“New Orleans Food,” by Tom Fitzmorris (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $19.95)
Food, which always has been important to New Orleans, is now helping New Orleans recover from Hurricane Katrina.
About 600 restaurants have reopened in New Orleans and again are celebrating the city’s culinary heritage as a healing balm to its people. New Orleans native Tom Fitzmorris knows this well. Fitzmorris has written about the food of the Big Easy for more than 30 years, including his most recent book, “New Orleans Food” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $19.95).
He currently is living in a FEMA trailer, writing his food columns and broadcasting his local radio show. Fitzmorris is donating half his proceeds from the book’s sale to Habitat for Humanity to help rebuild the city. More recently he gave the group a check for $10,000.
By buying the book, home cooks win two ways: By learning to prepare Louisiana favorites at home, you’re also helping rebuild the city that made the foods famous.|Ellen Sweets
Book: Tom Fitzmorris’s New Orleans Food: More than 225 of the City’s Best Recipes to Cook at Home:
Shrimp Limone
This is a dazzling dish for shrimp lovers. The lemon really stands out, and the bit of smoky richness from the ham and the touch of red pepper at the end bring it to the culinary border of Italy and Louisiana. Serves eight.
Ingredients
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
24 large shrimp (16-20 count), peeled and deveined
1/2 stick (4 Tbsp.) butter
1/4 cup chopped shallots
10 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, leaves only, chopped
2 oz. lean, smoky ham, thinly sliced and cut into ribbons
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 dashes of Tabasco
1/2 tsp. salt
8 thin slices French bread, toasted
8 thin slices lemon, for garnish
Directions
Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat until it shimmers. Add the garlic cloves and saute until the garlic begins to brown. Remove and discard garlic.
Add the shrimp to the oil and saute over medium-high heat until they just begin to turn pink. Add the butter, shallots, parsley, and ham, and cook until the shallots are soft.
Add the wine and lemon juice, season with the Tabasco and salt, and bring to a boil. Reduce the liquid by about two-thirds.
Place the French bread on individual plates. Place 3 shrimp on each slice and spoon the sauce all over. Garnish each serving with a lemon slice.
Cajun Seared Scallops with Near Guacamole
Save this recipe for occasions when you find those sea scallops that are almost the size of filet mignons. Sea scallops that size are delicious ad lend themselves particularly to pan-searing. In our part of the world, this verges on blackening and that’s just fine, assuming the pan is really hot and you don’t let the scallops sit there too long. The salsa is essentially my recipe for guacamole but with the avocados sliced on top instead of blended in. Serves four.
Ingredients
Scallops
1 1b. sea scallops, the bigger the better
Salt-free Creole seasoning
Salt to taste
1/2 stick (4 Tbsp.) butter, melted
Salsa
2 tomatillos, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 medium sweet onion, coarsely chopped
Juice of 1 lime
1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 tsp. Tabasco Green Pepper Sauce
2 large tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. coarsley ground black pepper
2 tsp. Vietnamese fish sauce
2 Hass avocados, ripe but not soft, each cut into 8-12 slices
8 sprigs cilantro, leaves only, chopped for garnish
1 green onion, tender green part only, sliced, for garnish
Directions
Heat a black iron skillet over high heat. Check the sea scallops to make sure they’ve been well-trimmed. (Sometimes you’ll find some fibrous stuff at the edge; remove and discard this.) Coat the sea scallops generously with the Creole seasoning and a little salt. Add the butter to the skillet, then add the scallops and sear them for about 2 minutes on each side.
Blend all the salsa ingredients up to (but not including) the avocados in a food processor.
Spoon about 1/4 cup of the salsa onto each of 4 plates. Place 4-6 scallops on the salsa (depending on size). Put 2-3 avocado slices between the scallops. Garnish with the cilantro and green onions.
Oyster-Stuffed Steak
It’s an odd-sounding idea: a steak stuffed with an oyster and served with a sauce of beef essence and more oysters. But the flavors of the two ingredients are most agreeably complementary. The hard part of making this dish is making the demi-glace, the ultimate reduction of an intense stock made from roasted veal bones. Every good cook should try this at least once; if you do it right, it takes two days. If you don’t want to go to the trouble, you can buy demi-glace at gourmet food stores or on the Internet. If you’re friends with a chef, he might sell or give you some. Serves four
Ingredients
Four 8 oz. filets mignons
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
20 medium-large fresh, shucked oysters
1 cup Pinot Noir or other dry red wine
1/2 cup demi-glace
1 stick (8 Tbsp.) unsalted butter
1 Tbsp. clarified butter
Directions
Season the steaks with salt and pepper. With a sharp paring knife, cut a slit in the side of each of the steaks. Stuff an oyster into each steak.
Place the remaining oysters into a stainless steel or enamel saucepan or skillet. Pour in the wine and bring to a boil. Cook until the oysters begin to curl. Remove the oysters with a slotted spoon to a bowl and continue to simmer the wine until it’s reduced to about 1/3 cup.
Stir in the demi-glace and return to a simmer. Reduce the heat to low and add the unsalted butter, a tablespoon at a time and whisking constantly, until the sauce is thick and creamy. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Keep the sauce warm.
Cook the steaks in a hot skillet with a little clarified butter, adding more, as necessary, to sear the outside of the steaks. Cook to the desired degree of doneness. Place a steak on each of 4 warm plates. Surround each steak with 4 oysters and spoon the sauce over all.
For clarified butter
The process of clarifying butter does two things: It boils out the water (of which there is a great deal in butter), and it causes the milk solids to fall out of suspension. Some of the solids will rise to the top as foam, but most will fall to the bottom. During clarification, you will lose a third to a half of the quantity of butter you started with. So if you just start with two sticks of butter, you’ll end up with a quarter to a third of a cup of clarified butter.
The amazing thing about clarified butter is that it will hold up for a long time, even unrefridgerated (although I recommend keeping it chilled). It can also be heated to a much higher temperature than most fats without burning. (The threat of fire, however, is always there, so be careful)
2-4 sticks butters (unsalted preferred)
Heat the butter in a small saucepan over the lowest heat for about 20 minutes, or until the bubbling has stopped almost completely. Spoon the foam off the top, then pour the clarified butter carefully away from the milky solids on the bottom. If you want to be thorough, you can strain the butter through a cheesecloth. Makes a quarter to two-thirds of a cup, depending on the amount of butter used.
