Recipe: Pineywoods Grillades and Grits

To purchase: Crescent City Farmers' Market Cookbook. This book has been placed in the Comfort Food From Louisiana blog store as Amazon has it for far less a price! Help support a farmers' market and cook wonderful recipes for your family: win-win.

Poppy Tooker is a long time New Orleans food instructor. She also has been a promoter, a culinary activist, of perserving the New Orleans food heritage like the century old dishes of Calas (Rice Cakes) and Creole cream cheese. She strongly supports the Crescent City Farmers Market in New Orleans and wrote this cookbook to help support the market.

The cookbook is 216 pages, published by marketumbrella.org and focuses upon telling the centuries long history of food markets in New Orleans since 1718 along the Mississippi River. Tooker founded the Slow Food Movement in New Orleans 11 years ago and her group is credited with helping revive the Farmers Market after Hurricane Katrina.

To purchase: Crescent City Farmers' Market Cookbook. This book has been placed in the Comfort Food From Louisiana blog store as Amazon has it for far less a price! Help support a farmers' market and cook wonderful recipes for your family: win-win.

What else is featured in this new cookbook? There are 125 featured recipes from New Orleans area chefs, local farmers and even shoppers who frequent the market! The forward is by famed food author and chef Alice Waters who also is a farmers' market advocate.

Pineywoods Grillades and Grits

From: New Orleans's Famous Chef Poppy Tooker, from “Crescent City Farmers Market Cookbook”

Serves: 6 - 10, depending upon your appetite!


Ingredients:

3 lbs. round steak

Flour (for dusting steak)

Bacon drippings or oil (for sautéing steak)

1/4 cup bacon drippings or oil

1/4 cup flour

1 onion, chopped

3 stalks celery, chopped

1 bell pepper, chopped

1 (1-lb.) can crushed tomatoes

1 bay leaf

1 clove garlic, minced (we add about 5 cloves garlic at our house)

1/2 tsp. thyme

Salt and pepper

Cayenne pepper

Hot cooked grits (or rice at our house)

Directions:

1. Dust steaks with flour and sauté in bacon drippings until browned on both sides. Remove steaks from pan and keep warm; deglaze the pan with water, then pour pan juices into a bowl and reserve.

2. Put drippings and flour in skillet and cook, stirring constantly, to make a dark roux.

3. Add onion, then celery and bell pepper; sauté until vegetables are translucent. Add reserved pan juices, tomatoes, bay leaf, garlic, thyme, salt, pepper and cayenne; mix well. Simmer at least 10 minutes.

4. Add steaks and simmer over low heat until steaks are fork tender. Serve with grits.

Note: Grillades recipes often cut the steak into serving pieces. Chef Tooker prefers to leave them whole. Others like to cut the steak into strips like we do at home because sometimes your skillet isn't large enough to leave the steak whole or in large pieces! Personally, I like to brown the meat on more sides for that wonderful caramelization browned taste.

To purchase: Crescent City Farmers' Market Cookbook. This book has been placed in the Comfort Food From Louisiana blog store as Amazon has it for far less a price! Help support a farmers' market and cook wonderful recipes for your family: win-win.

Thank you for visiting and have a great weekend!

Recipe: Shrimp Biscayne

Another version of Sauteed Shrimp Image by Pabo76 via Flickr

From Denny: This recipe comes from the area of Grand Isle just off the Gulf Coast of Mexico at land's end of the state of Louisiana. It's where everyone goes deep sea fishing and keeps a small camp to enjoy their weekends of fishing.

It's also the place that gets wiped out repeatedly by big storm hurricanes like Hurricane Katrina four years ago and now Hurricane Gustav this past year. Insurance companies are not crazy about insuring anything that close to the water any more, at least not without an outrageous premium like say a $50,000 deductible for an 8 x 10 foot tool shed. For over a century there has been a thriving small community in Grand Isle but times are looking tough for them now.

Seafood recipes abound in this fishing community. Enjoy this one that was published in our favorite regional magazine, Country Roads.

Shrimp Biscayne

Yield: Serves 1

5 21-25 count shrimp, tail on, peeled and deveined

11/2 oz. olive oil, 80/20 blend of pomace and extra virgin

7 slices jalapeño, pickled

8 pieces garlic, slivered

1 tsp lemon zest

1 tsp. house seasoning (Cajun seasoning, lemon and pepper, your choice)

In a small sauté pan add the oil, add seasoned shrimp, cook on one side and turn over and then add the garlic, finish with jalapeños and zest.