Maggie Richardson recipes – Hungry for Louisiana

Fall flavors, Farmers Markets, One Pot, Soups

Recipe: pasta e fagioli with fresh red beans

November 3, 2015

I first got turned on to the Italian peasant soup pasta e fagioli when I took a cooking class on soups at the John Folse Culinary Institute several years ago. I was amazed at how flavorful a soup made of little more than beans and pasta could be. Now I really like to make it because it’s a favorite among my kids, and I can sometimes buy fresh and shelled red beans from Pontchatoula farmer Eric Morrow at the Red Stick Farmers Market. We also have an old school pasta shop here in Baton Rouge, D’Agostino’s, that sells handmade dried pastas. Their birdseye, shown below, is perfect for this soup.

Here’s my pasta e fagioli recipe, referenced in earlier post on fall soups inspired by farmers market ingredients. This version is lighter than many because it uses chicken stock rather than beef, and diced fresh tomatoes rather than tomato paste.

Enjoy!

Appetizers, Fall flavors, Vegetables

Homey and woodsy, chanterelles on toast perfect simple supper

October 28, 2015

The other day, my friend Anna-Karin Skillen and I were talking about chanterelles. They’re in season in her native Sweden right now, as well as in the U.S. on the northwest coast, in New England and other spots. I’ve been drooling lately watching a Facebook friend from Seattle document her family’s foraging trips, the kitchen table blanketed with fresh (and free!) chanterelles, soon be thrown in a scorching skillet or tossed in buttery pasta or noodle soup. Just this week, the Boston-based radio program, Here and Now, featured a segment on fall mushrooms, complete with easy recipes by resident chef Kathy Gunst, who had picked up several different wild mushroom varieties from Boston-area farmers markets.

Appetizers, Apples, Fresh from the Gulf, Shrimp, Tailgating

Spring rolls at home

September 22, 2015

During halftime of last weekend’s delicious LSU-Auburn game (sorry, Auburn friends!), my friend Sara and I headed into the kitchen to work on appetizers while our combined six kids and two husbands headed outside. It was beastly hot, so much so that organizers a few miles away at Tiger Stadium had made special arrangements for extra water — and paramedics. Even here in the comfort of our air-conditioned house, something cool and refreshing was in order. We set out the ingredients to make Gulf shrimp spring rolls.

Crab, Local, Louisiana

Succulent, classic Crab Louie salad is fast and easy

September 8, 2015

A friend sent us this picture from a crab boil underway over Labor Day weekend! He picked up fresh crabs from Hammond, Louisiana, and boiled them during a beach weekend in Destin, Florida.

The blue crab harvest is fully underway here in South Louisiana, and many friends I talked to over the weekend were planning Labor Day crab boils. Yum! As much as I love crawfish, shrimp and oysters, crab — I have to admit — is my all time favorite local seafood. It would be on my desert island list, and my death row last supper.

After our daughter’s cross country meet Saturday morning, we picked up a couple dozen boiled crabs over from Tony’s Seafood for our family of five, and they couldn’t have been tastier. Traditionalists say if you harvest crabs after a full moon, they’re at their fullest, so I guess we were still benefiting from the full moon a week earlier.

Cajun, Crawfish, Hungry for Louisiana, Local, Louisiana, Southern, Weeknight

A weeknight saved by crawfish tails

September 3, 2015

Here it is early September in South Louisiana, and crawfish season seems like a thing of the past. Backyard boils, Sunday etouffée and rural crawfish festivals are fixtures of spring, not fall. But let’s not be too hasty. One-pound packages of Louisiana crawfish tails are still available in many independent grocery stores in South Louisiana, and they should be around for another few weeks, says my friend Blaise Calandro III of Calandro’s Supermarkets here in Baton Rouge. In fact, it’s only between November and February when local tails are not commercially available.

So stock up for yourself Louisiana peeps, and freeze some for your out-of-state friends, because in addition to being full of flavor, crawfish tails are one of easiest and most convenient ingredients around, especially if you’re a working parent. I can attest. Earlier this week, I found myself trying to pull together dinner at the absolute last minute, and a pound of frozen crawfish tails saved me.

Labor Day, Salads, Tailgating, Vegetables

Bleu cheese coleslaw great for Labor Day and fall tailgates

August 26, 2015

I am a huge, huge coleslaw fan.

Given a choice between coleslaw and potato salad, I’d choose the former every time. I love the crunch of the cabbage. I love the range of dressings, from creamy to vinegary. I love to experiment with old-fashioned, church supper versions steeped in mayonnaise-y simplicity, as well as modern takes that incorporate stone fruits or Asian flavors. I love slapping coleslaw on a hot dog or a pulled pork sandwich. And I love when the homemade barbecue sauce on my smoked baby back ribs seeps into the adjacent pile of slaw on my plate.

With Labor Day right around the corner and the fall football season nearly upon us, it’s time to get into a slaw routine. It’s incredibly easy to make at home with fresh ingredients, and a lot cheaper than using packaged cabbage and bottled dressing.

Older Posts

Newer Posts