Guest Post: Primo’s Red Beans & Fries

Time for another guest post from my cousin Primo, straight from his pad in NOLA!  Seemed perfect to post on a Monday!

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It’s Monday and that means it’s red beans & rice day down here in New Orleans. In the 19th century, Monday was laundry day in the city. Without washing machines, the women of the house had to wash all of the household’s laundry painstakingly by hand, leaving little time for cooking.  So dinner had to be something that could cook without being fussed over.
Enter the red kidney bean, brought to New Orleans by those fleeing Haiti’s slave rebellion. The beans needed to soak overnight before cooking. After soaking and draining them, housewives simply set the beans on the stove with fresh water to boil until tender, and then added a delicious helping of sautéed “trinity”– the Cajun/Creole cooking base of diced onions, celery and bell peppers.  This would typically also be combined with leftover ham from Sunday’s big family dinner.
While I love red beans and rice, I wanted to mix things up a bit and put a small twist on a local staple. While Monday is ‘red beans and rice day’ down here, it’s Monday Night Football for  the rest of the country. Football and finger foods go together like, well, red beans and rice. Thus, red beans and FRIES were born.

(FeauxNote: if you’ve made up a big batch of red beans & have some leftovers, this is a great way to use them up.)
INGREDIENTS:
Frozen waffle fries (or if you have a mandoline, you can make your own)
1 can Blue Runner red beans
1 lb smoked sausage (traditionally andouille or tasso, but use what you like best)
1/2 – 1 cup of trinity (diced bell pepper, celery & onion)
Green onions for garnish
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat your oven to 400F and when at temp, throw in your French fries (waffle fries hold up best for our purposes; Alexia makes some seasoned waffle fries, and Great Value sells a generic for about $2.00).

While I have the luxury of a modern washing machine, I decided to cheat and use a can of Blue Runner creamed red beans for experimentation purposes (and because I felt lazy). (FeauxNote: I can get Blue Runner at Wal-Mart in Missouri, but if you can’t find them, you can try this Crockpot recipe.)

While the beans heat up on the stovetop, dice a link or two of your favorite sausage—andouille in my case (FeauxNote: Johnsonville makes a New Orleans style smoked sausage if you can’t find real andouille near you) and drop the sausage in a medium skillet or saucepan to begin heating up and releasing that delicious fat. Enter your “trinity”. Again, I cheated and bought a container of pre-chopped veggies.

Add as much or as little to taste. Sauté those fine ingredients together until your onions become translucent. At this point, your peppers and celery will retain their crunch for a good texture contrast. Remove from heat.
Place a good base layer of your fries on a plate (platter if serving family style). Add a layer of the trinity/sausage. Heap your creamed red beans on top (FeauxNote: I added the Blue Runner beans to the pot and mixed it all together, rather than keeping them separate & layering—still tastes awesome). Lastly, garnish with some freshly diced green onions from your window garden…

…add a dash (or 5) of hot sauce, and serve.

Oh, and watch out for aliens posing as butternut squash. (Compliments of Feaux’s Hubs.)

Since the serving size on this varies (especially if you’re sharing with a group), I won’t attempt a NutriFacts sheet, but just use your brain—stop when you’re full.

Hey….I didn’t say it would EASY.  But just TRY to have some restraint.

Have a great week, folks!

Baked Chicken & Sausage Jambalaya Egg Rolls

Hey there—remember back in the day when I made St. Patty’s Day Egg Rolls?  Well, that little venture got a lot of gears turning, so that I just started making baked egg rolls with just about anything.  There’s the Southwest Egg Rolls, and at some point I’ll finish my post about the Sushi Egg Rolls (I forgot to take a photo of the finished product before we ate them all, which means I need to make them again!).

Really, my egg roll recipes are typically born out of necessity.  Because when you buy egg roll wrappers, there’s 20 in a pack.  And as much as I love them, we really can’t eat more than 8 between the two of us in a sitting.  Which means you still have 12 wrappers laying around, mocking you—“okay Captain Kitchen Improv, now what are you going to do with US????”  And oddly enough, I’ve never just said, “well, I have some pork & cabbage…guess I’ll just make normal egg rolls with you.”  Because that’s not how I roll. And I prefer to make baked rolls, because they’re just WAY better for you, and as long as you give a nice light spritz of olive oil on the wrapper, they still get a really satisfying crunch.
As we move through this post, you’re going to notice something---between the prep photos & the final product photos, it looks as though my jambalaya stuffing has magically changed color.  It hasn’t.  But the first time I made these, I was using my Crock Pot Jambalaya recipe, and then the second time I made them with my Chef Folse recipe.  You can choose either, depending upon your preference, time allotted, etc.  Or you can even cheat & buy some Zatarain’s jambalaya mix.  You can also mix it up & use seafood instead of chicken or sausage (or even venison).  Totes up to you.
PS—this is an awesome way to use up leftovers, if you’ve made a pot of jambalaya the night before.  And these are perfect for any upcoming SuperBowl parties you might have!

INGREDIENTS: (makes 8 egg rolls)
8 egg roll wrappers (you should find these in the produce section, usually near the tofu.  My Wal-Mart stocks them near the shredded cabbage/bagged lettuce & veggies)
about 3-4 cups of jambalaya (it can be cold or hot)
water
Olive Oil mister

DIRECTIONS:
Preheat your oven to 425F.
Lay a wrapper on a clean, dry surface with a corner toward you.  Spoon about 1/3 – 1/2 cup of jambalaya onto the wrapper, not quite in the middle.

Roll the point that’s closest to you over the filling, gently squishing a bit so the filling is uniform in thickness. 
Now fold in the sides, and then roll over once toward the far point.  Now wet the far point with the water, and then finish rolling it up.

Spray a cookie sheet with olive oil, add the rolls, and then lightly spray each of the rolls with olive oil (you can use a brush to get good coverage).  This will help them to brown all over.

Bake for 10 minutes on each side (20 minutes total) so you get a good crust/seal on them. Then booyah—you’re done!

Now: dipping sauces.  They REALLY don’t need one.  But it’s an egg roll—so you sorta feel inclined to dip it.  I tried Cajun mustard, but it was a no-go: just WAY overpowered the flavor of the jambalaya.  However, you could try a remoulade with it…or ranch goes with about anything.  If you get creative & find a great sauce to go with these, please leave me a note! Enjoy!

Watermelon, Mint & Feta salad

I am a newb gardener.  Let’s just get that out there in the open.  My mother was blessed with a green thumb.  My Grammy growing up always had a huge garden that we would help water, and she’d let us grow a few seeds in our own little section of plot, but even back then, the only thing I could ever get to grow were root vegetables—radishes & turnips.

Over the years, periodically I would make an attempt at getting something to grow, like a watermelon plant or a small herb garden, but they never took off. Probably because I wouldn’t take the time to water them, and would forget they existed for weeks at a time.

But after I got married, I started pondering on the movie “28 Days”, and the end when Steve Buscemi is telling the group when they might be ready for emotional relationships again. “First, you get a plant.  If it’s still alive at the end of a year, you get a pet.  If, by the end of the second year, both are still alive…then you can start thinking about a relationship.”  Of course, if my case, it was more “baby” than relationship.  I figured I should probably know how to keep something green alive that only requires sunlight & water before I had to try to keep a whole other human being alive, too.

So, in the first year of our marriage, I had a bamboo & re-grew some green onion tops in a windowsill. 

In the second year, I took potatoes for a whirl, along with some rosemary & a tomato plant.  The potatoes didn’t thrive, but I got enough for a shrimp boil.  The rosemary did great, and the tomato plant struggled at first, but once we put it into a larger pot, things turned around for the better & we got a couple months’ worth of grape tomatoes out of it.

This year…I have squash, mint, basil, three types of tomatoes, rosemary, garlic, and I recently started some romaine & celery from store-bought ends. 

I had a cucumber in a Topsy-Turvy, but I don’t think it was getting enough sunlight so it’s no longer with us. (RIP, Japanese cucumber.)

Our patio garden.

Oh, and I still have the bamboo & green onions.

So far, most things are growing well…some things a little TOO well.  I guess I should have read a little more about which plants are compatible for growing together in a pot… I bought rosemary, mint, and basil at the same time, and put the rosemary in a pot by itself, and the mint & basil together in a large pot.  But apparently, mint doesn’t play well with others.  It’s a bully, and it chokes out everything near it.  So I’ve been spending the summer trying to keep my mint under control so it doesn’t kill my basil. Because Basil > Mint, in my culinary world.

Of course, upon this realization, I also then realized…what in the world am I going to use all this mint IN??? I rarely cook with mint.  However, my friend Ruben made this awesome watermelon-mint salad last Fourth of July, so that was the first thing I decided to make.

This is perfect for your upcoming Fourth of July BBQ!  Super easy to throw together.  It’s also great for tailgating—we went to a ball game earlier this month, made this ahead of time, and brought it in a gallon Ziploc bag in our little cooler.

 

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 seedless watermelon, chunked

1/4-1/2 cup chopped mint

1/2 cup feta crumbles

juice of 1/2 lime

salt & pepper to taste

 

DIRECTIONS:

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients and toss well.  While it’s great even just a few minutes after making, if you let it sit over night the flavors will combine even more.  The lime, salt & pepper are optional, but the acidity adds another layer of flavor, and the salt & pepper can really make the flavor of the watermelon pop.

 

The Marginator’s CrockPot Wings

When I worked at Martin’s Wine Cellar down in Metairie, my manager’s name was Margie.  Actually, it still IS Margie, since she still works there & hasn’t changed her name.  Our loving nickname for her was The Marginator… Of course, this is coming from a gaggle of gals who have a song dedicated to rare roast beef, which comes in a 20 lb package, vaccum-sealed in it's own “juices” (aka, blood), and makes a HUGE mess when you have to open it, and was thusly named “The Big Nasty”. 

ANYWAY.  Margie hired me with no real experience in gourmet foods, wines, or cheeses, with the exception of an addiction to Food Network.  And by the time I left a year later, I knew WAY too much about 200 different kinds of cheeses, 8 types of pate (all gross), about 20 gourmet deli meats & sausages, 6-7 types of olives, and was our resident expert in crafting entirely kosher holiday baskets.

I have tasted 89% of these things.

Margie also passed along several recipes to me, which incorporated food items we sold in the store.  This bestowal of knowledge was partially for recommending to customers, and partially just because they were delicious and we got a pretty sweet employee discount.  I sincerely miss that discount these days.

This is my favorite Marginator recipe by far.  It’s extremely easy and has tons of flavor.  And I figured I’d share since Football Season is here and wings are a pretty popular football food.  The Hubs & I don’t do much tailgating, but now that I get free admission to Missouri State games with my new fancy schmancy student ID, we might have to attend a couple. :D

Another thing I really like about this recipe: A lot of wing recipes are either fried or breaded, which adds a ton of unnecessary fat.  But you can use your broiler to get your chicken all crispy on the outside with NO added fat.

Ingredients:

NOTE: I do this recipe in “parts”, rather than specific measurements, because it’s entirely dependent upon how many wings you’re making.  Just use equal amounts of each of the sauce ingredients.  For example: if we’re making about 4 servings worth, I use 1/2- 1 cup of each. 

1 part your favorite BBQ sauce (we love KC Masterpiece Smoky)

1 part honey (as always, I recommend Acadiana Honey, or, if you don’t have that available, buy local.  I guarantee there’s a honey producer at your local farmer’s market.)

1 part Pickapeppa Sauce

Fresh or thawed chicken wings & drummies (4-6 pieces make a serving)

 

Directions:

Turn your oven’s broiler on, and spread your wings out on a foil-lined baking sheet.

Place the baking sheet in the oven, with the shelf a couple notches below the broiler.  Broil on both sides for about 10 minutes each—this gets the skin really nice & crispy, and seals in a ton of flavor.

In your CrockPot, mix together the sauce ingredients (Note: I occasionally add a few splashes of Cajun Power garlic sauce if I have it in the house), and then toss your chicken into the pot.  Mix so that the chicken is coated.

Cover, and let cook for 5-6 hours on Low, or 2-3 hours on High, or until the chicken is no longer pink.  Stir once about halfway through cooking to recoat the chicken.

Serve with some ranch & veggies on the side! 

 

NutriFacts (per serving):

Calories 641.5

  Total Fat 22.0 g

  Saturated Fat 5.6 g

  Polyunsaturated Fat 0.9 g

  Monounsaturated Fat 1.0 g

  Cholesterol 244.6 mg

  Sodium 923.4 mg

  Potassium 241.7 mg

  Total Carbohydrate 38.9 g

  Dietary Fiber 0.1 g

  Sugars 34.8 g

  Protein 67.0 g