Quiche is one of those dishes that has so many varieties of fillings and is really easy to prepare, so it is a wonder that we don’t eat it more often. It seems to be an overlooked meal item on restaurant menus these days, and its popularity has waned a bit over the years, you just don’t see it often when dining out anymore. But at home the leftovers are so easy to keep and re-heat too; it just makes sense when we prepare it once in a blue moon. It only takes about 10 minutes to prepare the set up and then bake in the oven for 45 minutes and dinner is ready in just an hour or so.

I like it because I can spend just about 15 minutes in the kitchen after a long day at work and then in the oven for the rest of the hour, giving me enough time to head out into the yard and tend the garden, pick some tomatoes, water the herbs and shoo away the invasive bugs. I have to admit that a few tomatoes end up being devoured before they make it back into the house.

This recipe is for the broccoli and cheese version, but the great thing about this quiche recipe is you can substitute any type of cheese for the ½ pound of cheddar, as well, the 2 cups of broccoli can be replaced with 2 cups of spinach, tofu, bacon crumbles, diced ham, cooked sausage chunks, cooked tiny shrimp, crab meat, or other seafood as well. The variations are only limited by your pantry and imagination.

This recipe has become a family favorite since we first made it in 2001 when Monique bought a copy of the Weight Watchers Magazine Six O’Clock Solutions cookbook. Found on page 49, this recipe for chicken enchiladas is quick,  easy and for those who follow the Weight Watchers points system each one is only 6 points. The original recipe calls for 8 servings; however, with doubling it I was able to actually yield 20 enchiladas, so the points per enchilada will actually be a bit less than stated. Essentially this changes the recipe from 2.5 ounces of chicken per enchilada to just 2 ounces each.

We prepared a double batch of these  Monday night (06/22/09) in celebration of Bryan arriving to town, and within an hour we were diving into our favorite enchiladas, everyone went back for seconds too. The fresh chopped cilantro and jalapeno are sautéed with some onions and then the canned enchilada sauce is added with the shredded chicken. I’ve modified the recipe some as the original calls for boiling the chicken breast in water until done then shredding the meat. I prefer to grill the chicken instead, and before doing so I like to season the chicken first so I add some of my Finger Lickin’ Rub to the chicken breast meat and then grill it on both sides until done. Then I allow the grilled chicken breasts to sit for 5 minutes before shredding. The grilling does not add any more fat or calories because no oil is used, but it adds that charcoal grilled flavor that allows the chicken breast to develop that smoky outdoor tang that I just love.

This video short embedded below demonstrates the corn tortilla dunk, filling and rolling the enchiladas, topped them with cheese and baking in the oven. Then garnishing the pan of baked enchiladas with the diced tomatoes, sliced black olives and then served up on a plate over a bed of shredded lettuce ready to eat. I am sure you will enjoy this recipe with your family as much as we have over the years.

Yesterday I threw together a batch of scratch mac with four cheeses for Ben to get in some good carbs before his baseball game. A half hour later he and I were eating some fresh hot mac and cheese. Ate some more for lunch today and dinner tonight too. Only a little bit left. So I Twittered this on Foodbuzz last night and I got a few comments and a request to post the recipe from Frieda aka Lovin’ from the Oven… and more!

Sorry no photos, but the recipe should work as described.

Butter Pecan Pound Cake

This recipe was passed on to me at work from my boss and friend Liz. We trade recipes on a regular basis and she seems to cook a lot more than I do these days, she has many opportunities to prepare some really good meals for her family.

I am not sure of the origin of this recipe, but I have seen variations on the Internet and in some family style cookbooks. This is one of the moistest cake recipes I have ever run across, the amount of liquid, eggs and oil combined with the addition of icing in the batter and then baking at a very low temperature for three-quarters of the oven time ensures a very moist cake.

Cooling on wire rack

This recipe is so quick and easy to prepare and requires only 7 ingredients, and while not a complete from scratch recipe, it does utilize some brand name items that can be found in just about every store across N. America.  A versatile cake too it can be served as dessert to just about any meal, makes a great breakfast bread with coffee or perfect for an afternoon break with a spot of hot tea.

Ready to serve

Let’s face it the focus should be on College Algebra 101 or Biology 1001 classes and time spent in the kitchen is quite limited. So the recipes tagged for college life cooking will be geared toward quick, easy and nutritious meals that make enough for a few days of leftovers or enough to feed a small group of friends or room mates. One of the first recipes that I prepared often when I attended college was a simple lasagna dish and that will be my first installment later this week.

The first time this recipe came across my purview was during a culinary practicum at the University of New Orleans (UNO) Hotel and Restaurant Training (HRT) kitchen. The practicum consisted of the spring semester of 1984 where the Delgado Community College culinary apprenticeship shared a class with the senior HRT students, practicing restaurant operations in a learning environment. The senior HRT students ran the front of the house and the culinarians ran the back of the house. The first month involved making up rotations of team members and then developing menus based on various themes ranging from several cuisines to a Culinary Olympics menu as well. Most of the meals were prepared as a luncheon for UNO staff, but a few of the meals towards the finale of the course were dinner evening meals. One such meal was the French cuisine dinner, it was a 7 course event and also featured a pre-dinner party with canapes and Hors d’oeuvres, one of them was the Shrimp Imperial.

I was the sous chef for this particular meal, and while the designated chef apprentice became ill and missed this day I had to step it up and no backing out now even though I also happened to be running a 101 fever. I worked through the 14 hour day somehow without fainting or collapsing, I guess the adrenalin kept me going. I was young then and could endure a lot of adversity, but it certainly was a test of strength and stamina, the energy came from somewhere and is still a mystery to this day!

The second time I made this recipe was for a Halloween party I put together in 1992 at my home, of course it was a big hit. And the biggest hit for me was the first flirtation with my wife Monique was in reference to this dish. We were friends then and she told me “You can make these for me anytime”, and I said “There’s a price for everything!” So for a third time I made this dish for Mother’s Day a few weeks ago and again, Monique loved them.

This recipe calls for ½ lb. of back fin crabmeat and ½ lb. of claw crabmeat for added flavor, and I find the claw meat also adds a bit of firmness to the texture of the stuffing as well. The Panko breadcrumbs are actually an addition to the original recipe, and the cocktail sauce is served as an alternative to the traditional beurre blanc sauce that would be served on the side also. Another ingredient that is found in the traditional “Imperial” preparation is mayonnaise, and it has also been eliminated from this version.

After 25 years and only preparing this dish 3 times the historical recipe is finally documented and shared with you, and hopefully it will continue to impress those in your life too. I just hope to make it again sooner than later!

We got a copy of the Creamy White Chili recipe from Ben’s girlfriend’s mom a few weeks ago and decided to prepare it for our dinner a few Sunday’s ago. I have taken the original recipe and made a few changes, it had called for canned chicken breast, cayenne pepper and whipping cream. I modified the recipe and used some cooked chicken breast and dark meat that was left over from a roasted chicken earlier in the week. I also replaced the cayenne pepper with my Cajun spice blend, and instead of whipping cream I made a quick bechamel sauce with some milk and a blonde roux.

This recipe is a really tasty alternative to your typical red meat, chili powder and tomato based chili recipe. The green chilies add the heat and with a little cayenne pepper from the Cajun spice and the black pepper blend it makes up for not having any chili powder. The Great Northern Beans are a great addition and add body along with the chicken. I would venture a guess that white kidney beans or cannelloni beans would be really good too. The sour cream and bechamel sauce incorporated at the end offer a hint of coolness that is reminiscent of the texture and flavor profile similarly found in a Stroganoff.

Yield: 6 servings

What follows are a few noteworthy items of interest that I came across today. And then I’ll wrap up with a few new things on the Cajun Chef Ryan (CCR) blog that I started today.

This year’s Earth Day will see the launch of the Green Generation(tm)  Campaign; a  two-year project that will end on the 40th anniversary of  Earth Day in 2010.

The special focus areas of the Green Generation(tm) Campaign will be:

• A carbon-free future based on renewable energy that will end our common dependency on fossil fuels, including coal.

• An individual’s commitment to responsible, sustainable  consumption.

• Creation of a new green economy that lifts people out of poverty  by creating millions of quality green jobs and transforms the global education system into a green one.

On Facebook today, Donna McLoughlin of Slow Food Urban San Deigo posted a link to Fertile Ground USA a site that Celebrates the people behind the plow, a zine investigating the sustainability of sustainable agriculture cropping up. This got me to digging more and as I read a few more articles it hit me that I needed to add a new link category to the CCR blog, more on that later.

This past weekend the Wake Forest Herb Festival started in what is now a 10 day event. And after dropping $197 on plants including many culinary herbs, vegetables, heirloom tomatoes and perennial flowers,  we then trotted home Sunday afternoon and planted 1/2 of them in the ground just before the rain set in.  The tomatoes got put into 4 deck planters yesterday afternoon and now only 8 more herbs remain to be set into the ground.

Also, today I ran across the the NO GMO Challenge, a 30 day challenge to avoid all foods with GMO’s. It’s a rolling challenge — you can join in anytime. You can also participate as long as you like. You don’t have to stop at 30 days.  GMO’s - short for genetically modified organisms - are man-made organisms created in a laboratory and patented by a corporation or the USDA. GMO’s are created by a process called genetic engineering.

A weekend of planting in the garden, the Wake Forest Herb Festival, Earth Day today, a Facebook posting and the No GMO Challenge  got my wheels turning and so this has led to my new link (blogroll) category on the CCR blog:

Sustainability

And with the new sustainability category there are three new links and the No GMO widget with the hope of adding more as I grow this new focus.  Which is similar in focus to that of the “Slow food” movement, it is my hope to contribute in this idea as a way of living and as a way of eating. It is a global, grassroots movement with thousands of members around the world that links the pleasure of food with a commitment to community and the environment.

• Sustainability Links

  • Eat The View
  • Fertile Ground USA
  • Food System Creators Cafe
  • Slow Food Urban San Deigo

For Good Friday this year we decided to finally make the trek to the south side of Raleigh and check out two seafood markets we have been hearing about over the years. Coming from Louisiana we always had our choice of seafood on a regular basis, especially in the spring months when crabs, shrimp and crawfish are always plentiful. I wrote a short wish list of items we would look for such as halibut, cod, oysters, crabs and shrimp.

We first went to Earp’s Seafood Market (1414 South Saunders Street, Raleigh, North Carolina 27603) and after spending $73 and change we walked away with 2 lbs. catfish fillets, 1 quart fresh shucked oysters, 1 lb. jumbo lump crabmeat and 2 lbs. large shell-on shrimp. We asked about live blue crabs and the owner said his blue crab supplier was in Florida for a week and it would be next weekend before he gets any in again to sell.

A few mental notes for the next visit to Earp’s - they do sell frozen crawfish tail meat imported from China, so that will only do in an absolute pinch. But they also have frog legs, scallops and just about any fish. Grouper, salmon, catfish, haddock, pollock, trout, red snapper, and flounder were also available on our visit.

We then drove just a few minutes away to Capital Seafood (676 Maywood Ave, Raleigh, NC 27603) and they had live blue crabs available for $4.99/lb so we picked out 10 of our own and they weighed in at around 2 lb. We were happy with our “catch” and drove home to proceed with our seafood extravaganza.

Once home I immediately set up a stock pot with 3 quarts of water and some seasonings to boil the crabs and shrimp, in the meantime we started eating the raw oysters. Of course we had to whip up a small batch of remulade and cocktail sauces to go with the bivalve delights. Once the crabs and shrimp were done we sat down to our Good Friday Seafood Dinner complete with raw oysters, boiled crabs and boiled shrimp with potatoes, garlic, onion and celery. Lassez le bonne temps roule!

Monique picked about 4 ounces of crabmeat from the remaining crabs and the next day I combined that with the 1 lb of jumbo lump we bought and created a crabmeat stuffing. We saved the crab shells and I cleaned them up allowing them to dry overnight before stuffing. What follows is a simple yet delicious crabmeat stuffing, perfect for stuffed crab shells which we did, or stuffed founder (Bruning’s Style) or for stuffing anything from artichokes to catfish.

Crabmeat Stuffing / Stuffed Crabs Recipe

Okay, so a Cajun Chef making sushi, right? Go figure, but it is one of our families favorite meals, and weeks before when we told Ben that our Christmas meal was going to be sushi his jaw just dropped! At least once a month, give or take a few weeks here or there, we make the trek to our favorite sushi restaurant on Lake Boone Trail in Raleigh, the unbeatable Sushi Thai Restaurant. Their special rolls are to die for, like the Hurricane, Dragon, Spider, Dynamite, Crunchy Shrimp, and the Neptune Roll. They also feature $1.00 sushi special price for dinner every night. But when we can’t make it to Sushi Thai, I like to make my own.

And for Christmas day this past holiday season we had a menu of Wonton Soup and Sushi as our flavor for a Christmas meal. Quite a juxtaposition for our menu selection in that very few Chinese or Japanese celebrate the true meaning of Christmas. With baptized Christians comprising approximately only one percent of the Chinese population, it seems safe to assume that Christmas is not a major holiday.¹

It’s been over three months now and I’m just getting around to documenting this wonderful dinner, so it’s time to put it down into words and share this meal with my foodie buds!

A word of caution here, making sushi is what I would call an advanced preparation method that takes great skill and practice. If you love sushi as much as I do, you too will want to learn how to do it yourself. Practice makes perfect and with practice comes confidence. Some of the sushi making steps were cut a bit when we made ours, but I will present the complete steps as described in the traditional method and will let you know were we took a few cuts here and there.

Wonton Soup

Making Wonton Soup was a lot of fun for Monique and I as we put it together. We found this recipe from the cookbook The Big Book Of One Pot which by the way is always a treat when you can get by with just messing up one pot for dinner! This day was not one of those days with having the sushi too!

This recipe calls for both shrimp and pork for the Wonton filling as well as fresh ginger. The Wonton’s are quite fun to fill and once the liquid portion of the soup is done and the wonton’s are filled and set up into triangles they only take about 5 to 10 minutes to cook in the chicken stock. This recipe serves 6 to 8 portions.

Making the Sushi

I’ve made sushi about a half dozen times in my life and it is always a treat to prepare since a challenge is in making the rice, but also in getting the rolls and the sushi just so. Both practice and patience are a plus with putting together both the rolls and the sushi pieces. Just like a roux in Cajun Country you first start with making your sushi rice and this is quite a process to get it prepared. Before you do anything else read the instructions a few times to understand the process, yes, even for me I have to re-read the recipe just about every time I make sushi rice. All of these steps to making sushi have been adapted from the book The Book of Sushi by Kinjiro Omae and Yuzuro Tachibana, which I have owned this copy since 1983.

Sushi Rice

Making sushi rice is zen for me, as I become one with the rice, as it takes on a personality that transcends any rice I have ever made. The rice starts out in a cool bath of fresh clear water and is rinsed and fondled until the water runs clear, which can be more than a few minutes. As I run my fingers through the rice and the water I reflect on the anticipated treats of fresh tuna, shrimp and avocado awaiting its proper place. Once the rice is washed it is set to rest for 1 hour to drain, then it is sent to the hot water for cooking.

To make a good sushi rice all the steps and ingredients must be followed to near perfect as written.

Nigiri-zushi (握り寿司, lit. hand-formed sushi). Consists of an oblong mound of sushi rice that is pressed between the palms of the hands, sometimes with a speck of wasabi, and a slice of fish called neta draped over it. Certain fish are typically bound to the rice with a thin strip of nori, most commonly tako (octopus), unagi (freshwater eel), anago (sea eel), ika (squid), and tamago (sweet egg). Nigiri is generally served in pairs.³

Putting It All Together

To Slice Sushi Topping

Cutting fresh fish into uniform size and thickness appropriate for nigiri-zushi topping takes some skill, which can be acquired with some practice. We bought an 8-ounce piece of sashimi grade tuna, or maguro for our fish topping ingredient. Here are the steps to preparing your fish topping:

To Prepare Sushi Shrimp

Sushi-topping shrimp must be nicely colored, well shaped and opened flat to embrace the finger of sushi rice. Prepare them as follows and then refrigerate until needed. In our case we accidentally shelled the shrimp before we cooked it, and it still came out ok for us.

To Make Nigiri-zushi

The key factor to making really good sushi is a balance between the topping and the rice. The hand-formed rice is gently squeezed together, as the word Nigiri means “squeezing”. For one finger of sushi the topping weights no more than a ½ ounce and the rice weights no more than and ounce.

Before beginning the actual process have all your tools and ingredients ready, such as a sharp knife, a clean, damp kitchen towel, a small bowl of wasabi horseradish, and a bowl of water with a bit of vinegar in it in which to rinse your fingers. The preferred method is to slice the fish fillets as you go which is typical of most sushi shops, but in our case our tuna was already sliced.

The traditional method of setting up sushi is listed below, which after reading many times I may try this technique the next time. But what I did was take a little bit of rice and shaped into a small elongated block, then placed a tiny pit of wasabi on that and added the topping tuna or shrimp. And continued with this until all the toppings were set up. Some of them I left out the wasabi for variety. Now the 11 step traditional method below seems like a lot of work, but the technique most likely only takes 20 to 30 seconds to complete.

Though the explanation sounds complicated in writing, once your go through the steps several times your will get used to them in practice.