Thursday, October 6, 2011

Gumbo





One thing I remember from one of my most dominant inspirations into learning how to cook is gumbo. My Grandmother, Ida Thomas from Houston (affectionately known as "Nina"), was the best cook EVER. And she could make a mean gumbo. That woman could cook, bake, eat, feed, and could do it all with such precision, taste, and most of all...love. Yes, the one ingredient that you need to make good food is love. Love for the people you are cooking for and love for the food you are preparing. You have to believe in what you are creating. I always say that cooking is the one way I show love. One way, but a big way. I am not an overly affectionate person. I get a little claustrophobic, so I seem to channel that affection through feeding others' bellies. When I see them content, happy, engaged and satisfied...that is my round-a-bout way of giving them my affection. Kind of codependent, eh? "I give you this, but I get so much more out of your contentment from it."

With that said, this dish is a little more on the intermediate level. Let's just say it's made with more love and affection that most of my dishes, because it takes awhile. On a Sunday, if you love to get in the kitchen and open a bottle of wine and have the smells wafting through your happy home on all kinds of levels, do this. This makes a large batch, but with so much LOVE placed in this puppy, I share! This freezes extremely well, too, so since you are already going to be in there, make the large batch. Share, freeze, have a football party!?

I am going to start with the recipe card this time. Usually I always put them at the end of the recipe so you can always know exactly where they are, but I want you to read it first before we go into instructions. Mmmmkay?

Recipe Card:

8 bone-in chicken thighs, with skin (Use what chicken you prefer. Buy a Rotisserie Chicken for a time-saver)
1 lb. smoked sausage
2 lbs. raw shrimp, peeled and deveined
16 oz. picked crab meat of your liking (I used half backfin and half lump). You need to pick through it and remove any leftover shells

Holy Trinity:
[1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
1 large yellow onion
3-4 stalks of celery, with leafy tops]
5 cloves of garlic, finely diced

3 TBSP. butter
8 oz. tomato paste
3.5 TBSP. Old Bay seasoning
3 tsp. dried oregano
2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder
1 TBSP. smoked paprika
2 large bay leaves
dashes of Texas Pete hot sauce to your liking (I used about 12-15 dashes)
1.5 boxes of chicken stock
Bag of frozen sliced okra
salt and pepper

Roux:
6 TBSP. butter
8 TBSP. flour
dash salt and pepper

White Rice
Diced scallions for garnish

Ok, got all that??? Here we go...get all your ingredients out and ready to go.


































Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Salt and pepper your chicken thighs, drizzle with olive oil and roast in a 400 degree oven for 40 minutes. Make sure the juice runs clear when you puncture them, near the thickest part of the thigh. Put aside and let cool. (You may want to do this a little earlier as it does take chicken a little while to cool down). While the chicken is in the oven, dice those veggies. On a separate board, slice your sausage into coins and set aside.  When chicken is cool enough to touch, pick it. Remove the skins and pick all of the good meat off the bone and make sure it is free of fat and the icky stuff.



Heat a dutch oven pot over medium heat. Add 3 TBSP. butter and add your bell peppers, celery and onion.  Salt and pepper generously and stir. Saute until slightly tender and add your garlic. Continue to saute until all is fragrant and translucent.



Make a well in the middle of your pot and add your tomato paste. Let that heat up a tad as you stir and it becomes aromatic. Add your Old Bay, oregano, garlic & onion powders, paprika, and bay leaves. Stir well and add your sausage discs to the pot. Let them warm up a tad and release some of their fat. When everything is nice and incorporated, add your box and a half of chicken stock. Then, add your picked chicken to the pot and let it simmer, covered,  for a bit while you make your roux.

In a separate pan (I just used a heavy bottom pot here), heat 6 TBSP. of butter until melted over medium heat. Whisk in 8 TBSP. of flour and let this mixture cook. This is going to take awhile and you have to watch it or it can burn, especially once it starts to get golden. You will see a ton of changes over this process. It is going to start out really thick, pasty and light yellow. Eventually, it is going to thin out and get copper colored. You will notice changes in smell, too. It will become nutty-smelling. This can take anywhere from 30-40 minutes here. Keep stirring, especially when it starts to thin and change color. Roux can burn like that! Go ahead and peel and devein your shrimp while you are watching this process closely.



When the roux is this color, you can remove it from the heat and add it to your large pot of veg, chicken & sausage. This is going to make the mixture thicken up...that's what you want here.  Add salt and pepper to taste and your hot sauce. Let come up to a hot temp and taste. Add more salt and pepper as needed. Taste your sausage and make sure it has become nice and tender.





About 30 minutes before serving bring your stove up to medium low-medium and add your frozen okra and let it come back up to temp (the frozen okra will lower the temp a bit). Once it is nice and warm again, add your shrimp and stir and cover. Let go for about 20 minutes or until the shrimp is pink and opaque. Do not overcook your shrimp! Rubbery shrimp is NOT good in gumbo!



Remove from heat and add your picked through crab meat (crab will easily disintegrate if cooked too long). I topped mine with crab meat here instead of adding it to the pot because I was giving several servings away and someone didn't want crab meat in theirs.

Serve over white rice and garnish with green onion.



Ca c'est bon!


Monday, October 3, 2011

Braised Country Style Ribs




Here's a good Sunday Dinner for you to prepare!!  Braising meat that is relatively cheap is a sure-fire way to make sure it is super tender!

































Heat oven to 275 degrees. Go ahead and prep your veggies. This does not have to be perfect as you are just throwing them in there. Just crush your garlic...don't chop it up.  Add a whole sprig of rosemary right in there...again, no need to chop up or remove from stem. Just remember to remove the thick sprig before serving.



Salt and pepper both sides of your ribs. I have 8 ribs here for this recipe. Heat about 2-3 TBSP. of canola oil in a big pot. Use a heavy bottomed pot so you get a more even browning. Go ahead and brown your meat on all sides. If they are thin, the sides don't necessarily need to be browned, just make sure the larger sides are all golden brown. Don't move around a lot while browning.  Let them do their thing. Remove ribs after browning and just put aside.




























Next, go ahead and deglaze your pot with wine. I had some port wine in the house that I used. Use what you want here. Stand back! It's gonna get steamy in here!
























Add your veggies, garlic and rosemary. Bring a box of beef broth up to temp and add your ribs back in. You want them mostly all covered by liquid.

































Bring all to a boil and then cover tightly. Put in your 275 oven for 2 1/2 hours. Take your pot out of the oven and let the ribs sit in their liquid for at least 30 minutes.  Do not remove from pot before then! I let mine sit for an hour before serving.

Fork tender and oh, so good!

Recipe Card

8 country style pork ribs
salt and pepper
3 TBSP. canola oil
About a cup of wine
Box of Beef Broth
Half a large yellow onion
2 stalks celery, with leaves
4 garlic cloves, crushed
Sprig of rosemary



Blue Goat Virginia -- Restaurant Review


Blue Goat on Urbanspoon

I decided to check out the new Blue Goat restaurant, located on Grove Avenue, this weekend. We had 8 p.m. reservations. The restaurant is located in the old Peking building. The floor plan was nice and open and I loved the artwork of the goats hanging in the middle of the restaurant. It is considered a gastropub.  According to Wikipedia, a gastropub is simply defined as "a bar and restaurant that serves high-end beer and food."





We were sat immediately upon our arrival. We sat for awhile before a server came over to us, although he did acknowledge us and let us know he would be with us soon. He obviously was triple sat with us, a 2 top, and then two other 4 tops. So, I completely understood. We ordered our drinks, a Maker's and Coke and I got the Dirty Diana, which was Hornitos Tequila, Chambord, fresh lime juice, and ginger beer. It was really good.  I had three.  ;)  Fresh, sparkling, bubbly, not too sweet. It had a distinct flavor, but was a refreshing change.



For our first course, I ordered the house cured charcuterie board and my husband ordered the forest mushroom ragout with mascarpone polenta. The board was your typical set up, but served with olive tapenade and a fig relish. Our server did not go over what was on the board, but it was the typical salami, sausage and prosciutto. I enjoyed the mushroom ragout. It was a very earthy mushroom serving. My husband said it was a little too earthy for him, but I like the deep, rich flavors of mushrooms. The polenta was perfect.

We, then, ordered our entrees. He got the steak special. It was a TBone, cut in house from 30 day aged meat. A whole whopping 18 ounces! I ordered the daily shellfish collection, which was three different raw oysters and jumbo head on shrimp. It was served with three different sauces. I love mignonettes with my oysters, although this one had a lot of lemon in it and I prefer the more straight up vinegar base. The oysters were fresh and the shrimp were extremely tasty. Our server told me, "I don't know which are which, but here you go." So, I was not given the "tour" that you normally get when ordering different raw oysters. Now, for my husband's steak...we had to send it back. :( He started on it and within a few cuts, he could no longer cut the steak. It was full of gristle. I am a huge advocate of NOT returning food, but this really had to go back, especially at the $35 price tag that came along with it. The chef came over and completely understood as we showed him the issues. It happens with steak. Isn't anyone's real fault, just a freak piece of meat.  And it happen to hit our table. :(





We will definitely go back. If not for anything but some Dirty Diana. Prices range from $11-$18 for the small plates on the menu, with specials (i.e. the TBone) which can run closer to $40. I will give them a 3.5 stars out of 5. Only because of our freak incident and the service.  The front desk was extremely friendly.

Here is their DINNER MENU and their extensive LIBATION MENU -- Dirty Diana listed.

I only got a few pictures, and I only took my small point-and-shoot camera in as I didn't want to disturb too many. I would love to hear your stories if you have made the trip to the Blue Goat! What did you eat and drink?



Sunday, October 2, 2011

Hogtober 2011




We went to the Hogtober Festival sponsored by Style Weekly and Budweiser in Church Hill on Saturday.  We had a great time!!!  Here are a few pictures of our day.  We sampled Halligan's pork, as they were the only ones who offered ribs!  Extra Billy's, Buz and Ned's, Alamo BBQ, and Halligan's were all present.  Halligan's was really good!  I fell in love with their BBQ sauce.  I am not big on sweet BBQ sauces.  This sauce was vinegar-based and had mustard in it.  I saw some crushed red pepper in there, too.  We split a brisket sandwich and then ordered a few bones each.







































The ribs were dry rubbed, but I like dipping dry rubbed ribs in sauce and well, since I loved their sauce so much, I was really dipping!!!  Ribs were very meaty and super tender.  Brisket didn't have a lot of flavor, but was also very tender and moist.  Smoke ring was present...not much of a bark.  I slathered that puppy in sauce, too!  Halligan is in Shockoe Bottom, with a Short Pump location opening very soon!  Although we decided on Halligan's for our BBQ, I will say Alamo BBQ had the longest line by far!  Will have to try them out at a different time for sure!!!  Lines don't lie!  Bands were B2B Band, Jackass Flats, People's Blues of Richmond, The Atkinsons (shown), and Rosie Soul and the Rock and Roll Cowboys (shown). 

The pictures of the smoker below were from Extra Billy's.  Looked good, but as you can see by my earlier blogs, we just did pork sandwiches at home.  I was looking for ribs and brisket!