There are three key elements to the best gumbo–an excellent seafood stock, a solid brick roux, and quality ingredients to go into it–fresh seafood when possible, okra in season, and so on. While you may sometimes have to make due with frozen or out-of-season ingredients, the stock, roux, and giving the gumbo the time it needs to develop flavor will still always give you incredible results.
Category: Articles & Reviews
A Pie By Any Other Name? Shepherd’s Versus Cottage Pie, and a Recipe to Make Yours
This is an easy, versatile, and satisfying recipe for cottage pie: ground beef and vegetables in rich gravy topped with a crust of mashed potatoes and cheddar cheese.
A Wholesome Marriage I: A Recipe for Red Beans and Rice
Served over white rice, the rich, savory Andouille sausage and smoky, salty ham play off of the red kidney beans to produce a harmonious whole in this traditional Creole red beans and rice dish.
Chopped Liver: Amending America’s Distaste for the Humble Organ, and a Recipe for Georgian-Spiced Chicken Liver with Eggplant and Chickpeas
Liver is a nutritious, economical, and, most of all, tasty protein that takes almost no cook-time to prepare. In this recipe, the spices bring complexity and balance to the iron-y flavor of the liver, and the meat plays nicely with the textures of the eggplant and chickpeas.
Come Fry with Me: A Defense of Deep-Fried Food and a Recipe for Crispy Beer-Battered Chicken Strips
Although associated with health risks and low-class eats, there’s nothing that can rival the crispy outside, juicy inside, and intense flavors frying offers.
Hooked: Why America Should Eat More Catfish and a Recipe for Them, Southern Fried
Coated in a savory mixture of cornmeal and Cajun spices, deep fried to perfection, catfish is both delicious AND a sustainable option for dinner!
Forgotten Feast II: Offal Rising
Offal’s descent into ignominy is a mainly Western, modern phenomenon that is tightly bound up with issues of class. But there are pockets of our food culture that have either never stopped eating the “humble” parts or who have returned to it, finding something wholesome, exotic, or even erotic about it.
Forgotten Feast I: The Descent of Offal
Offal occupies a central place in my kitchen–but many Americans would never even try it, let alone attempt to cook with it themselves. In this article, I explore how offal used to be an integral part of the Western diet, and why it has suffered a fall from grace in modern times.
Kandaulos II: Mystery Meat, Ritual Feasts, and the Question of Jar Puppies
When archaeologists excavated Sardis, the ancient capital of Lydia, in the 1950s, they unearthed some disturbing evidence: “table settings” from ritual meals, including plates, cups, pitchers, stew pots, iron knives…and the bones of puppies. The remains forced them to consider an uncomfortable question: Might the meat originally used in the dish have been that of puppies, slaughtered for a ritual meal?
Kandaulos I: A Recipe for Souvlaki’s More Provocative Predecessor
Souvlaki is a traditional dish that is almost synonymous with Greece itself, yet it may have emerged from a much older, Lydian delicacy. Read on to find out why your favorite skewered food’s predecessor carried cultural stakes that go beyond what you might have imagined–and how you can cook a version that recovers what it may have been like to dine on the original.
