Make this this week. Bring me a piece.

Mine usually aren't quite this pretty, but I bet they taste better....                                                                                                   (I didn't take a picture of my cherry pie from this weekend, and yes, I'm regretting it)

I have recently written about my literary love affair with cherries.  Oh, lady macbeth, how do you make me delightfully somber.

But, let's be honest, we don't pit all the cherries for fun.  Really, we don't.  We pit them for a reason, and here it is mostly for cherry pie.  And I've recently discovered that a cherry can take fruit salad from blah to luxury in a hot second, or we've put them in a salsa, or in a fruit compote to top pavlova or white chocolate almond torte.  Okay, so there are a ton of ways to eat cherries, but Pie remains our favorite (prepared) way. 

Food 6/5/11-6/11/11

Food on the Ocean

We just got back from a fabulous week away from real life with my dad and my stepmother, Carrie. And a few interlopers.

It was awesome.

It was not real life.

Real life began this week.
I prefer the beach.

Well, I probably wouldn't after a while. But for now...


When a family goes on vacation, apparently, they still need to eat.  There are a couple of options about food. You can eat out, you can cook a bunch of food and freeze and take, or you can cook while down there.

We don't particularly like to eat out, in general. That needs clarification. I love, love to eat out. But, for me to enjoy, my requirements are as follows:

• The joint almost always be locally owned and operated. Chains just don't produce a good product, by and large.  There are always exceptions, but.... 
• The food must be as good or better than food I can cook. 
• And there shall be no discipline needed during the meal.
• Or the joint be Krystal or Taco Bell or Cheap (Tex) Mexican.

The first qualification and second qualifications sound quite snobby, but when you like to cook, it's very painful to pay for food that costs more and tastes worse than what you can do at home.  And by 'very painful' i mean 'mildly annoying'.  Regardless, the fourth qualification should alleviate snobby accusations.

All that to say, eating out at the beach isn't really on my to do list.  It results in mediocre, over priced meals interrupted by "sit down, Eason."  "use your fork, Collins" "sit down, Eason""Ada - remember how we talked about facing the knife inward?" "sit down, Collins." "Paul - can you help clean up the water spill?" "sit down, Eason."  "Ada - No, I don't know the exact difference in size between large and jumbo shrimp"  "sit down, Collins."
And so on and so forth.  None of it is bad.  I do it most nights at the supper table.  Which is fine.  And good.  And part of an important proccess.

But it's not something I'd like to pay to experience.


I could cook and freeze.  But I don't like pulling meals out of the freezer.  I have a few things that work really well like this, but only a few.  And I cannot do a week of casseroles.

So, we cook down there.  Which I enjoy, and have learned to bring my knives and a couple of pans.  Note to self - next year, bring a cutting board and some kitchen towels.

So, what did we eat?

Saturday Night 5/28:  Spicy Spinach Lasagna
Sunday Night 5/29:  Went to see Paul Thorne sing.  He's awesome.  And Funny. And great dancing music. We ate a smorgasbord of left overs and vendor distributed hot dogs. 
Monday Night 5/30: Redfish Annalowrey 
Tuesday Night 5/31:  Carrie created some awesome roasted garlic french alfredo
Wednesday Night 6/1:  Chicken Romano 
Thursday Night 6/2:  Elite Style Cheese and Onion Enchiladas
Friday Night 6/3: Carrie made shrimp scampi, but I missed out.  I'm sure it was divine!

It was all good, and the only day I felt like I spent a lot of time in the kitchen was on Monday.  But it was Carrie's birthday dinner.  So it was worth it!

I measured out my spices and grouped all of my ingredients together before I left for the trip.

It's the way to go!  Prepare well before you go and then cook down there!

We had a great week.

Redfish annalowrey

My favorite restaurant in Jackson is Walker's Drive-In. It's just good. Others are good as well, but not as consistently great as Walker's.

One of it's most bestest menu items is Redfish Anna. It's been on the menu since I can remember ordering it for the first time some ten years ago (perhaps much longer), and it's always been great.

It is a paneed redfish with creamy crabmeat and lemon butter on top. Usually served with mashed taters and either asparagus or thin beans. It's just amazing...

My favorite cookbook, I think, maybe.... Okay fine, in my top five cookbooks is this one:

I got it as a gift from a dear friend, maybe for a birthday, or maybe for a just because present. i don't know, becky sue, when was it?

Anyway - it is the recipe book from my favorite town in the world, Oxford, Mississippi.
I fell in love there, I nurtured my love of food there, I married there, I taught my baby to love the park and pool and also to walk and talk there.

And I ate. A lot.

I'm realizing at this moment in my writing that I cannot do a post on Oxford/Square Table and on Redfish Annalowrey or it will be novella length, so perhaps I'll do a series on cookbooks, because, well, I take them to bed like some women take romance novels.

And, and you'll be shocked at this: I have opinions about cookbooks.

So, I was flipping through Square Table some years ago - right after I received it, and I saw this recipe for Paneed Redfish.

I'm not a huge fish girl - I'm a shrimp girl, but you won't find me eating Salmon, Ahi Tuna (although I'll mow down a tuna melt), or many other little swimmers. But I love redfish.

Mainly because of my adolescent introduction to Redfish Anna.

So, I'm flipping through, see Paneed Redfish, read it, and think "I've found redfish anna, but really it's even better because it has shrimp on top instead of crabmeat, which I tend to prefer"

And I made it. And I've never had a dirtier kitchen or a more inefficient night (I was a toddler cook at the time), but it was SO good. And then I tinkered with it, and became a much better cook, and now it is mine. All mine.

So, here we go.

Early in the day - say 1 pm ish - (it is not necessary to start this early - just a tip for your cooking energy/sanity), chop up an onion - medium to large. small to medium dice. Put it in a pot with about 3 - 4 T butter. Do not turn on.

Then take a can of artichoke hearts and drain it and put them on your cutting board.


Then go at them like you've got a chance to chop up the precious comic books of your least favorite high school teacher. Or some other thing you have a secret desire to destroy.

And in a few minutes, you'll have:


And you'll feel better.

Add those to the pot. Put the top on.


Walk away.

Now hear this. Butter, artichokes and onions will not go bad in the span of an afternoon. This way you can get an annoying prep work step out of the way, cut your cooking time later by twenty minutes, and feel better about life. Do not listen to people about the boogie man of going bad things.
Butter takes a good couple of days to go bad at room temp. I have a friend whose dad insists on soft butter in the morning with his breakfast. Her mother puts it out for him each night. Never has there been an adverse reaction (except perhaps to his demanding nature.... =) ).

Now, later in the day, after you're ready to make the sauce for real, as early as 2 hours pre meal and as late as 45 minutes pre meal, come back to the stove.


Turn on pot. Medium heat. Stir occasionally. Let onions and artichokes cook down, you'll want to eat it with a spoon.

After about 10 minutes, grab the flour.

Flour is the best thing with which to thicken a sauce or soup, it just has to be done well.

Dump in 3 T.

Stir vigorously and turn down to low.

Now, grab the two best ingredients in the history of white sauces. Maybe in the history of the world.
Heavy Cream and Dry Vermouth.

Trust me.

In a measuring cup, put 1 cup of heavy cream. Get over it. It's a cream sauce. What did you expect? Soy products?

Lick your lips as you pour it into the artichokes and onions.

Now, in the same measuring cup, put 1/2 cup of the vermouth. Pour it in.

Now grab the best ingredient EVER:


One of my dearest, darling groomsmen in our wedding eats this stuff on chips. That's a bit extreme, but only a bit.

Throw in a few dashes. Tabasco is one of the only items about which I think a "dash" is an appropriate measure. 2 if you're squeamish, 5 if you're brave, 3-4 if you're me.
Stir. Turn up to medium to medium high.

Now, take 1/2 lb shrimp. I need an entire blog post on what shrimp is worth what money and what you should use in what, but for now: 1/2 lb most any size shrimp, chopped into pieces that are about as big as your thumbnail. We are not mincing, but we are not just chopping medium shrimp in half.
I used 31-40 size shrimp (Shrimp is sized with the number of shrimp per pound - so 8-10 shrimp are HUGE and 71-80 shrimp are teenincy) Medium shrimp are usually 30-50 shrimp. So i took one of my medium shrimp and chopped it into 5 pieces approximately, but trust me, I was not counting....

I regret no pictures of the shrimp chopping. I've had to use too many words.

Throw them in the pot. Stir. Put top on. Turn off pot. There is enough heat in that little pot to plenty cook those little diced up shrimp. Believe you me.

Take a bunch of asparagus. Lop off the bottom 20%. Do this before you take it out of the rubber bands. You'll thank me later.


Admire the beauty God gives us in food. Asparagus is pretty. No denying it. Of course, my favorite color is green....


Bring a giant pot of salted water to a boil. Throw in asparagus. Do not walk away. Do 45 jumping jacks (which should take you approximately 120 seconds). Take out asparagus, if it's small like this. If it's not small, give it another minute or two. Do not cook this asparagus for less than two minutes or more than five.

Then pull get it out of there.


See how bright green?

Now for the redfish. I admit, I failed at taking pictures of the following process, so you'll have to forgive me.

You need about 1/2 a fillet a person, or 1/3 of a lb. I allow 1/2 a lb, but always have left overs.

Put the fillet pieces (you don't want to cook them in whole fillets. Cut 'em in half. Perfect serving size.) Put 'em on a cookie sheet or somefin'. Sprinkle with garlic salt and lemon pepper.


Then dredge them in flour.

Then, 10 minutes before you want to sit down, put 4 T butter in the biggest skillet you have. Turn on Medium High. Give it a second. Put in fillets.
Follow these instructions precisely:
Turn on sauce, medium, stir.
Turn around and preheat your oven broiler to high.
Go to pantry, get out worcestershire sauce.
Flip fillets in pan. If you are having to do these in batches, you're going to have to adjust. Your goal is 2 minutes on each side. But really, buy a bigger skillet. You won't regret it.
Measure 1/2 cup worcestershire into a liquid measuring cup.
Juice a lemon into the measuring cup. (Should be about 3 -4 Tbsps. I won't tell if you used bottled stuff). Stir together with worcestershire.
Put fillets into a jelly roll or roasting pan or something with sides.
Pour lemon juice/worcestershire mixture over them.
Pop in oven.
Stir Sauce.
Pile four to six plates with mashed taters (which you've made during this process....).
Pop fillets out of oven (2-3 minutes in oven).
Plop fish leaning against mashed potatoes.
Place asparagus on top of that.
Pour sauce on top of all.

Unbutton pants and proceed to feast like a king.

Yes, the last ten minutes of this cooking experience are kind of frantic, but that's how you get Walker's quality food.. =) And you can see why there aren't any pictures of the last ten minutes.

What do the kids eat on nights like this? (I'm not opposed to giving them redfish - they'll eat it the next day - but when we have feasts like this, they usually go to sleep before we eat... so....





lots of times they get a sampler plate. Carrots, lettuce, chicken, pasta salad. All with a ramekin of ranch in which to dip it.

And a popsicle.

I'm tired now. And kind of hungry.