Tag-Archive for » New Orleans Recipes «

Gumbo: Turkey Bone Gumbo

Hey! Got a few minutes to talk about Black Friday? Not shopping. Cooking. I know you’re busy finishing up your Thanksgiving menu, planning that inevitable last minute grocery run and cooking make-ahead sides and sauces. And the last thing on your mind is what’s for dinner on Friday. But this is important, especially if your Turkey Day celebration extends through the weekend like ours does. If you need to plan additional meals for visiting family and want to make the most of leftovers, then save that turkey carcass (or beg the hostess for it) [ ... ]

Finger Food Friday: Blackened Chicken Bites

  I’ve had this blackened chicken idea in my head for sometime now.  It just took me awhile to figure out the best way to pull all the pieces together into a nifty little finger food.  My original thought was to wrap the ingredients in pie dough.  But I just used that dough for my crawfish pies.  I decided instead to finish the Blackened Chicken Bites a couple of different ways and go with whatever recipe turned out best. My first batch of Blackened Chicken Bites involved filling Tostitos Scoops with the cream cheese mixture, placing a piece of blackened chicken on [ ... ]

Jazzy Crawfish Pasta

In case you missed my tweets yesterday, the 2012 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival daily schedules have been posted.  The lineup is crazy good this year.  Almost as crazy good as this Jazzy Crawfish Pasta–my take on Crawfish Monica.  Crawfish Monica has been a festival-goer favorite for some 30 years now.  It consists of a mesmerizing bowl of rotini pasta drenched in a deliciously spicy crawfish cream sauce.  This dish became so popular at Jazz Fest that back in 2009, its creator Chef Pierre Hilzim (who named the seafood specialty after his wife Monica) trademarked the name and began [ ... ]

Finger Food Friday: Miniature Oyster Patties

‘Tis the season to share another one of my favorite holiday recipes with you, Miniature Oyster Patties.  These savory little bite-size pastries have been making the rounds at New Orleans Christmas parties and weddings for as long as I can remember.  And once you taste them, you’ll understand why they’re so popular.  Now when you read through the ingredient list, you’ll probably notice similarities to my family’s Oyster Dressing recipe.  The two are actually so close that I had to call my mom prior to making the Oyster Dressing for Thanksgiving to help me figure out which one was which.  [ ... ]

Spinach Madeleine

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 [ ... ]

Bourbon Creamed Corn

If you want to add some sizzle to your summertime side dishes, serve this Bourbon Creamed Corn at your next cookout.  Sure beats the canned “cream style sweet corn” we’re all too familiar with.  It’s also a pleasant change from the grilled or boiled corn on the cob that frequents most backyard bashes. This recipe is my best attempt at recreating a restaurant side I ate many years ago.  I had to make it a couple of times before I got the cream-to-bourbon ratio just right.  But I think I’ve finally nailed it.  I also faced the challenge of balancing out [ ... ]
Category: Side Dishes, Vegetables  Tags:  Comments off

Twice Cooked Corned Beef

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all my Irish kith and kin and to all of you out there pretending to be Irish for a day (you’re in good company)!  I don’t need to pretend, although you’d never guess I was Irish by my first name.  Genêt is obviously French.  But I’m at least fifty-percent Irish by blood and fifty-percent Irish by marriage.  More importantly, green is my favorite color, I can down several pints of Guinness with the best of them and I have pointy ears (okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration–depends on who you ask).  Regardless of [ ... ]
Category: Beef, Main Dishes  Tags: ,  Comments off

Seven Steaks in Brown Gravy

My mom cooked Seven Steaks in Brown Gravy quite often when we were growing up.  But no one in my family, including her, prepares them anymore.  The dish would have been all but forgotten had I not undertaken a family cookbook project several months back (more on that in future posts).  Through the process of collecting recipes for the book, I’ve reacquainted myself with this and a bunch of other almost forgotten family favorites.  I called mom to share my excitement and we got to talking about how much we enjoyed seven steaks and how sad it was that this [ ... ]

Spinach, Crabmeat and Brie Soup

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 [ ... ]

Smothered Cabbage with Italian Sausage and Feta

Smothered cabbage is a common New Orleans side dish.  We were all force-fed some version of it when we were little.   And while most of my friends gagged at the mere thought of it, I was one of those weird kids who loved it.  Cabbage, especially when pan-fried by my mom or cooked down with pickle meat by my great-grandmother, ranked high on my list of favorite veggies.  So in honor of my childhood and with ritualistic promises of health and wealth, I’m ushering in 2011 with an unusual twist on Grandma Kirn’s homey, belly-warming meal.  It’s not fancy [ ... ]