On a recent trip to The Tipsy Gourmet in Wake Forest we saw they had the Cafe du Monde Beignet Mix, and Ben said he wanted to have some beignets at home so we bought the box.

This past Sunday (08/24/08)  I took the box and prepared one batch of the mix which is 2 cups of the mix and 7 ounces of cool water.

Mix this well until a smooth dough is formed and then roll it out into a 1/8″ thickness sheet.

Then cut the dough into 2 1/4″ X 2 1/4″ squares, which are quite smaller than the ones you get at Cafe du Monde, but I suppose the directions are meant for home kitchens with smaller fryers. Next time I may cut them to a larger size like 3″ X 3″.

The recipe stated that this would yield 24 beignets, well, we ended up with over 40 of them.

Before I started with the dough mix, I set a quart of Canola oil in the deep sauce pot and with the candy/deep fry thermometer and set it on a high heat to warm up to 370 degrees F.

  Once the dough squares were done and the Canola oil reached the required temperature I started with batches of six squares at a time and quickly flipped them to puff up. I also gently tossed some of the hot oil on top while they were frying. These little puffs of dough fry quickly, in a matter of just a few minutes they are then pulled out and set on paper towels to drain.

 While they are cooling and still a bit warm we dust them liberally with powdered sugar and are ready to be consumed with some Cafe au Lait!

 We only fried up about half of them and this was plenty for the three of us!

On Friday a met Monique for lunch at Firehouse Subs in the Brier Creek shopping area and we both got a sub, I got the new BBQ Smoked Brisket Sub and she got the Hook and Ladder Sub. Both were good, but not like a good ole messy Hot Roast Beef Po-Boy like in NOLA.

Friday evening we finished up some leftover Tilapia from earlier in the week, but we soon started into some more great eats on Saturday and Sunday! I bought some fresh salmon at the grocery, a nice 1 lb. piece with the skin-on and we have been craving my Dill Crusted Salmon with Dill Yogurt Sauce.

Saturday afternoon after a visit at the hair salon we headed to our new favorite foodie store in Wake Forest, The Tipsy Gourmet. This place has many culinary and gourmet items, kitchen equipment, hard to find ingredients, beer and wine too! We happened to enjoy some free wine tastings and bought two bottles while there, a bottle of German and a bottle of Argentinian wine too, a dry Riesling.

After the trip there we started on our dinner preparation, the Dill Crusted Salmon.

Skinning a salmon filet is a technique that takes a bit of skill, but with a sharp knife and a tight hold on the skin and a quick flick of the wrist I peeled the skin from the fresh pink flesh with little or none attached to the skin. Same technique for skinning any cut of fish or meat for that matter.

 Once that was done, I cut the salmon into 4 pieces and seasoned them up with some garlic salt, fresh cracked black pepper and dill weed. Then into the pre-heated broiler for 15-20 minutes, or until a nice browned crust is formed on the top and the salmon is cooked about 90% through.

 Then I plated the crusted salmon filet’s on top a bed of garlic mashed potatoes and served it with a heaping portion of the dill yogurt sauce.

Ingredients

Procedure Steps 

Sunday we started the morning with some homemade Beignets with Cafe au Lait! What a great New Orleans treat. I will post a separate thread on these, but here are a few images to get your mouth watering…. 

You may have noticed that I have updated the Cajun Chef Ryan site with a new theme which has a very unique look and feel. It is the Cutline Theme for WordPress and it has a professional air to it that I like, especially the new added 3-column template and format.

There were a few reasons for the update, the major one being the ability to have a 3-column template that allows the Food Buzz badge and tower ad placement on the left side and above the fold of the page. I also like the functionality of the template and the header image rotation placement, I have been using this same theme for my Piedmont Division model railroad website for about a year now.

So one of the current projects I am still working on is creating some header images, they have to be formatted to 970 pixels wide, but can range in height, but I like to keep them to no higher than 300 pixels. Here are a few of them that I really like, and they are shown here at a reduced size for a better fit in the blog posting.

 This is the only image that I kept from the Cutline template:

Cafe du Monde in the French Market in New Orleans, Louisiana

Crawfish Bisque at the Boyer’s House

Boiled Crawfish and a Beer

The Tipsy Gourmet Label

Cajun Spice Mix Jars

There are two varieties of mint growing in our front yard, one is spearmint and the other peppermint. I love both, but the peppermint is much better in my opinion for making a Mint Julep or Mojito alcoholic beverage. The spearmint is highlighted in the close-up photo and the peppermint is the larger image displaying the bushy growth near our paved sections. These plants were put into the ground last year and both died back after the frost during the winter but have come back this year with a vengeance. I have also helped them along by picking the tops to help promote a bushy growth structure.

I love picking some of the leaf tops and just chewing on them, really makes your breath fresh too! Besides extracting the oils for all the minty flavored or enhanced medicinal products on the market these days like toothpaste, shampoo and shave cream, fresh mint leaves are also used in teas and can help settle a stomach ache.

Mint Julep

Ingredients

Procedure Steps

1. Muddle the fresh mint leaves with the sugar until well crushed, allow to sit for a few minutes to release the oils into the sugar
2.  Add the ½ cup of crushed ice and stir well
3. Add the bourbon and stir
4.  Strain the bourbon and ice over a tall up glass filled with crushed ice and add a splash of soda water
5. Garnish with more fresh whole mint leaves