First things first: this part has nothing to do with food.
Over there in the corner, as you see, it says I'm "a full-time writer who happens to cook." I think this pretty much sums up the stance of the blog -- cooking isn't my profession, but it IS something I have a lot of time for. Anyway, usually that writing involves things you don't want or need to know about, but this time I have a novel:
Low Country is NOT a novel about food. It is not a quirky mystery taking place at a gumbo cook-off. It is not Liquor, a really nice book you should read if you haven't. The protagonist is a food writer until he retires to South Carolina to move into a haunted house, but I don't want to mislead you -- the only thing Low Country has in common with this blog is that I wrote them both. Still, people who like haunted house stories are definitely a subset of people who eat food, so it may be something you're interested in, in which case, click on the picture there to be taken to the Amazon page.
Second things second: food.
Daube glace is an old school New Orleans dish, wherein you take leftover daube -- slow-cooked beef -- and solidify it with the addition of gelatin, and then serve it cold like pate.
It's extremely satisfying food. I braised about a pound of chuck roast in the oven with some pork stock (it's what I had - obviously beef stock would make more sense), bay leaves, celery from my mother's garden (better- and fuller-tasting than supermarket celery), and onions; let it cool; shredded the beef and strained the stock; combined the stock with gelatin; and combined the stock and the beef with sauteed celery and onions, and seasoned with red miso, Louisiana hot sauce, smoked paprika, saffron, and pebrella. The latter three ingredients were added to slightly inflect the Spanish elements in Creole cooking.
Served with a baguette. Very nice.
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