Tag-Archive for » Home Cooking «

Mid-City Meatloaf

13
Dec 2012
Remember last week when I was talking about brown gravy and how I used to resort to the store-bought stuff when I didn’t have any pan drippings to work with and before I discovered beef base? Well, I also used to pair that store-bought gravy with, among other things, meatloaf made with a store-bought seasoning packet. Then I finally set aside the time to make a few different versions from scratch and have never looked back. Best part is, this scratch version takes only a few extra minutes to make. It all starts with equal parts ground beef, veal and [ ... ]
Category: Beef, Main Dishes, Poor Boys, Sauces  Tags: , , ,  One Comment

Spinach Madeleine

21
Dec 2011
One of the best way to experience regional home cooking is to prepare recipes from community cookbooks.  These cookbooks represent an organization’s best efforts to support various social causes while preserving local flavors, cultures, traditions, cooking styles and trends.  What’s more, they’re all bound together by strong values and plenty of wisdom.  One of my favorites is the original River Road Recipes by the Junior League of Baton Rouge.  The series (there are now four books and an interactive edition of the first) is a true reflection of generational Creole, Cajun and Deep South cooking from home kitchens all over [ ... ]
Category: Christmas, Roux, Side Dishes, Thanksgiving, Vegetables  Tags: , , , ,  2 Comments

Spinach, Crabmeat and Brie Soup

15
Jan 2011
Just the other day, I was flipping through an old cookbook when out fell a recipe from the food section of the Times-Picayune, New Orleans’ daily newspaper.  The clipping, which obviously had a few years on it, was a recipe for Crabmeat & Brie Soup from The Dakota, a suburban New Orleans restaurant.  I had a vague recollection of that recipe and a similar one involving brie from Flagons A Wine & Bar Bistro.  (Flagons was another great New Orleans restaurant that closed many years ago.)  I remember wanting to borrow a couple of ideas from these two recipes to [ ... ]
Category: Crab, Main Dishes, New Orleans Classics, Roux, Seafood, Soups  Tags: , , , , ,  2 Comments

Broccoli au Gratin

10
Nov 2010
In my kitchen, broccoli is the chicken of the vegetable world.  It’s available year-round, relatively inexpensive, versatile and easy to prepare.  So we eat a lot of it around here.  Okay, that’s not a honest statement.  I eat a lot of it.  My husband and kids, well, they favor the simple preparation of steamed or gently boiled broccoli drizzled with olive oil and dusted with kosher salt.  That’s all good, but it gets boring after a while.  So I occasionally push them beyond their broccoli comfort zones with preparations like this one. Broccoli au Gratin is about as fancy as a [ ... ]
Category: Christmas, Roux, Side Dishes, Thanksgiving, Vegetables  Tags: , , ,  2 Comments