Baby Artichokes

I recently made these really awesome baby artichokes for my aunt and her family. Two of them suffer from Celiac's Disease, so I had to make them gluten free.  My solution, Fish Fry!  It's cornmeal, nice and crispy and produces a great golden color.  My cousin panicked because he thought I was trying to feed him glutenous flour.  The batter also contains vodka, another Celiac friendly commodity.  The vodka is there to give a nice, crispy yet smooth texture.  Hahaha...smirk!  No my dear cousin, you can have fried food!  Hurray for fish fry!  Oh yea, and any distilled alcohol is ok for the gluten challenged.  The poor dear was so excited he got to have fried food!  Food that actually tastes good...not the usual flavorless gluten free crap.


So I used:
1 cup fish fry(we use Zatarains)
1 shot glass full vodka
cayenne pepper
couple dashes Tobasco
garlic salt
1 egg (to hold it together)
and about 1/2 cup milk(you have to watch the texture, you want it thick, but you don't want sludge)*note:make sure you use real milk, not that white water stuff that has no taste!
You can pre-mix all this and put it in the refrigerator till you're ready for it.


To prepare the baby artichokes-which incidentally came from California, product of USA-cut the tips off first. Then you will need to peel off all the dark green leaves.  It may seem like you are disassembling the whole artichoke, but trust me keep taking them off till the leaves are that nice light green.  You don't want to keep chewing hard leaves when you eat these. once you've finished de-leaving them, cut them in half long ways.  I trimmed the uneven leaves off with a knife after peeling them for aesthetics, but as they are battered and fried it doesn't really matter unless there is still dark green leaf parts on the artichoke. 

Once you halve the chokes, you need to take out the furry middle part that rests over the heart.  I've eaten these myself and obviously haven't died, but the texture is prickly and unpleasant so cut it out with a knife.  I also peeled the stems a little with a potato peeler because they looked a little rough.  I love to eat the stems, and if you do too, just clean them up a bit.  

Ok, your artichokes are ready to be steamed!  Steam them for about 15 minutes or until tender.  Now, I fry these in a pan and turn them to cook both sides(see above).  You can deep fry them if you like.  So once they are steamed, batter(submerge and cover completely in batter) them with your wonderful mix you placed in the fridge earlier.  Make sure your oil is HOT before you fry!  If you put whatever you're frying in the oil before its hot its going to be greasy!  You've been warned!
Fry in your HOT oil and place on a plate covered in paper towels to soak up excess oil.  Serve with Parmesan cheese on top. YOU EAT THE WHOLE THING!  Don't be afraid, it's good...really! :)


Last note, once you've finished frying, drain the oil into a bottle to use again later.  It's still ok to use again!  No wasting!


True to Culinary Misadventures' current trends, I forgot that I had my camera while I was making these.  So the pictures here are all from the end of the creative process.  Yes, even the picture of the lone artichoke above.  It was the last one and I almost burned it trying to get the picture!

WE HAVE VIDEOS!!!

Our handy, dandy camera lady/advisor on all subjects has been working on editing the videos of our maiden voyage.  3 of them are now on our YouTube channel, http://www.youtube.com/user/culinarymisadventure

She did a great job making us not look as bad as we were!  Check out our YouTube channel every now and again for a new video.  We also post links on our Facebook and Twitter accounts!  

Email us at culinarymisadventures@gmail.com

Sunday Bouillabaisse

So, Sunday dinner is kind of a huge deal with my family.  We usually eat together every Sunday at NOON or 2pm if people are coming.  If dinner is late, my dad goes crazy and we rush to get dinner on the table.  Yes, dinner at noon.  Trust me, after eating this meal, you won't want to eat again for days.  Usual Sunday dinner consists of a gravy and pasta for the first course.  Second course is usually a chicken or spadina with salad and corn and egg or broccoli and egg frittata.  Then dessert, which is just any cake we find at the store or cheese cake Honey(grandma) made.

This Sunday, they let me cook.  I seem to have proven myself worthy of cooking on Sunday after cooking for my parents basically all summer.  The parents felt like eating seafood and my mom started taking out all the fish my dad ever caught--seemed like it anyway--and shrimp and imitation crab meat.  So I piped in with "Let's do a bouillabaisse."  My dad looked confused and disgusted all at the same time and replied "you do and you'll clean it up," while my mom was open to the idea.  I won!  Yay!  Bouillabaisse it was.

This stuff is so good and so ridiculously arduous to make.  The French would probably kill me for what I've done to this bouillabaisse.  We used crab boil.  We use it in almost everything we cook.  If it tasted good with cream cheese it would go in our cheese cakes.  I did not separate the ocean dwelling ingredients from the soup when I served.  And, I used imitation crab meat as well as lemons.  I KNOW!!! IMITATION CRAB MEAT AND TILAPIA!!! Blaspheme! Forgive me Arielle!!!  It's what we had in the freezer, can't waste things... So I guess this should be called my New Orleans Bouillabaisse.  Keep in mind, you can use whatever seafood you like, i.e. oysters, clams, mussels, REAL crab meat, etc. This still came out great with a wonderful lemon-garlic-seafood flavor(Honey couldn't get over how good it was). I'm going to attempt to tell you what I did so you can do it too.  If you like, we can do a video of this...just ask.

You will need:

1lb shrimp

1/2 lb imitation crab meat

1 small sack of mussels

a few fish(we only used 2 tilapia)

2 lemons

1/4 cup liquid crab boil

1/2 an onion chopped

white part only of 1 1/2 leeks chopped

olive oil

4-ish toes of garlic

pinch of saffron

1/2lb  tomatoes skinned and seeded

herbs like thyme, rosemary, parsley (I use a mix called Herbs de Provence from the International Market)

First, make sure all your mussels are good to cook.  Throw out broken and open shells that won't close with some persuasion, i.e. gently knocking it closed.  The dead one's are bad, just like crawfish...if the tail is straight don't eat, if the shell won't close don't eat! 

Soak seafood in crab boil, lemon(cut in half or quartered), and water to thaw if frozen like ours were.

Saute your onions and leeks till transparent with some oil, salt, pepper, herbs and saffron.  Add the tomatoes and 2 cloves of smashed garlic--blend in and cook for about 2min.(My sous chefs, aka mom and dad, did all the chopping and preparation...I hate chopping onions)  Add in the mussels and fish, and 6 cups of water.  Bring to a boil and cook for 7 minutes.  Add in shrimp and imitation crab meat.  Let cook for another 10 minutes. 

Blend the juice of one lemon, 4 toes of garlic, a pinch of salt, and a dash of olive oil.  Pour into pot and let cook a few minutes more. VOILA! You have my version of Bouillabaisse.

I served this with a baguette from Rouses that I sliced, and spread minced garlic, olive oil, and butter on before toasting in the oven.  And some steamed cauliflower.  You steam the cauliflower, then in a bowl mix some sliced onion, garlic salt, olive oil and white vinegar with it.  Refrigerate and serve.  Its ok hot, but I prefer it cold the next day when the vinegar has really soaked in.

I also made a rouille to go with the bouillabaisse, but it took away the wonderful lemony flavor.  My dad preferred the spice of the rouille so here's the recipe:

blend 2 egg yolks, 2 sliced chili peppers, 3/4 cup olive oil, a tsp of the soup and some garlic.

Oh, almost forgot, we had sfingiune too.  Its just a pizza dough drizzled with olive oil, romano and parmesan cheese, sliced onion, and anchovies baked in the oven till cheese is melted or browned.  Enjoy this light fare with some white wine!!

 Sfingiune, bread, cauliflower, bouillabaisse

 bouillabaisse

cauliflower and bread

Pralines

Today we were supposed to film another batch of recipes, but we had to cancel.  :(  Arielle and I decided to get together anyway to test her praline recipes.  She had two recipes.  One is "old school" and must be constantly stirred for ~45 minutes.  It is way better than the other quicker version.  So, "old school" it is.

We've taken mental notes concerning brand loyalty.  Down here in Louisiana we have this thing called brand loyalty.  Most of our recipes call for brand name ingredients, i.e. Zatarain's this, or Karo that, or PET milk.  And we are guilty of this loyalty as well.  We say things like pass me the Season All or hand me a Coke (and all we have is Sprite).  These companies don't pay us to say these things, but we do because it's part of the culture here.  By the way, if any of these companies would like to pay us, we could step up the mentioning of your products instead of censoring ourselves as we are attempting to do now.

Tangent over; sorry.  The pralines came good.  Well the first, "old school" batch did anyway.  The 2nd batch was too runny and had a strong flavor we found less pleasant than the smooth first batch.  They are really light because we forgot to put the vanilla in...oops! Hence the misadventures part! But they taste good all the same!  I can't give you the recipe for these.  Arielle would kill me.  We will eventually produce these delectable morsels of creamy, sugary goodness for sale, but that's going to have to wait till we get the business up and running.

 stirring batch 1

 Batch 1

 Batch 2-so runny...:(

 batch 2

Batch 2

After stirring for 45mins and cooking the 2nd batch of pralines for another 30mins we were feeling hungry, yet extremely lazy.  Arielle sauteed some shrimp in her usual spices: garlic powder, season all, cayenne pepper, and a little salt.  She made some macaroni and cheese too.  We then decided to douse the shrimp in bbq sauce.  Our dinner consisted of one of life's guilty pleasures! 

Dinner!

Outside the normal realm...

I don't usually praise Slidell.  In fact, I hate that I had to move from NOLA back to this dreadfully boring and dry city that is incapable of supporting good restaurants.  People here think Chick-fil-A is fine dining.  Tragic to say the least.  Don't get me wrong, Slidell is host to some really good breakfast joints like LA Pines and Good Eats.  And it has the best donuts on the planet at Georges.  However, I was pleasantly surprised late this morning when David took me to Tacos & Beer in Old Town.  IT WAS AMAZING!!!  Yes, that's right, I just described a Slidell culinary institution as AMAZING!  It was better than amazing, words cannot describe how shockingly good this Slidell restaurant is. 

We ordered 2 pulled pork tacos, 2 chorizo tacos, and a plate of nachos with marinated pork.  Hurray for pork!  Sorry non-pork eaters, this stuff was awesome!  The pulled pork was so tender and so juicy...succulent pieces of yummy, dripping pork on soft corn tortillas with fresh white onion and cilantro on top.  Then the chorizo.  This stuff has been popping up everywhere here recently, and it is soon becoming one of my favorite things.  The chorizo tacos were packed with flavor.  They had this wonderful bite, not too spicy but just the right kick.  The moment I bit into that wondrous garlic-y, tangy, onion-y, cilantro packed piece of heaven, fireworks went off in my mouth.  Sorry Philippe's off Calhoun, Tacos and Beer leaves you in the dust.  The nachos were great, and so was the one condiment-hot sauce.  The marinated pork was well seasoned.  Obviously the chorizo is the number one, hot item here.  And, of course, I had to have a Tecate with my tacos!  This time I had it with a lime.  Quite refreshing...

Supposedly they serve tongue there too.  I plan to sample this next time I go, which will be soon!  I do hope that this tiny food paradise in Slidell doesn't follow the usual good restaurant trend here.  Keep up the food quality and the service!  Our waitress Sonja or Sonya or Sonia(I didn't check the spelling) was awesome! You can't beat the prices, flavor, and service in this God-send of an establishment here in Slidell.

Pics!!!

 Chorizo and pulled pork tacos

 marinated pork nachos

 really good hot sauce...

Red Velvet

Today I had my first interview for a big girl job, finally.  Sad to say it didn't go so well, but I'll survive.  I also got some other bad news about a language grant.  Needless to say, bad day. Still unemployed, still eating anyway.
Arielle was there to save me!  We had a picnic in city park.  Lebna and pita from Mona's on Banks, some cokes (she drank pepsi and I had coke), genoa salami, and homemade RED VELVET CUP CAKES!  They were amazing, if I do say so myself.  Here's the recipe!

1 box of either white or yellow cake mix
4 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 box instant chocolate pudding
2oz vinegar
1 tblsp baking soda
1 small bottle of red food coloring
and whatever oil and water the box of cake mix calls for


Make sure your eggs are room temperature before you start mixing!!!
Combine dry ingredients.  Mix in (ROOM TEMPERATURE) eggs, oil and water.  In a separate small bowl mix vinegar and baking soda together then mix into cake batter. Add food coloring and bake in a 375 degree oven for about 20minutes.  Adjust that time as necessary. Let cool and ice with your favorite cream cheese icing.  We were lazy today and used store bought icing. Still yummy!


Commence the writing of letters to my Congressmen about this grant, the economic effects on recent college grads, and the brain drain that afflicts the state of Louisiana...oh boy!

Official Picture

Thanks to Arielle, we now have our official picture:

Both Joy and I approved!  It's adorable!

Tried to make some hummus today, but it came out too stiff.  It wasn't nearly creamy enough.  I soaked to chick peas overnight with baking soda, rinsed and boiled them with salt and let them simmer for about 45minutes.  Into the food processor they went with the juice of about 4 lemons and about a cup of tahini.  I added some water in hopes that the hummus would loosen up a little, but I was wrong.  So, it's sitting in a bowl looking pretty with olive oil and sumac on top.  Maybe I should stick to family recipes!

Arielle will be making a red velvet cake for us tomorrow!  My favorite!

Maiden Voyage

As neophyte videographers and cooks our maiden voyage didn't go so well.  We did manage to establish the basics. Joy is our producer, makeup artist, director, camera lady, and handler of various other miscellaneous tasks while filming.  Arielle aside from providing recipes for our book/videos is also in charge of graphics and photography.  I, Victoria, also provide recipes, and I am the designated writer for Culinary Misadventures.

I am so happy we decided to call our brand Culinary Misadventures.  The name fits us perfectly.  Our first video session was horrific to say the least.  We decided to start at 8pm and wanted to cook 4 dishes plus some odds and ends.  Our ambitious first menu included my family's Crab Gravy, Boiled Calamari, and Cheese Cake as well as Arielle's family recipes for Seafood Fricasee, Crab Meat and Shrimp Pistolettes, Strawberry Reduction for the cheese cake, and Sangria.  These were the only recipes we have been able to perfect from our stack of handwritten indecipherable family recipes.  The Crab Gravy is a New Orleans style Italian gravy that we serve over pasta but it can also be served over rice.  It's ridiculously spicy (my family used to sit and sweat while they ate it) and takes a while to make.  Also, like most Italian gravies it tastes better the next day.  The Seafood Fricasee is one of Arielle's traditionally Cajun recipes.  It calls for a dark roux which is the most difficult and integral part of the dish.

We decided to cook all these dishes simultaneously.  BIG MISTAKE!  Poor Joy!  She has so much editing to do now!  We also realized we will need to add some notes to the videos before we post them on YouTube.  The mistakes we made will help us for future videos, but these first few are sort of embarrassing! That's ok, we're still learning.  My voice is terrible. 

We used as many local ingredients as possible.  Even the wine was a California wine.  Yes, we do like to buy imported items, but only as specialty items.  Cheese, wine, beer, certain canned goods, etc. are all nice treats!  But we like to buy local for everyday dishes such as these.  Our recipes came out beautifully and they tasted good too! ;)  Look for our videos (soon to come)!

 Crab Meat and Shrimp Pistolettes

 Boiled Calamari

 Crab Gravy

 Cheese Cake

 Strawberry Reduction

Seafood Fricasee

This blog is meant to document our journey through the creation of a cookbook and supplemental videos and gives us an outlet to talk about food in general.

Getting started...

Joy Henriott, Victoria Baiamonte, Arielle Terrebonne present to you Culinary Misadventures. Our mission is to bring to you our own family recipes; to share Louisiana home cooking with you. This is our way of expressing our love of food, Louisiana, and doing things local!

These recipes are a hodgepodge of Italian, Cajun, and just good Louisiana dishes. We have worked and are still working to decipher old handwritten recipes and translate them into mainstream language for better use.

We are starting our project sort of in a rush.  Victoria's baby brother, who is in training to become a Navy Corpsman, has a hankering for some home cooked food and requested some recipes tout suite!  So today we all got together to begin filming some recipes he might enjoy.  We also set up our FaceBook page, Culinary Misadventures, and our YouTube profile(videos to come soon!!!).  Apologies if we seem a little unorganized at first.  Its been thrown together for the Navy boy!
Also, don't forget to buy LOCAL! Support your local suppliers! At least attempt to buy USA if you cannot buy within your state. It may seem expensive, you may suffer from sticker shock, but in the long term your local economy will benefit tremendously. Many of our recipes include lots of local ingredients and we will do our best to point out parallels in other major cities/areas.  You are more than welcome to adapt our recipes to your area! In fact, we encourage it!

We may also slip up with some New Orleans colloquialisms.  We apologize in advance!

Check us out on Youtube, Twitter, and FaceBook (all soon to come)!