Gumbo Z'herbes

I saw the original recipe in the May 2013 issue of Food & Wine magazine.  It's a meat 'n' greens stew, and takes advantage of all the tasty spring greens hitting the markets (or coming up in your garden) at this time of year.  As a stew, you can make it in advance very nicely...the first time I tried this recipe, I cooked it fully in the morning and put it in the crockpot to keep warm until we got home that night.  It also freezes beautifully.

Btw, "z'herbes" is shortening of "fines herbes"...a mix of fragrant, flavorful green herbs such as tarragon, rosemary, thyme, parsley, lavender and so on.  It's pronounced "zayrb", if you're a French linguistics nerd like me ;)

The OR calls for particular amounts of particular greens and particular amounts of particular cuts of pork...I think of it more as guidelines ;)  I LOVE that I can throw in that half a head of cabbage that's left after making cabbage 3 different ways for a regular side dish, the rest of the collard greens left over after making sausage-stuffed collards, the nubbin of romaine lettuce left over from 2 salads.  Use turnip greens, beet greens, mustard greens, chard, kale, spinach, collards, spring mix, romaine lettuce, iceberg lettuce...about 3 lbs. of whatever is green in your fridge or garden.

And you can throw in handfuls of oddball greens like carrot tops (if you get carrots with the frondy greens still attached), second-year parsley (oddly, my parsley survived our winter and is coming back up and preparing to bolt as biennial plants do), watercress or arugula that you scavenge out of your early garden.

Clockwise from left: Ham hock, chopped hamsteak
with thyme, andouille

I'm also using up the last of our locally-raised hog.  When you buy a whole animal like that, you wind up with...well...weird bits.  Bacon ends.  Bony sirloin roasts.  Smoked hambones.  Tiny pork chops that are too little to serve by themselves.  I'm throwing all that stuff in this stew.  You can use fresh pork shoulder or loin, smoked pork, sausage links (andouille is traditional, and is the only thing I've bought special for this stew), ham hocks, hamsteak, chopped ham, neck bones...about 3 lbs. total.

When you chop up all those greens, it's a LOT.  You'll need an 8 quart or larger pot.  And then you only add 2 quarts of water to that pile.  It seems like too little.  It's not.  Trust me.  The greens cook down and give off their own liquid to make a flavorful broth that the stew is built on.  You do not want too much water here.  Here's how to tell if your tiny amount of water is boiling when you can't see it under a mess o' greens...put the pot lid on, turn the heat to high, and when there's condensation on the underside of the lid, you're good to go.

Lastly, the OR calls for file powder which I don't keep in my pantry.  File is a flavoring as well as thickening ingredient.  I add extra flour to compensate for the lack of file.  Use 2 tbsp flour instead of 4 tbsp and 1 1/2 tsp file powder if you want.  You can always add some beurre manie at the end if your stew seems too watery.

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Pumpkin Soup and Pumpkin Muffins

Oh look!  There I am, reflected upside down, in the spoon!

I was reading a newspaper article recently that claimed Halloween was the only "major" American holiday that didn't have a signature food or meal associated with it...Thanksgiving has turkey, Mother's Day has brunch, St. Patrick's Day has green beer, the list just goes on LOL

That statement rang true at first, but as I thought more about it, I realized Halloween does have a signature food...the pumpkin!  I think most of us tend to think of pumpkins as edible only in pie form, but they're part of the winter squash family and as such, are versatile menu players. 

Peeling a fresh whole pumpkin for a recipe is an undertaking, and I prefer when possible to use canned puree (not pumpkin pie filling which is actual pumpkin plus a bunch of other stuff).  The following recipe for soup (which I made for our pre-trick-or-treating repast) only calls for 1/2 a can, so I made muffins with the remaining puree...less waste = less cost = less aggravation.  I am brilliant ;)

The soup recipe is from the Frugal Gourmet Cooks American.  You can make this soup up to the point of adding the scallops and milk and fridge or freeze it (be sure to include scallops and milk as part of the freezer kit to finish the soup).  Just reheat the soup base to a simmer, add the milk and scallops and simmer 5 minutes to finish.  Or if you don't have front-end time to make the soup in its entirety, prep and group the ingredients for next-day or same-day cooking: onion/celery/garlic/ginger in one bowl, flour/spices in another, stock/Worcestershire/Tabasco in a bowl, pumpkin/squash cubes in yet another and scallops/milk saved for last. 

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Pepper Pot Stew

The authentic and original version of this recipe comes from the Frugal Gourmet Cooks American and dates from the 18th century.  It may have been one of George Washington's favorites, and if it's good enough for a founding father, by golly, it's good enough for me.

Except...the protein in the original (and authentic) recipe is tripe.  Cow stomach.  I'm going to let you, dear reader, digest (haha!) that thought for a moment.

I am profoundly respectful of families and cultures that use "everything but the oink" (or moo) including organ meats (side note: how awful is it that the general term for organ meats, "offal", is a homophone of "awful"?).  I wish I could count my family among their rank.  But I've tried, and tripe is unfortunately never again going to grace our dinner table.  It's one of the very, very few foods about which I say this.

I want to make it clear that the issue may have been that of inexperienced and inexpert cooking techniques (as it was the one and only time I've tried making tripe) rather than the meat itself, but until I meet a variety meat cookery expert who shows me both a delicious finished dish including tripe and also how to prepare it, it ain't happening.  But if you know what you're doing with tripe, 1) please do use it and 2) call me.

Back to the stew recipe...the combination of aromatics for this stew is mouth-watering, tantalizing as it wafts from the stew pot.  When you make this, be sure to open your windows and make your neighbors jealous.  It's a fabulous base for a stew using any protein you want.  Up until the addition of the (possibly improperly prepared) tripe, this was by far the best stew I've ever made.  Now that I make it with stew beef, stew lamb, veal shoulder, beans, or cooked poultry, it IS the best stew I make.  You could even make this is a wholly vegetarian stew by using oil in place of the bacon fat and rounding out the stew content with lots of hearty fall veggies like butternut squash and cabbage.

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Chicken and Sausage Gumbo

If you're wondering what to do with your garden okra (or just like some Cajun cookin'), here is your recipe!  If I don't have enough okra to cook as a side dish for the whole fam, I slice it and throw into a freezer bag and keep adding as more okra comes in.  When I've got 1 1/2 cups, I make gumbo.  This is also a good way to use up leftover cooked chicken or turkey (hello Thanksgiving!).  You'll need about 2 cups cubed.

Like all stews, gumbo is gorgeous reheated.  Make it ahead for next-day service or freeze it in its fully-cooked form.  You can also make a freezer kit for the stew if you prefer.  You'll have to cook the roux before making the freezer kit, so give yourself plenty of time.

Here is the I Screw Up So You Don't Have To portion of the program...brown the meats in a skillet and make your roux in your soup pot (if you're making the soup start-to-finish, ignore this if you're making a freezer kit).  Or clean your soup pot really well after browning the sausage and chicken and before making the roux.  Any "browned bits" stuck to the pot after browning will act like a magnet for the roux and cause it to scorch.  Yuck.  Remaking a roux doesn't really cost much in terms of ingredients, but it does cost a good bit of time.

Making the characteristic Cajun "red" roux isn't much different than making a light roux for white sauce.  You just cook it longer.  But it is a bit like playing chicken...you want to cook it as dark as you can without burning it.  This is one time when stirring the pot CONSTANTLY really is necessary.  I turn off the heat when I achieve peanut-butter colored roux, though some recipes encourage an even darker color. 

Last note...the Cajun mirepoix or Trinity is onion, celery and green bell pepper.  I use carrot instead of celery here as I'm cooking around a food sensitivity, but feel free to use either.


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Caribbean Ratatouille

The South Beach cookbooks (whence the original recipe here comes) just say summer...lots of veggies, in all flavors and colors.  The OR for this dish calls for a variety of veggies that were pretty easy to locate in my grocery stores when I lived an hour away from South Beach...calabaza squash, chayote, green plantains...but which are hit-or-miss finds now that I live in the Corn Belt.  What follows is my Midwestern Caribbean Ratatouille which takes advantage of the current agricultural overlap in late summer and early fall produce.  It's full of color which means it's full of nutrients and vitamins...talk about cooking the rainbow!

This is a fast and light stew...goes together in less than 20 minutes once all the veg is chopped and the seasonings measured and sorted.  It *can* be frozen once it's cooked, but I think it loses a bit of its bright, fresh flavor.  It is perfect though for prepping ahead for same day or next day cooking.  Just chop all the veg, sort into containers, and combine the cooking liquid and seasonings for fast-fast dinner execution.

When you "peel" an acorn squash, don't sweat getting every last bit of peel off.  Once the squash is cooked, the peel will come away very easily from the squash meat.  Note: If you do use a green plantain instead of a green banana, start it with the squash and onion...they're more like potatoes than bananas when they're green and unripe.

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Beef and berry stew

WHAT kind of stew??  (I can hear some readers asking already)

Beef stew.  With blackberries.  Calm down, it's delicious.  And easy with only 5 ingredients.  And seasonal.  And a lesson in our nation's cultural heritage.  According to the Frugal Gourmet (from whom the original recipe comes), this is a Sioux recipe that would have been made with bison meat charred briefly over an open fire with wild berries picked at the height of summer. 

This is a great recipe for me as my blackberry plants only produce a handful of berries at a time toward the end of the season, where most blackberry recipes call for several cups.  If you use frozen berries and plan to make freezer kits, one 12 oz. bag will make 2 batches of this stew so go ahead and get double the beef and broth and make one batch for dinner and one batch into a freezer kit.

Stew beef is a more convenient choice than a slab o' buffalo IMHO. And cooking it in a crockpot instead on the stovetop is a far more convenient choice.

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