do you know what it means

When it's made right, red beans and rice is one of the most satisfying meals there is.  It was also the first meal I made in New Orleans ... in a microwave, with boxed mix and canned alligator.

It came out better this time.

One of the things my meatless Lent did for me was give me a more developed sense of which dishes really need meat.  It's not always as clear-cut as you think.  You can make a perfectly reasonable vegetarian meal with red beans on top of rice ... but it's just not Louisiana red beans and rice.  The meat, even if you don't use much of it, makes too great a difference.

Traditionally you make this on Monday with the leftover ham bone from Sunday.  But I think ham hocks actually work better than a ham bone, because of the skin and the amount of gelatin they contribute -- that's what you can't replicate without meat.  That's what you need here.

I smoked my own ham hocks for this.  That helped.  Really they're not even ham hocks, in that they're not cured -- I just put pigs' feet in the stovetop smoker for the afternoon, and when they were smoked, I simmered them in a pot of water for a few hours, until the skin went from leathery to tender to totally falling apart.

At that point, you strain the pork out of the stock and put it aside to cool a bit.  Saute onion and a little celery in some pork fat in your bean pot, and add the stock, a bay leaf, a little sriracha, and enough Tony Chachere's seasoning mix to salt the beans, and bring to a boil; add red beans (I used Rancho Gordo's sangre de toro, which are perfect for this), cover, and boil for five minutes.  Toss in a 275 degree oven for an hour and a half or so.  After cooking, let sit, covered, for an hour or more.

Meanwhile pick the bones out of the pigs' feet -- there are lots of little ones -- and mince the meat and skin.  Add it back to the beans whenever -- while they cook, after they've cooked, any time is good.

Adjust seasonings once the beans are cooked.  Serve over rice with some Tabasco sauce.  Ideally you'd have some pickled onions here, but I didn't have any.

they asked me how I knew

I have, and love, a Cameron Stovetop Smoker.  This isn't a piece of equipment you'll often find praised, because what it isn't is a substitute for a proper outdoor smoker (or an indoor smoker with its own ventilation).  If you want to make real barbecue -- a big hunk of pork or beef, or a chicken or turkey, smoked until it develops a smoke ring -- this is not the way.

However.

Many people, like me, can't use a "real" smoker without considerable inconvenience (there are a couple places in my condominium development where I could use one, none of them near my kitchen) and don't have the means to install a professional indoor smoker.  What's more, even a basic and not terribly great outdoor smoker is an expensive piece of equipment.

The stovetop smoker cost me $30.  It comes with enough wood chips that most people will never use them up, and if you do, refills are cheap.

The way it works is you put it on your stove, put fine wood chips inside, put the tray over those, add your food, and close it up.  The wood chips smolder, and after about twenty minutes begin smoking your food.  The smoke alarm will not go off.  Trust me, mine goes off during oven cleanings sometimes, while searing steaks, and so on, and the smoker has never once set it off.  That's an improvement on the way I used to smoke things.

Essentially, your food is cooking in a small, somewhat moist, low-temperature oven.  That's why it won't work for everything.  This isn't an ideal cooking method for everything, and it's a pretty slow cooking method.

That's also the strength.

It's excellent for fish (I don't think I've tried shellfish yet).  I love using it for smoked meatloaf.  It's great for cooking potatoes in the smoker and then mashing them to make smoked mashed potatoes -- though the potatoes take 2 to 3 hours to cook, rather than the 20-30 minutes if you simmered them.

But some things benefit from a slow cooking time.  I'm able to smoke butter -- I just put it in a small pie plate and put the pie plate in the smoker tray -- because it can sit in the smoke for a long time before coming anywhere near to burning.  Fresh mozzarella will take on some smoke flavor by the time it starts to melt.  

And grits ...

Grits apparently benefit tremendously from a slow cooking time.  Not only does the combination of smoke and salt give them a bacon-like appeal, but cooking slowly -- these took three and a half hours, maybe four -- makes them silky and luxurious without being mushy.  Ridiculously good.

I cooked 3/4 cup grits in 3 cups of water in the smoker, with just a little homemade celery salt for seasoning (I make crazy good celery salt, it's a weird thing to take pride in).  Once they were cooked, I added a pat of smoked butter, a little crushed red pepper, and a generous shredding of Pecorino Romano cheese.

The greens, well -- nothing goes better with grits than greens.  These are turnip greens, collards, and Swiss chard, simmered for about four hours in plain water with two bay leaves.  I then adjusted the pot liquor with a little demiglace (super-concentrated pork stock), Texas Pete hot sauce, that homemade celery salt again, homemade smoked turnip salt, and a dash of Worcestershire.

Bliss.

where the skies are so blue

I have some long posts I haven't finished, and consequently I keep failing to make the shorter more manageable posts that I could be making, so sorry for not informing you of the chaurice and patatas bravas with paprika mayonnaise, which have now been et and were not submitted to the camera, but I will circle back round to patatas bravas when I make them with clams.

Meanwhile, pimento cheese.  This is pretty much my favorite thing.  I'm so devoted to pimento cheese that I grow pimiento peppers so that, for as long as they last, I can make extra-awesome-terrific pimento cheese, before having to go back to the jarred peppers.

Those are the pimientos from my garden, roasted and peeled, in the Zip-Loc bag.  The summer was bad enough that I only got enough peppers for one batch of pimento cheese.

Roasted red bell peppers are not a substitute for pimientos.  Pimientos have a bad reputation because of their association with so much crappy processed food, but just because crappy processed pimento cheese exists doesn't mean pimento cheese must be crappy or processed, nor that it is authentically so.

There are a wide variety of peppers sold as pimientos, but as far as I'm aware, they're all members of the capsicum annuum family -- the same pepper family as bell peppers and Italian sweet peppers, Hungarian wax peppers, cayenne, jalapenos, and New Mexico chiles, as well as the various peppers ground to make paprika.  If I had fresh paprika peppers, that'd be the best substitute for pimientos, and in fact I'm not sure it's a substitute at all -- the pimientos I've grown remind me of the fresh paprikas I've bought, as well as of Italian sweet peppers and sweet cherry peppers.

Pimento cheese -- yes, you may notice I spell the word for the pepper differently depending on whether I am referring to the pepper itself or the cheese made from it -- is a spread made from pimiento peppers, Cheddar cheese, moderate levels of seasonings, and enough mayonnaise to make it spreadable.  Butter is a good addition, but if you use butter, it helps to bring the cheese up to room temperature before spreading it.

Ideally, you should make your own mayonnaise.  However, this is one of the only things I use mayonnaise for, and it only takes a few tablespoons, which is significantly less than the smallest reasonable amount of mayonnaise you can make (because it's made with eggs, and you would have to use less than one egg to make that little mayonnaise).  

You can make your pimento cheese "chunky," by shredding the cheese and mashing everything up with a fork, or smooth, by using a Cuisinart.  I use the Cuisinart but don't scrape the sides of the bowl, so that it's not completely smooth.  After shredding the cheese, I add it, the peppers, a couple pickled ramps (substitute pickled garlic, a little diced onion, or nothing), and sometimes a little bit of butter, and then while the Cuisinart is running, I'll add:

* A bit of hot sauce (Louisiana hot sauce, Texas Pete, Tabasco, or sriracha).  You can just give it a little zing, or you can make it real damn spicy.

* A bit of prepared or dry mustard (Zatarain's Creole Mustard is the best choice if you're using prepared mustard)

* Sometimes a bit of Old Bay or black pepper

* And then add mayonnaise, a little bit at a time, until the texture is right.  It will be softer in the Cuisinart than in the refrigerator, so make it slightly softer than you want if you want it to be spreadable while cold.

But what you want to end up with, see, is a fusion of Cheddar cheese and peppers with a little seasoning that highlights both.

What's it good on?  Sandwiches, ideally.  Hamburgers.  Hot dogs.  Biscuits.  Celery sticks.  Scrambled eggs.  Tomatoes.  Bacon.  Grits.

bears battlestar galactica

I would suggest you get in the comfortable chair for this one, this meal's got a lot of ground to cover.

Let's talk about a few specific elements.

Corn.

Corn is pretty great.  I don't know what I'd do without the foods of the New World.  Even apart from the fact that corn kernels are the best canned vegetable and the best frozen vegetable -- though they experience some loss of flavor and texture, it's not nearly as pronounced as in most vegetables -- the sheer variety of forms corn can take is fucking staggering.  Let's break it down:

Cob and kernels.  Self-explanatory.  As demonstrated, usable to make caramel.  Note in passing that corn is the most underrated of all chowders, capable of excellence with only three ingredients (corn, cream, salt), though five is better (+bacon, +hot sauce).

Cornmeal.  Ahhh, cornbread.  When the weather is colder, I'll show you some couche couche, a fantastic and criminally little-known cereal made with cornmeal.  Cornmeal is also the basis for corn chips, tortillas, etc., and while I don't share the enthusiasm for corn dogs that some possess, I am an ardent supporter of fried cornmush.  Cornflour, similar to cornmeal but finer, is found primarily in fry mixes for chicken or fish, especially in the South.

Grits.  Superficially similar to coarse cornmeal, grits are made from coarsely ground corn (ideally stone-ground).  If you're a Yankee or foreigner, you probably haven't had grits.  You're missing out.  Soft and silky when first cooked, grits solidify when cooled, and can be reheated for a texture that's hard to describe, though similar to fried cornmush -- sometimes crispy on the outside, softer on the inside, somewhat like a French fry.  Grits are often compared to polenta but aren't quite the same, if only because the varieties of corn themselves differ -- just as slightly different varieties of corn are used for all these other corn forms.

Hominy.  Especially big kernels of corn that have been nixtamalized (treated with an alkaline solution) and hulled, which makes the corn more digestively useful, and therefore features in the cuisines native to the New World which were dependent on corn, as opposed to those cuisines which have developed subsequently which typically rely on flour (or rice, in Louisiana and the Carolinas) for their principal starch.  It's no coincidence that hominy survives in Mexican and southern cuisine, where corn has historically been most important.  But nevermind that: hominy has a very light corn flavor and a sort of spongy texture that's hard to compare to anything else.  It's amazing at soaking up flavors, which is why it is the key component of posole, one of the world's great soups.  Dried and reconstituted hominy is far superior to the easier to find canned stuff.

Popcorn.  Come on.  Awesome.  I still vividly remember the introduction of Smartfood.  My brother and I regularly argue over who will inherit my mother's popcorn popper, a standalone electric unit which uses oil in a curved bowl to pop the popcorn.  Air-popped popcorn, which displaced such units in the marketplace, and microwave popcorn, absolutely suck in comparison to oil-cooked popcorn, whether popped in a standalone unit or on the stovetop. 

Huitlacoche.  Technically not corn, this is a fungus -- a mushroom, if you're a marketer -- that grows on ears of corn, to the consternation of some and the delight of others.  It has only really been adopted by Mexican cuisine, perhaps because they call it huitlacoche, while gringos call it "corn smut."  The flavor is actually very subtle -- a little earthy, like cocoa powder without the acidity.

BOLD BOLD BOLD HELLO THERE.  Lima beans.  BOLD BOLD BOLD SHAZAM.  God, so many people hate lima beans, but here's the thing: the dried ones are not very good; the frozen ones are only okay; the canned ones are terrible (get canned butter beans instead).  You want to get them fresh, and they have a brief season.  Ideally, lima beans are slightly sweet, with a creamy texture.  They get mealier if they get bigger, and since my limas come from my mother's garden, where generally things are let to grow as big as possible, the ones I'm using do lean in that direction.  But I'm an experienced and satisfied lima-eater, I'm okay with that.  They're just not what I'd consider conversion limas.

"Lima beans" isn't bolded because every time I bold it, my browser crashes, even when all I do is restart the browser, open up Blogger, open up this draft, and do nothing but highlight "lima beans" and then press the bold button.  True story.  What the fuck, Blogger?  Motherfuck.  Fourth fucking time in a row now!  Pisswhistler.  I have employed an alternate means of emphasis.

Beets.  It was a long time before I loved beets, because I had grown up with Harvard beets -- pickled beets -- and was never fond of them.  I discovered plain old regular beets in New Orleans, and for whatever reason they became my standard side dish with fried fish.  Beets have a sweet (remember Mrs Howell?) and earthy flavor, and are sort of potato-like in texture, though they neither fry nor mash as well as potatoes do.  They're very forgiving when you roast or boil them in their skins, which then rub or peel off easily.

The stems -- which have a similar flavor to the beets, but lighter -- and greens (sweetish, tender) are both edible.

Lunch, then, consists of:

Succotash, which I have talked about before, a traditional dish of lima beans and corn.  I added tomatoes and sweet pepper in this case.

Beet "confit."  I covered slices of peeled beet in duck fat and cooked them at a low temperature until tender.

Smoked grits cake.  The grits were cooked in the stovetop smoker with salt and butter, and then combined with diced ham and my aforementioned "lactic corn," before being refrigerated.  A slice of the refrigerated grits was reheated in a pan with just enough butter to keep them from sticking.

and I don't care

To fry chicken:

Marinate for a day or two (in buttermilk with or without hot sauce, sriracha, or Old Bay, or in undiluted Louisiana hot sauce).

Put a mixture of flour, self-rising flour, cornmeal, and seasoning in a sack -- I never measure, but I can tell you it's not more than a few spoonfuls of cornmeal and that there's more flour than self-rising flour.

Heat oil in cast iron.

For each piece of chicken, go through this procedure: shake in the sack until well-covered.  Let rest on a plate for twenty minutes to hydrate the flour.  Shake again right before putting in the oil.  Cook for about 8-10 minutes depending on size, flip over and cook for that amount again.  (I tend to cook one or two pieces at a time, and don't use a huge deep fryer with gallons of oil -- because if I did, I wouldn't get around to frying chicken very often.)  Let rest ON WIRE RACK with plate underneath to catch the dripping oil.  Fried chicken will retain heat pretty well, but even apart from that, this particular fried chicken is good cold or room-temp.

Remember when deep-frying -- even "shallow" deep frying like I do -- that the first thing you fry will not be as good as the third or fourth.  Oil has a lifespan, and it doesn't do its best work in infancy.

Thighs here, drumsticks in the country captain.  You might could guess leg quarters were on sale.

To make "fresh grits":

Scrape corn kernels from cob.  Pulse in Cuisinart until pulpy.  Fry up a little bourbon bacon in a pan, with some chopped tomatoes.  Add corn and cook for 2-3 minutes.  Salt and pepper.

With sweet corn, this is a very sweet side dish -- in fact, I made it to use up some Mirai corn that'd been sitting in my fridge over a week, and it's still very sweet.

City chefs call this "fresh polenta," but fuck them.

oh captain my captain

It's dim, rainy, and chilly today, and country captain seemed like the perfect remedy.

Country captain is the curry of the South, a dish that owes its origins to the spice ports of the Low Country.  I've always seen it made with tomatoes or a tomato sauce, though I don't think that's universal.  For me, though, it's chicken on the bone, browned in a pan and then braised in a sauce of tomato, curry powder, onions, and raisins.  Everything else is optional.

Lately, for curry powder I've been using the Vadouvan blend from the Spice House.  You're probably a big fan of Penzey's for your mail order spice needs.  I totally understand.  I love Penzey's, and their curry powders, especially the rogan josh, are among their selling points.  I placed an order to the Spice House instead -- run by the brother of the owner of Penzey's, if I have that right -- because they had cassia buds and Penzey's didn't, and I've stuck with the Spice House since.  Their white truffle salt is a welcome addition to my kitchen, and the chili con carne seasoning is excellent.

So the sauce is garden tomatoes, pureed and strained and cooked until thick, with onions, a few cayenne peppers from my yard, Vadouvan curry powder, golden raisins, and a couple additions -- chopped sweetened dried hibiscus flowers, and chopped fresh apricots.  The tomato-raisin combination has always made country captain a sort of sweet/sour dish for me, so the additions add to that.  Some fresh peas and scallions would have been a good addition; I didn't have any.

Trader Joe's, where I got the hibiscus, is a good source for dried fruit.  Because of their "discontinue everything that isn't a bestseller" business model, anything you see today may not be there tomorrow, but they always have SOME kind of dried fruit (they did not have any more of the hibiscus last time I was there), often things you won't find other places -- dried orange slices, freeze-dried rambutan (terrific), dried dragonfruit, etc.