Cajun without a cookbook

Growing up with a Cajun mother, you'd think I would have been eating gumbo, jambalaya, étouffée and blackened steak every night. But no. My mother was a wonderful cook, but my Polish father, with one exception, pretty much called the dinner shots. That one exception was steak night; my mother insisted that we have rice, not potatoes, when she cooked steak, and the au jus flavored the white long-grain rice.

So it wasn't until I latched onto a copy of Paul Prudhomme's "Louisiana Kitchen" that I began eating Cajun food regularly at home. Oh, it was great; finally I didn't have to wait to go to Polly's or some other little greasy spoon near Elton (my mother's hometown) to get my Cajun food fix.

But any cookbook should be a road map, not commandments chiseled in stone. Take my jambalaya last night. Prudhomme has a ham and sausage jambalaya, a rabbit (or chicken) jambalaya, a chicken and tasso jambalaya. They are all pretty good, but most of them call for some tomato sauce or canned tomatoes. That just exposes Prudhomme's New Orleans training; most Cajuns do not cook with tomatoes, most Creoles do.

Tasso isn't expensive in Louisiana; but in many other places, it's rare and dear. And that defeats the purpose of Cajun cooking: making what's available taste wonderful. Tasso, for those of you who aren't familiar with Louisiana ingredients, is a smoky seasoning meat not unlike ham.

What is available here in Virginia is ham chips. They are fairly smoky, very salty, and work well as seasoning. I also had a pack of chicken thighs from the last time I cut up a trio of chickens. Voilà! I could work with that.

Lori K's jambalaya with chicken thighs and Virginia ham chips

Ingredients

Seasoning mix

3 California bay leaves, broken in half

1 teaspoon white pepper

1 teaspoon dry mustard

1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon ground sassafras leaves (filé)

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground thyme

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

4 tablespoons olive oil

10 ounces Virginia ham chips

6 chicken thighs (bone in)

1 1/2 cups chopped onion

1 cup finely diced celery

1 cup chopped bell peppers

2 large cloves garlic, minced

2 cups uncooked long-grain or basmati rice

4 cups chicken broth

1 teaspoon liquid smoke

Instructions

Combine seasoning mix ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.

In a large cast iron skillet, heat the oil until it begins to smoke; add chicken breasts and cook until browned on both sides. Turn down the heat a little and remove chicken pieces to a large ovenproof casserole. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Cook the ham until it sizzles and add the vegetables and seasoning mix, stir well and continue cooking until browned, about 10 minutes. Add the rice and cook another 5 minutes, scraping and stirring the mixture. Put the broth in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Put all the contents of the pan into the casserole with the chicken. Add the broth, and put in the oven. Cook for 45 minutes to an hour, until all the liquid is absorbed. Remove bay leaves and serve immediately.

Save the Gulf oyster

Federal officials plan to ban sales of raw oysters harvested from the Gulf of Mexico unless the shellfish are treated to destroy potentially deadly bacteria, the Associated Press reports.
The Gulf region supplies about two-thirds of U.S. oysters.
About 15 people die each year in the United States from raw oysters infected with Vibrio vulnificus, which typically is found in warm coastal waters between April and October. Most of the deaths occur among people with weak immune systems caused by health problems like liver or kidney disease, cancer, diabetes, or AIDS.
"Seldom is the evidence on a food-safety problem and solution so unambiguous," Michael Taylor, a senior adviser at the Food and Drug Administration, told a shellfish conference in Manchester, N.H., earlier this month in announcing the policy change.
Some oyster sellers say the FDA rule smacks of government meddling. The sales ban would take effect in 2011 for oysters harvested in the Gulf during warm months.
The anti-bacterial process treats oysters with a method similar to pasteurization, using mild heat, freezing temperatures, high pressure and low-dose gamma radiation.
Treated oysters are "not as bright, the texture seems different," said Donald Link, head chef and owner of the Herbsaint Bar and Restaurant in New Orleans.
"This is an area the government shouldn't meddle in," Link said. "What's next? They're going to tell us we can't eat our beef rare?"
Until the 1960s, raw oysters were rarely eaten in the summertime. (The old adage was never eat oysters in the months without an R in them.) But changes in harvest patterns and advances in refrigeration and post-harvest treatment have made the industry a year-round business. About three-fifths of the Gulf's oysters are harvested during the warm months.
The FDA contends treating oysters would not affect the taste and would save lives. In 2003, California banned untreated Gulf Coast oysters and since then the number of deaths dropped to zero. By comparison, between 1991 and 2001, 40 people died in California from the infection.
The rule would not affect oysters harvested outside the Gulf. Oysters are harvested up and down the West and East coasts, but the bacteria is not found in such high concentrations there.

Lemons, and their well-preserved punch

Preserved lemon is an easy condiment to make, and can a punch to usually bland dishes such as baked fish, chicken or veal. It makes mayonnaise taste yummier in a tuna fish sandwich, and can be used anywhere you need an essence of lemon and salt. Somehow, when the lemon sits in its brine, it becomes at once more lemony and less tangy, and you can eat the entire lemon, rind and all.

Your homemade version probably won't look as pretty as the tiny lemons in a jar from Morocco, but you won't be paying upwards of $8 for them, either.

Easy preserved lemon

You'll need:

1 half-pint jelly jar with good-fitting lid

2 lemons (no wider in the middle than the inside of the jar)

Kosher salt

Instructions

Sterilize the jar with boiling water and cool. Slice one lemon thinly; throw away the ends. Put in a teaspoon of salt in the bottom of the jar. Put each slice in one at a time, sprinkling each with kosher salt, until the entire lemon is in the jar. Sprinkle a little extra salt on top. Juice the other lemon and pour the juice over the sliced lemon and salt. Put the lid on tightly and shake to mix well. Keep out on the counter for about a week, shaking and turning upside down at least once a day. Put the jar in the refrigerator and the slices will be ready to use in about two weeks. When you're down to the last couple of slices, it's time to make a new jar. The lemon will keep in the refrigerator for at least 6 months.

Here's a simple recipe from blogger Kerry Saretsky to get you started once your own preserved lemon has mellowed:

Parmesan, Preserved Lemon, and Thyme Wafers

Serve these on top of a salad of baby spinach dressed lightly with lemon juice, lemon zest, olive oil, salt and pepper. Lemon heaven.
- makes 9 wafers -
Ingredients
2 tablespoons finely chopped preserved lemon
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
Place the finely chopped preserved lemon pieces in a mesh strainer, and rinse very well. Dry on paper towels, and pat very dry.
Mix together the dry lemon pieces, the Parmesan, and the chopped fresh thyme leaves. On a Silpat- or parchment-lined baking sheet, heap little tablespoon mounds of the cheese mixture, leaving room for them to spread as they melt, and bake in the oven for 4 or 5 minutes, until golden. Allow to cool completely on the baking sheet, then lift off with a spatula and allow to rest on paper towels until cooled and hardened. If you're ambitious, you can form them into tubes while they are still hot.

Want to waste not? Tips to use leftovers

Making a great pot of chili last night, my thoughts wandered to recipe cooking vs. instinctual cooking. Most everyone, who has basic cooking skills and instructions that make sense, can cook from a recipe and have a dish that turns out well. (Of course, everyone who conveys a recipe hopes the instructions make sense, but you'd be surprised at how many don't, even ones that make it into a cookbook.) But the instinctual cook uses his or her senses on how a dish should be and goes on to make it unique. The advantage to this method is that one can use what is at hand, the freshest produce and most inexpensive meats, even bits and pieces of previous dinners, commonly derided as "leftovers."

The dishes that lend themselves most easily to this are melanges, and almost every cuisine has one or two of them. My standbys are chili, jambalaya, gumbo, spaghetti, curry and soups (five options can get most anyone through a week; if you have others, please let me know).

For the chili, I started with a pound of ground turkey and a tablespoon of olive oil. Turkey is bland, but much like tofu, it picks up the flavors around it. I season it as it's cooking with garlic, onions, cumin and oregano. And of course, chili.

I prefer straight chili. Prepared chili powder is OK, but it's a combination of chilies, cumin, oregano, salt and sometimes other spices, and you don't know how old the other spices are that go into it, since the smell of chili overwhelms the others. I use ancho powder if I'm in a hurry; otherwise, I like to use dried whole chilies (a combination depending on how hot I want it) stemmed and seeded, soaked in a little boiled water for 45 minutes, then puréed.

If I'm preparing a bowl of red, I add a can of beer and stop right there. But turkey doesn't hold up nearly as well as beef for that. So my turkey chili is what the sainted Frank X. Tolbert would refer to as "a rather tasty vegetable stew." (Those were the fighting words that led to the first chili cookoff, which gave birth to a cultural phenomenon that will continue this year in Terlingua, TX, Nov. 5-7.)

I added a 28-ounce can of diced tomatoes, then found in the refrigerator the following: 1 eggplant, which I had sliced and salted in preparation to sauté, but had a change of plans; 1 1/2 yellow bell peppers, which had been charred and the skins removed; a lonely carrot; a half cup of refried black beans. I rinsed the eggplant slices, trimmed the skins off them, then chopped them and the peppers coarsely before adding them and the beans to the pot. I peeled the carrot and shredded it into the pot. Then everything cooked for about three hours. The texture, no doubt thanks to the refried beans, was just right; usually if the chili is a little soupy at the end, I add a little masa harina to thicken the stew.

One taste and you, too, would know why it drives me crazy when people say they'd rather eat fast food than leftovers.

Now, no discussion on chili would be complete without a little travelogue on Texas, so here's one on Big Bend National Park, which will give you a little taste of Terlingua country.

"Clueless"? Silverstone's "Diet" is kind, but kinda naive

Here's a short cookbook review that got rather short shrift in the Washington Post's redesigned Health section yesterday:

The Kind Diet: A Simple Guide to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Saving the Planet (Rodale Books, $29.95)

Alicia Silverstone is famous for her role in the '90s teen film "Clueless" and as a real-life vegan activist. In "The Kind Diet," Silverstone provides three approaches to cooking vegan: "Flirting," for people trying out meat- and dairy-free foods; "Vegan," for experienced flirts; and "Superhero," which is basically vegan with fresh, local foods grown in-season. The book feels straight out of La-La Land: lots of exclamation points, italics and such sentences as, "Get ready to meet the beautiful, delicious, God-given foods that will rock your world." Her intentions are good, if a little naive - "I believe that following the Kind Diet can lead to world peace" - and, to her credit, she gets preachy only when criticizing the "Nasty Diet" of meat, dairy, sugar and processed foods. The book is like a hijiki-tofu croquette (a seaweed appetizer that Silverstone recommends in the recipe section): People already interested in veganism might like a bite, but for everyone else, it's easy to turn down.
- Rachel Saslow

Fast and French

French food, for most people, conjures up hours in the kitchen, striving for perfection of sauces and presentation. Not so for Jacques Pépin, born and kitchen-trained in France. He wrote "Fast Food My Way" (Houghton Mifflin, $30, 250 pages) five years ago, and although it's not a beginner's cookbook (there are no notes on basic cooking techniques), most of the recipes are, as promised, fast - which translates as uncomplicated and straightforward. Pépin also has included many menus, which is a great help in balancing out a meal.

It's a small book, but has lovely and inviting photographs by Ben Fink, all in bounce-off-the-page color.
The cookbook has a wealth of vegetable recipes and salads, and a few recipes for most kinds of seafood and meats. A substantial dessert section includes a tiramisu that is not unlike the one I hit upon when assembling one for a dinner for 100, and I'm sure it is just as delicious.
The recipe I used last night was definitely a winner: chicken breasts with garlic and parsley. Pépin says he adapted the idea from a traditional French way of cooking frog legs. Well, if he can adapt, so can I. I didn't have parsley, but my basil is loving this cool, wet weather, and I love the way it works with garlic and lemon.

Fast chicken breasts with garlic and basil

(adapted from "Jacques Pépin: Fast Food My Way")

Ingredients

3 boneless skinless chicken breasts (organic preferred; each about 7 ounces, cut into 1-inch cubes)

2 tablespoons rice flour (Pépin=Wondra)

1/2 teaspoon each salt and pepper

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil (Pépin=parsley)

1 tablespoon butter (Pépin=2 tablespoons unsalted)

1 lemon, quartered

Instructions

Dry the chicken cubes with paper towels and toss them with the flour, salt and pepper in a bowl. Heat the oil in a 12-inch skillet until very hot but not smoking. Add the chicken cubes and cook in one layer turning occasionally, for about 3 1/2 minutes.
Meanwhile, combine the garlic and parsley in a small bowl. Add the butter and the parsley mixture to the skillet and sauté for 1 minute longer, shaking the skillet occasionally to coat the chicken. Divide among 4 plates, add a wedge of lemon to each plate and serve within 15 minutes.

Editor's note: Want this cookbook? Click on the photo or the name of the book to go to Powell's Books; it's $21 there.

Top 10 Riskiest Foods

This is definitely worth reposting.

Top 10 Riskiest Foods Regulated by the FDA
The list includes leafy greens, eggs and tuna

By: Candy Sagon | Source: AARP Bulletin Today | October 5, 2009

The good news is chocolate is not on the list. The bad news—ice cream is.
Some of the healthiest, most inviting foods on your grocery list—lettuce, eggs, ice cream—are the most likely to make you sick, says a Washington, D.C., nonprofit advocacy group.
Researchers at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) on Tuesday announced their own grocery list of the 10 riskiest foods regulated by the Food and Drug Administration. The most hazardous, in order: leafy greens, eggs, tuna, oysters, potatoes, cheese, ice cream, tomatoes, sprouts and berries.
50,000 cases of food-borne illnesses
According to CSPI’s study, those 10 foods account for nearly 40 percent of all food-borne outbreaks linked to FDA-regulated foods between 1990 and 2006. Nearly 50,000 illnesses—from temporary stomach cramps to disability and death—were reported as a result of the outbreaks. And those illnesses are only the tip of the iceberg. For every case of salmonella poisoning reported, for instance, federal officials estimate that another 38 cases go unreported.
Meat, pork and poultry, which are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, were not included in the research. Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of CSPI’s food safety program, says the group chose FDA-regulated foods because the federal agency is responsible for “80 percent of the food supply,” including produce, dairy products and seafood, as well as packaged goods like peanut butter and refrigerated cookie dough—both of which were involved in recent food-poisoning outbreaks.
Leafy greens, No. 1 culprit
Many of the items that made the top 10 list are healthy, vitamin-packed foods that nutrition experts frequently urge Americans to eat. “Leafy greens hit a nutritional home run, but they’re starting to mimic the well-known risks of ground beef,” says Sarah Klein, an attorney with CSPI and lead author of the study. This is partly because, like the ground scraps and bits collected to make hamburger meat, the popular bags of prewashed, ready-cut greens are collected from a variety of sources. “A large batch can be contaminated by just one item,” notes DeWaal.
Leafy greens, which include iceberg lettuce, romaine, spring mix, spinach and cabbage, sickened nearly 13,570 people who reported becoming ill—an estimated 30 percent of all the reported illnesses caused by the top 10. This includes the highly publicized 2006 outbreak of food poisoning and deaths traced to bagged spinach contaminated with E. coli bacteria.
Eggs, the second most risky food in the study, are now subject to new FDA regulations that went into effect this summer. The rules require egg producers to test for salmonella—the cause of 95 percent of egg-related food illness, according to CSPI—and refrigerate eggs during storage and transportation. The agency, in announcing the new rules in July, said it expects them to help decrease the 30 deaths annually caused by contaminated eggs.
Watch that homemade ice cream
Salmonella in raw and under-cooked eggs was also the culprit when Americans got sick eating ice cream. Almost half of the ice cream outbreaks could be traced to homemade ice cream made with under-cooked eggs, the study found.
That familiar deli standby, potato salad, pushed potatoes onto the risky foods list, says Klein. “Potatoes are always cooked before eating, but they’re likely being cross-contaminated by other items like mayonnaise or meat,” she says. More than 40 percent of potato-related outbreaks were linked to foods prepared in restaurants and food establishments like grocery stores and delis.
Toxic tuna
Researchers were also surprised to find that scromboid poisoning, from the hard-to-destroy scromboid toxin, made tuna the third riskiest food in the CSPI study. The toxin is most commonly found in fresh tuna (think sushi and seared tuna in restaurants) but cannot be destroyed by cooking, freezing, smoking, curing or canning.
Symptoms of scromboid poisoning often include flushed skin, headaches, abdominal cramps and heart palpitations. More than 65 percent of the outbreaks reported from contaminated tuna occurred in restaurants, the study found.
Although the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 76 million food-borne illnesses occur annually, Craig Hedberg of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health notes that “our food supply is relatively safe, with one illness for every 3,000 to 4,000 meals eaten.” Still, he adds, “new challenges to food safety will continue to emerge and we need a strong and flexible regulatory response.”
Help for the FDA?
The FDA has been criticized for its lax oversight, particularly in the wake of recent illnesses and deaths from tainted spinach and peanut butter products popular with children.
This summer, the House approved a bill that would provide sweeping new powers to the FDA for the first time in 70 years, including stepped-up inspections and the ability to mandate a product recall. The Senate is expected to take up its version this fall and Erik Olson, director of food and consumer product safety with the Pew Health Group, hopes to see a new bill enacted “before Christmas.”
Candy Sagon is a food and health writer in Washington, D.C.
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