good southern girls

I've only lived in the South for ten years; before that I lived in Oklahoma. Even though Oklahoma technically isn't the South, my grandmother, Willie Ruth Abbott (or Mee-Mo, as my cousin Kitty dubbed her), was a true Southern cook, making fresh sausage gravy and biscuits every morning, pouring cornbread batter into hot bacon grease in her cast-iron mold. What I learned about Southern food early on in life was all due to spending time in the kitchen with Mee-Mo, crimping the edges of her fried pies. When I was growing up, we'd travel every few years to family reunions held at Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Durant, Oklahoma--a densely green and hilly area in the southeastern corner of the state. Long tables would be set up in the covered pavillion of the cemetery, loaded with every cook's most-requested dishes:  fried chicken, dilly bread, peach cobbler, macaroni salad, angel biscuits, fried pies, baked beans, and several potato salads. Just writing this list makes my soul ache for those sweltering afternoons of paper plates weighted down with so much good food.

Mee-Mo had one of the most popular potato salads. Sometimes she'd get a little carried away, adding black olives or tomatoes or other oddities, but she could make a tasty dressing, which is really what potato salad is all about. I'd like to think that all "good southern girls (or boys)" can whip up a potato salad from scratch simply by birthright, but the reality is that it takes a little practice. You need to overseason the dressing a bit, because the potatoes are going to zap up some of its zing as soon as they touch it. You need to make more dressing than you think you'll need, because the potatoes will soak up a good deal of it while the salad chills. These are the tips you learn from a good-southern-girl-turned-grandmother, and we're all lucky if we've had the chance to know one.

*Note: Here in Louisiana, a popular home-cooking treat is to make potato salad to eat with your gumbo. Put some potato salad on your spoon, dunk it in your hot gumbo, and enjoy. I've tried it, and it's pretty awesome.

Good Southern Girl Potato Salad

• 4 pounds red-skinned potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
• salt and ground black pepper
• 2 stalks celery, minced
• 1 bunch green onions, sliced (both green and white parts)
• 2 T. sweet pickle relish (optional)
• 3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and chopped (optional)
• 3/4- to 1 cup mayonnaise
• 3 T. grainy mustard (I use Creole, but Dijon or deli or plain old yellow are fine)
• 2 T. extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 T. red wine vinegar
• 1 t. fresh thyme or 1 t. chopped fresh dill

1. Bring about 4 quarts of well-salted water to a boil in a large pot. Add potatoes and bring back to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook for about 9 minutes, or until potatoes are tender but not mushy. Test one by poking a sharp knife point into some of the bigger pieces: if there is no resistance, they're done.
2. Drain potatoes into a colander. Place them back in the pot, where the residual heat will help dry out some of the excess water. Let cool for about 10 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, make the dressing. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the mayonnaise and mustard. Slowly whisk in the olive oil, then the vinegar. Season well with salt and pepper and add the fresh thyme. Taste for seasoning: it should have a good amount of zing. If not, adjust it by adding little bits more of salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard, or whatever you think it needs.
4. Add potatoes and all the other ingredients to dressing, stirring gently with a rubber spatula to avoid breaking all the potatoes. Taste for seasoning again and adjust. If it seems dry, go ahead and add more mayo or oil and mix it in--it's better to do it now than after chilling.
5. Chill, covered, in refrigerator for at least an hour and up to a day.

Serves 5-7

good southern girls

riz jaune to the riz-scue

Riz jaune has appeared in my life right when I really needed a new "dinner magic" kind of recipe--something cheap, on-hand, and easy to adapt to all sorts of quick dinner fixes. Riz jaune (say "ree zhahn") is basically a Cajun version of fried rice. You make a sort of trinity-plus-Pope concoction (that's onion/celery/bell pepper + garlic), add veggie bits or leftovers you have around the kitchen, ditto with meats (sausage is especially nice), and then you stir in cold cooked rice and eggs. Mix everything up, cook till the egg is firm and scattered all throughout, then eat it as-is or in dozens of other ways that I haven't even thought of yet. Here's what we have had: Riz-jaune-and-red-bean burrito, and gumbo served over riz jaune instead of plain rice. Good stuff. I can also see this being a great stuffing for vegetables or an interesting bed for some gravied chicken or pork.

Riz Jaune (a sort-of recipe)

Heat a little butter or oil in a large nonstick saute pan with high sides. Saute an onion, a few cloves of garlic, a couple of stalks of celery, a bell pepper (all diced small) until soft. Add other vegetables if you see some sitting around: chopped mushrooms, tomato, eggplant, etc.--just don't let the mixture get too wet. If you have some cooked ham, chicken, pork, or shrimp, add it now. If you have some chopped andouille or other smoked sausage, put that in too! When the pan starts to dry out and some browny bits start forming, pour in about 1/4 cup of wine or stock and stir until the pan is dry again. Then add about 1 1/2 cups cold cooked rice (leftover rice is great for this), about 1 teaspoon dried thyme, and other seasonings like salt, pepper, Tabasco, or Creole seasoning blend to taste. After the rice is coated with vegetable juices, stir in 5 or 6 eggs, lightly beaten and seasoned with salt and pepper. Stir over medium-high heat until the eggs have dried out and firmed up and the rice has turned light yellow (that's the "jaune" in jaune). Eat it!

riz jaune to the riz-scue

ever feel like sampling a little seafood?

Last weekend, I attended my first New Orleans food festival--the Seafood Festival, held downtown on Fulton Street. This was also my first experience with Drago's: their famous char-grilled oysters. On the bottom is their grill (which also happened to have the longest line at the party); top left is the finished product--tender oysters, romano and parmigian cheeses, pepper, lemon, and hot-hot-hot shells.

Crawfish cakes from Mr. B's and Paul's happy face.

Alligator sausage & seafood gumbo from Red Fish Grill and shrimp remoulade from Galatoire's. If you guessed "yum," you're right. Incidentally, this was also my first Galatoire's. It was a big day.

ever feel like sampling a little seafood?

dinner from the freezer, louisiana style

John Folse is a famous Louisiana chef; I've watched him for years on PBS. He's also the author of several very large and luxuriously informative cookbooks, including The Encyclopedia of Cajun & Creole Cuisine. So when we happened by the freezer case stocked with his frozen gumbos, soups, and bisques, we just had to try one. It was really good, and I could argue that it's also worth the money.

Inside the tub, the frozen gumbo is packed in a plastic bag which you immerse in a pot of boiling water. I was glad for this technique--no one should have to eat overcooked seafood, and the bag helps you reheat the gumbo gently, protecting the crawfish and shrimp. The container says seven servings are in each bag, but they're 1/2-cup servings. Paul and I split the entire container (it's the gumbo part only, so you make your own rice to add--the best way to offer frozen gumbo, I think). We spent about $7, so about $3.50 per meal. That's a good price when you're comparing it to restaurant gumbos at $5 to $10 per bowl, but lousy when you're looking at a huge homemade pot that will last a few days. But as far as convenience and quality go, Folse's gumbo was much better than I was expecting it to be.

How much does your gumbo cost, per serving?

dinner from the freezer, louisiana style