Hungry for Louisiana, Louisiana, The Writing Life

Hungry for Louisiana the book has been released!

So excited! My book, Hungry for Louisiana, An Omnivore’s Journey (LSU Press) is out this month. You can find it on Amazon or in regional book stores, including large chains and local independents. It’s also in some gift shops and culinary stores, like Red Stick Spice Co. in Baton Rouge.

This was so much fun to work on. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. The book includes an intro that explores how Louisiana’s food culture was local before local was cool and how there are few places in the world with such intact culinary traditions. Each subsequent chapter peers into a different food or ingredient from the state’s culinary tableau. Discover the quirks and traditions behind crawfish, jambalaya, Creole cream cheese, snoballs, filé, blood boudin, Zwolle tamales and oysters. Meet some of the people who produce these famed eats. This is breezy food writing with a few recipes at the end of each chapter.

Find out:

What Ashley Hansen of Hansen’s Sno-Bliz did when her grandfather’s famed snoball machine was on the fritz…

Why the northeast Louisiana town of Zwolle has a deep and meaningful tradition of tamale-making that is nothing like the Mississippi Delta’s…

Exactly what makes a pot of jambalaya achieve blue ribbon excellence at the annual Jambalaya Festival in Gonzales, Jambalaya Capital of the World…

And lots more.

Please keep coming back to this site for updates, additional material, photos and more recipes.

Thanks for your interest! 

Asian, Sweet Potatoes, Vegetables

Sweet potato chick pea curry in three easy steps

The up-and-down damp weather we’ve been having lately has had me craving something stew-ish, but not something so heavy that it feels like fall or winter. I found myself dreaming about a one pot curry with fresh sweet potatoes, chickpeas and veggies over couscous, the kind of stuff I used to eat way back, when I was single grad student on a budget who didn’t have four other sets of taste buds to appease. But I figured, why not? My kids like Thai flavors, and they love sweet potatoes, so I foisted this yummy veggie curry on them. There are elements of creaminess, sweetness and tang thanks to the base of green curry paste and coconut milk. Hard not to like.

This is a pleasing spring dish that places Louisiana sweet potatoes – seasonal year-round – front and center. They might be harvested in the fall, but their long shelf life makes them enjoyable 12 months out of the year. Modify the other veggies as you see fit. Add different spices or some heat if you like. Or try it over brown rice or quinoa.

Serves 6

Ingredients:

For sauce:
1 can light coconut milk
2 tablespoons green curry paste
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 one-inch piece peeled garlic

For veggies:
2 sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
½ cup chicken broth
1 red pepper, cut into medium chunks
2 cups broccoli florets
1 cup fresh spinach
1 can chickpeas, drained

For couscous:
2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1 10 oz. box plain couscous

Steps:
1. In a small saucepan, heat coconut milk gently, then add next four ingredients. Simmer for about three minutes and turn off heat.

2. To a Dutch oven or large pot with a lid, add about a half-inch of water and bring to a simmer. Add sweet potatoes, cover and cook for 4 minutes. Add broth, return to simmer, and next five ingredients. Simmer for 5 minutes. Pour curry sauce over veggie mixture and cook another 4-5 minutes, or until vegetables are cooked to you liking and the sauce is hot. Turn off heat.

3. To make couscous, bring broth to boil in a small to medium lidded saucepan. Add couscous, stir and turn off heat. Cover and remove from burner. After five minutes, fluff with fork.

To serve, remove ginger. Mound curry on top of couscous and garnish with fresh cilantro.

 

Louisiana, Sweet Potatoes, Vegetables

Truly, madly, dirty…sweet potato myths revealed

My mother-in-law, Nan, likes to buy Louisiana sweet potatoes direct from a local farmer, resulting in a large box of spuds that get passed around among my husband’s large extended family. We’ve been well-plied with Beauregard variety sweet potatoes for several weeks now, and each time I go back to the till for more, she repeats the same directive: Keep the dirt on them until you cook them.

Is this true, or just rural myth? I recently asked LSU AgCenter Associate Professor Tara Smith, who studies the Louisiana sweet potato at the state’s research station in Chase, Louisiana, southeast of Monroe. The dirt, Smith says, keeps the sweet potatoes from bruising before use.

“Sweet potatoes are stored with the dirt on them after harvest. They’re not washed until they’re packed and shipped to market,” she says. “If you buy direct from a producer with the dirt on them you can store them in that manner until you’re ready to use them. Really, it is the handling component. They are susceptible to bruising and the more they are handled the more likely you are to encounter losses due to shriveling, bruising and subsequent breakdown.”

So there you go.

The dirt is a sort of protective layer for Louisiana’s favorite vegetable.

And what about curing?

Unlike other fresh picked produce, sweet potatoes have to “set up” before they’re ready to consume, or so they say. True? Yep. Consumers never really see this stage, though. Smith says that sweet potatoes are cured immediately following harvest, a process that involves bringing them into the storage shed and subjecting them to 85-90 degrees F and 90% humidity for 5-7 days. Potato sauna! Afterwards they’re stored at 55-60 degrees also with high humidity. After about 6 weeks they’re ready to be packed and shipped. The curing process quickens the conversion of starches into sugar and makes the spud tastes sweeter. It also begins the healing process of any bruises and skinning that occurred during the harvest operation, and “sets” the skin, allowing the sweet potatoes to be washed and packed with less damage to the outer surface.

As for shelf life?

Sweet potatoes can be stored for a year or longer under the right conditions, making them seasonal in Louisiana year round.

Fresh from a Hessmer, La. farmer, Beauregard sweet potatoes.

Fresh from a Hessmer, La. farmer, Beauregard sweet potatoes

Lent, Louisiana, Shrimp

Lent: Restraint tastes good in Louisiana

Lent may be the season of restraint, but in Louisiana, it’s become 40 days of seafood-centric culinary creativity. From backyard boiled crawfish to indulgent chef’s specials on Fridays, there’s no shortage of good eats wrapped up in all that contemplation and sober self-sacrifice.

Last Friday — the first Friday of Lent this year, I dropped by Tony’s Seafood in Baton Rouge to check out the action. Even though it was mid-afternoon, the hot food line at Tony’s was still 25 deep. Bummer. I didn’t have time to wait for the fried catfish snack and trio of boudin balls I’d been fantasizing about driving up I-110. “Man. Look at that line,” I said to the guy bagging up my fresh shrimp. And as if it required no other explanation (even at 3:30 in the afternoon) he said, “Well, it is Lent.”

Continue Reading…

Breakfast, Eggs, Farmers Markets, Louisiana

Editing the Egg McMuffin

It wasn’t that long ago that fresh eggs – the kind with deep golden yolks from happy chickens – were hard to come by. Our farmers market here in Baton Rouge would routinely sell out, especially if you were a sleepy straggler (like me) who liked to get there late. Now it’s much easier. More vendors are selling them at our farmers markets – and probably yours, too. And in many cities, urban poultry is commonplace. I’m usually not without locally raised eggs, and one of my favorite uses for them is in a….

homemade egg McMuffin.

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Farmers Markets, Fruit, Valentine's Day

Pavlova is an easy and beautiful dessert

This is one of those years in South Louisiana when Cupid haters get some relief since February 14 falls squarely on the final Saturday of Carnival season. No need to sweat the red roses when you can crisscross the state for bawdy floats and bead collecting. But, if a side of you loves a good schmaltzy Valentine’s dinner at home staring doe-eyed across the table at your sweetheart, I have the perfect dessert for you. It’s gorgeous, simple, comes in red and white and, yes, uses local Louisiana strawberries. Plump, juicy berries are now available from regional growers, but if you source them from the farmers market, don’t drag your feet. This past Saturday, vendors at the Red Stick Farmers Market sold out of strawberries before closing time.

strawberries

The Valentine’s Day dessert I’m recommending is a pretty throwback – Pavlova. It’s a meringue-based dessert named for Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova and created in either New Zealand or Australia (still debated between the two). The meringue, we’re led to believe, is a nod to a fluffy white tutu. But more important than this dish’s whimsical elegance is that it tastes great and is easy to pull off.

There are numerous recipes for Pavlova, but this one is reliable. And, it doesn’t insist you draw a circle on a piece of parchment paper to use as a guide as you pour the meringue onto a baking sheet. You are perfectly capable of making the shape of a circle on your own, and, anyway, perfection is overrated.

Not only did the strawberries in my Pavlova come from a Louisiana farmer, but the eggs did as well. You only need the whites. Hang onto the yolks for aioli or to enrich quiche or scrambled eggs.

Eggs

Pavlova

Serves 12

Cooking spray
1 teaspoon cornstarch
4 egg whites
1 cup, plus 2 tablespoons, sugar
1 teaspoon white vinegar (or lemon juice)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ cups whipping cream
1 teaspoon almond extract
Fresh fruit for garnish

Heat oven to 275 F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper, spray it lightly with cooking spray and dust with cornstarch. Beat egg whites in a clean, dry bowl at high speed with an electric mixer until foamy. Add 1 cup sugar gradually, about ¼ cup at a time, until the whites form stiff peaks and begin to look glossy. This takes about 3 minutes. Add vinegar and vanilla extract. Spread mixture onto parchment paper in the shape of a 9-inch diameter circle. As you form spread the meringue, press down slightly in the center, allowing the outer rim to be slightly higher (like you would pizza dough).

meringueforpavlova1

Bake for 45 minutes. Carefully remove from baking sheet and cool completely on a rack. Some cracking is normal. When it’s cool, you should be able to slide the meringue off the paper and onto a serving plate.

Beat whipping cream at medium speed until soft peaks begin to form. Add 2 tablespoons sugar and almond extract. Spread over the top of the meringue, leaving the rim. Garnish with fresh fruit. Cut into slices to serve.

Pavlova3

Enjoy!