Thursday, April 16, 2009

Louisiana, Texas, and the Rocky Mountains...all in one week!

It's been a delicious week in American Regional. Monday kicked off with the Cajun and Creole cuisines of Louisiana. Before Zack and I met in college, I'd never even been to Louisiana, but after more than five years of food-filled visits, I consider myself pretty well-educated in its cuisine. However, prior to Monday I'd never actually cooked any of it myself before.

The Louisiana menu was full of classic dishes: gumbo, stuffed mirlitons (called chayote squash outside of the bayou area), red beans and rice, maque choux (a creamy, rich stewed corn dish), crawfish etouffee, jambalaya, trout with pecan butter, pecan pralines, beignets. My group was on entree duty, and I volunteered to make the jambalaya. It's one of those dishes that seems straightforward enough to make at home—I love one-pot meals!—and I wanted to learn the tricks that make the rice so delicious and flavorful. We used a classic combination of chicken and spicy andouille sausage—I like seafood jambalaya the best, but this is what we had to work with since shrimp were needed to stuff the mirlitons.

Jambalaya turned out to be very simple, provided you have some pre-cooked andouille, which we did. We made sausage from scratch back in Garde Manger class and I'm fine with never doing that again, thanks. I broke down a chicken and cut the meat into bite-size pieces, then browned it in a pot with a little oil. Then, I took out the chicken pieces and browned the vegetables: the "holy trinity" of onions, peppers, and celery replaces traditional mirepoix in Cajun and Creole cooking. Some diced lean pork went into the pot with the vegetables as well. Once all of that had browned, I threw in the spicy sausage and all of the spices—our recipe called for equal amounts of black pepper, cayenne, chili powder, dried thyme, ground cloves, dried basil, and mace. New Orleans food certainly is not bland!

At this point, the rice goes into the pot and is browned for a few minutes before the chicken stock is added. The chicken pieces go back in too, and I brought the pot to a boil, then cut the heat to a simmer and covered it to let the rice cook. That took about 35 minutes with occasional stirring. Then it needs just a few minutes uncovered to let the rice dry out a little, and you're done! It was spicy and rich and flavorful, just how I remembered it from Mother's in the French Quarter. We molded it and scattered the plate with fresh herbs for presentation—Chef P. requests that we plate everything in fine-dining style, but for this one I'm all for serving it in a big messy heap.

Jambalaya goes refined

Other highlights from Louisiana day included the shrimp-stuffed mirlitons, which were almost as good as the ones I was first introduced to at Zack's parents house. They went really well over a delicious corn-and-boiled-peanut salad that another group made. People seem to either love or hate boiled peanuts—I love them! They're just regular peanuts boiled in the shell in salted water, sometimes with spicy Cajun seasonings, and they take on a totally different flavor and texture. In Louisiana, you can get them at roadside produce stands and even gas stations. Zack remembers a "peanut man" who came around selling them when he was little. Whenever we visit, he's always on the lookout for this "peanut man"...no success yet, unfortunately.

Beauty plate of shrimp-stuffed mirlitons over corn-and-boiled-peanut salad

The etouffee was extremely rich, as it should be, and the crawfish were tasty even though we got them frozen. There's nothing better than fresh crawfish straight from the shell.

Crawfish etouffee—not the most attractive dish, but very delicious

On Tuesday, we moved into the Midwest. The cuisine of the "Central Plains" isn't very easily defined with specific dishes—but they use a lot of beer, bacon, sausages, and beef. It's not the lightest fare, to say the least. We were at the sides table and I made some braised cabbage that I actually liked a lot. Naturally, it was made with bacon and braised in Guinness (and some apple cider).

Beer-braised cabbage

Here we plated some of the cabbage and our other side of corn-and-wild rice cakes with another group's pork medallions, which were served with a blueberry sauce.

Pork with blueberry sauce, braised cabbage, and wild rice cakes

Moving along, we headed into the Rocky Mountain region. Chef P. talked about the abundance of wild game and berries out there, but admitted that there wasn't much to talk about in this cuisine: "You know what their main crop is out there? Rocks." It was probably a good day to be stuck at the dessert table. We made an amazingly moist blueberry cake that was served topped with cream that we'd warmed in a pot with a vanilla bean. The class devoured two large cake pans of it. Our group also made some skillet cornbread and lemon chess pie, which I always thought was Southern, but apparently not.

Melt-in-the-mouth blueberry cake with cream

Just for the record: it was Passover this week and I was avoiding anything leavened, so I allowed myself only a tiny taste of cake—to make sure it came out okay, obviously! And as for all the rice on Louisiana day, I have adopted Sephardic culture and they're cool with rice during Passover. Yeah...we all do religion differently, people!

Next, we tackled Tex-Mex cuisine and the soup table. Chef P. explained that the day's menu was actually more authentically Mexican than Tex-Mex, which in this country has come to mean fake-Mexican food like nachos and jalapeno poppers. Our class made chicken with mole, the intense sauce made with chocolate and chiles; chile rellenos; matambre, a roulade of flank steak filled with greens and hard-boiled eggs; tres leches cake, etc. In my opinion, this was the best day ever to find ourselves at the soup table. We made two of my all-time favorites: tortilla soup (which is one of my staple dishes at home) and gazpacho (which I'd never actually made myself before, but I ordered it at pretty much every meal on my trip to Spain!) Speaking of, Chef P. clarified that gazpacho is not indigenous to Mexico, but to Spain. She didn't write these menus and admits that sometimes they are a bit misguided! We also made empanadas, which are not really Tex-Mex but South American.

Back to the soups. The grilled vegetable gazpacho is definitely a recipe that I will make again on my own. Grilling the zucchini and onion and roasting the peppers before pureeing them gives the soup a wonderful, slightly charred flavor. We gave it an extra kick with some siracha and rice wine vinegar and garnished with perfectly diced cucumbers (knife skills!) and tortilla strips that we fried ourselves. I brought some of this home and Zack loved it—I guess he's like a little kid who will only eat vegetables when they're hidden, because the pureed soup includes several that he normally doesn't touch!

Grilled vegetable gazpacho

The tortilla soup was very different from the one I make at home. Mine is a tomatoey base thickened with corn tortillas that are pureed with the broth. It may have originally been a recipe that I found somewhere, but I usually just tweak it a little each time I make it. In class, we made a brothy soup that was more like chicken soup gone Mexican. This is probably the more authentic version. Both have corn kernels and are flavored with cilantro and lime. I like tortilla soup both ways—my version is more of a hearty meal-in-a-bowl, while the brothy one, like chicken soup, would be perfect medicine for a cold.

Tortilla soup, brothy-style

Finally, we hit California cuisine. I don't have much to elaborate on—my group made salads and it was a fun, laid-back Friday if not all that interesting. Plus, I forgot my camera. The spinach salad I made was pretty tasty though. How could it not be—it was tossed with warm bacon dressing, goat cheese, toasted walnuts, crispy chopped bacon, and some dates. It's a salad that's really about as healthy as a steak dinner. Other chefs from throughout the school always come by our class after production time for some lunch, and I've never seen them hit the salad table so hard!

2 comments:

  1. Oh yum....everything sounds amazing. My husband so wants to go to NO (I've been)--you may have pushed me over the edge with your descriptions. Excuse me while I go clean up my saliva mess! Cousin Judy in Buffalo

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  2. im so freakin jealous!!! i cant wait to get there!

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