Louie, Louie, crab Louis

If you order crab Louis and the waitress asks what kind of dressing you want on your salad, just walk out the door. Crab Louis has its dressing built into the dish. It is crabmeat. It is lettuce. But it's the dressing that makes it crab Louis.

Crab Louis
adapted from "Creole Gumbo and All That Jazz" by Howard Mitcham (Addison-Wesley, 1978, 180 pages)
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 large head (or 2 small) romaine lettuce
1 cup homemade mayonnaise
1/4 cup tomato sauce, or 2 tablespoons tomato paste
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tablespoon capers
1/4 teaspoon cayenne

1 pound fresh crabmeat, picked clean and squeezed dry

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Instructions
Wash the lettuce, remove the coarse ribs and shred. In a small bowl, mix the mayonnaise, tomato sauce or paste, lemon juice, capers and cayenne together. Add salt and pepper to taste. Blend in the lettuce and the crab, gently as not to break it up, until both are well coated. Serve in individual salad bowls.

Homemade mayonnaise

Ingredients
2 egg yolks
1/4 teaspoon Tabasco
1/2 teaspoon powdered mustard
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
White pepper to taste
16 ounces olive or canola oil

Instructions
Beat together the yolks and the seasoning ingredients. Add the oil, a drop at a time at first, then in a slow, steady stream. Keep beating until all the oil is absorbed. If it curdles, you have added the oil too quickly. Start over with a new bowl and an egg yolk. Beat the yolk, and add the curdled mixture to it slowly. The final mixture should be velvety, creamy and smooth, and it should have a full-bodied zest.

Jerry Brown takes the cake

In case you're not on Facebook, or not in the habit of looking at former (and future candidate for) California Gov. Jerry Brown's page, here's the recipe he posted for his mom's banana cake.

Bernice Brown’s Banana Cake
by Jerry Brown on Thursday, August 19, 2010 at 5:22pm

Cake
Ingredients:
½ cup butter
2 eggs
1 and ½ cups sugar
½ cup sour milk (1 teaspoon lemon or vinegar to make sour milk)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 ripe bananas, mashed (the riper, the better)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chopped walnuts
Directions:
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg yolks. Add milk with baking soda. Mix.
Put baking powder in flour, mix in gently. Add vanilla, banana and nuts.
Fold in beaten egg whites last. Mix barely, don’t over beat.
Bake in 3 greased layer cake tins at 325-350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Icing:
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter
2 and ½ cups powdered sugar
1 egg (may be eliminated if concerned about using raw egg)
1 teaspoon vanilla
A little cream
Directions:
Cream butter and sugar. Add egg and mix. Add vanilla. Add cream until frosting is the right consistency to spread.
Make the cake the day before serving.

In praise of hostels

I'm out here on a lovely deck overlooking trees and a small meadow, enjoying my morning coffee as the sun slowly rises, twinkling through dew-kissed leaves. Bees lazily check out the rose-of-Sharon next to the deck, and move on, not finding any blossoms open yet. The chirps of insects and birds intertwine and the air is still cool.

As pleasant as the morning is, my thoughts return to last night's dinner: spinach-and-ricotta-stuffed ravioli and a large salad of heirloom tomatoes, fresh oregano and marjoram, avocado, and butter lettuce, dressed with red wine vinegar and sunflower oil seasoned with paprika, salt and pepper.

I wish I could recommend the restaurant where we dined so simply yet well, but it was no restaurant. We ate in.

And for me, that is the beauty of a hostel: So many options, for a reasonable price. That is why I became a life member of  HI-USA (formerly AYH) many years ago, although sometimes years pass between visits.

Some offer great chances to meet people from all over the world; some are in beautiful spots; some require you to spend early mornings doing chores.

The Harpers Ferry hostel is one of the better ones, with two "family" rooms (for $40 per night for members) with coded locks, a well-appointed kitchen that only lacks sharp knives, an herb garden and selection of dried herbs in the kitchen, and large bathroom/showers segregated by sex. They have lockers available for those in the dorm rooms. The hostel is on a flat area on a hillside, with plenty of parking and room for campers ($10 for adults, less for groups and youth) as well. It has picnic tables, grills and a fire ring for cooler evenings. A nice big supermarket (where we bought the frozen raviolis, lettuce and avocado) is a few miles away in the town of Brunswick. The hostel store keeps a supply of organic canned soups, top ramen, frozen pizzas and ice cream bars for sale; and there's a fridge with free food as well. This hostel also comes with another perk: Free make-your-own pancakes from 7-10 a.m., with raisins and chocolate chips to sprinkle in the batter, and plenty of syrup and soft margarine on the table.

During the summer, it stays open all day, a real convenience for Appalachian Trail hikers who can't time their arrival to precisely 4 p.m. The only chores required are to wash and put away your dishes, and to strip your bed and put the linens and towels in a hamper on your way out.

The guests were about evenly split between youth and older guests; only two, young women from Germany, were backpackers who stopped for a comfortable night with showers.

On the map above (click on it to see it at its full size), the hostel is just south of the junction of Keep Tryst and Sandy Hook Road; you can either drive to the Visitor Center and take a shuttle to the old town of Harpers Ferry (1 on the map) and other sites, or you can walk to the town via the C&O canal path, which has a pedestrian crossing into the town over the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers.

For more information on the hostel, click HERE. For more information on Harpers Ferry, click HERE.

Chili? Or just a tasty vegetable stew?

If you've never been to Terlingua, Texas, on the first weekend of November, you don't really know what chili is. Yes, you can buy (click on the book cover above) a copy of "A Bowl of Red," Frank X. Tolbert's bible on the legendary stew, and follow the directions, but to taste, all in one place, the chilies that have been judged the best of their respective communities, and to immerse yourself in the culture of the pod, is an experience not to be missed.

Started in 1967, the cookoff features a number of different chilies, but to be a Texas chili, the mixture must:

• Not contain beans
• Not contain anything that doesn't turn red or brown after four-plus hours of cooking.

I love a good bowl of red. But I don't eat that much red meat anymore, and when I do indulge in grass-fed beef from a local farmer, I prefer a nice steak.

So my chili these days is one that will have my Texas friends rolling their eyes. Just taste it, though, before passing judgment. It may not be what you call chili, but you'll have to admit it's a tasty vegetable stew (which is what Frank X. Tolbert reportedly called Dave Chassen's famed Beverly Hills chili, which  contained beans).

Vegetable Chili
Serves 8

Ingredients
1 medium eggplant
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1/2 cup olive oil
2 onions, chopped
6 cloves minced garlic
1 large red pepper, diced or one large jar diced pimientos
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 28-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained, but reserve the liquid
1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 15-ounce can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
2 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon oregano
1 tablespoon basil
1 teaspoon pepper
Salt to taste
1/2 bunch of chopped parsley
2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill
Juice of 1/2 lemon

Instructions
Cut eggplant into cubes and sprinkle with salt. After an hour, pat dry. Sauté in 1/4 cup of the olive oil until almost tender and set aside. Add remaining oil and sauté onions and garlic until softened. Add to eggplant. Put on low heat and add all but the last four ingredients. If cooking on the stove, leave uncovered and stir frequently for 30 minutes, then add the last four ingredients and cook for another 15 minutes. If using a crockpot, cover and cook for at least an hour; add the last four ingredients 15 minutes before serving.
Serve over brown rice. Offer shredded cheddar cheese, tiny-diced fresh jalapeños or hot sauce and sliced scallions as toppings, and serve with corn chips or cornbread.

Note: If eggplant is out of season, use a large can of black olives, chopped, and obit the kosher salt.

Bacon&eggs alternative

Big breakfasts aren't so big anymore. As much as I love eggs, I don't eat them every morning: one or two times a week, tops. But if you can't face another bowl of cereal, maybe it's time to get a little creative.

I made these potato bites from a large Yukon Gold potato that I had baked extra for a previous dinner, skinned and refrigerated. Once cool, these potatoes are firm and slice easily (white rose and red potatoes would work, too, but not russets). Low-fat cream cheese tastes fine on these. If you've never bought a bag of real bacon bits, you're missing out. They keep for a long time and have a lot less fat than bacon you cook yourself, then crumble.

Using smaller or fingerling potatoes, these would also make super appetizers.

Potato bites
Serves 1-2

Ingredients
1 large Yukon Gold potato, cooked, cooled and sliced into 1/4-inch rounds
2 ounces cream cheese
2 tablespoons bacon bits
Minced parsley (optional)

Instructions
Put cold potato slices on a paper-towel covered plate. Top each slice with a teaspoon of cream cheese, made into a little ball, then flattened. Sprinkle with bacon bits. Microwave for a minute or until hot. Sprinkle with minced parsley if desired. Serve.

Sorry I didn't get a good photo of this to post. We ate them too quickly!

Diving into endive, with a scalloped edge

Summer's heat makes it hard to face spending much time in the kitchen, where it can get even hotter than the inferno outside. Yet, one cannot live by grill alone, even though that is tempting.

And salads. Salad after salad after salad is not good for the creative soul, although creativity and a composed salad can lend variety to summer's meals.

For something a little different, try scallops served on endive. To get the whole leaves from the tight little endive, keep trimming from the bottom of the core as you pull off the outer leaves. If the leaves seem a little limp, wrap them in damp paper towels and stick them in the refrigerator for a bit. (Save the small leaves on the core to slice into a salad later.) You can soften the cream cheese in the microwave if you have a soften setting; I zapped it twice at the 1-stick-of-butter setting and it was soft but not melted. As for the scallops, look for the cream-colored and rosy ones; they have a richer flavor.

Serve with saffron rice and sautéed green beans or spinach, and you'll have an elegant dinner on the table in less than 30 minutes.

Diver scallops on endive
Serves 2

Ingredients
1/2 pound medium to large scallops (about 8)
McCormick's mesquite seasoning
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 ounces cream cheese
1 large endive, washed and separated into enough leaves for each of the scallops

Instructions
Wash and dry scallops, set them in a single layer on a plate and season on one side with the mesquite seasoning. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a medium cast-iron skillet over medium heat. When hot, put in the scallops, seasoned side down. Meanwhile, spread about a teaspoon of the cream cheese on the endive leaves, and arrange on two plates. The scallops should cook until golden brown on each side and just until firm, about 8 minutes total. Drain on paper towels as you finish preparing the meal, then place one scallop on each endive leaf (they can be picked up and eaten easily). Serve.

When new ( Cholula ) is not improved

I really love Cholula hot sauce. For one thing, it's still made in Mexico. And it has that cute little wooden cap. And it's made from arbol and piquin peppers, not Tabasco or habanero. Not that there's anything wrong with the others; it's just my personal taste.

And for years, the bottle has never changed, never updated. I thought it was frozen in time, with the woman on the front always looking a bit weary, but managing a Mona-Lisa smile.

Yet on the shelves this week, next to the original bottles, was something NEW: chili-lime. With a GREEN wooden cap. I had to try it.

Disappointment to the max. Did you ever pick up a packet of Limón at gas station in an area with a high Latino population? It's a lemon-lime salt that you can lick off your hand (and at a bar, you follow it with a shot of tequila). Well, the chili-lime flavor of Cholula tastes like they took the original recipe and dumped in several packets of Limón in it.

At least they didn't mess with the original.