Low-Country Boil

Who wouldn't love a meal with no dishes afterward?  Or silverware?  We spread newspaper, strained the boil and dumped the boil on the table: shrimp, corn on the cob, red potatoes and andouille sausage.  Seasoned with the traditional boil packet from the grocery store and voila: casual dining.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. 

Add 15-20 small potatoes (red) and cook for 10 minutes

Add the shrimp boil seasoning

Add 4 andouille sausages cut into 1/2 inch disks and 8 corn cobs (small, frozen) and cook another 3-5 minutes until the corn starts to get tender. 

Last, add 1.5 lb medium shrimp (about 30 shrimp) and cook for just 1 minute, until they're heated through and no longer translucent.

Drain and serve.  

Serves 4.

Hachis Parmentier - Comfort Food with a High Flash-to-Bang Ratio

This was comfort food of the highest order.  Hachis Parmentier, the french name for shepherd's pie, is essentially chopped beef under a mashed-potato topping.  Hachis means chopped, but I had to look thumb through wikipedia to learn that Parmentier was a nutritionist who convinced the french to eat potatoes.  And we are thankful for his work!

Parmentier had nothing to do with the flash-to-bang ratio though - that term comes from our army-based family member who has shared the ever-useful term with us.  High flash-to-bang?  You get a lot of flash for the size of the bang.  Low flash-to-bang?  It wasn't really worth the effort.  You can see how this could apply to cooking, right?

This dish had flash.  We made it on a Saturday and therefore had time to babysit a large pot of simmering beef while it became tender and made bullion.  We then had time to boil potatoes and mash them up.  Then we had time to chop the cooked beef into delightfully small pieces (this actually took relatively little time since it was falling-apart tender).  The hands-on time wasn't terrible, but it was worth every moment.  And I am really glad we made a double batch!  It freezes well and the leftovers are even better.

It was agreed by all that this was a keeper, and worth making from scratch.  There's a full recipe and a shortcut version using ground beef in "Around my French Table," or you can find recipes online.

Basque Potato Tortilla - French Fridays

This evening was our first foray into French Fridays with Dorie and it was a gastronomic success, but it took some getting there!

I managed to get home a little early this evening so we could make this recipe from Around My French Table - it was really tasty, but even with the extra time, we ended up having a pretty late dinner; it probably took about an hour to get the Tortilla and some veggies on the table.  We were making two new recipes, so that adds some time, flipping back and forth between pages, trying to keep track, but I think the main culprit this evening was the potato. 

The recipe calls for 1/2-1 inch chunks of potato, cooked in the cast-iron skillet for about 20 minutes.  It took closer to 40 minutes for ours to be cooked through.  I think I'll try this again, with the cheater's step of microwaving the potatos (tossed in olive oil) first, just long enough to get them started.  I don't know if that'll make them stick to the pan, but since you have to wipe the pan clean before you put the egg mixture back in, it seems to me that you could cook the potatoes in a non-stick pan first, then heat the cast-iron skillet for the final oven-browning.

As you can see, it was a beautiful dinner, but since it was a Friday, we had the luxury of not rushing dinner.  This is just our first shot at one of the recipes in the book, and it was so good we'll work our way through the others, for sure! 

My daughter really enjoyed showing off her salting technique, while the potatos were cooking, so it was time well-spent, nonetheless.

I can't post the recipe here (part of the rules - besides, you should buy the book - it's beautiful!) but it's essentially a fritatta with cooked potatos, rosemary, garlic and onions.  Probably good left over too - not that we'll know....

Duxelles

Duxelles - they're all the rage right now (apparently!).  They've turned up in two of the cooking magazines I get and I was reading about them in two different cookbooks recently.  So, what are they?

Lots and lots of mushrooms.

Duxelles is a prepared mushroom dish that you can use as a flavoring, topping or taste-booster in other dishes.  Like salt, stock, anchovy paste or other enhancers, it's an addition that boosts other flavors - and something we've never tried before.

So, into the food processor went all the mushrooms...

And out came this giant quantity of spongy, chopped mushrooms.  We cooked them with olive oil, some onion, garlic and leeks until all the liquid was evaporated - that took some time!

Then we used them in a salmon dish and a potato gratin.

Comparing the two we had a clear winner.  Including the duxelles with the potato dish gave the potatos deeper flavor.  With the salmon, they were a good note, but a little lost in the saucy fish-flavored broth that collected while the dish cooked.

Lucky for us, the recipe made a significant quantity of duxelles, so we've got two freezer bags we'll be using for upcoming recipes to see how we can use this treat best.

If you want to make some of your own, here's a recipe:

Duxelles

Process 1 lb of white mushrooms in the food processor until finely chopped.  Only put about 6 mushrooms in the food processor at a time, working in batches, pulse about 15 times until the mushrooms are chopped, but not pureed. 

Heat a teaspoon of olive oil in a pan and add:

1/4 cup chopped onion and 1 clove minced garlic, a dash of salt and pepper.

Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until most of the liquid has evaporated.  About 25 minutes.

Remove from heat and stir in 1/4 cup minced parsley.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

The recipe can be multiplied to produce extra for freezing.

We used about 1/2 cup duxelles in the gratin.