Marilyn's Jalapeno Cornbread - a weekend recipe

Cornbread is a staple for every good southern cook. When it comes to making cornbread, few can compete with my own wife, and wonderful southern cook, Marilyn. Here is her cornbread recipe using jalapenos, her daughter Shannon’s favorite.

Ingredients

• 2 ½ c cornmeal

• 1 c flour

• 2 Tbsp. sugar

• 1 Tbsp. salt

• 4 tsp. baking powder

• 3 eggs, lightly beaten

• 1 ½ c milk

• ½ c cooking oil

• 16 oz. can cream corn

• 2 jalapeno chili peppers, chopped and seeded

• 2 c sharp cheddar cheese, grated

• 1 onion, large, grated

Directions

Combine first five ingredients in a bowl. In another bowl, mix milk, eggs and cooking oil, and then combine with cornmeal mixture. Stir in remaining ingredients, and then pour into two well greased baking pans. Bake at 425° for 25 minutes, or until done.

Eric'sWeb

Big Billy's Catfish Fajitas - a weekend recipe

It’s no secret that Big Billy, a Dallas restauranteur and Oklahoma oil man, loved to cook, and he loved Southern comfort food. Here is one of his favorite and simplest recipes.

Big Billy's Catfish Fajitas

Ingredients

• 2 lbs. catfish, filets

• 1 cup lime juice

• 3 cups mesquite wood chips

• 1 onion, large, chopped

• 1 red pepper, large, chopped

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• 2 Tbsp. butter

• 1/2 tsp salt

• 1/4 tsp pepper

• 8 tortillas, flour or corn, warmed

• Sour cream, salsa, avocado and lime slices

Directions

Place fish filets in a large zip-top bag. Pour in lime juice, seal, and marinate in the refrigerator for one hour. Soak wood chips in water for one hour. Drain wood chips. Sprinkle wood chips over pre-heated coals in a covered grill. Brush the grill rack lightly with cooking oil and place catfish filets on the rack. Close the grill and cook for about five minutes on either side or until the fish is flaky.

In a large cast iron skillet, cook onion, red pepper, and garlic in the butter until tender. Stir in salt and pepper. Cut filets into chunks, toss into skillet, and mix well. Fill warmed tortillas with catfish mixture and serve with sour cream, salsa, avocado, and lime slices.

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• Born near Black Bayou in the little Louisiana town of Vivian, Eric Wilder grew up listening to his grandmother’s tales of politics, corruption, and ghosts that haunt the night. He now lives in Oklahoma, where he continues to pen mysteries and short stories with a southern accent. He authored the French Quarter Mystery Series set in New Orleans, the Paranormal Cowboy Series, and the Oyster Bay Mystery Series. Please check it out on his Amazon author page. You might also like checking out his Facebook page.

Big Billy's Oyster Balls - a weekend recipe

Big Billy was a Dallas restauranteur and oil man, but he loved Cajun food and knew how to prepare it. Big Billy liked people and he liked parties. When he hosted one of his famous parties, he often prepared this appetizer. It’s one of my favorites and I think you will like it too.


Big Billy’s Oyster Balls

Ingredients

• 2 pints oysters, chopped

• 2 pints sausage, chopped

• 1 egg

• 2 cups bread crumbs, grated

• Cajun hot sauce, to taste

Preparation

Combine oysters and sausage. Season liberally with Cajun hot sauce. Add egg. Shape into small balls. Coat with bread crumbs. Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Serve hot.

Eric'sWeb

Chicken Sauce Piquante - a weekend recipe

A certain spicy stew is a cooking staple in south Louisiana. Sauce piquante was introduced to Louisiana by the Spanish. It has been embraced by Cajun chefs and has evolved into nearly as many differing recipes as there are cooks.

The dish begins with a roux, combined with the sauce and almost any meat you can think of. In Louisiana, there is chicken, pork, wild duck, turtle and even alligator sauce piquante.

Chicken Sauce Piquante

Ingredients

1 chicken, cut up
¼ cup chopped shallots
½ cup cooking oil
2 8oz. cans tomato sauce
½ cup flour
1 cup water
2 large onions, chopped
1 cup Burgundy
4 garlic cloves, chopped
¼ cup chopped parsley
1 medium bell pepper
Salt, pepper and hot sauce to taste

Preparation

Make roux with cooking oil and flour, stirring constantly until medium brown. Add onions, garlic, bell pepper and shallots. Sauté until onions are clear. Add chicken, tomato sauce, water, Burgundy, parsley and seasoning. Cover and cook over medium heat for 30 minutes (stirring occasionally) or until sauce begins to thicken. Serve over rice. Serves six.

Eric'sWeb

French Market Beignets - a weekend recipe

I was eleven when I first visited New Orleans with Aunt Carmol. She was a schoolteacher and off for the summer. Every day, she would awaken Brother Jack and me and take us on a tour of the old city. We rode the streetcars and roamed the French Quarter, Carmol the quintessential tour guide, filling our heads with both history and lore.

One of the places I remember visiting was Café du Monde in the French Quarter. It is there that I first tasted the luscious confections dusted with powdered sugar. It is also there that I first learned about the delicious taste of coffee.

That was long ago. Carmol has since passed away but Café du Monde survives, still selling strong French coffee and beignets, the French version of the American doughnut. Here is a recipe. Though probably not exact, it is close.

French Market Beignets

• ½ pkg. yeast cake
• 3 ½ cups flour, plain
• 1 cup milk
• ¾ Tbsp salt
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 Tbsp cooking oil
powdered sugar, generous sprinkle


Soften yeast cake in 1/3 cup lukewarm water to form a paste. Warm the milk and add sugar, oil and yeast mixture. Gradually stir in 2 cups flour and the salt. Stir until it forms a batter. Stir in egg until it is mixed well, and then add rest of flour. Mix well. Cover and set in warm place about 1 ½ hours to rise. Take dough out and roll until about ¼ inch thick. Cut in 2 inch pieces. Place on cookie sheet or pan and let rise another half hour. Fry dough until it is brown and then remove and let drain. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and enjoy.

Eric'sWeb

Mavis' Fried Okra - a recipe

A year or so ago, I had a heart scan to detect for plaque in the arteries. Amazingly, my heart was clearer than 99% of the people in my age group. This is amazing because I had fried food literally ever meal until I left home at seventeen to go to college.

My mother had a good heart, as does my ninety-year-old father and sixty-five-year-old brother. I guess it all comes down to genetics. If you are predisposed to building plaque in the arteries of the heart, then you can eat steamed broccoli every meal and will probably still develop plaque. My advice? It probably won’t matter much if you binge occasionally. If you decide to take my very unhealthy advice, you might try fried okra, one of my personal favorites, and one that qualifies as southern comfort food.

My mom fried okra at least once a week because it was cheap, tasty and filling. Here is a simple recipe for the totally awesome southern fare.

Mavis’ Fried Okra

Ingredients

10 pods okra, sliced in ¼ inch pieces
1 egg, beaten
1 cup cornmeal
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
½ cup vegetable oil

Directions

Soak okra in egg for 5 to 10 minutes in a small bowl. Combine cornmeal, salt, and pepper In a medium bowl. In a large skillet, heat oil over a medium flame. Dredge okra in the cornmeal mixture, coating evenly. Carefully place okra in hot oil; stir continuously. Reduce heat when okra first starts to brown. Cook until golden. Drain on paper towels. Enjoy.

Eric'sWeb

Pulley Bone Memories and Mama's Fried Chicken

Growing up in northwest Louisiana in the fifties, money was scarce but chickens were cheap. One of the meals my mom prepared at least once a week was southern fried chicken served with fresh-cut fried potatoes. Although I never thought about it at the time, the meal now ranks as my favorite southern comfort food.

My brother Jack and I both liked the wishbone, the piece of the chicken we called the “pulley bone.” He was older and usually ended up with it. Whichever one of us got it we would have a contest, each grabbing an end of the vee-shaped bone and pulling. The one of us ending with the biggest piece of the pulley bone could then make a secret wish guaranteed to come true.

The recipe is simple, with only a few basic ingredients, and the preparation straight forward. Still, no one could fry chicken like my northwest Louisiana mama. If I had a pulley bone wish today, it would be for a bite of her fried chicken and potatoes.

Ingredients:
1 chicken, e.g. wings, thighs, etc.
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ cup flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
1 ¼ cups milk

Preparation:
Combine chicken, salt, pepper, and the flour on large plate; toss lightly to coat. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken and cook until golden on all sides, 5 to 8 minutes. Remove chicken, pouring off excess oil.

Return the skillet to the heat and add milk, scraping pan to loosen any brown bits. Add chicken, skin side up. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until chicken is tender and juices run clear, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Fiction South

Marilyn's Chicken Fried Steak

If you’re exploring Route 66 and stop for lunch at a café in some small Oklahoma town, you are apt to learn that chicken-fried steak is the specialty of the house. Since you are on the “Mother Road”, you’re already looking for adventure, so point to the picture on the plastic menu and tell the homey waitress that you’re having the chicken fry.

When I returned home from work, I learned Marilyn had prepared chicken-fried steak for me. It was, she said, the first time she had cooked chicken fries in more than twenty years. The meal was delicious, served with mashed potatoes and cream gravy.

“Just the way my mother Joy used to do it,” she said. “Well, almost. Mama would buy a round steak big enough to feed eight of us and then she’d pound it out with a hammer until it was tender. I did it the easy way and had the butcher do the trimming and tenderizing for me.”

Here is Joy and Marilyn’s method of cooking a yummy chicken-fried steak:

Take two pans. Combine an egg and a little buttermilk in one of the pans. Put some flour in the other pan, add salt, and pepper to taste. Salt and pepper the meat and then, using tongs, dredge both sides of the steak in the flour. Dip the floured steak into the egg and buttermilk mixture and coat both sides. Coat the steak a second time in the flour.

Heat about half an inch of oil in a frying pan (Joy always used a cast-iron skillet) and place the floured steaks into the pan once the oil is hot. Cook until the bottom and edges are golden brown then turn the steak to finish browning. Blot additional oil with paper towels after both sides finish cooking.

That’s how you do it. Try it sometime if you can’t actually make it to that little roadside café in Oklahoma.

Fiction South

Cheese Grits Casserole - a weekend recipe

When corn is ground, the resultant fine powder is corn meal; the coarse remaining product is grits. I grew up eating either grits or fried potatoes for breakfast and I don’t recall my Mom cooking hash browns.

I recently ordered a birth certificate for my Dad and learned that his real father, a person that neither of us ever met, was from Maryland. Dad always liked sugar in his grits, a preference normally observed by people from north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Having a father from Maryland may explain this anomaly.

My second wife Anne, even though from Oklahoma, loved grits as much as I do. On a trip to Massachusetts to visit Cousin Angela, we stopped at a restaurant for breakfast and were happy to learn they served grits. When we ordered our side dishes, the young woman waiting on us got a big grin on her face.

“I’ll be right back,” she said. She returned with six other restaurant employees. “Say grits again, “she said. They all cracked up when we complied.

Yes, it’s a fact that the word grits has at least two syllables - if you are from the south, that is.

Here is a recipe for an Oklahoma version of the tasty North American polenta:

Cheese Grits Casserole

1 ½ c. grits
3 eggs, beaten
1 ½ sticks butter, softened
1 lb. cheddar cheese, shredded
3 tsp savory salt
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. paprika
Tabasco sauce to taste

Cook grits in 6 cups boiling water, in a saucepan, for 30 minutes, stirring frequently. Combine remaining ingredients in bowl, mixing well. Stir into grits. Pour into casserole. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour.

Makes 8 – 10 servings