Rachael Ray, Southern Style...

Hey y'all! Wednesday night I cooked a Rachael meal that I have had in my arsenal for about 4 years and never made. So glad I did because it's fantastic! Here is Rachael Ray's "Smoky-Spicy Bass with Greens & Andouille and Corn Cakes with Honey".

First up is the fish. The recipe for this meal calls for Black Bass and also calls for skin-on filets. I've never seen this in my grocery store or even in the Whole Foods in Birmingham. You could probably ask them and they might could order it if you know in advance you are going to make this meal. You could definitely get it ordered if you have a local fish market. The grocery store I went to here in NY did not have any fish with the skin on so I just got a nice firm white fish to use. If you are able to find a white fish with the skin on that's perfect. If not, any firm white fish is good for this recipe. First I turned the oven on 250 and placed a platter in the oven to warm. Unless you just have a gigantic pan, you'll have to cook the fish in batches. Having the warm pan in the oven allows you to cook the fish in batches and keep the first two warm while the other two cook. For the fish I combined the necessary ingredients to make a sort of cajun/blackening spice rub. If you'd like to know the specific ingredients, they can be found in the recipe link below. Once combined, you will want to score the skin if you are using skin on filets of fish. Rachael Tip: Scoring the skin on the fish will help to prevent it from shrinking too much while it cooks and help to get you a nice crispy skin. Once scored, season both sides liberally with salt and pepper and coat both sides well with the spice mixture. The recipe calls for you to heat up a cast iron skillet over medium-high to high heat. I find in my cast iron skillet, no matter how much oil I use to coat the skillet, the fish still sticks. I have a non stick griddle pan that I will probably use when making this again. If you are better at using your cast iron skillet than I, then by all means, go for it! When the pan was nice and hot I added in the vegetable oil and then the fish. If you are using skin on filets, you will want to put the skin side down first. Cooked the fish for about 4 minutes per side and then transferred the fish to the warm platter in the oven. Once all 4 filets were done I turned the oven off and let the residual heat keep the filets warm to proven the oven from over cooking the fish. 

While the fish is cooking you can start working on the greens. The recipe here calls for dark spicy greens such as mustard greens or dandelion greens. My grocery store again didn't have either one so I got 1-1.25 lbs of collard greens. If your store has mustard or dandelion greens, go with one of those and be sure to get at least 1 lb of greens. Greens cook way down so if you don't get enough, you'll end up with a very small amount of greens once they are cooked. If your store does't have mustard greens or dandelion greens, any dark bitter greens will do. Just be sure to get at least 1 lb. and no more than 1.25 lbs. Stem and chop the greens. Rachael Tip: To stem the greens, hold the greens upside down by the stem and using the opposite hand, curl your middle finger and index finger around the stem like a claw and strip the leaves from the stem. Once the greens were stemmed I piled them up and rough chopped them. After chopping the greens I added a couple of inches of water to my oval sauté skillet and brought the water to a boil. Once it was boiling I salted the water and added in the greens to cook for just a couple minutes. Rachael Tip: Boiling the greens for a couple minutes in salted water will help to take some of the bitterness out of the greens. After the greens boiled for a couple minutes I removed them to a colander to drain and dried out the pan. Make sure you dry it out well. Leaving water will cause the oil to spatter when you put the skillet back on the heat and add the EVOO in. After drying the skillet out and putting it back on the heat I added in a few tablespoons of EVOO and then the andouille sausage. If you're grocery store has a large butcher section, such as Whole Foods for my friends back in Birmingham, you may can find fresh andouille. If using fresh, remove the casings from the sausage and add it to the skillet, crumbling it as you add it and cooking it until it's is done. My grocery store did not have fresh andouille so I used andouille from the packaged meats case. This product is already fully cooked so all you need to do is chop it into half moon shapes and add it to the skillet. I let it cook for just a few minutes until it started to brown a little and it had rendered out it's fat. At this point i added in the onion and cooked until the onions became translucent. Once the onions were done I added in a little chicken stock, the greens, salt, pepper, freshly grated nutmeg and a couple splashes of apple cider vinegar. Rachael Tip: Freshly grated nutmeg really helps to bring out the flavor in any dark green. Also, you could use apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar either one. I really love the flavor of apple cider vinegar so I went with that. I let the greens cook for a few minutes until tender and then turned the heat down to the lowest setting and put the lid on to keep them warm until i finished the meal. Just a disclaimer: I'm not a fan of greens in general. I've never liked collard greens, but I absolutely LOVED these. They were my favorite part of this meal. 

Last up were the corn cakes. This is really simple but has such a nice flavor to it. I took a box of jiffy corn muffin mix and followed the instructions on the box for corn pancakes. To give these a twist, Rachael adds in corn kernels from to ears of fresh corn as well as a couple scallions chopped, whites and greens, and the zest of an orange. Rachel Tip: Here is Rachael's trick to getting the kernels off the cob of an ear of corn. Take a large bowl and a smaller bowl and invert the smaller bowl inside the larger bowl. Stand the ear of corn up on the the smaller bowl and scrape down the cob with a sharp knife, scraping the kernels off the cob. The large bowl catches all the kernels and you don't have to chase them all over the counter. Once the kernels were scraped off the cobs I added them, the scallions and the orange zest into the batter. Pour the pancakes out onto a greased griddle heated over medium-low to medium heat. I used canola cooking spray, but Rachael recommends nesting a chunk of butter in a paper towel and greasing the hot griddle that way. Either way works great. I then used a 1/4 cup measuring cup to pour out the pancakes. it should make 8-10 corn pancakes. While the corn cakes cooked I placed a glass jar of honey in a pot with water and brought the water up to a boil. Once it boiled I turned it down to low and let the honey stay warm in the water bath. This makes the honey pourable. Once the cakes are done, you plate them up with the fish and the greens and drizzle the cakes with the warm honey. 

This one was a delicious meal all the way around and definitely a southern comfort style meal. Rachael's father is from Louisiana and you can definitely see how the flavors here come straight from that side of her family. Hope you guys enjoy this one. I sure did. Buon Appetito!

Recipe:

This meal was featured on Rachael Ray's 30 Minute Meals. The recipes can be found at the link below.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/30-minute-meals/22-series/southern-nights.html

Let Freedom Ring!!

Hello all!! First of all, Happy Fourth of July!! May we all remember how blessed by God we are to live in a free country and may we always be grateful to the men and women who have served, are serving and will serve in the future to protect the freedoms we hold dear. To celebrate today I made some of my favorite summer cookout foods, but I made them in the comfort of my apartment. Two of the recipes are Rachael's but I also used a Bobby Flay recipe and a Giada DeLaurentiis recipe! To celebrate Independence Day, here is Rachael Ray's "Coney Island Chili Dogs and Salt & Vinegar Oven Fries" with Bobby Flay's "Creamy Cole Slaw" and for dessert, Giada DeLaurentiis' "Citrus Gelato".

First up was starting the oven fries. Turn the oven on to preheat at 425 degrees. Something in this recipe that i had never seen in any other recipe was to preheat the baking sheet in the oven while the oven preheats. I find that in order to keep the oven fries from being too piled on top of each other, it works better to split them between two baking sheets, two potatoes per sheet. If you have an extremely large baking sheet, which I don't, you can probably get them all in an even layer on one baking sheet. While the oven preheats, peel the potatoes. I leave a little skin on each end of the potatoes when I peel them just to have a little textural difference but to peel or not to peel is completely up to you. If you like the peel a lot, you can leave it all on or peel and leave the ends like I did, or if you don't like it peel all of it off. Once they are peeled, slice the potatoes in half lengthwise and then cut 5 wedges per half, coming out to 10 wedges per potato. Once the oven reaches 425 degrees, take the baking sheet, or sheets, out of the oven and drizzle the pan with EVOO. Scatter the potatoes in an even layer, coat in the EVOO and sprinkle with grill seasoning. Put the potatoes in the oven and let them cook for about 40 minutes until they are soft on the inside and crispy and golden brown on the outside. Be sure to check them every so often and turn them, otherwise they will burn on one side. When the potatoes come out of the oven you sprinkle them with sea salt and drizzle them with malt vinegar. These were so tasty and reminded me of salt and vinegar potato chips! While the oven was preheating I actually started working on the coney island chili sauce and here's how I made that!!

Start off by heating a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a medium sauce pot. As all my friends can attest to, my kitchen looks like a Rachael Ray product display and I have both the RR oval dutch oven and the RR round dutch oven. I used my round dutch oven for this. I find using a cast enamel dutch oven gets a wonderful caramelization on the beef and holds the heat well while the chili cooks. If you don't have a dutch oven, a medium sauce pot will work just fine. For this recipe, I really wanted to get a nice crust on the meat before I began breaking it up. Rachael has to great tips for making that happen. Rachael Tip: To get a great caramelization and crust on the meat, first take the meat out of the fridge to take the chill off of it. If you put really cold meat into the pan it seizes up. Second, pat the meat dry before putting it into the pan. If the meat is wet, it won't caramelize and build that nice crust. Once the meat had a nice caramelization I broke the meat up into fine crumbles. Because this is a chili that is going on top of hot dogs, you don't want huge clumps of the meat. It really needs to be a fine crumble. As I've stated before, I have a pampered chef tool that was given to me that is fantastic for doing that. But, don't go out and pay for an expensive tool just for that. If you have a potato masher it is terrific for breaking up meat. You can also use a wooden spoon, it'll just take a little more work. Once the meat was browned I added in the onion, garlic, chili powder, salt and pepper and let the onions sweat out. The onions are chopped really fine for this recipe so they cook out pretty quickly. Something that was not in the original recipe was to drain the meat. While I love the buttery taste and texture of ground chuck, I don't like knowing I'm consuming that much fat. I drained the meat after he onions were sweated out just to remove some of the fat from the chili. After draining I added the meat mixture back to the pot and added in the tomato paste. Rachael Tip: When using tomato paste in a small can, as in this recipe, or whether it is in a tube, you want to let it cook out a minute to "wake up" the tomato paste. Cook out the tomato paste until it is fragrant and then you can proceed with the recipe. At this point I added in the cup of water and let the mixture come to a boil. Once the mixture came to a boil I added in the spicy brown mustard, worcestershire sauce and brown sugar. Before whisking it into the chili I mixed these three ingredients together in a bowl to dissolve the brown sugar and then added it. At this point I turned the chili down to a low simmer and let it simmer for about 40-45 minutes to thicken up. Once done I tasted it and adjusted my seasoning as needed. The recipe calls for all beef hot dogs which I highly recommend. It also instructs to cook them by heating water to a boil, reducing to a low boil and then adding the hot dogs in for 4-5 minutes to heat through. I actually prefer to have a hot dog grilled than boiled. I like them boiled, but I prefer them grilled. I don't have a grill pan but i do have a little griddle pan. I heated the griddle pan over medium heat and sprayed with canola oil cooking spray. When the pan was hot I placed the hot dogs on the pan and let them get nicely browned all over. All beef hot dogs have a casing and when grilled or placed on a griddle the casing gets crispy and just pops in your mouth! When the dogs were done, I placed the hot dog buns on the griddle for a few seconds to toast, placed the dog in the bun and topped with the coney island chili sauce. The recipe calls to put chopped raw white onion on top, which is perfectly acceptable. I'm not a huge fan of raw white onion, so I didn't but if you like it by all means go for it!!

The other side dish I made for this meal was Bobby Flay's "Creamy Cole Slaw". I actually made this the night before so that all the flavors could meld together. First up shred the head of cabbage and the carrots. First quarter the head of cabbage. Slice into the cabbage on an angle to remove the core. I used my food processor because I like a very finely shredded cole slaw. If you like larger pieces of cabbage, thinly shred it with a knife. If you don't have a food processor you can also shred the carrots on a box grater. The dressing for this slaw is really delicious and had ingredients I wouldn't have though to use. I mixed together the mayo, sour cream, grated onion, sugar, white wine vinegar, dry mustard, celery salt and pepper. The recipe also calls for regular salt. I would mix the dressing without the regular salt first, taste it, and then decide if you need to add any salt. I tasted it and the celery salt was plenty for my taste. Once mixed, I added it into the cabbage and carrot mixture and let it sit over night. Before serving, I tasted again and mine needed a little extra sugar. Be sure you taste your food ;)

Last, but not least, was dessert. Fourth of July just wouldn't be the Fourth of July without homemade ice cream, or at least not in my family. So for dessert was Giada's "Citrus Gelato".  I actually made this the night before as well so that it had plenty of time to set up in the freezer. First up is to make the base for the gelato. I whisked together the egg yolks and sugar in a stainless steel pot until mixed and then slowly whisked in the heavy cream, whole milk and buttermilk. I then grated in the lime, lemon and orange zest and mixed together.  Place the pot over medium heat and stir with a wooden spoon until the custard coats the back of the spoon. It should take about 8-10 minutes. The best way to tell if it is ready is to coat the back of the spoon and then run your finger down the middle of the mixture. If the mixture stays separate and doesn't come back together, it's done. The mixture then goes into a 4 cup measuring cup and stays in the refrigerator for 3 hours. I did stir it every so often to prevent a skin from forming on top of the mixture. After three hours you can either cover and leave it in the fridge until you are ready for it, or you can go ahead and mix it in an ice cream maker. I have a cuisinart countertop ice cream maker and it takes about 25-30 minutes to be ready to go in the freezer. While the mixture is mixing, peel and segment the orange but cutting between the membranes and pulling the segments out. Cut them into 1/2" chunks and in the last 10 minutes or so of freezing, add them into the mixture. Once the mixture was done, I transferred it into a container with a lid and put it in the freezer. I have to say it set up perfectly and was just refreshing and delicious! 

This whole meal was a great one for Independence Day and all the flavors worked so well together! Hope you guys will try some of these for your next cookout. I promise, you won't be disappointed! Buon Appetito! 

Recipes: 

The recipe for the Coney Island Chili Dogs is found in Rachael Ray's The Book of Burger. The recipe for the Salt & Vinegar Oven Fries is found in Rachael Ray's My Year In Meals. 

The recipe for the Creamy Cole Slaw and the Citrus Gelato can be found at the links below.

Creamy Cole Slaw:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/bobby-flay/creamy-cole-slaw-recipe.html

Citrus Gelato:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/citrus-gelato-recipe.html