Lex Culinaria

Missing Melbourne

When we left Melbourne at the end of October things were just beginning to heat up over there and cool down over here. Sadly, springtime in Melbourne is a distant memory now. It doesn't help that winter descended on Edmonton overnight with a great big whumpf of snow and a 17 degree drop in temperature. Right now in Melbourne it's a mere 13c. Mind you, it's early morning there. Sigh.

Aside from the weather, there's always something for me to miss about Melbourne. More often than not, it's food-related. Good coffee. A favourite restaurant (or two).

Mainly what I miss is really, really good food just about anywhere you go. Sadly, in Edmonton mediocrity is all the rage and truly good meals are few and far between.  I think I'd kind of forgotten that after 2 years away from Melbourne.

For a meal to be truly great, it doesn't have to be avant garde science geek food "inspired" by El Bulli or the French Laundry (which is now so ubiquitous as to be boring - if I never hear another person bill their food as "Inspired" by something it will be too soon!).

Really good food does have to fulfil its potential. If it's a scone, it must be a great scone. A scone that makes me go "wow!".

And honestly most restaurants in Edmonton aren't even half way there. Some are good. Most are mediocre. A few are downright shocking. People here seem to rave about restaurants that hover somewhere around good to mediocre. A sad testament to what is available on tables across the city.

For me, the perfect illustration of the disparity that exists between Melbourne and Edmonton is summed up in one word: Risotto. I have never had a good risotto in Edmonton. Even in a pricey restaurant. Most risottos here are mushy or soupy. And flavourless and uninteresting. I ate several amazing risottos in Melbourne. Not in fancy places for outrageous prices, but in run of the mill local pubs for around $14. My love for good risotto re-ignited, I couldn't wait to try to reproduce my favourite as soon as we got back.

I know risottos are very "Naked Chef", but there's something so cozy yet elegant about them that I can't help but still love them even if they are about 5 years out of style. Besides, there must be a skill to them. Seems a lot of chefs out here have trouble with them.

I promise this one won't disappoint. I had something similar at the Fringe cafe at the Acland Street Junction in St. Kilda.

Pumpkin, Spinach & Goat Cheese Risotto

Serves 6

• 1 medium acorn squash or small, sweet pumpkin (plus olive oil to coat)
• 2 chopped medium onions
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 1.5 litres chicken stock
• 2 cups arborio or carnaroli rice
• ½ cup dry white wine
• butter
• ¼ cup grated Parmesan
• 4 cups fresh spinach leaves
• 300 grams goats cheese
• Sea salt
• Fresh pepper

Cut the squash in half, scoop out the seeds, peel and cut into 2cm cubes. Toss cubes in olive oil and roast on a baking tray at 350F for 35 minutes.

10 minutes before the squash is finished baking, sauté the onion & garlic in a large saucepan over medium heat for a 3-4 minutes until they begin softening. Add the rice and cook, stirring for several minutes until the rice is glossy and absorbs the oil.

Stir through the wine until it is all absorbed into the rice and the alcohol has cooked off.
After the wine is absorbed, start adding the stock a cupful at a time, stirring constantly until the rice has absorbed each cupful before adding the next.

This whole process should take between 15 to 30 minutes to absorb all the stock. Keep tasting the rice to make sure it is cooked and soft but with a bit of bite.

With the last cupful of stock add the pumpkin cubes, spinach, butter and Parmesan.
season with salt and pepper. Stir gently to allow the remaining stock to be absorbed and to break up the pumpkin a little bit.

When the risotto is done, it should be slightly saucy, but should still mound nicely, not run.

Ladle piles of the risotto into bowls and top with crumbled goats cheese.

High (end) Steaks

These last few months have seen the opening of several high end steak houses in Edmonton. I gather this is not due to some innate Albertan penchant for beef (although it does suit that crowd as well), but is rather part of a larger North-American swing towards expensive steaks and high end chain-type restaurants. It would appear that the Great American dream of the mundane and mediocre has now breached the borders of fine dining.

Having recently reviewed the three new additions to the high end steak game in Edmonton, I am absolutely underwhelmed by the prospect that this is the future of fine dining. Don't get me wrong. The food at each is good (in some cases excellent) in its own way, but steakhouse fare is not and never will be fine dining.

If I pay $90 per person for a meal, I expect it to be unique, challenging and above all, have required some degree of innovative thought and inspired ingredient choice on the part of the chef. Unfortunately, what you get at one of these places for that price is a really good steak and some potatoes. Not exactly rocket science.

In fact, bar a few noteworthy exceptions (mainly found on the appetizer menu at Sage), the "not rocket science" label appears to be equally applicable to almost all choices on the menus of these restaurants. You could take one menu for each of Ruth's Chris, Chop and Sage, remove the names, shuffle them, and not know which menu belonged to which restaurant. They ALL have at least one "Seared Ahi Tuna" dish. They ALL have a "Chicken Breast Stuffed with...". They ALL have the same uninspired (but tasty) sides of fries, mash, etc..... They ALL have an "Iceberg Wedge" salad on the menu and at least one tomato-based salad. How boring. For $90 I do not want to be bored by my meal. I do not want to be served a meal that I could as easily (bar some supply issues in that you can't buy some of the premium grade meats unless you are a restaurant) make at home. For that, I'll go somewhere more reasonable.

For $90 I want something that makes me go, "wow. I never would have thought to put beets and vodka together like that...."

The more I think about it the more I think we're being shortchanged in the fine dining department. When other restaurants can put together a sensational meal for the same (or even less!) money, I wonder where these guys get off charging the money they do for the product they serve.

I imagine (sadly) it's because we let them. I'd rather eat at the Hardware Grill or Wild Tangerine or Blue Pear thank you very much. It's been a long time since any of these were the new kid on the block though and I'd love to see some new restaurants that push the envelope a little around here....

Any takers?

The Summer Barbque Challenge Round-up

We all know what a huge proponent I am of the importance of sharing great meals with friends and family. The sort of meal I enjoy sharing most often happens out of doors, on a sunny weekend afternoon and doesn’t generally involve heating up the kitchen or folding napkins into perfect thirds.

Though I’ve had both near and total disasters in the kitchen preparing for regular dinner parties, I’ve never had the experience with a BBQ. There’s something magical about the ease and joviality that go hand in hand with the BBQ. No one’s worrying about the right fork and it’s totally acceptable to be so enamoured of what you’re eating that you end up with sauce on your chin. I guess that’s why I love barbeques so much… they really are the essence of what a shared meal should be -  enjoyment of great food, and lively company (especially when there’s good beer and wine!) - without the fussiness and formality that sometimes comes packaged up with more formal meals.

My most vivid childhood memories of eating a complete meal (as opposed to a particular food item or the preparation of food) are of summer suppers eaten outside with my parents and sister on the patio of the house I grew up in. We had a patio table with an umbrella that had a very hip (for the late 70s) brown and blue stripe on it. That was at the time long before patio furniture became plastic. Our table was a shiny powder-coated white metal. The meals were never really fancy – salad from the garden, baked potatoes – maybe done in foil with sliced onions, butter and a touch of honey – and steaks from the barbeque. I loved those meals. Heat would kick me under the table, or torture me by obliquely revealing to my parents some secret I’d confided earlier and which I was mortified to hear her repeat. After supper, we’d get Popsicles from the freezer. Those meals were lively and happy and exciting in a way that meals eaten inside never quite were.

Maybe it’s because the winters here can seem so long, but I really feel like I have in the past been much more adventurous with my indoor cookery than the outdoor variety. I felt stuck in a BBQ rut really, serving the same old standbys time after time. I swore to myself that this year would be different – I’d cook outside more, and I’d cook better and more adventurous things. So I issued the Summer Barbeque Challenge. I thought it would be a great resource to have a little online cache of great outdoor recipes to inspire our shared backyard meals all summer. So here we are…

The Summer BBQ Challenge has certainly turned out to be an international event with recipes from all corners of the globe all of which are amazing alternatives to the same-old-same-old that happens all too often around my own barbeque. After some initial confusion over what in fact I meant by “barbeque” the entries rolled in. 

Stephanie, my favourite Happy Sorceress brings us a tasty looking Lamb & Persian Rice Kibbeh and in doing so has unwittingly created for the barbeque one of my favourite Middle Eastern Dishes. Funny, without her, I’d never have thought of doing kibbeh on the barbeque. Thanks Stephanie!

McAuliflower of Brownie Points brought a tasty treat for vegetarians and meat lovers alike! Her Teriayki Grilled Tempeh that looks amazing. She did hers in a grill pan, but I reckon it’s going to get a workout on my wood fire pit grill this summer. This is one recipe that's stood the test of time...McAuliflower's brought this with her from her college days!

Helen of Beyond Salmon brought us two fantastic entries. First she provided great instructions on how to properly grill fish. I for one, have never really attempted to grill fish before because I was always worried about temperature control and the possibility of the fish sticking to the grill or breaking up and disappearing into the flames! With Helen’s great step-by-step instructions, I think I can finally conquer my fear.

Helen also made a great salad, with grilled ingredients. I don’t have much to say about Helen’s Grilled Asparagus, Tomato and Feta Salad, because I’m too busy drooling. I love grilled asparagus. I love tomatoes. I love feta. Yum.

Sandra of Un Tocco Di Zenzaro gave us the only non-English entry. Sandra, who lives in Turin, Italy made some chicken skewers that sound wonderfully yummy, no matter what the language! Her chicken skewers recipe – done both in Spanish and in Italian, would make a great addition to any summer barbeque.

Haalo of Cook (almost) Anything at Least Once is from my very favourite city in the whole wide, wide world: Melbourne. When we lived in Melbourne, Cakes and I would barbeque our supper at least 5 nights out of 7 over the summer. I can remember some Saturdays when we’d barbeque both our lunch and our supper!  Getting away from the focus on the meat is Haalo’s potato skewers recipe, which is a fab alternative to plain potatoes in foil. I could practically smell the garlic and roast potato smell looking at that photo!

Kat of Kat on Thyme made an extremely adventurous Triple Sec and Vanilla Brined Pork Tenderloin with a Rhubarb Fruit Compote spanning two posts. This is definitely on my to-try list as I’ve become a great fan of brining meat ever since reading Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking. Plus, I’ve got some nice fresh rhubarb sitting on the counter……

Zorra of 1 x umruehren bitte also stepped away from the meats! The one Barbeque meal food that I almost always end up buying is the bread. That will probably change now that I’ve seen how soft and yummy looking Zorra’s home made pita bread looks. I can just imagine wrapping up a nice hot browned bit of lamb or sausage straight off the grill in one of those pitas.

Gabriella True of My Life as a Reluctant Housewife brings us the only desert entry with her amazing-looking grilled pineapple with caramel sauce. Yum. I really would like to experiment more with grilled sweet foods and this looks like a great place to start!

Craig’s & Lois Notes from the Cape sent in a fantastic recipe for melted camembert on a baguette. I can’t even bear to look at the picture because I am afraid the drool might short out my keyboard and then where would we be? No roundup. I think I’d probably be tempted to also grill the baguette too, but that’s just me and my new barbeque motto - no food should be left ungrilled! Seriously. Melted cheese? Too good.

Everyone need as good Barbeque sauce recipe or two in their repertoire. I’m glad I can add Dave’s world famous BBQ basting sauce from Robert at White Trash BBQ to mine. I find the selection of sauces at the store most perplexing. I get tired just contemplating reading the labels on 200 different sauce bottles to find one that I like. I’d much rather just make my own. I’m gonna put this one together with Helen’s fish-grilling instructions…

Intrepid Torontonian Ruth, of Once Upon a Feast, came up with a whole barbeque meal menu including grilled asparagus, cedar plank salmon, quinoa tabouleh, chickpea & couscous salad and blueberry mint granita. Wow. Now I have one whole barbeque party planned out and I’m not even tired! Those granitas sound great, and I’ve always wanted to do cedar planked salmon……

Kevin of Seriously Good is clearly making this his sausage year as well. In that vein he made us some super tasty looking Romanian sausage called Mititei, which I imagine is Romanian for “seriously good-looking sausages”. They’re user friendly too. You don’t need a sausage stuffer for these babies, as they are skinless.

My favourite Edmonton author/shopping enthusiast and all-round blog-girl, Jena of Naked Bootleg, added to the international flavour of the challenge by producing Korean barbequed chicken and beef with loads of garlic. She complements this with home made Sunomono, which is an absolute favourite of mine – I’ve never even though about making it myself before, but now that Jena’s brought this recipe to my attention, you can bet I will!

Blogless Erica sent us two really tasty entries from her online cookbook (why don’t I have one of these?). Her Sweet & Sour Broccoli Coleslaw looks like a great twist on an old barbeque favourite and the amazing sounding  Wheatberry & Roasted Beet Salad is right up my alley – I love roasted beets in a salad!

My favourite Southerner, William of Never Trust a Skinny Chef, throws it back in Rachel Ray’s face with a five-hour smoked chicken chilli. Could Rachel even stand to do a dish that took more than 30 mintues? We’re guessing not. After all, she’s probably too skinny to stand and cook for that long. She'd probably feel all faint and have to lie down. William smoked his own chicken folks. That’s dedication.

Robert from Al Forno wades into the backyard cooking fray with a great post on the history of barbeque sauces and the regional sauces of the American barbeque belt.  He serves up a great recipe for an old fashioned all-American barbeque technique that sounds amazing and which will certainly find a place in my repertoire.

And lastly, my own entry… Grilled Char Sui Beef Bundles

Fitzroy will be making his selection of the winner of the Summer BBQ Challenge later in the week when his mum manages to buy a new printer cartridge! Also, he's feeling a little out of sorts owing to the fact that he recently ate a bee. This necessitated a terrifying trip to the vet (actually, probably more terrifying for me and Cakes than for poor old Fitzy). I'd like to make sure he's in top form before setting him to such a difficult task!

The Best Dinner In My Life!

Most brides save bits of ribbon and maybe press some flowers from their bouquet in between the pages of their wedding album.

Not me.

The one thing that enjoys pride of place in my wedding album, aside from photos, and the marriage certificate, is the menu saved from the vineyard restaurant where we held our wedding reception.

That's because it was the best and most important dinner I have ever had, and ever will have.

I've said it a number of times on Lex Culinaria, and I'll say it again now... the greatest joy in life, well, in my life anyway, is the sharing of a beautiful meal and a nice glass of wine with people you love.

The food at Manton's Creek that night was great. The restaurant was beautiful. The service was exceptional. But most importantly, we got to share that terriffic meal as our first together as husband and wife. We shared it with each other, and with our closest friends, and with our families. That, above all else is the reason it was the best meal of my lifetime.

Cakes, Here's to many more meals shared in love. You're my favourite dining partner, my hero and my best friend. Thanks for three amazing years. I love you more than words can say.

PS. I had the prawns and the eye fillet. They were out of this world. Also - if you ever get the chance to Try Manton's Creek Pinot Noir, do. It's fantastic.

Recipe: Disaster, serves four.

11:00  Trot through snowstorm to Strathcona Farmer's Market to purchase lamb roast for supper as we are having guests.

11:09 No lamb as have arrived at market too late.

11:13 Spy really lovely organic prime rib roast. Purchase. Very exie, but will be great.

11:40 Walk back to house. Like roasts to be at room temperature before cooking so place wrapped roast in empty oven so it can warm up but so cats wont get at it.

11:50 Try to take car to Save On Foods to get remaining provisions for supper. Need to be pushed out of snow 4 times on way there. Make it into parking lot at speed of 1 km per hour. Have to push car into parking spot.

12:45 Finally home again. 3 more pushes required to get home. Save On is only 4 blocks away. Vow not to move car again until all snow melts.

1:30 Five whole hours before dinner. Plenty of time. Think I will walk up to K&K  Foodliner to see what's up. Buy completely random stuff including: 3 pkts smoked goose thighs (on sale so a good deal even if I have no idea what I'll make with them), 1 pkt random German chocolate treat (Cakes cannot translate packet label as makes no mention of directions to post office, but photo shows chocolate so must be good, well, at least must be chocolate), 1 carton very expensive (so must be yummy) apple, ginger and cranberry juice, sausages. yum.

2:00 Smugly commence making of soufflees. Because as you will know from my previous post, am very good at soufflees. Even a culinary doofus can make a souffle. Heh.

2:01 Preheat oven to 180c for souffles.

2:50 Misread own recipe for souffle (was trying nifty lemon & ginger variation) and add twice the amount of corn flour called for.

3:05 Why is my souffle base a gelatinous, yet strangely cement-like mass of citrus?

3:07 Break Kitchenaid immersion blender Cakes bought me last Christmas while whisking the lemon and ginger flavoured jellycrete in cool water bath. Telltale metal shavings from stripped gears in little mound on top of jellycrete. Whisk attachment falls by own wieght out of receptacle and clatters to floor. Is completely f**cked. SHIT@!

3:08 Hope against hope that the jellycrete (metal shavings carefully cut from the top) will magically fold into whipped whites.

3:09 Dump bowl of lumpy egg whites with blobs of jellycrete into rubbish.

4:00 Re-read recipe and see that brilliant self accidentally doubled the amount of corn starch. Crap. Am clearly not fit to lick the mixing bowl of culinary doofus referred to snottily in souffle post.

4:30 Decide to have another go. Plenty of time. Roast only needs 90 minutes so can spare some time.

4:42 Maybe should do the roast first and then the souflees after. Prepare roast rub of butter, seeded mustard, garlic, salt, pepper.

4:46 Where's the roast?

4:47 SHIT!

4:48 Remove roast from oven that has been preheating for over an hour. Inspect. Plastic wrap hot but not melted. Roast appears to have begun to steam inside its plastic wrap. Remove plastic wrap and floppy hot styrofoam tray. Scorch fingers on hot meat juice.

4:49 Do not know what to do about roast so will just ignore and hope it goes away.

4:50 Commence making second batch of souffles.

5:39 Decide that as usually roast for 30 minutes at high temperature and then reduce heat to 180C that will just reverse the procedure and roast will be fine. Apply roast rub to top of roast and wait for oven to heat up to 500F.

5:52 Observe that buttery roast rub has melted and run off roast. Unsurprising as roast is still hot from steaming in plastic wrap.

5:58 Pop roast in oven.

6:25 Not usure how long roast originally cooked for so not sure how long it needs. Insert oven thermometer. Reads 120. Need 140.

6:28 Turn oven temperature down.

6:35 Check thermometer. Burn thumb by grabbing it with bare hand because clearly am very smart person. Reads 138. Remove roast from oven. Looks amazingly good. Like one could never tell I bollocksed it up. Smirk. Tent with foil.

6:37 Guests arrive. (they live next door so are very punctual).

6:38 Pop souffle version 2.01 in oven. Notice that batter has deflated a bit as they sat while roast was cooking. Hope they will be okay.

6:45 Souffles rising nicely. They'll be fine. Tops of souffles not brown though so turn on broiler for a few minutes.

6:47 Serve first course.

7:10 SHIT!

7:11 Remove scorched and shrivelled souffles from oven. Observe their resemblance to small brown pucks. Cry into apron.

7:25 Serve main course. While serving, bang together lifesaving desert that can be mixed in one bowl and for which I have everything on hand and which can bake while supper is eaten and can stand a whole lot of overcooking if I forget about them.

Set two timers, just in case.

A Foodie's Melbourne

You can bet that this week I'll be visiting some of my favourtie foodie haunts in Melboure, and possibly some new places that have popped up in the year and a half I've been gone.

I have always been a foodies, but not always a blogger. It'll be very interesting to see if my impression of some of my favourite Melbourne food haunts are the same to my food blogger's eyes as they were to my previous self.

Check out this list to see where I might pop up in Melbourne this week!

Right about now, I'm getting a pedicure for my friend Niki's wedding tomorrow and we're probably tossing back some champers and pate!

Andouille and Grit Cakes

Have you got any idea how hard it is to find crawfish meat in Edmonton? No? Well, it's darn hard. Being the Prairies and all. So I am lucky I had my wits about me a couple of months ago when I spotted the frozen crawfish tails in the Swedish food market in Ikea.

I grabbed 3 packets at the time and socked them away in my deep freeze. And thank god. Because I couldn't find a single place that carried frozen crawfish meat when I was out procuring provisions for last week's New Orleans feast nite! And believ me, I looked everywhere.

Since all we had available to us was one pound of treasured crawfish, we didn't have enough to make Randy's Crawfish Pie, which is the main dish that we prepared and ate on our actual New Orleans Feast night a year ago. But, honestly, we didn't feel like reliving the 10-pound-apeice-weight-gain we experienced in New Orleans either. And Randy's pie is calorific. Plus, there was no way were were going to skip the bbq shrimp - and that calls for an ungodly lot of butter!

However, I think the deciding factor in tyring this recipe was that I couldn't find a way to work grits into the meal if our main dish was going to be crawfish pie.

Polenta cakes are quite nice with stew-y type stuff on top, so why not a nice crawfish etoufee on top of grit cakes?

While I was mulling this over, I stumbled upon Emeril's recipe for andouille grit cakes with spicy crawfish on top and they seemed the perfect thing.

The grit cakes were my favourite part, expecially since Joan was able to find actual andouille sausage. If you can't find Andouille where you're located, a spicy Chiorizo or hot Italian sausage will do the trick. The grit cakes would be a great accomaniment to all sorts of things and I reckon they'd be fantastic in place of the standard mini risotto cakes if you were after something finger-foody. They hold together really well and, because I used Panko, the outside was super crispy.

I wasn't too crazy about the crawfish stew on top. It was pretty unsightly - sort of a creepy violent salmony colour and honestly, didn't taste any better or more interesting than a prepackaged etoufee you might buy in the supermarket. These  hard-to-come-by crawfish tails should have been done greater justice with a different preparation, alhtough I haven't quite worked out how yet. It also really gets under my skin that Emeril's recipe calls for "Emeril's Essence", which is one of his commercially packaged spice blends, as its primary seasoning. And, frankly, when celebrity chefs do that sort of thing, I it offputting as it takes away my ability to judge what I want in the recipe according to my own tastes and it seems like a shameless way of making more money by forcing people to buy a product they otherwise would have little use for when it's probably no more innovative a seasoning than all the rest of them.

I've adapted the grit cakes recipe to suit my own tastes. Because that's what I do with recipes. If you have a crawfish etoufee recipe that you particularly like, I'd say use that instead of the topping recipe on Emeril's recipe page. These cakes deserve better than that.

For the grit and sausage cakes: (will make 6 quite large ones)

• 1/2 pound cooked andouille sausage, chopped quite fine
• 4 1/2 cups chicken broth
• 1-2 teaspoons salt (depending on how salty your broth is)
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 2 cups coarse white grits
• 1 cup grated white cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup panko
• 2 eggs, beaten with 2 tablespoons of water
• 1/2 cup canola oil

Combine sausage, broth, salt, cayenne, and butter and bring to a boil. Stir in the grits and reduce the heat to medium. Cook, covered, for 25 to 30 minutes (or whatever the cooking time is noted on the package), until the grits are tender and creamy. Add the cheese and parsely and stir through. Pour the grits into large flat tupperware (large enough so that the grits form a layer about an inch thick) and use a large spoon or your fingers to even the layer out and smooth the top. Refrigerate for at least 15 minutes. You can make the grits ahead of time and just leave them in the fridge until you're ready. Using biscuit cutter, cut the grits into six rounds. Season the flour and breadcrumbs with salt and pepper. batter the cakes by coating each first with flour, then with egg and finally with panko. Set the coated cakes aside.

Heat the olive oil in a large, deep pan, such as a stir-fry pan, over medium heat. When the oil is hot enough that a few panko crumbs start to brown when you drop them in, Add the cakes. Cook each side until nicely browned, about 2 to 3 minutes per side. Remove cooked cakes from oil and place on a paper towel to drain. You can place the fried cakes on a cookie sheet in a 250F oven to keep warm for up to 25 minutes while you prepare the remainder of the meal.

Annual N'awlins Feast!

Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans? - the Dixieland Ramblers

Last Friday marked the one-year anniversary of my trip to New Orleans. I feel truly blessed to have been before Katrina, and I know I'll be back soon to do my part to help her recover. You see, I fell in madly in love with her. I had suspected I would for years before I went, so it was a bit like coming home when it actually happened. Kind of like falling in love with an old friend that you've had feelings for for years, but never had the opportunity to act on and when you finally do...WOW! I can't imagine not seeing her again. I've been thinking about her a lot lately. I've been checking the Times-Picayune's website regularly, just to see how she's coming along.

Strolling with Cakes and our friends, Joan and Kevin, from our lodging on Esplanade Avenue to the French Quarter I could (and did) spend days wandering the streets, in awe of the gorgeous buildings, the friendly and easygoing people, the beautiful food, the special New Orleans feeling of celebration of all that is beautiful in life. Sure there's a gritty side to New Orleans, but that's part of her charm too - the paint peeling from buildings 150 years old and the dark little alleyways. I don't mean to intimate that the city's social problems are quaint, because they're rather more horrifying than quaint, but there's a real and alive texture to New Orleans that you don't find in uber-sterile thoroughly modern cities. It's rather like the difference between sugar-free, fat-free ice cream and the real thing, made slowly, with plenty of cream and without a thought given to calories. Eating the first kind might allow you to live longer, but the second one is a hell of a lot nicer to eat and, provided you show a little restraint once in a while, the improvement in your enjoyment of life is more than worth the cost of those extra few days tacked on before you die.

In memory of the afternoon Joan and I spent in Randy's kitchen and the fine, fine Southern meal we got to enjoy with some of our dearest friends as a result - Joan and I got together again this weekend to recreate that meal  (with a few modifications).

The menu this year consisted of:

Randy's Sinful BBQ Shrimp (based on Randy's recipe, but with only 1/4 pound of butter plus the juice of 1 lemon)

Grits and Andouille Sausage Cakes topped with Spicy Crawfish Sauce (recipe coming soon!)

Green Salad with Glen's Mamma Ro's Salad Dressing.

Randy's bread pudding (this stuff is like crack!)

And was every bit as tasty as the supper we made with Randy. Although we missed his fun ole' self in the kitchen...

I've had a few emails from Glen and Randy recently, letting me know how they are doing. They're back in New Orleans and their B&B was relatively undamaged, but business is slow and, like everyone else in that beautiful city, they're tyring to get back on their feet. If you're planning a trip to New Orleans, give them a call to see if they've got room. Glen's breakfasts are out of this world and their warmth and hospitality (not to mention killer Bloody Marys) will make your stay more special than words can say. And a free tip: if Randy & Glenn recommend a restaurant? Go. And have what they tell you to have.