Red Beans & Rice
Jun. 8th, 2005 12:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akirluIn a largish dutch oven, brown two slices smoked bacon, diced up fairly small, and perhaps a third of a smoked sausage, diced ditto.
When the bacon is limp, and the sausage bits are browning, add three cans red beans, with their liquor.
Season to taste with white pepper, liquid smoke, savory, garlic powder, and parsley flakes. Discover you have no lard -- unsurprising since you never buy it -- and substitute 2 T bacon grease and 1 T butter.
Allow to simmer together for about an hour on low heat. Taste, and adjust spices, adding white pepper, more parsley, and several dashes of the McIlheny sauce. Discover the bacon grease has added too much salt. Return to simmering while you hunt up the pieces of the food processor.
Saving aside 1/3 of the bean mixture, run the rest through the food processor until smooth. Swear silently under your breath about the safety-conscious bleeding Germans and their unfathomable damned interlocking safety closure mechanism which expansion steam-locks the Braun food processor lid to the bowl to the base when hot foods are run through it. Eventually unscrew the sodding thing by a series of sharp blows delivered with the back of your Chinese cleaver, after utterly failing to find a less dangerous implement to do the deed. Do not maim self with cleaver.
Return the processed batch to the dutch oven, mix in with unprocessed reserve, and resume simmering, while putting on the rice that you should have started thirty minutes ago. When the rice is done, dump it into the red bean mixture, stir the whole gloppy thing together, and eat, discovering that the addition of rice has restored the salt balance.
The result is very tolerably like unto Popeye's red beans and rice, which, if your nearest Popeye's outlet is in South Tacoma, is a very fine thing indeed.
When the bacon is limp, and the sausage bits are browning, add three cans red beans, with their liquor.
Season to taste with white pepper, liquid smoke, savory, garlic powder, and parsley flakes. Discover you have no lard -- unsurprising since you never buy it -- and substitute 2 T bacon grease and 1 T butter.
Allow to simmer together for about an hour on low heat. Taste, and adjust spices, adding white pepper, more parsley, and several dashes of the McIlheny sauce. Discover the bacon grease has added too much salt. Return to simmering while you hunt up the pieces of the food processor.
Saving aside 1/3 of the bean mixture, run the rest through the food processor until smooth. Swear silently under your breath about the safety-conscious bleeding Germans and their unfathomable damned interlocking safety closure mechanism which expansion steam-locks the Braun food processor lid to the bowl to the base when hot foods are run through it. Eventually unscrew the sodding thing by a series of sharp blows delivered with the back of your Chinese cleaver, after utterly failing to find a less dangerous implement to do the deed. Do not maim self with cleaver.
Return the processed batch to the dutch oven, mix in with unprocessed reserve, and resume simmering, while putting on the rice that you should have started thirty minutes ago. When the rice is done, dump it into the red bean mixture, stir the whole gloppy thing together, and eat, discovering that the addition of rice has restored the salt balance.
The result is very tolerably like unto Popeye's red beans and rice, which, if your nearest Popeye's outlet is in South Tacoma, is a very fine thing indeed.
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-08 08:22 pm (UTC)[silly-voice type="Valley Boy"]Uh... It's north of Burien? But if you take the main road north it won't be the right one, you know? So you have to -- oh never mind, it is too complicated that way... So, like, you can also take the hidden freeway (502) north from 405, but then you have to catch the White Center exit which isn't marked right so you have to, like, look for the dump sign? Only you don't want to go to the dump, so you go the other way, you know? Then you have to go up the hill instead of the going the direction that looks right? Oh, like this way is getting too complicated too...[/silly-voice]
Popeyes
Date: 2005-06-09 03:33 am (UTC)Once, in the deepest and least Reconstructed South, I asked where in town I could get good fried chicken.
I was directed to Popeyes.
I'd call that some kind of endorsement.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-09 06:20 pm (UTC)Re: Popeyes
Date: 2005-06-09 06:30 pm (UTC)Well, it might also be a sad commentary on the state of preservation Southern Culture is in in the restaurants of the South. Hal used to travel quite extensively in the South for Barbecues Galore, and, of necessity, eat out quite a bit while there, and his claim was that the best Southern Food he'd ever had in a restaurant was in California. Specifically in the Johnny Reb's chain in Southern LA and Northern Orange counties. Theirs is certainly still the best fried chicken I've ever had.
Converseley, my first Popeyes experience was being dragged to one in South Central LA by a pair of southernern fen who so boggled at my never having eaten Popeyes that the situation must be fixed Right Now. And while the chicken was indeed quite good as fast food fried chicken goes, the red beans and rice were and are Nirvana. So I'm very pleased to be able to finally approximate the taste and texture. Next, learning to make fried green tomatoes like Johnny Reb's does. Mmmmmm.