kayb

I bought four more yesterday.

Last post for today: I just can't resist. This is a true Southern dish, one familiar from my childhood: Squirrel and dumplings. Cut squirrel bite-sized chunks. Boil the carcass with salt, pepper, onions, garlic to make broth, strain, and keep warm. Roll squirrel bites in flour seasoned with salt and pepper, saute over medium-high heat until golden brown. Add water, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes or so. Make your favorite dumpling dough -- I tend to use regular pie crust dough, although you could certainly make spaetzle. Bring squirrel broth to a boil over medium-high heat, and poach dumplings. Add cooked dumplings to squirrel in saute pan, and add enough broth to make a creamy gravy to cover. You can also use the same preparation with rabbit. It would probably work with venison, although I've never tried that. Serve with fresh biscuits, butter and sorghum molasses, and you have a genuine West Tennessee hills dinner.

My probable favorite wild duck recipe is simply the breasts. Having friends' boys who hunt, they keep me supplied. Here's the simple braised version: Soak fresh duck breasts in brine for 4-6 hours prior to cooking. Drain and rinse. Roll in flour seasoned with salt and pepper; brown in butter and olive oil, and then pour red wine in the saute pan to about half the thickness of the breasts. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, turning every 15 minutes or so, until wine is almost evaporated. Add beef stock to about 1/4 depth of breasts; simmer another 15 minutes. Remove breasts to warmed serving platter, increase heat and reduce sauce to a consistency to your liking. Slice duck breasts and spoon sauce over. I serve these with roasted sweet potato wedges (tossed in olive oil, brown sugar, paprika and cayenne) and whatever green vegetable strikes my fancy that evening. And because I'm near Stuttgart, Arkansas, the duck-hunting capital or the world, here's the World Championship Duck Gumbo Cookoff recipe. I replace the okra with celery because, much as I love fried okra, I don't like it in a soup or stew. Broth: 5 to 6 ducks 2 large yellow onions, diced 2 large bell peppers, diced 1 clove garlic, minced 3 tablespoons chicken bouillon granules 2 teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon black pepper 2 bay leaves Water, to cover the ducks Roux: 1/2 pound bacon 3/4 cup all-purpose flour Vegetable oil (if needed) 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon pepper Gumbo: Reserved duck broth 1 large yellow onion, chopped 1 large bell pepper, chopped 2 (15-ounce) cans diced tomatoes, drained Salt and pepper 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper 2 tablespoons garlic powder 1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce 2 tablespoons mango-tamarind spicy Jamaican pepper sauce (recommended: Pick-a-Peppa brand) 1 large package smoked pork sausage, diced and browned Reserved chopped duck meat 1/2 cup finely chopped reserved bacon 1 package frozen okra, cooked to package directions, drained 1 pound raw shrimp, cut into small pieces 2 tablespoons gumbo file White rice and French bread, as accompaniment Directions Broth: To a large stockpot, add the ducks, onions, bell peppers, garlic, bouillon, salt, pepper, bay leaves, and enough water to cover the ducks. Bring to a boil and cook the ducks for about 1 hour, until tender. Remove ducks and pull the breast meat from the bones and chop them into small pieces - use only the breast meat and discard the rest of the bird or save for another use. Strain the broth and save. Set aside the chopped duck breast and broth to use later. Roux: In a large, deep, black skillet or kettle, fry the bacon and sausage. Remove the meat with a slotted spoon, leaving the grease in the pan. (Here’s where I added the saute-the-veggies step.) To the hot bacon grease, slowly add the flour, if the mixture is of a paste consistency, add more bacon grease or oil until it’s loose and easy to stir. Stirring constantly, flour-grease mixture should cook on medium heat until a dark caramel color is obtained. Add the salt and pepper and stir. As soon as the salt and pepper are stirred into the roux, add the remaining ingredients to make the gumbo. To the hot roux, add broth, then the onions, peppers and tomatoes. Add the seasonings. Then add sausage, duck, bacon pieces and okra. Next add the shrimp, cook until shrimp is pink. Finally, add the gumbo file and stir. Let gumbo simmer for about 1 hour. The longer it simmers, the better it gets. Serve over white rice with hot French bread.

There's Hobo Mondays on the Thursday Night Smackdown blog (www.thursdaynightsmackdown.com), where the challenge is to make dinner for two for less than $5. There's usually one or two conditions -- last month it was "no pasta," this month it will be "chickpeas, but not hummus." She also does the title of her blog as a contest, in which one Thursday a month she'll give a theme and competitors are to employ a theme, use a cookbook, and follow the recipe exactly. Good way to plug your favorite cookbooks; I've picked up a couple based on that. Plus, she's hysterically funny.

A couple of posters have mentioned yeast and/or potato doughnuts. Here's my mother's recipe. I have never made these on my own, but I fondly remember waking up on Saturday mornings to the smell of doughnuts frying. Potato Doughnuts 2 cups milk, 1 cup sugar 1/2 cup vegetable oil 1 1/2 tsp. salt 1 cup mashed potatos 2 pkgs yeast 1/4 cup water 3 eggs 1 tsp lemon flavoring 1 tsp cinnamon 8 cups flour (I presume self-rising, as I don't remember Mama cooking much with all-purpose) Fry in three pounds shortening. Glaze with 1 1/2 boxes powdered sugar This is the recipe exactly as written on a dog-eared, grease-spotted index card. Obviously she left out some steps. It seems that I recall her making up the batter and letting it rise; and I'm guessing that she used 1/4 cup warm water to soak the yeast and activate it. I don't recall the lemon flavoring, nor the cinnamon, for that matter, but they wouldn't taste much in that volume of batter anyway. She would roll out the batter in batches and cut the doughnuts out with a doughnut cutter, and would fry the holes separately because I begged for them. I think the glaze was powdered sugar and milk, although it could have been powdered sugar and water. And it seems that this recipe made five or six dozen. I remember vividly that they were the best doughnuts I ever ate, bar none.

I will have to construct this from memory, as my father used to cook pork shoulders, ribs and chickens with this method of barbecue (altering the times as needed for doneness). It involved an on-the-ground barbecue pit, but could, I suspect, be done with a smoker; I have his sheet-metal pit he fabricated (he was a welder) with 2-foot by 3-foot expanded metal racks for grilling and turning. The rack rests about 20 inches above the coals. The second rack is used to put on top of the meat, extended handles on each side grasped (arms crossed first) by one person on each side, so the meat can be flipped. It has a thermometer in the lid so one could keep track of the inside temperature, and the temperature was regulated by removing the "door" on one end and shoveling in coals from a hickory wood fire kept burning nearby for that purpose. The racks would accommodate four shoulders, and that is usually what we would cook as we only did this for a BIG crowd or for church events, etc. I've done it on a smaller scale with one shoulder, and it should work just fine with butts by adjusting the time. You can also adjust the time and do chicken halves or quarters, or ribs. Put two or three shovelsful of coals into the pit, and monitor until the temperature is steady at 180 degrees. You may have to add more coals, or remove some coals, to get the temperature steady. When it is, put the plain, unrubbed, unbrined shoulders on the rack, fat side down; cover, keep the temp at 180 for two hours. Flip the rack, and baste the shoulders (a cotton dish mop is the best implement for this) with a sauce made of corn oil, cider vinegar, salt, pepper, garlic powder, cayenne, and paprika (and, I suppose, anything else you've a mind to put in it; I think one could do a great Cuban style barbecue by adding lime and upping the garlic) in proportions to your liking. From this point, the shoulders should be flipped and basted hourly. Temperature should stay at 180 for the first six hours; 200 for the next four; 220 for the next four; and 250 for the final two to three, to put a nice deep crust on it. It's done when the bone wiggles freely. Remove, pull, and serve with a tomato-pepper based sauce. (When we'd do four shoulders, we'd use an ice chest to pull it in; kept it warm until it was served.) Wear heavy rubber gloves; should be pulled by hand while hot; with four shoulders, it'd take all day to pull it with forks. Our classic sides were potato salad, roast corn on the cob, baked beans, yellow coleslaw made with oil, vinegar, onion, bell pepper, carrots, celery seed, dry mustard and turmeric at least two days in advance. Gallons of iced tea and fresh lemonade (the family was generally teetotalling; I've supplemented that with an ice chest full of cold beer), and a couple of freezers of homemade ice cream. In the back yard, under the maple trees. For pork shoulders, due to the time involved, we'd generally start them about 8 p.m. to serve them at noon the next day. The helpful way to do this is with shifts of folks, else the two who cook are not worth much the next day. Daddy always took the first and last shift, to monitor progress. The "graveyard" shift always involved numerous thermoses of coffee to help stay awake. It freezes well, particularly if you have a vacuum sealer. Few memories of my growing up are as fond as that one.

Lord. That sounds SO good. I'm going shopping for Splendid Soups, this afternoon.

I am SO making this this weekend!

I vacation every year at Orange Beach, AL, in the same condo complex. I drive, so equipment is not so much a problem; I do always take (a) my coffee grinder, (b) my French press, © assorted spices including shrimp boil seasoning, and (d) my big stockpot for boiling shrimp. (I have learned I can pack the grinder, the French press, and a baggie of coffee beans all down inside the stockpot. Rubber bands looped around the handles on the pot and the handle on top of the lid holds it all together. If flying, you could put it all in a box and either check it or carry it on (probably carry-on given they charge you $15 a pop for checked bags now, the dogs, and how many clothes do you need at the beach anyway?). I stop on my way to the condo and buy groceries -- granola, berries and vanilla yogurt with a loaf of decent bread is good enough for breakfast. (If it's several of us, I get bacon and eggs and cook a big breakfast one morning.) Deli meats, cheese, crackers, fresh veggies, dips, chps, fruit, etc. for lunch. A bag of rice. Corn and potatos and andouille sausage for the shrimp boil. Dinner is always fresh seafood, because it's so good; I generally do a shrimp boil at least a couple of nights, with extra shrimp (though it's hard to have extra shrimp when you love them as much as my crowd and I do). I'll use the extra shrimp chopped up in a curry sauce (you can get good curry sauce at a lot of delis now) over grouper, or just marinated in lime and cilantro as an "add" to lunch. Many fresh seafood markets will also have prepared gumbo that's a good "add" to broiled grouper. You can jury-rig a steamer in your stock pot and cook lots of other fresh seafood, and sauces as simple as butter or olive oil, lime and cilantro are the only accompaniment it needs. Oh, and beer. Lots of very cold beer. Beer and a shopping bag of books and a week of sun. I'm going April 27. Can't wait.

Sign me up for the Shameless Self-Promotion list. My blog started in January and swiftly became a cooking blog to reflect an avocation that's becoming increasingly important to me. I'm strictly an amateur cook, but I've spent the last six months or so expanding my culinary horizons. I've chronicled those adventures at http://kayatthekeyboard.wordpress.com, where I occasionally rant about politics and try to gin up a laugh or two at the same time I share some enjoyable times in my kitchen. A lot of my inspiration comes from http://thursdaynightsmackdown.com, which is possibly the funniest food blog I've ever read.

52 on the shelf, plus 2 e-books, plus my own digital compendium of recipes I've collected and filed away from various websites and friends. Plus at least two that I can't find right now, so I think I must have loaned them out. Plus an Essential Bartender's Guide. So that's what, 57? I don't feel nearly as profligate now. I think I'd best go buy cookbooks. I have a 40-percent-off coupon from Borders.....

This has been my year to try new ingredients, new dishes, and new techniques. I've had some spectacular failures (we won't talk about the mung beans in coconut milk....), but I've also had some huge successes. I think my two favorites to date are Carbonnades a la Flamande, and Linguine with Squash, Bacon and Goat Cheese. Here are the links to my blog posts for each: http://kayatthekeyboard.wordpress.com/2009...on-a-snowy-day/ And the linguine.... http://kayatthekeyboard.wordpress.com/2009...this-right-now/ (also posted on the foodbuzz blog site) Almost makes me wish it'd be cold again, so I could make the carbonnades a la flamande again.

Same situation here. Decent, but not great, meat; for dry-aged, someone at one of the city's better restaurants is going to have to cook it for you. But I had good success with Mark Bittman's method and a sirloin recently; as it was a less-than-ideal grade (I'm not even sure it was choice), I marinated it for a couple of hours on the counter in a wine-olive oil-freshly ground pepper mix and sprinkled it with unflavored meat tenderizer. I heated my cast-iron skillet on the next-to-highest notch on my garden variety electric stove (setting 7; the next one up is High) until it was smoking. Added a liberal shake of coarse salt to the ungreased pan; seared the steak for 2 minutes, flipped it and seared for another two minutes, finished with 5 minutes in a preheated 500-degree oven. Perfectly rare/medium rare for a two-inch steak. I added a couple of pats of butter during the last minute or so in the oven. I sliced it in thin slices across the grain and served it with pumpkin risotto and steamed sugar snap peas tossed with butter and tarragon. Good stuff! One of my other favorite preparations is to do filets essentially the same way, minus the marinade, but during the last minute in the oven, top them with a pile of caramelized Vidalia onions and some crumbled blue cheese.

My local market periodically has what they call an "arm roast." I've never been able to tell much diff between it and a chuck roast, and use them the same way, either cut up for stew or in a pot roast.

Goat Cheese Lasagna Serves 6 as Main Dish. Very rich, good, flavorful lasagna; use your favorite marinara (mine is simply olive oil, garlic, tomatos, oregano) Lasagna noodles 3 c marinara sauce 2 eggs 4 oz fresh goat cheese 1 c grated mozzarella 8 oz fresh mozzarella 1 lb Italian sausage 1/2 c grated Parmesan 1/2 c minced fresh basil leaves salt and pepper Beat eggs; add crumbled goat cheese, grated mozzarella and basil, salt and pepper to taste, and stir until creamy and well mixed. Remove casings from Italian sausage, crumble and fry over medium-high heat; drain. Assembly: Begin with a thin layer of sauce in the bottom of a deep 9 x 13 casserole. Add a layer of lasagna noodles. Spread slightly less than half the goat cheese-egg mixture on top. Cover with thin slices of fresh mozzarella. Sprinkle on half the browned sausage. Drizzle with a cup of marinara. Sprinkle with 1/3 the grated Parmesan. Repeat layers. For final layer, use a layer of noodles and the remaining goat cheese mixture; drizzle with the remaining sauce; sprinkle with final 1/3 of Parmesan. Bake, uncovered, in 375-degree oven for 30-35 minutes. Allow to rest for 10 minutes before serving. Keywords: Main Dish, Easy, Cheese, Dinner ( RG2159 )

Oh, and Brother Juniper's, out near the Univ. of Memphis (Go Tigers!) for breakfast.

Wish I'd seen this earlier; hope you're still in town. Harry's Detour, just off South Main on G.E. Patterson. Take your own wine. Felicia Suzanne's. I'd take Interstate barbecue over Payne's, but I concur with Cozy Corner cornish hen. Concur on Bari, too. Have heard Restaurant Iris is wonderful, but haven't been there yet. Raffe's Deli has great falafel and a marvelous selection of beer.

My "favorite" cookbook changes from time to time, according to what my current cooking craze is. Currently I'm exploring different ethnic/national cuisines, and enjoying cookbooks that focus on different regions. But I'm also learning about new ingredients and techniques, and I like cookbooks that have an educational component; Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything and Shirley Corriher's Cookwise are a couple of my favorites. And as many other posters have mentioned, an easy-to-read ingredient list, a book that lies flat when opened, and an index that can be easily read -- with the main ingredient in bold or larger type, and the permutations of it it in lightface. Stories and anecdotes are great, too. Make me WANT to try that recipe! And if a specific ingredient is absolutely essential to a recipe, let me know that (I'm fond of tweaking, and appreciate being told if something's just not subject to a tweak).

Linguine with Squash, Goat Cheese and Bacon Serves 4 as Main Dishor 6 as Side. I stumbled on this while looking for recipes with goat cheese. It's from Real Simple (and it is!). I couldn't imagine the combination of flavors, but it was wonderful. 6 slices bacon 1 2- to 2 ½-pound butternut squash—peeled, seeded, and diced (4 to 5 cups) 2 cloves garlic, minced 1-1/2 c chicken broth 1 tsp kosher salt 4 oz soft goat cheese, crumbled 1 lb linguine, cooked 1 T olive oil 2 tsp freshly ground black pepper Cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until crisp, about 5 minutes. Drain on a paper towel, then crumble or break into pieces; set aside. Drain all but about 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat from the skillet. Add the squash and garlic to the skillet and sauté over medium heat for 3 to 5 minutes. Stir in the broth and salt. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the squash is cooked through and softened, 20 to 25 minutes. Add half the goat cheese and stir well to combine. Place the cooked linguine in a large bowl. Stir the sauce into the linguine and toss well to coat. Drizzle with the olive oil and add the reserved bacon, the remaining goat cheese, and the pepper. Serve immediately. Keywords: Main Dish, Easy, Vegetables, Dinner ( RG2158 )

Grew up in rural West Tennessee and we'd have them at least twice a month. I agree with previous posters -- they were cheap, quick, easy, and something to break the pork monotony. While there was a plnetitude of fish, the only way anyone ever cooked it was fried, and that was a lot of trouble, so it was a special event or an outdoors meal, so this was a way to get fish into the diet. As I recall, it was chopped onion, salmon, eggs, flour, salt and pepper. I've also made 'em with tuna, and have come to substitute cracker crumbs for part of the flour; better texture. A key is to drain the salmon first, and use only one egg per can, and just enough cracker crumbs/flour to bind it. Usually accompanied by green beans and mashed potatos, for whatever reason. I get the urge and make them occasionally. Bought a can of salmon the other night for that very purpose, in fact.

You'll find a lot of Silver Queen and a lot of Peaches and Cream. That's what I see most of when I go home for a weekend.

If you're in Mayfield, you MUST go to Trolinger's Barbecue in Paris. It's also a grocery, feed store and meat market, on Highway 79 between Paris and Paris Landing. (Good steaks, chops, bacon, roasts, other cuts, as well.) Other than that and some other barbecue spots, and some good catfish here and there, you're pretty much limited to meat-and-three (some good, some awful), Chinese (some fair, some awful) Mexican (some good, some awful) and Italian (some acceptable, some awful). Church dinners are a great place to eat, though. And volunteer fire department fundraisers. And small-town festivals. And you will not find friendlier people.

Actually, pretty succinct. I do maybe half my cooking now from recipes from the internet; it's easy to search for an ingredient, or a technique, or a combination of the two, to get a collection of potential recipes for what I want, and I can peruse through them at my leisure. But I continue to buy cookbooks, as much to read (I will read one much as I do a novel) as to cook by. To learn the history, the background, the language of a food, or the science of a technique, or for fuller instructions in the "how-tos" of not specific recipes, but specific methods, so far, cookbooks cannot be touched. I do have to find a simple way to reset the length of time my screen will stay live before the screensaver comes on, though, for those times that I move the laptop into the kitchen for regular reference. It's awkward, darting back and forth to my office or the den to check regularly.

Last night -- pan-grilled, oven-finished sirloin, marinated in garlic and herb marinade, served over risotto with leeks and sweet potatos, with steamed sugar snap peas with butter and tarragon. Recipes on my blog, www.kayatthekeyboard.wordpress.com (nothing for sale!) This morning/brunch, a Mexican frittata with black beans, fried potatos, chorizo and guacamole, topped with salsa and grated cheese. No photos as I can't find the charger to the camera battery. Kim, a make-it-quick tomato soup that beats canned all hollow -- 1 1/2 cup V8 juice or Bloody Mary mix, 3/4 cup plain yogurt, stir and simmer until hot and well blended. Spice to your personal taste (I usually add a shot of Worcestershire if using V8, nothing if using Bloody Mary mix).

I go to Nashville periodically, and will go more often now that my daughter and son-in-law are moving there in June. I thought the hellfire bitters would be worth a trip in and of themselves, but I have GOT to try a bacon old-fashioned! Can't wait. See y'all this summer. If it's a success, maybe a branch in Memphis....