It's a Little Chilly, Let's Have Chili!

Although I'm a New Orleans girl at heart, I live in Texas now, and Texans love them some chili! Once you move here from a place like New Orleans, you learn to cook all over again, because you can't get your usual ingredients (seafood!  pickle meat!  Blue Plate mayonnaise!*), so you get some new favorites, like King Ranch Chicken, Texas Caviar**, and good ol' Texas chili.  I tend to like my chili considerably spicier than most Texans, it seems, but I've had to temper it down for my kids (though they enjoy a little kick, too!).  Some trial-and-error provided me with this yummy recipe.

Today was our first good "cold snap"*** of the season, and everyone rushed to the grocery store for chili fixin's (yes, I spelled that right).  I still can't bring myself to serve it over Fritos****, but I do like some cheese with my chili, and my mom always served chili over elbow macaroni, so I decided way back when to serve mine with baked macaroni & cheese.  Ohhhhhh, my, it makes such a delicious, rich, creamy dish out of standard Chili Mac!  I occasionally serve it with cornbread, but tonight it's going to be biscuits***** ... mmmmm!

Mmmmm ... can you smell it?  Yum.

TEXAS CHILI

Ingredients:

4 lbs. ground beef

2 onions, chopped

2 tblsp. minced garlic

2 15-oz. cans of tomato sauce

1 sauce-can of water

2 tblsp. cumin

6-8 tblsp. chili powder (be generous!)

2 tblsp. paprika

1 generous tsp. cayenne pepper

salt to taste

Brown the ground beef, drain, and set aside.  In the same pot, saute the chopped onions and minced garlic until the onions get translucent.  To the onions in the pot, add all the ingredients except the cayenne pepper and salt. Simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes.  Add the cooked and drained ground beef and the cayenne pepper (less if you're a sissy!) and simmer on an extremely low heat until you're ready to eat it.  Just before serving, taste it and add salt if needed,

I line my pan with foil for easy clean-up.
This is a service to my family, because she who cooks does not clean up.

BAKED MACARONI & CHEESE

Ingredients:

1 large package elbow macaroni

shredded cheddar cheese (lots!)

2-3 cups of milk

1/3 cup flour

1 tblsp. sugar

2 eggs

Cook the macaroni according to package directions.  Pour half of it in your baking pan (greased or lined).  Generously sprinkle the shredded cheese to completely cover the pasta.  Pour the other half of the pasta on top, and top that with even more shredded cheese.  Now it's time to make the custard that holds it all together and makes it creamy, rich and a little bit sweet!  In a mixing bowl, combine 2 to 3 cups of milk (just estimate how much it'll take to come up 3/4 of the way in your pan with your mac), 1/3 cup of flour, 1 tblsp. of sugar, and 2 eggs, and whisk it well.  Pour immediately over your macaroni and cheese layers.  Bake in a 375° oven for about 30-45 minutes, until the liquid has stopped bubbling and the cheese is beginning to brown on top.

Scoop out and serve in individual bowls and top with chili.  Mmmmm.  Comfort food.

Oh, you can go all out and round this out with a green salad, but I call the onions and tomatoes in the chili my veggies for the meal and just have some kind of bread (like I said, tonight it'll be biscuits!) and some Turtle Pie****** for dessert.  Y'all enjoy -- we will!

*I can actually get good ol' Blue Plate at HEB now, so I don't need to import it anymore!

**I'll post those recipes in the future!!

***Seriously, that means that the high was 60°.  Any colder, and people freak out instead of enjoying it.

****They call it Frito Pie.  I've actually tasted it and it's not too bad, I sort of like the crunch!  But I just can't deal with serving Fritos and telling my kids it's dinner.

*****Yeah, they're Pillsbury Grands.  No recipe forthcoming.  Homemade biscuits are delish, but I just didn't have it in me tonight.

French Bread

Growing up, nearly all our meals included some delicious, fresh French bread.  The crisp crust and light, meltaway insides were perfect compliments to almost any meal.  Cornbread was better with black-eyed peas, Italian bread was better with spaghetti, but French bread was the staple for anything else.

Real French bread, light and airy inside, crisp outside

New Orleans had many different bakeries that mass-produced French bread, but in this case, the words "mass-produced" had no negative connotation.  Every yard-long loaf was perfect, all the time. They were delivered to grocery stores in individual paper sleeves, which were all placed into a large brown paper bag and stood upright in the bakery department, never next to the sliced sandwich breads.  Some grocery stores made them in-house, but they packaged them in plastic bags, which ruined the crust.  Boooo.

Putting French bread in a sealed, plastic sleeve ensures
 that it gets soft and chewy outside and doughy inside.
Yuck.

Here in Texas, "french bread" has neither the shape nor texture of the real stuff.  Closer are "baguettes," but they're still not quite right.  So, my only option was to learn to make French bread.  I discovered it is actually quite easy!  This recipe is done in a bread machine until after the dough/manual cycle is finished, then completed in the oven.
  

This is what French bread should look like inside: full of air pockets, not layered.
And that deep tan crust should be crisp and flaky!

French Bread

Ingredients:

1.5 cups water

4 cups white bread flour (I use King Arthur)

2.5 tbsp. sugar

2 tsp. salt

1.5 tsp. fast-rise yeast OR 2.5 tsp. active dry yeast

In your bread machine, first put the flour, sugar and salt.  Stir lightly and build up the center to a mountain shape.  Make a well in the peak of the mountain.  I guess that would mean it looks more like a volcano - go for it.  Pour the water in around the outside of the mountain shape, and then carefully pour the yeast in the well.  You can immediately begin your cycle (depending on your machine, use the white, French, rapid or delay cycle), or leave it sit until you're ready to mix it up.Once the dough/manual cycle is complete, remove the bread dough and turn it out on a lightly-floured surface and carefully form a long loaf.  You may want to make two smaller loaves depending on the size of your oven.  Do not knead or punch down.   Let it rest and rise for about an hour (it may double in size, which is why you may want to make two loaves).  Preheat your oven to 350.  Brush the loaves with water (which will give a light-colored, crisp crust) or egg white (which will give a more caramel color, still crisp), or a mixture of the two, which is what I usually do.  I just barely brush with an egg-white, and liberally brush with water after that.  Bake for about 30 minutes.  Check often, since ovens vary.  Serve immediately, to dunk into whatever creole deliciousness you've already whipped up -- or make a po-boy!  Actually, po-boy bread is wider than French, but that's a whole 'nother blog post.

Roast beef po-boy, dressed*!

*"Dressed" in New Orleans means "with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise."

Sunday Breakfast: New Orleans Calais, an alternative to Beignets

Since I'm from the New Orleans area, I do indeed love me some beignets.  Those little puffy squares of deep fried dough covered in powdered sugar turn everyone into little kids again, blowing powdered sugar across the table, even unintentionally.  But there are other delicious breakfast treats that have been around even longer and served a purpose, too -- calais!  Also spelled "calas," there are very few places you can find them in New Orleans anymore.  Calais have always been on the menu at The Old Coffee Pot*, though.

Mmmmm ... calais and buttered grits, bless my little southern soul!

Calais are basically fried balls of seasoned rice.  They came into popularity in a time when nothing went to waste.  Every wife and mother saved leftovers (if there were any) of all kinds, and when there was leftover rice**, they made a delicious treat for their husbands who were walking to work and their kids to were walking to school.  During the winter months***, these delicious little treats also served to warm their hands when popped into their pockets.  I'm pretty sure it caused some more work on laundry day, when they had to remove those grease stains from the pockets of their loved ones' clothing, but at least their fingers didn't freeze!

The Old Coffee Pot - yes, you really do want to eat here.
Delicious AND beautiful!

Calais can be eaten alone or as a side, and they are served covered in powdered sugar.  They are so full of flavor, though, that they can overpower the relatively bland eggs and bacon, so I skip all that stuff.  Usually. The Old Coffee Pot offers them with grits, which I looooove, but no one else in my family will touch.  Boooo.  And I just hate cooking in the morning, so these are a very rare treat in my house. Yummy, though!

New Orleans Calais (Rice Balls)

Ingredients:

1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. nutmeg (I actually go a little heavier on this; call it a heaping teaspoon!)
4 tbsp. sugar
6 tbsp. flour
2 eggs
2 cups cooked, cold rice
cooking oil
powdered sugar

Mix the first six ingredients together thoroughly, then mix in the eggs.  Once completely mixed, start adding in the rice, making sure the rice is well-coated.  Heat up a small half-pot of cooking oil (has to be very hot, around 360°) and drop by tablespoons (or, if you have a larger serving spoon, that will make a nice-sized ball, too) gently into the oil.  Depending on the size of your pot, you can probably do about six at a time - more if you're using a larger pot.  Fry the rice balls until they are a dark golden brown.  Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on a cooling rack placed over a couple of paper towels to catch the grease drippings.  Serve hot with powdered sugar.  

*The Old Coffee Pot is located on St. Peter in the French Quarter, right next to Pat O'Brien's.  So after a long night of boozing it up with hurricanes in the courtyard next to the flaming fountain, you can run next door and sober up a bit with some piping hot coffee and delicious calais!

**Turns out, you HAVE to use leftover rice.  Freshly-cooked, hot rice just won't cut it.  It'll make a mushy mess.  Trust me.  Make your rice the night before and store it in the refrigerator overnight.

***Yes, New Orleans has a winter!  It may not snow every year (or every decade), but it is humid all the time and a wet cold is a bone-chilling cold!  We did sometimes end up wearing shorts on Christmas Day, though, so you really can't predict when that cold weather will arrive ... or how long it will stay.