New Orleans Recipes for Mardi Gras

New Orleans is one of my happy places. I’ve been at least four times – twice before Katrina and twice afterward. Of course, I have so many favorite memories of the city – from absinthe-induced feather boas in Jackson Square during the day to Fred the Mouse scampering across the floor during the evening. And the inevitable powdered sugar from the Café du Monde beignets all over my black shirt! So I was thrilled to find a gallery of “22 New Orleans Classics to Celebrate Mardi Gras” on the Saveur website while I was doing some research for Chocolate Dinner. Of course, I immediately panicked and asked Siri when Mardi Gras was this year. Fortunately, it was exactly three weeks away, so I had plenty of time to research, plan, and recipe test some of the New Orleans Classics before the big day.

The Research

Of the 22 recipes, there were six or seven that I was willing to try. Classic Red Beans and Rice seemed to be a very straightforward recipe, so that would be possible once I figured out what a “ham hock” was and where to get two of them. The New Orleans French Bread was squarely in my wheelhouse. If I can grow my own sourdough starter and successfully make bread from that, I’m sure I can make regular bread too. And I was so excited about the Crab Maison recipe from Galatoire’s. On the other hand, Oxtail Gumbo was a no go simply because I had no idea where to get an oxtail. Same thing with Duck and Andouille Gumbo and Smoked Turkey and Andouille Gumbo; duck, smoked turkey, and andouille sausage are just not readily available in my area. The Fried Chicken and Andouille Gumbo might be a possibility. I can definitely make fried chicken, and I can definitely make a roux. The food for thought is whether the gumbo will suffer irreparable harm if I left out the andouille sausage and the okra. None of the various okra recipes were going to happen because okra in New England in the winter is virtually impossible to find. The oyster recipes might be possible. But if I was going to shuck two dozen oysters, I wasn’t going to bake them into an Oyster Pie with Buttermilk Biscuits or fry them to serve alongside a garlic sauce. And I certainly wasn’t going to shuck four dozen oysters just to fry them up for a po’ boy sandwich! I’d be more willing to try something like Brigtsen’s Oysters Leruth, which broiled the oysters with a crab and shrimp filling, or Antoine’s original 1889 Oysters Rockefeller recipe. I would most certainly be willing to attempt a Crawfish Etouffe, even if it meant using small shrimp instead of crawfish. Leruth’s Red Shrimp Remoulade elicited a similarly enthusiastic response, although I would be likely try to find a work around for the Creole mustard. Making a King Cake was well within my capabilities as a baker, but I needed to find some people to share it with. Otherwise, having that in my house would sink my weight management plan! Likewise, even looking at the recipe for the White Chocolate Bread Pudding with Bananas and Rum Sauce was bad juju. However, since I did find a rogue bottle of banana liqueur in the recesses of my cabinet, I may not be able to resist attempting Brennan’s Bananas Foster. After all, bananas are fruit!

The Hunting and Gathering

After soundly declaring that okra was virtually impossible to find in New England in the winter, I asked the girl friend who would be coming up to visit me for the long February weekend what she wanted me to cook for her. Among a few other things, her response included “I love eggplant and okra.” So, that set off the search for both good eggplant and fresh okra. I know that I had seen at least one sad package of fresh okra in the produce section of the Walmart SuperCenter down the road from my local supermarket, but I really didn’t want to go there. The day my girl friend was arriving, I found myself in Whole Foods a few towns over looking for cardamom for another friend of mine, and I decided to detour through their produce section to check out their eggplant because the eggplant selection in my local supermarket is sad. I was very pleased. I did a cursory check for fresh okra and didn’t see any, so I texted my girl friend on the train that we were a go on the eggplant and a no-go on the okra. When I finally went back to the produce section to bag my eggplant, I found the bin of fresh okra right underneath! We were in business! But for what? I had never cooked okra before and neither had she. And she explicitly told me that she didn’t want any fried foods during her visit.

Fortunately, while I was still in the store with some time to spare, I remembered that the Saveur gallery had an Okra Gumbo recipe. So I walked over to the meat section to see if they had andouille sausage, which was a usual component of gumbo. They did! But I couldn’t remember how much the recipe needed. It was making my head hurt. And then I remembered that my smart phone had an Internet browser, so I quickly Googled “Saveur Okra Gumbo Recipe” while standing in the meat section and – ta dah! - found the recipe. It required tasso instead of andouille sausage, so I looked for that, and met with success. The rest of the ingredients were things that I could get at my local supermarket.

When I got home, I checked the Saveur gallery for other recipes that I could prepare while my girl friend was visiting that would compliment the Creole Okra Gumbo, since we would be having a mini dinner party on Saturday night. I chose the Classic Red Beans and Rice and the Red Shrimp Remoulade. Of course, both recipes had an ingredient that caused me drama. The Red Beans and Rice required ham hocks; the shrimp dish required Creole mustard. I still had no idea what ham hocks were, until I was in the local supermarket at the very end of the meat department and happened to look up while putting my leaky chicken breasts in a plastic bag. Sure enough, the third shelf was double stacked with packages of smoked ham hocks! They look like the foot of a pig without the hoof. The smallest package I could find had three, but I only need two, so it looks like we are going to make an extra hammy Red Beans and Rice. The Creole mustard for the Red Shrimp Remoulade seemed to be very straightforward. Even though I have never actually bought mustard, I was aware of a floor to ceiling wall of the product at my local supermarket. Certainly, there must be a Creole mustard somewhere on that wall! Alas, here in New England, I had no such luck. And not knowing what Creole mustard tastes like or what spices it has, I didn’t know what would be the best substitute. Or if there could be any substitute. So I guessed! I chose what looked good to me – which was a sweet bourbon mustard – and decided that we would make the sauce with that, try it, and then not use it if it tasted badly.

Classic Red Beans and Rice

The sneaky thing about this recipe is that soaking the red beans overnight is listed with the ingredients, rather than with the recipe instructions. So I was happy that I read it before grocery shopping on the day that my girl friend was due to come in by train – rather than on the day we were due to host our mini dinner party. When I unpacked the groceries, I put the pound of red beans in the same bowl that I use to soak my black beans and covered them with about three inches of cold water. When I returned several hours later, the red beans had already absorbed all of that water and were threatening to overflow the bowl. So I transferred the semisoaked beans to an even larger bowl and covered them with approximately six inches of cold water. By the time it came to cook them in the afternoon, the beans were still covered with some water.

Because my visiting girl friend and I were out and about running errands in one of the town centers after yoga class, we got into the kitchen approximately half an hour before I had to leave to pick up our special dinner guest. Fortunately, he was willing to postpone his pick up by half an hour, which gave me a full hour to start the Classic Red Beans, change into clean clothes, and give my girl friend basic instructions for the Creole Okra Gumbo. Another stroke of luck was that I had pulled out the necessary pot from the cabinet ahead of time, so I didn’t need to waste time on that project. So I needed about fifteen minutes to chop the onions, celery, and pepper because I was measuring the garlic from my jar of chopped garlic in the refrigerator. While the vegetables cooked, I pulled out and measured the spices for the next step in this recipe; I also started to pull out the ingredients for the Creole Okra Gumbo so that my girl friend wouldn’t have to hunt in my kitchen. Once the vegetables had softened nicely, I added the spices and actively stirred for two minutes to keep the mixture from sticking to the bottom of the pot and burning. Immediately after the timer rang, I added the six cups of water, the drained red beans, and the three ham hocks. I moved the pot to the back burner on low heat, covered it, and set the timer for two hours. At that point, my girl friend came in from clearing the ice outside to get instructions for the Creole Okra Gumbo and then I had to leave to pick up our special guest a few towns over.

When I got back from picking up our special guest, there was still a little more than an hour on the timer for the Classic Red Beans and Rice. So we basically ignored it, except to give it the occasional stir, until the timer sounded. Because the recipe directed that the beans be served over cooked white rice, I made a separate pot of jasmine rice using my usual two cups water to one cup rice ratio. Unfortunately, the rice burned slightly at the bottom, and was otherwise dry. But my girl friend recognized the smell and the problem, and salvaged it by adding more water.

The pot of Classic Red Beans and Rice was very watery. Since I had never made nor had Red Beans and Rice before, that didn’t really bother me. I didn’t feel like dealing with the odd little ham hocks, so we left those whole in the pot and worked around them to pull up ladles of red beans from the bottom. We each put a ladle or two of the red beans with some of the sauce on a pile of white rice on our plates. The consensus was that they were good, but a little spicy.

My girl friend didn’t want to take any of the Classic Red Beans home with her to DC, so I called my parents to see if they were interested in a Cajun dinner. They were, so I packed the pot in my car when I took my girl friend to the train station and detoured to my parents’ house from there. When it came to reheat the pot for dinner, Dad asked where the rice and beans were. I explained to him that the pot was just the beans and that we had the rice on the side. He explained to me that he had never had it that way before. Every time that he had it, the rice and beans were combined and were not soupy. So he made a batch of rice in the microwave and added that to the pot, which he had simmering without the cover to get rid of some of the fluid. He also removed the ham hocks, discarded the fat and skin, chopped up the meat, and returned the meat and bones to the pot. By the time he was done with it, the red beans and rice were more like a porridge. It was very good, although it definitely tasted much spicier than when we just ladled the beans and sauce over plain white rice.

My parents didn’t want to keep any of the leftovers of the Classic Red Beans and Rice, so I took the pot back home with me. I liked the spice level much better when I made a pot of fresh white rice and served the spicy porridge over the plain rice.

Creole Okra Gumbo

I left the Creole Okra Gumbo in the capable hands of my visiting girl friend while I went to pick up our special dinner guest, so I am not sure exactly what magic she worked with the recipe during my forty-five minute absence. I left her with a pile of ingredients and spices, and came back to her sautéing a Dutch oven full of boneless chicken cubes and vegetables with my laptop humming in the background. It was glorious! I felt bad that she attempted to call me as I was headed into a nasty traffic circle, and I ignored the call. But then she followed up with a text asking where the salt was, which I didn’t remember being integral to the recipe. Of course, when I got home, I found out that she had improvised by using my fancy salts, which was totally appropriate!

I do know for certain that we only used four cups of chicken broth, rather than the six cups called for in the recipe because any more than four cups would have threatened to overflow the Dutch oven. After the chicken simmered for an hour, the question became how to prepare the okra. I was all for just washing it and slicing it. But my girl friend asked Google, which gave her more detailed instructions involving distilled white vinegar to reduce the sliminess. All three of us were in favor of that! It was super cool to watch her cook the okra because she preferred to flip the okra slices by sending them airborne in my large sauté pan. And, despite being green, the okra did turn golden brown when sautéed for long enough.

The Creole Okra Gumbo never really thickened, even though it simmered without a cover and simmered with the okra. Each of the three of us took some of the white rice and a ladle or two of the gumbo with sauce over the rice. We all liked it, and agreed that the okra definitely wasn’t slimy. My girl friend loves okra and definitely wanted to take some back to DC with her. My parents, however, were not interested in okra so they did not partake in the gumbo.

Leruth’s Red Shrimp Remoulade

After reviewing all the possible shrimp options at the grocery store, I bought frozen peeled and deveined shrimp. When I got home from the grocery store, I put them in the refrigerator to defrost for approximately 24 hours prior to steaming. Right about when I put on the rice, I dumped the shrimp into the steamer basket on top of an already boiling pot of water. I let them steam for about ten minutes while I prepared the sauce.

At first glance, the Red Shrimp Remoulade recipe seemed very straightforward: whisk together the first four ingredients, emulsify the oil, and then add the shrimp. The jar of sweet bourbon mustard that I bought was roughly ¾ cup, so I emptied the entire thing into an 8x8 baking dish. Then I whisked in the paprika and the sugar. My girl friend suggested that I use the smoked salt from my specialty collection, so I did. It made a nice thick sauce. I had no problem whisking in the first quarter cup of oil, or the second quarter cup of oil, or even the third quarter cup of oil. I was actually pretty satisfied by how the sauce looked with ¾ cup oil. But, for some reason, I went ahead and added the last quarter cup, and the sauce couldn’t absorb it. It was a greasy mess! No matter how much or how hard I whisked, that last quarter cup of oil would not emulsify into the sauce. So I added the shrimp anyway and did my best to evenly coat them with the sauce. I skipped the parsley, celery, onion, and Tabasco. Mostly because I wanted to keep the dish simple, but partially because I was working from memory and forgot that there were other ingredients.

We served the Red Shrimp Remoulade as soon as the Creole Okra Gumbo and the Classic Red Beans and Rice were ready. I didn’t try any that evening because I knew that there would be leftovers. My girl friend and our special guest both enjoyed the shrimp that evening, but remarked that they tasted sweet. That was most likely due to my choice of sweet bourbon mustard as a replacement for the unavailable Creole mustard. I didn’t offer my girl friend any shrimp to take with her to DC because I was concerned that it may spoil on the train ride, despite being packed in ice.

Since I don’t ever eat mustard, I was hesitant about having so much shrimp left over because I was concerned that I wouldn’t like it. But I liked it well enough. Just like my guests said, the predominant taste was the sweetness of the sweet bourbon mustard. Still, I’m not sure whether I would seek out this recipe to repeat it.

Brennan’s Bananas Foster

Before my girl friend and I left for yoga in the morning, we compared the Bananas Foster recipe from her Page-a-Day calendar with the Bananas Foster recipe from the Saveur gallery. The Saveur recipe was the winner because it used two different types of liquor: rum and banana liqueur.

Throughout dinner, my girl friend looked forward to making Bananas Foster for dessert. She had once worked at a restaurant where they made Bananas Foster that they flambéed and then sprinkled ground cinnamon in the flames to create sparks. So she wanted to try that again. As we later found out, my girl friend was used to doing it with 151-proof rum over a Bunsen burner, so using 80-proof Goslings Black Seal rum over a household gas stove posed a greater challenge. But she got it to catch fire and sprinkled in the cinnamon to create the little sparkles. It was phenomenal!

The dessert itself was very good. The bananas were caramelized with brown sugar, banana liqueur, and Goslings Black Seal rum. The recipe said to use white rum, but my girl friend and I agreed that the dark rum would taste better. All three of us agreed that this recipe was a keeper.

The Bonus Round: The Sazerac

The Sazerac is the classic New Orleans cocktail, or so I’m told. Because my girl friend and I opted for lower octane Classic St Germain Cocktails with our Cajun/Creole feast, we fixed ourselves a pair of Sazeracs to accompany our eggplant camponata the following day. But rather than fix a pitcher of Sazeracs from the Epicurious cold weather whiskey cocktail recipe gallery, we opted to go to the website on the bottle of Peychaud’s bitters and look for the recipe there.

Of course, we did make some simplifications and modifications to the Peychaud’s recipe. I had used all the sugar cubes for the Orange 44 liqueur for the Chocolate Dinner, so we used one teaspoon of sugar for each drink. We definitely had enough of the proper Buffalo Trace Bourbon for both drinks. The recipe required Herbsaint, which we didn’t have, so we used Pernod instead. And, despite my girl friend’s bias against measuring implements, I used a measuring spoon to measure out the three dashes of Peychaud’s bitters.

The Sazeracs were amazing! They were a very nice balance of the bourbon and the anise. We probably ended up with more anise flavor in ours because we just stirred all the ingredients together in our glasses, rather than follow the more complicated recipe instructions.

The Verdict

There were so many leftovers from the Cajun/Creole feast with my really good girl friend from DC and our special guest that I didn’t have the time – or motivation – to explore any other New Orleans recipes before Mardi Gras rolled around. That’s not to say that I’ve entirely ruled out the prospect of a lovely New Orleans French Bread or a Fried Chicken and Andouille Gumbo; I just need a little time to recover before I go down that road again.