big deal. Just more for sandwich making today! And the turkey probably looked a bit like this(although you are a much better photographer than I).

Baseball sized snails are living very close to Fifi. She could take the culinary lead on this looming enviromental disaster! This is more serious than the title of the thread indicates. As an area of the world that is pretty much subtropical, the South is particularly prone to invasions by predatory, non native tropical species of animals, plants, birds, invertabrates, etc. that are either released by pet lovers or that come in as part of foriegn cargo (The red fire ant is a prime example of this, as it came from a shipment of tropical wood shipped to the port of Mobile a number of years ago). We are also suffering from the invasion of Flying Carp (this article has a great quote about a fisherman being saved by a tractor seat ). In Louisiana, The Nutria, has become a source of both economic and environmental trouble as the things have multiplied like crazy since the drop in fur prices in the late 80's. Inspite of the efforts of some of our finest culinary minds,to turn this disgusting little rat into a food source, the things continue to multiply like crazy. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee led the way by using a team of crack marksmen from the JPSO SWAT team to shoot the yellow toothed devils, but sadly, the wily rat has continued to multiply. Texas eGulleteers have a unique chance to help out their farmers and chefs by leading the way in developing a native escargot industry. This snail should fit the bill for Texas quite well, because IT'S BIG!, just like Texas! As the leader of the eGullet Public Relations team I pledge to get you all of the press that you can stand in order to promote your selfless efforts. So for the greater glory of Texas (IT'S BIG™), start gathering up that Texas Escargot!