New Orleans’ Creole Remoulade Sauce

Creole Remoulade Sauce is truly a recipe of New Orleans. It is a very tangy and full-bodied sauce usually served with boiled shrimp or seafood. Derived from French cuisine and adapted by Creole cooks, the sauce eventually making it’s way onto the menus of some of the oldest and finest New Orleans’ restaurants. With Mardi Gras celebrations and their pageantry and traditions in progress in New Orleans, I’m reminded of these restaurants and what made them famous. Continue reading

Teen Chef: Let’s Bake Mardi Gras King Cake Broiches

It’s Mardi Gras season in Louisiana and today we’re making King Cakes. This year I have teenager, Jessi, to help me make these sweet, rich and delicious yeast breads known as King Cakes. King cakes fill the grocery stores and hundreds are sold in New Orleans during the Mardi Gras season. It is fairly easy to make a king cake yourself at home using this recipe. The key is using a heavy-duty mixer to do the kneading.

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Easy Cook: Kung Po Inspired Tilapia

I sent my husband to the grocery store to purchase catfish. He brought home tilapia. It’s not the same fish; you can’t deep fry a delicate tilapia filet–it will fall apart. I remembered a recipe for a quick-to-prepare Chinese dish for “Kung Po Cod” in our local newspaper using cod fish and lots of peppers. Why not use the tilapia instead? The dish is fantastic; but about the only similarity with the real Kung Po dish is the peanuts. Continue reading

A Large Batch of Colorful Brined Freezer Coleslaw

If you live in the South, tradition says you must eat boiled cabbage and blackeye peas on New Year’s day for good luck and fortune. And the grocery stores are full of bins of large cabbages. Several days after New Years, one of the bins still had cabbages–they were on sale for $.25 a pound. Of course I purchased one. But rather than cooking more boiled cabbage, I’m making a brined coleslaw and freezing the left-overs.

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Traditional New Orleans Shrimp and Grits

I’m starting out the New Year with a very traditional New Orleans’ recipe for “Shrimp and Grits.” We ate this dish several years ago on Christmas morning at a little cafe in the business district of New Orleans. The grits were creamy and smooth; the shrimp seasoned just right; about the best I’ve eaten.  I’ll begin the New Year with one of my favorite recipes that I’ve learned to like since moving to Louisiana. Continue reading