Mess of Greens

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Fusion

Riffing on Robert St. John: White Bean & Ham Stufato

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Have you ever eaten at a Robert St. John restaraunt? He’s got what amounts to a restaurant owners compound in Hattiesburg,  right down the street from the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi.

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A rustic Italian spot, a new orleans pub and a southern fine-dining experience,  a super swank cocktail bar, and now, a much anticipated hamburger joint are all within the confines of basically one parking lot. ALL the food at all the places (well, I don’t know about the burger spot yet since the lines have been too long for me to try it out) is really delicious, and the ambiance is always perfectly suited to the cuisine. Anyway, I’m a huge fan, especially since his food is great, AND uses his platform to support hunger initiatives in Mississippi.

He also has some pretty lovely cookbooks, and we were leafing through the Italian one, and ran across a recipe for white beans. My dad has basically been talking about wanting a bean dish for DAYS, since it’s what he wants to eat in cold weather, AND we had a huge bone-in honebaked ham (and what do you do with a ham bone if you’re from the south? You season something.) I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, and I didn’t have all the things to make his unique seasoning blends and herb blends, so I just kinda went with my gut. What resulted was my take on his already warm, creamy, Mississippified-Italian white bean dish that is PERFECT for a cold, cold night.

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The Mississippi Bahn mi

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For our anniversary, Boone and I took a jaunt to New Orleans in May for a two night get-away. My parents’ next-door neighbor and long-time friend has an apartment RIGHT IN the French Quarter, so we had a pretty lovely spot to drink, eat, and wander. This is, of course, exactly what we did. Our first stop was Dong Phuong Bakery, a place my dad had heard about from friends. This tiny spot had a sit-down noodle shop on one side, and a pick-up bakery and banh mi shop on the other. Oh, y’all. I’d never had a Banh mi sandwich before, so we ordered THREE different ones (before you judge, you take look at the menu and see how you’d choose just one.) There’s nothing nothing nothing good to say about colonialism. However, I guess Banh mi is one example of a food fusion that was created in French-controlled Vietnam, AND is also an example of a sandwich that was basically MADE for life in New Orleans, home of one of the strongest (if not the strongest) Franco-fusion culture in our country. It turns out that there’s a pretty large Vietnamese-American community in south Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and they are shaping and molding local flavors to their own tastes, and in return, influencing the local cuisine to reflect their presence (SO AWESOME). I fell in love with the sandwich, but unfortunately, my sweet little town doesn’t have our own Vietnamese Bakery. (Here’s hoping.) In the meantime, I started trying to figure out how to make my own at home.

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Pickled Mustard Greens

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I was thinking about the crazy abundance of mustard greens that I had in my fridge the other day (Maybe I got a little too excited at the .50/bunch sale at Kroger…) and wondered if pickled greens were a thing. With a little googling, it turned out that they ARE a thing and super popular in Vietnamese, Chinese, and Thai food! Hooray! This was AWESOME news as I’d already decided it was going to be a thing for me even if it wasn’t a real thing.

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G-Nut and Special Sauce… Sweet Potatoes, Peanuts, and Cultural Appropriation

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I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made this amazing modified Ugandan recipe over the past nine years. I used to have a roommate whose boyfriend (now husband), Jared, would cook with us three nights a week. We’d trade off and make sure there was a hot, homecooked meal on the table. It was a genius plan, and since the BF was vegetarian and we lived in a village (popluation 500) in the middle of the Mississippi Delta, it was also kind of necesary if he was going to eat anything other than french fries or mushroom quesadillas.
Anyway, this recipe came out of his Best of Vegetarian Times cookbook, and it was AMAZING. Super filling, pretty healthy, and gorgeous. I can’t believe it took me so long to share it with you since the basis of the recipe is sweet potatoes and the magic comes from a special peanut-sauce.
And this brings me to something else…something we haven’t discussed in a little while on the blog (though a lot in real life). Thanks to some articles (#1,#2, #3) floating around FB, I’ve been thinking about cultural appropriation a lot this week. Food Historian Michael Twitty has some pretty important things to say about it, and if you haven’t read or heard his thoughts on the importance of giving respect and credit (and more importantly, actual compensation) to those women (and men) who played HUGE ENORMOUS roles in the creation of the rich, diverse, amalgam that is southern food today, then  you should.

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Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Rosemary Browned Butter

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My friend Zach recently introduced me to the delicious world of homemade gnocchi… he brought over all of the ingredients to make beet gnocchi and regular potato gnocchi and we celebrated the end of his first year of teaching. (he’s a rock star) Although I loved what we made, the whole time we were cooking (which was a long time since TWO different kinds of gnocchi and a salad for 4 people means that I used nearly every pot in my house, the blender, several cutting boards, and more mixing bowls than you could imagine)  I just kept thinking, “well now, wouldn’t this be AMAZING made sweet potatoes?”  I mean, what isn’t made better by the south’s very own superfood?
 Thankfully, I didn’t have to invent the recipe since other cooks although thought this would be a great combo. I did, however, made a few changes and combine a few different recipes, given what I had on hand and what flavors I wanted.
Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Rosemary Brown Butter
Serves 4
What you Need:
For the Gnocchi
 2 pounds sweet potatoes
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 egg
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese (1/4 for dough, 1/4 for serving)
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus 1/3 cup for the work surface
For the brown butter
1/2 cup salted butter (1 stick)
2 fresh rosemary stalks
What to Do:
Some recipes I looked up tell you to bake the sweet potatoes, but I was a little bit under the gun since I was hosting two friends/coworkers/fave gals for a summertime dinner and only started cooking about 30 minutes before they were to arrive. Since I’d just tested out regular and beet gnocchi, I knew making this stuff was a pretty involved process, and that meant I needed to cut time in whatever way I could. Rather than bake or roast them, I boiled the potatoes instead, which didn’t really sacrifice flavor as far as I could tell. You could do either, depending on the time you’ve got! (in fact, I’d say if you’ve made gnocchi before, this recipe could take about 75 minutes..but if you’re new to this fun culinary experiment, then allot 90-95 minutes or so from beginning to end)
once I’d gotten the potatoes boiling, I put the flour, egg, and seasonings together in the mixing bowl. When the potatoes were ready, I cooled them in an ice bath, pureed them in a food processor, and mixed it all in with the flour mixture.

 

 

Once the potato and flour mixture have been fulyl incorporated, and the texture of the dough is smooth and not too wet or sticky, I dumped the dough out onto a floured surface, separated in into about 5 equal sized hunks, and rolled each into a long, thin cylinder about the width of a thumb.

Once that’s done, I boiled a pot of water. Then, I started to cut the dough into small rectangles (about 1″ by 1 1/4″).

To give the gnocchi the little characteristic ridges, use a fork to roll the little pieces of dough… mine honestly never turn out perfectly, but they still taste GREAT. Drop the dough into the boiling water and wait until it pops up to the top..about 1 minute (when it floats, it’s cooked all the way through…if it’s still on the bottom of the pot it may need a minute or so more).

 

 

To make the browned butter sauce, take the stick of butter in a sauce pan or skillet and cook over medium high heat, swirling it around the pan a little, and waiting until the bubbles/foam goes down a bit. the butter will start to turn brown, and at that point, drop in the whole rosemary pieces and let simmer for 1 or 2 minutes to infuse the butter with the rosemary flavor. Other recipes call for sage browned butter, or pecan browned butter, or balsamic browned butter… I figure you can’t go wrong with any of them. I chose rosemary because I have a HUGE rosemary plant outside my kitchen door, and I thought the two flavors would mix well together… they DEFINITELY do.

Once every thing is ready, serve the gnocchi with the Parmesan cheese, the browned butter, and a sprig of rosemary and enjoy!

 

Blackened Catfish and Spicy Pinapple Salsa

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 It’s spring time, which means that Boone and I try to eat as much fish and fruit as possible…also, on springtime Sunday afternoons, all I want is a homemade frozen margarita for some reason, and spicy food goes just great with that.Plus, when we went down to the Fla Keys last fall I think every single meal I had something blackened, so it was time to try our hand at that. On top of that, since I’m back on the weight watchers wagon (whooo!!! or booo! depending on who you ask…) and since we may or may not have eaten chinese food on Saturday night, we wanted something light.You may have seen the catfish tacos that I posted last year, and this is a similar idea with different flavors. If you liked those, read on for your own spring time blackened catfish feast.
 
What you need for the catfish
a cast iron skillet
4 catfish fillets
4 sprays cooking spray
For the Rub
 2 1/2 Tablespoons Paprika
2 Tbs Salt
2 T garlic powder
1 T black pepper
1 T cayenne pepper
1 T dried oregano
1 T french poultry seasoning (in place of thyme)
What you need for the salsa
1 can of pinapple rounds (or one fresh pinapple, peeled and cored), diced
1 medium fresh tomato, diced
1/2 red onion, diced
1 jalepeno chile (diced fine)
Juice of 2 fresh limes
salt to taste
we didn’t have any, but I’d also recommend cilantro.

Serve with Greek Yogurt and cilantro!

What to do: 
Start by dicing all of the fruit and the onion and jalepeno and combining in the large bowl.
 
once everything is diced in about the same size pieces, juice the lime and pour it over the fruit. Salt to taste. Let this stand and marinate for at least 30 minutes, if not longer so the flavors meld together and it gets spicy and sweet.
Once that’s ready, start preparing the fish by mixing the spices together to make the rub. Once that’s taken care of, set aside and heat the cast iron skillet on high for  6 minutes. it may smoke, but you need it to be hot enough to blacken…but not hot so hot that it cracks (because you can do that to a skillet, btw).
pat the fillets dry, and then cover them in about 1 tablespoon of rub per fillet. You can use more, but 1 tablespoon does the trick. Once you’re ready to blacken, spray the skillet with cooking spray.

place the catfish in the pan making sure that the fillets don’t touch. If they touch, the meat steams rather than crisps…which just isn’t the same as blackened. Cook for 3-4 minutes on each side, until the fish is firm and flakey… you’ll know it’s ready because there’ll be a nice black crust on the top.

 

VOILA! serve with tortilla chips  or saffron rice and black beans and a dollop of plain greek yogurt on the top for a tropical-ish treat using my favorite southern fish!