GeoCities.us » BourbonStreet » Quarter

Get your FREE home page!

Miss Odette's Creole Kitchen Seventh Ward, New Orleans, Louisiana Come in, baby, wipe your feet, and sit down. I am Odette, I taught fourth grade in this city for thirty-four years, and now that I am retired my grandson has put me on the computer so that I can stop telling him the same things over and over and just write them down once. So here they are. These are the dishes my mother cooked in the Seventh Ward when I was a girl and her mother cooked before her, and they are not hard, but they do require that you pay attention, which is the same thing I told my fourth graders for thirty-four years. I will tell you right now, I am particular. I have opinions and I am going to share them. If you want to put tomatoes in your gumbo, that is between you and the Lord, but you will not learn it from me. [ Miss Odette's Rules | Why Red Beans on Monday | Gumbo | Red Beans & Rice | Pralines | Bread Pudding | Café au Lait ]

Miss Odette's Rules of the Kitchen 1. The Trinity. Onion, celery, and bell pepper. Chopped. That is the foundation of nearly everything on this page and nearly everything in this city. Some people say two parts onion to one part each of celery and pepper. I say you will know when it looks right. If you start a pot without the trinity, I do not know what you are making, but it is not Creole. 2. Filé goes at the table, not in the pot. Filé is ground sassafras leaves and it thickens the gumbo and gives it that flavor. But if you boil it, it turns stringy and ropy like something you would not want to eat. You put the shaker on the table and each person sprinkles their own bowl. That is how it is done and that is the end of it. 3. Do not walk away from the roux. I will say it again below, and then I will say it a third time. 4. Long-grain rice, cooked plain with salt and nothing else. The gravy is the flavor. The rice is the plate. 5. Hot sauce on the table, not in the pot. Same reason as the filé. Everybody's mouth is different. 6. Taste it. Then taste it again in twenty minutes. A pot changes as it cooks. Salt at the end. 7. Cook more than you need. Somebody always comes by. And every one of these is better the second day anyhow. 8. Feed people. I do not care who they are or what they did. If they are in your kitchen, they get a plate.

Why Red Beans on Monday People from away always ask me this, and here is the answer. Monday was wash day. Before there were washing machines, and for a long time after in a lot of houses, Monday was the day the women did the wash, and I mean with a tub and a washboard and a wringer and a line in the yard. That was an all-day job that needed both your hands and most of your back. You could not stand over a stove. But a pot of beans does not need you to stand over it. You soaked them Sunday night. Monday morning you put them on with the ham bone left over from Sunday dinner (you always had a ham on Sunday, or a picnic shoulder, or at least a hock), the trinity, a bay leaf, and you let it go all day on a low fire while you did the wash. By the time the sheets were dry and folded, supper was ready, and it cost you nearly nothing because the bone was already paid for. So red beans and rice is a Monday supper in New Orleans and it still is, in the restaurants and in the schools and in my kitchen, even though I have had a washing machine since 1961. When I was teaching, the cafeteria served red beans every Monday and the children would groan and then eat every bite. It is a habit of the whole city. You could set your calendar by it. And that is also why I tell you to cook them low and slow and not to fuss. They were invented for a woman who was too busy to fuss. Respect that.

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo Feeds 8 to 10. Give yourself three hours and do not make plans for the first forty-five minutes. What you need: 1 cup vegetable oil 1 cup all-purpose flour 2 large onions, chopped 3 ribs celery, chopped 1 large green bell pepper, chopped 4 cloves garlic, minced 1 pound andouille or good smoked sausage, sliced in rounds 1 chicken, about 3½ to 4 pounds, cut up (or 3 pounds of thighs, which is what I use now because my hands are not what they were) 3 quarts chicken stock, hot 2 bay leaves 1 teaspoon dried thyme Salt, black pepper, and cayenne to taste 1 bunch green onions, sliced A handful of parsley, chopped Cooked long-grain rice Filé powder for the table First, the roux. This is the whole gumbo and it is the part people are scared of. Put the oil in a heavy pot (cast iron if you have it) over medium heat, and whisk in the flour until it is smooth. Now you stir. You stir with a flat wooden spoon or a whisk, slowly, all the way across the bottom, the whole time. It will be blond after ten minutes, peanut butter after twenty, and by thirty-five or forty-five minutes it will be the color of a Hershey bar, which is what you want. It will smell nutty and toasty. If it smells burnt or you see black specks, throw it out and start over, and I know that hurts, but a burnt roux will ruin the whole pot and the whole pot is a lot more than a cup of flour and a cup of oil. DO NOT WALK AWAY FROM THE ROUX. Not to answer the phone. Not to see who is at the door. Not to yell at the children. It can go from perfect to burnt in the time it takes you to turn around, and it will splash and burn you worse than anything in the kitchen if you slop it. The old people called it Cajun napalm and they were not joking. Turn the heat down a little if you are nervous; it takes longer but it is safer. Then: when the roux is the right color, dump in the trinity all at once. It will hiss and steam, and the vegetables will stop the roux from cooking any further. Stir it for five minutes until the onions go soft, then add the garlic and the sausage and cook another five. Now add the chicken pieces and stir them around to coat. Pour in the hot stock a little at a time, stirring so the roux dissolves into it, then add the bay leaves and the thyme. Bring it up to a boil, then turn it down to a low simmer, half cover it, and let it go for an hour and a half to two hours, stirring now and then and skimming the oil off the top. If you used the whole chicken, pull the pieces out after an hour, take the meat off the bones, and put the meat back. Season it with salt, black pepper, and cayenne at the end. Go easy on the cayenne; the hot sauce is on the table. Stir in the green onions and parsley in the last five minutes. Serve it in a bowl over a scoop of rice, with the filé and the hot sauce and a loaf of French bread on the table. It is better tomorrow. It is even better the day after.

Red Beans and Rice Monday. Feeds 8. Start the night before. What you need: 1 pound dried red kidney beans 1 ham bone with some meat on it, or 2 smoked ham hocks 1 pound smoked sausage, sliced (optional but I would not leave it out) 1 large onion, chopped 2 ribs celery, chopped 1 green bell pepper, chopped 3 cloves garlic, minced 2 bay leaves 1 teaspoon dried thyme ½ teaspoon cayenne, or to taste Salt and black pepper About 2 quarts water Cooked long-grain rice, hot sauce, French bread Sunday night: pick over the beans for little stones, rinse them, cover them with water by a good three inches, and leave them on the counter. Monday morning: drain the beans. In your big pot, cook the sausage a few minutes to get some fat out of it, then add the trinity and the garlic and cook until the onion is soft. Add the beans, the ham bone, the bay leaves, thyme, cayenne, and enough water to cover everything by two inches. Bring it to a boil, then turn it down as low as it will go and let it simmer, lid half on. Now go do your wash. Come back every half hour or so, give it a stir, and add a little water if it is getting low. After about two hours the beans will be soft. Take out the bone, pull off whatever meat is on it, and put the meat back. Then take the back of your spoon and mash some of the beans against the side of the pot, maybe a cup's worth. That is what makes the gravy creamy, not cornstarch, not anything else. Let it go another half hour to an hour. It is done when it is thick enough that a spoon stands up a second before it falls over. Salt and pepper it at the end, because the ham is salty and you will not know how salty until then. Serve over rice with hot sauce and French bread to sop. If it is a Monday and you have done this right, you will understand why the whole city does it.

Pralines Makes about two dozen. It is "PRAH-leen." If you say "PRAY-leen" you are from somewhere else and that is all right, but now you know. What you need: 1 cup granulated sugar 1 cup light brown sugar, packed ½ cup evaporated milk 4 tablespoons butter 1½ cups pecan halves 1 teaspoon vanilla A pinch of salt A candy thermometer, wax paper, and a fast hand Lay out two sheets of wax paper on the counter before you start, because when it is time, it is time. Put both sugars, the milk, the butter, and the salt in a heavy saucepan over medium heat and stir until the sugar melts. Let it come to a boil and cook, stirring now and then, until the thermometer says 238 to 240 degrees, which is the soft-ball stage. If you have no thermometer, drop a bit in a cup of cold water; it should make a soft ball you can flatten between your fingers. This takes ten minutes or so. Take it off the heat. Add the pecans and the vanilla. Now beat it with a wooden spoon, and keep beating, for two or three minutes, until it starts to thicken and go from shiny to a little cloudy. This is the moment. Drop it by tablespoons onto the wax paper as fast as you can, because it sets up quick, and if you wait too long you will have one big praline in the pan, which my grandchildren say is fine with them but it is not a praline. Let them cool and set, about half an hour. Keep them in a tin with wax paper between the layers. They do not keep long, and they never get the chance to in this house. If it is raining, do not make pralines. The sugar takes up the damp and they will not set. That is not superstition; that is chemistry, and I taught science too.

Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce Serves 10. This is what you do with the French bread that has gone hard, and in this city there is always French bread that has gone hard. The pudding: 1 loaf stale French bread, about 12 to 14 ounces, torn into pieces 4 cups milk 3 eggs 1½ cups sugar 2 tablespoons vanilla 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 cup raisins 3 tablespoons butter, melted, for the pan The whiskey sauce: 1 stick (½ cup) butter 1 cup sugar 1 egg, well beaten ¼ cup bourbon (more if it is a bad week) Put the bread in a big bowl, pour the milk over it, and let it soak for a good half hour, squeezing it with your hands now and then until there are no dry spots. Beat the eggs with the sugar, vanilla and cinnamon and stir that in, then the raisins. Pour the melted butter into a 9 by 13 pan and tilt it around to coat, then pour the pudding in. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour, until it is puffed and brown on top and a knife in the middle comes out clean. For the sauce, melt the butter with the sugar in the top of a double boiler (or a bowl set over a pot of simmering water) and stir until the sugar is dissolved and it is hot. Now, with a whisk in one hand, pour in the beaten egg in a thin stream while you whisk hard, so it does not scramble. Keep whisking over the heat a minute or two until it thickens up. Take it off the heat, let it cool a bit, and stir in the bourbon. Cut the pudding into squares, put a square in a bowl, and spoon the warm sauce over it. Serve it warm. I do not know anybody who has ever had leftovers of this, but if you do, it is very good cold for breakfast, and I will deny that I said so.

Café au Lait Two things make it New Orleans coffee. Chicory, which is a root that is roasted and ground up with the coffee, and which we started using a long time ago when coffee was scarce and dear and never stopped, because we like the taste. And hot milk, half and half with the coffee, so that it is not so much a cup of coffee with milk in it as a cup of coffee and milk together. Make the coffee strong. Buy a coffee-and-chicory blend, any of the local brands will do; I use about two heaping tablespoons for every cup of water in the drip pot, and if that seems like a lot, it is supposed to. While it drips, heat the same amount of whole milk in a saucepan until it is steaming and just starting to get a skin, but do not let it boil. Then take the coffee pot in one hand and the milk pan in the other and pour them together into the cup at the same time. That is the whole trick and my mother would have said it is the only trick. Sugar if you want it. Beignets if you are lucky. A porch and somebody to talk to if you are really lucky.

Other kitchens worth visiting: Rosa's Kitchen Table (Rosa runs the Kitchen Table ring and she is a fine cook) · Sourdough Sam · Betty's Backyard Vegetable Patch · Stitches & Stories Quilt Guild And my neighbors on this street: The Crescent City Stompers (Lionel fixed my teeth for twenty years and plays a good horn) and the Krewe of Persephone. Coming when I get to it: shrimp Creole, stuffed mirlitons, my mother's crawfish bisque (that one takes all day and I need to be in the mood), and something about the King Cake season, which starts on Twelfth Night and not one day sooner.

This site is a member of the Kitchen Table WebRing, owned by Odette B. [ << Prev | List Sites | Next >> ]

You are the person to sit at my table since August 1999. Every one of you is welcome. Write to me: [email protected]. If you have a question about a recipe, ask. If you put tomatoes in the gumbo, don't tell me. Last updated September 20, 1999 (a Monday, naturally, with the beans on) © 1999 Odette B. These recipes were free when I got them and they are free now.