Rainy Day But NOT Monday!!

It rained all day long. From the time I got up until the time I got home. It may still be raining now. Of course the heaviest was after I backed out of the garage and drove to school. Just poured down...then between the car and the building. I am so glad for that London Fog raincoat with a hood! I carry a purse and a bag filled with a book, my current knitting project, regular playing cards, Uno, Scrabble Slam, and a set of dominoes...think I've mentioned that before...just in case the teacher didn't leave any work...or not enough.

First period...had a student with an attitude at the very beginning of class. She didn't get any better. After a back and forth to the office, I sent her the second time. She is now in detention. Hopefully she won't try to convince me again that as a freshman she has an empty class slot, and that she's not who she really is. I sure wish that they would leave their attitudes at home!

Thanks for all the wonderful comments full of envy and jealousy. Yes, my friends, I can read between the lines! LOL I am having a blast with my new floor and chair. Tomorrow I plan on sorting through the last of the things on my guest bed and do a bit of quilting.

Sam said that he was going to do a cardboard mock-up that would represent the height and size of my requested cutting table to make certain that it was what I wanted. Silly man.

Another of my comments pertained to a post on Christmas Eve when I made gumbo. http://keepyouinstitches.blogspot.com/2009/12/cooking.html

I use Tony Chachere's wild shrimp caught off the coast of Louisiana. Cindy wrote:

Thanks for buying wild caught Louisiana shrimp!

Cindy Adams-Ardoin
Food Scientist
Tony Chachere's

Now, how neat is that?!

Cajun Cooking

I got up this morning and got ready for school. Walked in and the secretary looked at me. "You're not scheduled today." I think I'm the one who made the error, but no problem. I dropped by the library and did a couple hours volunteer work. Stopped by the grocery store for a bell pepper. FINALLY! I spotted some mirlitons. Huh? You ask. In our stores they are called by the Spanish name...Chayotes...a squash. And the best that I can spell the pronunciation of the Cajun French mirliton is: mur' lay tawn Be sure to say it with a Cajun French accent. ;o)

When I got my Cajun cookbooks, I noticed some recipes for mirlitons. I asked my Cajun co-worker and Jerry told me what they were. Anyway, I purchased a couple along with the bell pepper and headed home. When I got home, Sam was in the shop. I called him and told him that lunch would be ready about 12:30. Of course I had to explain what I'd done.

Menu
Chicken Sauce Piquante
Mirliton Au Gratin
Rice
Orange stuff ;o)

Chicken Sauce Piquante
3 or 4 lb. hen, cut in pieces
cooking oil
2 small onions, chopped
1/2 bell pepper, chopped
2 buds garlic, minced
2 ribs celery, chopped
1 large can tomato paste
1 can mushrooms, medium size
salt, red pepper, black pepper
1/2 cup wine
Fry pieces of chicken in oil until brown. Remove chicken from pot. Add onion, bell pepper, garlic, and celery to oil and cook until transparent. Add other ingredients and chicken. Add seasoning. Cook over medium heat until tender, will take from 45 minutes to 1 hour. Serve with rice.

Just two of us, so I reduced the amount of ingredients. I intended to use some thighs I purchased, but they were in the freezer, and these two boneless skinless chicken breasts were in the refrigerator.
I put all the vegetables in the oil except for the fresh mushrooms. I'm not much on canned mushrooms. After the vegetables were almost transparent, I added the mushrooms.

Jonathan gave me this seasoning (from New Iberia, Louisiana) when he visited a loooong time ago it seems. It is very good on poultry.
The chicken piquante is simmering on the back burner. Time for the mirlitons.

This
is a mirliton.

Mirliton Au Gratin

mirliton
medium white sauce
buttered crumbs
salted water
grated Cheddar cheese

Wash mirliton and cut into cubes. Boil in one inch of boiling salted water until tender, about 10 or 15 minutes. Drain. Place in buttered baking dish. Cover with white sauce and sprinkle generously with grated cheese and some buttered crumbs. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and bake at this temperature for about 15 minutes.

I kid you not. That is the recipe as printed in the cookbook. I HATED recipes like that when I was learning to cook. At least this one doesn't say "bake in a moderate oven until done." Sheesh.

This is what I did:

2 mirlitons. Sam asked about peeling them but the recipe didn't say to peel so I didn't. I tasted it raw...very, very light squash flavor.

Medium White Sauce
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk

Melt butter in a saute pan, whisk in flour and cook a few minutes so the white sauce won't taste like raw flour. Whisk in milk and cook until slightly thickened. (Okay...this is called "white sauce." I'm from Texas and call this gravy.) Add a little salt and pepper. Some people don't like the black pepper flakes in this and use white pepper. I don't have white pepper.

I added about 1/2 cup grated cheese to the sauce.

I haven't made bread lately and have NO bread crumbs. So I crushed a handful of saltine crackers. It didn't brown, but everything was bubbling, so I pulled it out of the oven. Ready to plate.Ready to serve.
The recipes came from this cookbook:
Oh...Almost forgot the Orange Stuff.

1 package of orange Jell-o (Regular or sugar-free) Do NOT make Jell-o
1 carton Cool-Whip (whichever variety of plain that you like: regular, fat-free, sugar-free)
About 1/4 pound cottage cheese
2 cans Mandarin oranges, drained

Pour the dry Jell-o over the Cool-Whip and stir until the Jell-o is incorporated into the Cool Whip. Spoon in the cottage cheese and orange slices. Stir. Refrigerate.

Cooking

Looks like chocolate doesn't it?! But it's not! It's roux! How does a Cajun make chili? First he starts with a roux.
This is going to be gumbo though. I cheated with the roux. When Drew down in Freeport/Lake Jackson told me that he used jarred roux...well, if it was good enough for a real life Cajun, then it's good enough for me. Besides, it saves an hour! I forgot to look for andouille, so just put some bacon grease in the bottom of my soup pot; added a cup of roux and a tablespoon of Penzey's seafood soup base. When it got hot, I whisked in a quart of water. The added chopped celery, bell pepper, and onion; along with some minced garlic. Don't forget the salt, pepper, and some kind of fire...I use a seasoning mix Sam's sister Linda makes. What else...Oh! Two bay leaves.
I added a couple of cooked chicken breasts that were hiding out in the freezer. Chopped them and threw them in the pot. Let that simmer an hour or so before adding the shrimp and sliced okra.
If you are not an okra fan, omit it. If you liked tomatoes, add some diced. A recipe is a guideline, not rocket science! Did you pay any attention to the shrimp in the above photo? It's Tony Chachere's...wild shrimp caught off the coast of Louisiana. Try very, very hard not to purchase Chinese shrimp.I made a pan of rice, then we sat down and ate...didn't get a photo of it 'plated.' This is going into the refrigerator for tomorrow's lunch. (I'm not cooking a big meal until Saturday when John and Brook may come in. I also put a couple of 1 quart freezer containers aside in the freezer for future meals.
While the gumbo was cooking, I did some more baking. Another of my New York style cheesecakes. I was excited to try my new glass-bottom springform pan. (More about that later.) The crust is a sweet pastry. Set aside 2/3 cup in the refrigerator and pat the remainder in the bottom of the pan.
Bake it, cool, spread the remaining dough around the sides.
Pour in the filling and bake.
Cool a bit, run a thin-blade knife around the perimeter and try to release the latch. Well, the latch released but the damn pan didn't. Sam had to help me get it open. Then I had to take a long blade knife to cut the cheesecake from the bottom. It stuck. This is the springform pan from hell! As good an idea as I thought the smooth glass bottom was...I won't be using this again. I was so ticked off that I forgot to take a photo. Tomorrow...

My other metal pan was (1) Made in Germany and (2) was a thicker metal. This pan was (1) Made in Taiwan and (2) was so thin I thought it would bend when we were trying to get it to slide open enough to release the bottom. This is Norpro. Pass it by!
Faked you out with the chocolate look-a-like earlier, so here's the real thing. FUDGE!! Waiting on it to cool.
All cooled and sliced and missing a piece or two. whistle whistle whistle
The recipe can't be simpler. It came out of this cookbook.
The best recipes are the desserts, of course! German Sweet Chocolate Cake, Original Banana Pudding...

Jambalaya, Crawfish Pie, Me-o My-o

Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me oh my oh
Me gotta go pole the pirogue down the bayou
My Yvonne, the sweetest one, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we'll have good fun on the bayou.


Chorus:
Jambalaya, a crawfish pie and a file gumbo
'Cause tonight I'm gonna see my ma cher amio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-oh
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou.


Thibodeaux, Fontainbleau, the place is buzzin'
Kinfolk come to see Yvonne by the dozen
Dress in style, go hog wild, me oh my oh
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou.


Jambalaya, a crawfish pie and a file gumbo
'Cause tonight I'm gonna see my ma cher amio
Pick guitar, fill fruit jar and be gay-oh
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou.
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou.
Son of a gun, we'll have big fun on the bayou.


Thank you Hank Williams Sr.! I haven't always been a fan of Country & Western music. Very few teenagers share music tastes with their dads. But many of these old songs that I rolled my eyes at way back then...I remember word-for-word. ;o)


Why am I into C&W tonight? timetries saw my post and recipe for Gumbo. While she and her husband were on their Daytona FL bike week trip, he ate Shrimp Jambalaya really liked it. tismetries asked if I had a Jambalaya recipe. I found a dozen or more recipes in my cookbooks. I settled on one that seemed really familiar and cooked it tonight. Yep. Correct recipe.


First, last night after supper I took my one and only package of frozen south Louisiana wild Gulf shrimp out of the freezer. (Do you know how hard it is to find shrimp in grocery stores not near the Gulf coast that's not from Thailand or China?! Just pert near impossible!) Anyway, I put the package of rock hard frozen shrimp in a dish and left it on the counter. I asked Sam to remind me to put it in the refrigerator before we went to bed. An hour or so later, he stuck his head in my sewing room door on his way to bed. I wrapped up what I was doing, walked into the hall, looked toward the 'other' end of the house to find it dark. Then, I went to bed. When I walked into the kitchen this morning...yep. There sat a bag of room temperature shrimp. Sigh. Sam's office is off the kitchen. He walked past the shrimp on the kitchen island as he left the room and turned out the light. Drats. I bought more shrimp this afternoon. If he was fishing any at all, I would've labeled the other bag and thrown it back in the freezer...as it is...all wasted.


Anyway. Here's the picture of what's left after our supper:


And here's the recipe.

Jambalaya

3 tablespoons bacon grease (or vegetable oil)
3 tablespoons flour
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium green (bell) pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce
2 cups water
2 cups cleaned raw shrimp
salt and pepper to taste
parsley
green onion top, sliced
2 cups cooked rice

Make a roux with the oil and flour, cook until light brown. Cook until onions are soft. Add tomato sauce, water, shrimp, salt, and pepper. Simmer 30 minutes. Add cooked rice and simmer five mnutes longer. Serve hot. Garnish with parsley and green onion top.
tismetries! I hope your husband enjoys his Jambalaya!!!

Dogwoods are blooming! If we didn't need the rain, I'd say unfortunately it's raining and I can't get a decent photo yet. But we do need the rain. This was taken about 7:30 a.m. on the way to school Wednesday morning. I hadn't realized the dogwoods were in full bloom until Sam mentioned it. This tree is in a pasture so is almost a "lolly-pop" tree. In their natural state in the woods, the larger trees filter out the sunlight and the dogwoods seem to grow and bloom in feathery layers. When the weather breaks, I'll try to get some more photos.