Harry

slkinsey, I'm cooking thin crust pizza in a regular home oven. The oven is gas-fired and gets at least 550 degrees. Is that hot enough for uncooked sauce?

I'm taking a stab at pizza making and can't seem to get the sauce right. Should the sauce be cooked? Should I use marinara sauce? Should I just run canned plum tomatoes through a food mill and use that for sauce? If anybody has any information I would appreciate it.

I'm also partial to the thinner style but don't think whether you add stock instead of plain water has anything to do with the consistency of the gumbo. My seafood gumbo is very thin, but I always make a stock of shrimp shells and frozen crabs before adding water to the pot. I don't add the shrimp until I think the gumbo has cooked long enough (at least three hours) and I only cook the shrimp a couple minutes. I add the crabmeat after I turn off the heat and let it soak in the gumbo for half an hour or so with the pot covered. This way seafood isn't overcooked and the gumbo still has a strong, cooked-in seafood taste. I do agree with you, however, that gumbo is best cooked at home.

What is a separate stock?

I'm going to New York City on business in a couple weeks and, like most tourists, I'm looking forward to some top-notch Italian food. Specifically, I'm looking for old-fashioned, unpretentious Italian-American establishments, the kind that serve good meatballs, braciole, osso buco, etc. What are your favorite old-line Italian-American restaurants in the city? I'll be staying and working in Manhattan but glad to travel to the other boroughs if the food is worth the trip. I'm sure you New Yorkers get tired of rubes like me asking "so where can I get some good Italian food?" so let me know if this request is not specific enough. Thanks in advance for any advice.

His recipe for spaghetti and meatballs is one of the best I've found. He also has an excellent recipe for Bolognese meat sauce, pot roast, and cobbler. I can't think of anything else offhand, but his recipes have rarely disappointed me.

I wouldn't spend much time looking for good seafood in Birmingham.

Why is the first cut better than the flat cut?

Now that it's finally getting cold down here, I'm starting to get hungry for some good corned beef. I've been experimenting with different kinds of store-bought, pre-corned briskets but haven't settled on a favorite yet. Does anybody here have any opinions as to who makes the best corned beef briskets available in grocery stores? Thanks.

Is it just roux, chopped vegetables, stock, seasoning and crawfish?

Thanks for the help, highchef. To form the "meatballs" do I just ball up the stuffing that would go in the heads and drop it in the bisque, or do I fry it first? Should I cook the crawfish balls in the bisque for a long time or add them at the end. I think the heads are a chore to eat anyway so I'd probably like it better with the crawfish balls.

Anybody have a good recipe? It's one of the few old-fashioned Gulf dishes I've never tried to cook and I might have to try it once crawfish come back into season. I think I'll skip the stuffed heads, though. Unfortunately I don't know anyone who cooks crawfish bisque so I'll have to learn from a cookbook rather than in person. Richard and Rima Collin's The New Orleans Cookbook has a recipe that suggests substituting one pound of tailmeat for 2-3 dozen stuffed heads so I'm thinking that might be a good place to start. If there are any cooks out there with opinions on this subject I'd love to hear from you. Does skipping the stuffed heads mean you've made crawfish stew instead of bisque? Should the roux be fairly light or dark like a good gumbo roux? Do tomatoes have any business in crawfish bisque?

Bunny white bread Conecuh County sausage Dale's Marinade Zatarain's crab boil--I prefer the powder, but if I happen to be too far from the Gulf and can only find the perforated bags, then that will do. I know it has its proponents, but I do not like the liquid. Zatarain's Fish-Fri--I think there is a gallon jar of this stuff in every pantry on the Gulf Coast. Hellman's Mayonnaise--I can stand other mayonnaise on hamburgers and sandwiches, but for tartar sauce and crab dip I won't use anything but Hellman's. Sunshine Brand Turnip Greens Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Crystal Hot Sauce Tabasco Sauce Sophie Clikas's horseradish China Doll beans China Doll rice

Badiane, onion-smothered is what I had in mind. My maid's recipe is to first put a lot of sliced onions in a big skillet and cook them over low heat in a little butter with the lid on. Then she seasons, flours, and fries the meat, just a minute or two on each side. When the meat is browned she puts it in the skillet with the onions. Then she adds water to the McCormick's brown gravy mix, cooks it down just barely, pours it over the chops and the onions, and cooks it a low simmer until the meat is almost falling off the bones. If the gravy gets too thick before the meat is cooked enough, she adds a little water. Not a bad recipe at all and I never would have guessed the gravy wasn't the real thing had she not told me. I guess the long simmering with the pork chops and onions gives it some flavor it wouldn't otherwise have. Does that sound similar to your recipes, aside from the gravy?

One of my favorite foods in the world is smothered pork chops (or steak) with rice. My maid cooks it beautifully and I have her recipe, but was surprised and a little disappointed to find out she smothers the chops or steaks in gravy made from a store-bought mix. It works just fine, but I'm an insufferable purist and would like to learn how to make it the right way. If anybody out there has a recipe for smothered pork chops or steak they wouldn't mind sharing I would really appreciate it. Thanks, Harry

La Bouche Creole by Leon Soniat is easily my all-time favorite. The recipes are all very traditional and include all the classics: seafood gumbo, shrimp and crawfish etouffee, trout amandine, trout meuniere, oyster stew, several types of jambalaya, oysters Bienville, grillades, remoulade sauce, etc. His recipes for etouffee, redfish courtbouillon, and turtle soup are the best I've had anywhere. If you love to cook but do not have La Bouche Creole, do yourself a favor and order it as soon as possible. La Bouche Creole II is also good. I like River Road Recipes I and II, although I haven't tried many of the recipes. I also like Talk About Good. I just got the Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine by John Folse but I'm not sure what I think of it just yet as I have not tried any of the recipes. My wife received the new Galatoire's cookbook as a gift and I like that one a lot. I usually don't like restaurant cookbooks but this one is great. It does not come from Louisiana, but Recipe Jubilee by the Junior League of Mobile ranks right behind La Bouche Creole on my list of favorite cookbooks. I include it in this discussion because Mobile was part of French Louisiana (in fact, it was the first capital) and the folks there have been cooking so-called Louisiana food as long as any part of the state of Louisiana. Recipe Jubilee has recipes for this type of food that are every bit as authentic (albeit a little fancier) as the ones in River Road Recipes and Talk About Good. It has some great recipes for gumbo and the best compilation of seafood recipes I've found in any Junior League-type cookbook. It also has some great game recipes that rank right up there with Talk About Good. If you like the Junior League cookbooks from Louisiana, you should definitely get a copy of Recipe Jubilee.

The original says to use a cup and a half of crawfish tails. I doubled the recipe and used probably three or four pounds of shrimp.

I've found it. Until recently, I always used my maid's recipe for etouffee because it's quick and very good. It hasn't been of much use to me lately because it seems to work better with crawfish than shrimp (maybe it needs the fat) and I haven't been able to find peeled crawfish tails that aren't frozen. I'm usually not particular about frozen food but I hate frozen crawfish. I could buy cooked crawfish and peel them myself but if I had to pick 10-20 lbs of crawfish, the recipe would no longer have the advantage of being something I can get started after work and have ready by suppertime. Besides, crawfish have been outrageously expensive this season. Anyway, I decided to find a recipe that would go better with shrimp than my old one. I looked in my favorite cookbook (La Bouche Creole by Leon Soniat) and found a recipe for the best etouffee I've ever had. Here it is: 3 T. margarine (I used butter) 1 c. chopped onions 1/2 c. chopped celery 1/2 c. chopped bell pepper 3 T. flour 2 T. tomato paste 2 c. stock 1/2 c. chopped green onions 2 T. chopped parsley (I didn't bother with it) 1 t. salt 1/2 t. poultry seasoning 1/4 t. black pepper 1/8 t. cayenne Cook the onions, celery, and bell peppers in the butter until soft, then stir in flour and cook until brown. I did it the other way around--made the roux first then added the vegetables. Stir in the tomato paste, then the stock. Add the seasonings and green onions and simmer until it reaches your preferred thickness. Add the shrimp or crawfish and cook until done. I doubled the recipe and strongly recommend that you do the same (if not quadruple it) because it does not make much. Anybody who likes a good pot of etouffee should try this recipe out. If you know of a better way to make etouffee I'd love to hear it.

I'm all out of mallards and wood ducks, but a friend of mine wants me to show him how to make duck gumbo. I've never done it with anything but wild ducks and have always assumed that using Long Island ducks would result in a greasy pot of gumbo. Has anybody out there ever tried it before? If so, how did it turn out?

I've heard a lot of people raving about how great the Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cooking is, but most of the praise I've heard is for the pictures and the history section. All that is well and great, but the only thing that interests me are the recipes. Before I spend $40 or $50, I want to make sure I'm getting a real cookbook and not something to decorate my coffee table with. Are the recipes any good? Are they mostly traditional recipes or are they more in the vein of Paul Prudhomme? I'm not interested in innovation and am looking for something more on the Leon Soniat/River Road Recipes/Talk About Good end of the spectrum. Thanks. Harry