New Year, New Possibilties

Well, I'm a bit late on the Happy New Year Ra Ra! and the resolution this and holiday that train, but I hoped if I got it in before the week was over it might still be considered timely. I realize that by now everyone is well and truly tired of the holiday season and wants to move on to Mardi Gras and spring and new things. I do too, but I've got these cabbage and blackeyed pea photos on my phone and they are really nice things to eat at any time of year so I'm going to share.

On New Year's Day, I always try to do the traditional good luck thing but this year I was bored of Hoppin' John and braised cabbage, so I went a different route. Inspired by the cold bean side salad (usually served alongside pork rillette and various other dishes) at Tartine, I ad libbed a little black eyed pea salad with a red wine vinegar dressing. For the cabbage, I went with a chilled salad as well, using a NY Times recipe from a few years back for savoy cabbage slaw with applesauce vinaigrette and mustard seeds. They were both wonderful.  The bean salad is simple and delicious.  The slaw is so much better than you might think (and also makes surprisingly good leftovers).  I served them both with seared pork chops and it was a lovely meal.  Recipes, below.

I have to stop using my iPhone to take food photos. The white balance is terrible and my kitchen is nothing but yellow light at night. Sorry 'bout that, folks.

As for new year's resolutions, I'm going to keep it simple this year and rather than try to reform my hopeless ways, I am resolving to expand myself and do some things I've never done before, but think that by now I really should have. In some cases, it's unforgivable that I haven't yet. In 2011, I plan to:

Eat:

1. a muffaletta at Central Grocery - I've had them at lots of places in NOLA but never there, and really, what kind of muffaletta lover do I think I am if I haven't, right?.
2. turtle soup at Commander's Palace - When given the choice, I always go for new generation restaurants over the old traditionals, so I have a huge gap in my NOLA restaurant experiences. This seems to be a glaring one.
3. boiled crawfish at Hawk's in Rayne, La - Happily, my brother in law lives very close to it and we have plans for this spring.

Cook/Make:

1. Butter - I (oh so briefly) met Chef Daniel Patterson of Coi Restaurant in San Francisco several years ago (and had the pleasure of dining at Coi, which if you ever have the opportunity to do, DO!) and later watched him make butter in this fun video. Epiphany! Homemade butter! I've wanted to do it ever since, at least once, and now that I've gotten a stand mixer for Christmas, I intend to. Just look at it! All yellow and beautiful. Imagine lacing it with fleur de sel and spreading it on fresh bread with radishes. mmmm.... I'm not sure the reality can live up to my bucolic fantasy but we shall see.

2. Marshmallows - Another project that required a stand mixer to do, and one that I think I only need to try once or twice to appease the desire. The sticky clean up factor will probably prevent too many repeats, but I do want to sink my teeth into very fresh marshmallow. 2011!

3. Madeleines - Got the pan. Gonna make the treats. More than once. Need to put the pan to use and not let it collect dust in the back of the cupboard.

Do:

1. Learn to shuck oysters - This requires an leap of faith on my part. I am trusting that this year, my rheumatoid arthritis will be treated into remission and I will have the ability to bend and twist and bear weight with my right wrist again. Once I can, I plan to celebrate by learning to shuck and then eating a minimum of a dozen oysters on the half shell with champagne. It just seems right.

2. Plant some container herbs and tomatoes - This one borders on the "yeah right" type of resolution, since I say I'll do this every year and don't, but I might as well try again this year. Perhaps you can help me stick to it by reminding me when the time comes that I need to get those plants going.

3. Visit some of the River Road plantations - I never have. Might as well learn a bit more about the history of Southern Louisiana. I've always perceived the plantations as too tainted by the horror of slavery to make it enjoyable for me to visit for pleasure, but maybe by shutting the entire idea out, I am allowing myself to be ignorant. Maybe I could learn a thing or two. And eat a thing or two along the way.

That's that.

The recipes:

Black Eyed Pea Salad

1 lb frozen black eyed peas (precooked), thawed
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 small red onion, diced
2 TB fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped (optional)
drizzled olive oil, to taste
red wine vinegar, to taste
salt and black pepper to taste

Mix gently and serve cold or room temperature.  That's it.  It's delightful.

Serves 6


Savoy Cabbage Slaw with Applesauce Vinaigrette & Mustard Seeds
Adapted from Jeremy Fox, Ubuntu, Napa, California


FOR THE VINAIGRETTE:

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon applesauce
1/3 cup olive oil

FOR THE SALAD:

4 cups savoy cabbage, sliced as thinly as possible (store was out of Savoy by the time I got there, so I used half green and half Napa)
1 large bunch red radishes
3 or 4 Granny Smith apples
1 lemon, juiced
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped
Salt and black pepper to taste.

1. Make vinaigrette: In a bowl, mix together mustard, salt, vinegar and applesauce. Slowly whisk in olive oil a little at a time until dressing emulsifies. Set aside.

2. Make salad: Put cabbage in a large bowl. Using the shredding blade of a food processor or a box grater, shred radishes until you have 1 cup. Add to bowl.

3. Core apples and shred in food processor or with box grater until you have 2 cups. Put shredded apple into a bowl filled with lemon juice and 2 cups water, to prevent apple from browning.

4. When ready to serve, gently squeeze water from apple, add to cabbage and toss slaw with vinaigrette. Add mustard seeds and toss again. Sprinkle walnuts on top of slaw. Season with salt and pepper.

Serves 6

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One Year Anniversary Peugeot Pepper Mill Giveaway

One year ago today, I started my blog with this post, proclaiming my intentions and telling a bit about myself.  Yay, one year anniversary!!  What I didn't tell you was this: the reason I really started my blog was because I was very lonely.  My entire social circle disappeared after Katrina and because I have worked from home for the past 5 years, I had little opportunity to rebuild it.   Kid Cayenne (my wife, were it legal... otherwise known as partner, since it isn't) and I share most aspects of our lives, but my wide open-armed love of food is not really one of them.  I decided that if I were to build a new circle of friends, I wanted it it to include other people who shared my obsession for food so that I'd have kindred souls to exchange recipes and ideas with, fixate on obscure ingredients with and hopefully even share a meal with.  My blog is my attempt to create that for myself, both virtually and in real life.

This means I need readers and even more, I need commenters.  I need the exchange.  I need the give and take.  I need YOU, dear readers, to talk to me about what you think, what you like and don't like.  What you agree with, what you don't.  What you are intrigued by and what you can teach me.   I need feedback.

I know you are out there.  My stats tell me you are. Since few of you comment, I've decided to try luring you all out by offering an anniversary celebration giveaway of one of my favorite kitchen/dining room tools: the Peugot pepper mill.  I've had mine for years and it's dear to me.  Even though I have one, I would happily take another.  It is beautiful, both in aesthetic and design.  It functions superbly.  It is perfect for stove-side or table top.  I will be giving away one Peugeot Paris u'Select 9-Inch Chocolate Pepper Mill that features Peugeot's masterfully engineered grinding mechanisms and the patented u'Select feature, which lets you choose the grind from six settings with a simple turn of the base.  Yours will be even better than mine, which has the old style adjustable grind mechanism and doesn't lock into place.  I hope you all enter because this is a fine pepper mill and deserves a wonderful home.

How to Enter:

Leave a comment on this post telling me one thing about yourself.  Any one thing.  Anonymous comments will be not be counted, since I would have no way of knowing who you are.  One entry per person.  Entries will be accepted until midnight on Saturday, August 14, 2010.  The winner will be announced on Monday, August 16.  Winner will be selected randomly.  The giveaway is not sponsored by anyone but little old me.

Good luck!

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Tabula Rasa

A brand new blog. So fresh and shiny! What shall I write?

I've wanted to blog about local food and design for a while but never got around to it, which is unfortunate because now that I'm trying to think of what to write in my first post, I'm reminiscing about all the lovely meals I've had over the years and thinking "Damn! I could have written about that one! Or that one! Or..." but it's all a bit after the fact now. Needless to say, there will be plenty of good meals ahead, so I shouldn't fret, but still...

Instead, I'll start with an introduction of sorts. I'm a mid (late? *cough*cough*) thirties food and design enthusiast who has lived in New Orleans since 1999. This year marked 10 years in the Crescent City, which I'm just going to go ahead and say makes me a local. Feel free to disagree, just not to my face. It'll hurt my feelings. My partner (hereafter known as Kid Cayenne) and I were in the metro area pre and post Katrina, which I believe qualifies us even more. That said, I will admit freely that I have so very much to learn about my beloved city and that I don't think I've experienced even a fraction of what it has to offer. I'd like to remedy that.

Kid Cayenne and I bought our first house last week. We have always lived in our favorite New Orleans neighborhood, within a few blocks of Magazine and Jefferson (with the unfortunate exception of a couple of years spent out in Metairie when we had the bright idea of living in a little apartment for a while to help save money for a down payment on an Uptown house. Then, Katrina came and sort of knocked that plan on it's butt for a while, but we've recovered and here we are.) Our new house is Uptown, but in a different neighborhood than our familiar stomping grounds. We are now in the Carrollton/Riverbend area and are discovering that there is a whole new world of hidden gems and fun places to eat, drink and be merry over here. I can't understand how we missed them before, when we were minutes away, but when you live near Magazine St., you sort of have everything you need right at your doorstep and I think it blinded us.

When I look ahead, I imagine this blog to be a documentation of my adventures in cooking, eating and living well on a limited budget. I believe in making deliberate choices in your food and your home.

I am wild, WILD about food. Adventurous too. I want to eat wonderful, fabulous, amazing things and I DO NOT CARE if they include eyes or tentacles or are the ears or feet of something. I don't care if it looks disgusting; I will still eat it. I will give it a shot. I learned long ago that less-mainstream foods are often wonderful and I have not much squeamishness about it. There are limits, of course. I will not eat extreme things for the sake of eating extreme things, that isn't the point at all. The point is, I love to eat WELL and I have come to understand that this often includes things that people like, say.... Kid Cayenne .... are so horrified and repulsed by that I would never again be kissed if she knew they had touched my lips. Kid Cayenne is the opposite of me in food adventurousness, so very, very squeamish that she can only eat very benign things that in no way squick her out. Like um.... french fries. Or cheese raviolis. She eats almost no meats at all. Permitted are organic boneless skinless chicken breast, 95% fat ground beef, thin cut pork chops trimmed of every single sliver of flavor fat and maybe a bit of filet mignon on a special occasion but certainly no other type of steak because it might have a thin thread of flavor fat in it too... No seafood. Ever. The texture doesn't work. Quite a few vegetables but not nearly enough to compensate for the lack of meats. Rice, potatoes and pasta are fine but they had better not have too many herbs involved in their preparation. You get the picture. We eat chicken breast 140 times a week. It's almost true. This does throw a wrench in the works, but we deal with it. She does love to eat well, as long it doesn't scare her, so I do my best to accommodate her and she does her best not to make it too hard on me.

I love to cook, love good ingredients, love, love, love to eat. I'm ridiculously novice at anything fancy, so everything I cook is very simple but it's not a bad thing, really. That's enough, I think, to base the food part of my blog on, yes?

In design, I believe in moderation and I aspire to a minimalist aesthetic, although I am, as yet, far from it. I believe in the lovely William Morris quote: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful". I don't adhere to it, sadly, but I believe in it. I have spent years trying to undo the effects of growing up in a household with a pack rat mentality and am learning, slowly, that less is more and that quality is better than quantity. I am teaching myself that it is better to have nothing than to compromise on something not worth having. Not easy for me, but I'm OK with making some mistakes along the way.

I sort of obsess about design. I want to eat it like it's candy. I'm in love with modern/contemporary (a newish fascination for me) but will absorb anything that has a solid foundation in good design principles. I'm thrilled to finally have a house on which to play interior designer, but simultaneously petrified because it means I also finally have a venue in which to learn that I don't really know what I'm doing at all. We shall see how it goes. I'll blog about it, and we can all point and laugh at my ignorance.

Also, I'm a slob. Thems the facts.
That should do it for now.

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