Batter-Splattered

Red beans and rice

Here's one of my favorite recipes and one of my favorite dishes of all time. Red beans and rice with some sausage. Oh so good. Very simple to prepare.

Red Beans and Rice

Serves six

2 T olive oil

1 lb. smoked sausage, sliced

1 onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

3 cans kidney beans, don't drain or rinse

1 c chicken broth

1 t cayenne

3 cups cooked rice

Heat oil over medium heat in a large pot. Add sausage, onions, and garlic and saute until onion is soft and tender. Add beans and their juices, broth, and cayenne. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until very thick, stirring occasionally, for 45 minutes or so.

You can either serve this on a bed of rice or you can stir the rice into the pot and mix it all together.

Braised Pheasant with Red Cabbage Wild Rice

So.

I hesitate to post this recipe and its accompanying story for fear of offending any vegetarians / bunny-huggers that may be lurking in my readership. Believe you me -- ordinarily, I would salute you and your bleeding heart. I'd be nodding in the face of your liberal tendencies. Worship that dirt. Here, gimme a handful -- I do a little worshipping of my own. Tell it, sista'. But I just can't help it.

This dish is just so good. I can't keep quiet about it.

I licked my plate.

It all started this week when, in a departure for them, my parents decided to go all carnivorous and NRA on me and they signed up for a bird hunting class. Sunshine. Fresh air. Dogs. Pheasants. Chukars. Guns. Coffee swilled from Thermos cap cups. Chukar goulash cooked over an open fire. Etc, etc. It all resulted in my parents turning up on my doorstep bearing ziploc bags full of delicate little breasts and thighs and wings of chukars and pheasants.

What to do, what to do.

Alot of the pheasant recipes I reviewed before settling on this one called for fresh juniper berries. That's so cool. I see them all the time when I'm out and about hiking the trails, but I didn't have any and didn't really feel like tromping around the hillsides looking for some. But then I found this recipe on epicurious, Braised Pheasant with Red Cabbage Wild Rice, and it has an easy juniper berry compromise -- it calls for gin, which alcohol aficionados will tell you is a spirit flavored with juniper berries. Genius!

I think the fact that the recipe calls for red cabbage is a real stroke of luck considering the noggin-shaped head of red cabbage I bought a couple of days ago to make my vegetable face. Now there's a sentence I never anticipated myself typing.

Here's Mr. Cabbage Head now, sliced and sauting in a skillet:

Such a beautiful color.

If you have a mind to tackle this recipe, don't worry: you don't have to arm your parents with rifles and send them out into the field with a yellow labrador retriever. I think cornish game hens would work just as well. That's what I'm going to use the next time I get a hankering for this dish. And I have a feeling I'll be making it again because the husband licked his plate too and then scrunched his eyes and forehead up at me and said, "OH... my compliments to the chef... OH..."

What I like about it is the richness and complexity. The crunch of cabbage and saltiness of bacon in the cabbage / wild rice. The delicious sauce poured over the pheasant -- both sweet and peppery. It's just so good.

Heart-shaped breasts a-cookin' up in my pot:

If you're an over-achiever (unlike me) and would like to make your own pheasant stock, consult the original recipe on epicurious linked to above. Or you can be a corner-cutter (like me) and try my version made with chicken broth:

Braised Pheasant with Red Cabbage Wild Rice

Serves four

For wild rice:

1 c wild rice

2 c chicken broth

2 T olive oil

8 slices bacon (I used bacon with pepper pressed into the sides -- excellent)

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

4 c red cabbage, thinly sliced

4 t red wine vinegar

For pheasant:

4 lbs of pheasant

1/2 t salt

1/2 t pepper

1/2 t ground allspice

3 T olive oil

2/3 c dried currants or golden raisins

1/2 c minced shallots

1/2 c gin

1 c dry white wine

2 t tomato paste

2 3-inch sprigs rosemary plus 1 t minced leaves

1 c red and/or green seedless grapes, halved if you feel like it

Make wild rice:

Rinse wild rice and drain. Bring broth to a simmer in a small saucepan. In a small oven-proof casserole dish, saute rice in oil over medium-high heat, stirring, for 1 minute. Stir in hot broth and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil and bake, covered, in middle of oven for 1 hour, or until liquid is absorbed and rice is tender. Check on it often to avoid over-cooking -- mine only took about half an hour to cook.

While the rice is cooking, in a big skillet, cook bacon over medium heat until crisp. Transfer to paper towels to drain. Pour half of the bacon drippings into a small bowl to use later for cooking pheasant.

Heat drippings remaining in skillet over medium-high heat and saute onion and cabbage until softened, stirring often. Add vinegar and salt and pepper to taste and saute, stirring for 1 minute. Chop bacon. Set the onions and cabbage and the chopped bacon aside for now.

Make pheasant:

In a small bowl, stir together salt, pepper and allspice. Pat pheasant dry and sprinkle with allspince mixture. In a dutch oven, heat oil and reserved drippings over medium-high heat and saute pheasant until golden about 5 minutes per side. Transfer pheasant to a plate.

In the drippings remaining in the pot, cook dried cranberries and shallots over medium-high heat, stirring, until shallots soften. Stir in gin and boil until most is evaporated. Stir in wine and boil until reduced by about half. Stir in broth, tomato paste, rosemary sprig, and salt and pepper to taste. Bring sauce to a boil.

Add pheasant to sauce, cover with a tight lid, and braise in the middle of a 350 degree oven until pheasant is cooked through, for 10 minutes or so or until cooked through. Remove smaller pieces early if necessary to avoid overcooking while finishing cooking the larger pieces -- mine all got done around the same time. Transfer pheasants to a plate and keep warm and covered.

Stir minced rosemary and grapes into sauce and boil until slightly thickened, about 1 minute.

Reheat skillet full of red cabbage, stir in wild rice, and chopped bacon.

Serve it up.

Black Bean and Tomato Quinoa

This quinoa salad is so fresh and healthy, packed with veggies and protein. And the flavor improves over time making it perfect for office lunches. The ingredients positively scream summertime to me -- lime zest and juice, diced tomatoes, green onions, and cilantro. After all that zesting and reaming and slicing and dicing, your hands end up smelling heavenly.

The best part is I get it all to myself! My husband wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole because he's tomato-averse.

My version of the original recipe:

Black Bean and Tomato Quinoa Salad

2 t grated lime zest

2 T fresh lime juice

2 T unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 T olive oil

1 t sugar

1 c quinoa

3 cups or so chicken broth (you can use water two but I thought the broth added flavor)

1 (14 - 15 oz) can black beans, drained and rinsed

2 medium tomatoes, diced

4 green onions, chopped

1/4 c chopped fresh cilantro

Whisk together lime zest and juice, butter, oil, sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper in a large bowl.

Rinse quinoa thoroughly in a sieve with very fine mesh. Bring broth to a boil in a medium pot (if using water, add salt) then add quinoa. Cook for about 10 minutes, uncovered, until almost tender. Drain by pouring broth and quinoa into a seive resting on a large bowl so that broth is reserved. Return one inch of broth to same pan and bring to a simmer. Set seive full of quinoa in pot (broth should not touch bottom of seive). Cover quinoa with a folded kitchen towel, then cover with a lid -- it doesn't have to fit tightly. Steam over medium heat until tender, fluffy and dry, about ten minutes. Remove pot from heat and remove lid. Let stand, still covered with towel for 5 minutes.

Add quinoa to lime dressing and toss until dressing is absorbed, then stir in remaining ingredients and salt and pepper to taste. 

Seared scallops and sausage on a bed of baby greens / baked cheese grits

Something you should know about me: I have a thing for grits. I even like the word. Say it with me now: grits! It sounds so earthy and frugal and homespun.

I never ate them as a kid, in spite of growing up in Mississippi -- it's such a gritsy locale, but we were more of a homemade granola and bran muffin household. I was always intrigued when they were served up at my friends' breakfast tables the morning after rowdy and sleepless sleepovers. I wasn't too sure about them back then. Too runny? Too grainy? Too plain? I couldn't put my finger on it. I just didn't kow what to think of them. I'm making up for lost time now and the latest installment of my grits groove is my version of this recipe for Baked Cheese Grits.

I had a great time in the kitchen the night I cooked this up, barefoot, wooden spoon in hand, the new Pink Martini album playing on the stereo, the sound of rain falling outside the screen door, a glass of good (and thrifty!) wine in my glass, tickling each and every one of my taste buds. For this recipe, you stir the grits in a slow stream into broth, simmer awhile, then add garlic, butter, cheese, salt and pepper. Simmer till thick and then pop it all in the oven where it will puff up, up, and away. It turns a lovely golden brown and comes out looking almost like a really good frittata.

Slices of Tillamook cheddar, diced and ready to get stirred in:

Baked cheese grits straight from the oven:

If you really want a treat, serve a heaping spoonful of these in a bowl of jambalaya -- a recipe for which I'm working on posting in the coming days. That's what I had for a simply heavenly lunch today. The grits are like a dense cornbread, soaking up the jambalaya's broth. How can leftovers be so lovely?

But on this particular night, I needed something to go along with the grits and jambalaya was not yet on the menu. This recipe for scallops came up when I ran a search on epicurious for cajun and creole recipes, my cuisine of choice for the month of July. The results didn't seem too very much like something you'd dine on in Louisiana, but it was decadent and good nonetheless (how can scallops and sausage not be decadent?) and very easy to prepare on a weeknight after work. And look how pretty it turns out:

How could you not want to dig into that? I thought the dressing was a little bland and too heavy on the olive oil, so I tinkered with a few of the ingredients.

Scallops and grits in the same meal? My cup runneth over.

My versions of the recipes are as follows:

Seared Scallops and Sausage on a Bed of Baby Greens

Serves six as an appetizer

1/4 c shallots, chopped

3 T balsamic vinegar

1 1/2 T dijon mustard

1/3 c plus 3 T  olive oil

4.5-ounce bag mixed baby greens

18 sea scallops

6 ounces andouille sausage, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces (or use your favorite sausage instead -- I used kielbasa)

2 T fresh parsley, chopped

Combine first three ingredients in a bowl and gradually whisk in 1/3 c olive oil (adding more or less to suit your taste). Season with salt and pepper. Can be made several hours in advance. Let stand at room temperature and re-whisk before serving.

Heat two tablespoons of remaining olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Sprinkle scallops on both sides with salt and pepper. Add scallops to skillet and cook until both sides are lightly-browned and juices evaporate and centers are opaque, about two minutes per side. Transfer to a plate.

Add remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil to skillet and heat over high heat. Add sausage and saute until browned, for 3 minutes or so. Return scallops to skillet for 30 seconds or so to re-heat.

To serve, nestle scallops and sausage on a bed of baby greens on individual dishes and drizzle with dressing. 

Baked Cheese Grits

Serves four.

3 cups broth

1/2 t salt

1 c yellow grits (not quick or instant)

1/2 stick of unsalted butter

1/4 t pepper

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 c cheddar, grated

2 eggs

1/2 c milk

Bring broth to a boil in a two-quart heavy pot. Pour in grits in a slow stream, stirring constantly. Reduce heat and simmer for about 30 minutes, stirring frequently to avoid sticking, until very thick.

Add butter, salt, pepper, garlic and cheese, stirring until butter and cheese are melted. Lightly beat eggs and milk in a bowl, then stir into grits until well-combined.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees with rack in the center.

Pour grits into an ungreased 4-inch square (2-inches deep) baking dish and bake until set and lightly-browned, about 1 hour. Grits will puff up but won't overflow.   

Salmon with lemon risotto on the side

It takes alot of effort to catch a fish, as evidenced by all the accoutrements piled into my husband's little red fishing wagon:

I think it's adorable although I don't tell him that. That wagon means business. He wheels it down the long and winding path to the creek (pronounced 'crick') with him each time he goes salmon fishing. I gave it to him as a Christmas present the first year we were together, lo, some seven years ago. Perhaps eight? We can't remember.  We have a rather unorthodox and loose approach to milestones and anniversaries. We do know it was Halloween-y the night we went on our first official date. Not to be confused with our unofficial first date when he was still living with another woman and I graced him my presence on a lunch date in an effort to give him the little shove of encouragement he needed to move on and leave that woman in his dust. Sometimes men need a little shove. She was no good for him.

And yes, that's right. Over the course of a lingering lunch, I was the other woman. Gasp away. He didn't get any though because I'm not that kind of girl. I shoved him out of the car (another shove) without so much as a smooch and he moved into his own place a couple of days later -- a testament to my shoving skills, I'd say. As a housewarming gift, I brought him a set of dishes and a sugar bowl from the thrift store. I continue to grace him with my presence and we still have the sugar bowl. I've since replaced the dishes with other thrift store finds though. In fact, I've probably replaced the replacements. I'm like that.

But I think I'll keep him around, especially if he keeps bringing home salmon. He has a gift for fishing, I tell you. Reeling them in while others stand puzzled on the bank, fish-less and scratching their heads. He likes to reminsce about the days before I moved in, when all he had was a cup and a fork and a spoon. Now we have kitchen cabinets bursting at the seams with all manner of pots, pans, plates, bowls, glasses, cups, mugs, gadgets, enough food to feed an army ... I never hear him complaining come dinnertime though.

But where was I?

The Radio Flyer.

I suffered for that wagon. I had to sit around a department store for an hour and a half, way past my bedtime, waiting for a Christmastime midnight sale to start. One of the primo items on sale was Radio Flyer little red wagons, amongst other toys and kiddie stuff, and I showed up early to make sure I got one for him to haul his fishing stuff come summer. The wagons were such a screaming deal I knew they would be on everyone's list so I loaded one in a cart and rolled it over to sit at a table in the deli area, sipping a cup of coffee until midnight.

Notice how he turns the red gates in so that the white lettering doesn't show? That must be what all the cool boys at the crick do.

When he brings a salmon home, I often whip up some marinade inspired by this recipe. The glowing reviews posted on epicurious by other cooks say it all. And look at the lovely color!

My only adjustment is that instead of hoisin sauce, I use a chili garlic sauce for an added spicy hot kick. Let the fillets marinate for a half hour then throw them on the grill. The marinade turns the salmon a fiery shade of red that's simply lovely and irresistable-looking. Salmon's already such a beautiful color -- this enhances it and the taste is just right. As you carry the grilled salmon on a plate from the barbecue to the dinner table, just try to resist the urge to nibble a corner of one of the fillets. That corner right there with the slightly blackened edges? Go ahead. Just pinch a little off and have a nibble. You'll be glad you did.

I really should have taken a photo of the perfectly grilled fillets but we were overcome with hunger at the sight of them and wolfed them down immediately without my giving the camera a sideways glance. Some food-blogger I am. It was a rookie mistake and I hope you can forgive me.

On the side, I tried out a lemon risotto recipe and was very, very pleased. The lemon juice and zest add a nice bite to the creamy rice -- almost as if there's a piquant cheese, something other than parmesan, stirred in.

I had no white wine to stir into the risotto, as called for in the recipe, and didn't feel like running to the store for a mere two tablespoon's worth, so I used a sweet Marsala I had on hand instead. Oh, and we had steamed fresh green peas on the side.

The recipes:

Fiery Red Salmon Marinade

Serves two

2 T soy sauce

1 T chili garlic sauce

1 T olive oil

1 t lemon juice

1 clove garlic, minced

1 T scallion, finely chopped

1 t fresh ginger, finely grated

Dash of pepper

2 salmon fillets with skin (half-pound or so)

Whisk together marinade ingredients. Pour over salmon fillets and let marinate for thirty minutes or so at room temperature.

Either bake in a preheated 375 degree oven on a foil-lined baking sheet, skin-side down, or grill on barbecue to desired doneness.

Lemon Risotto

Makes 3 first-course or 2 main-course servings

3 c chicken broth

2 T butter

1 T olive oil

1 large shallot, chopped

1 c arborio rice

2T sweet marsala or dry white wine

1/2 c grated parmesan

1 T fresh parsley, chopped

1 T fresh lemon juice

2 t grated lemon zest

Bring broth to a simmer in a saucepan. Reduce heat to low and keep warm.

Melt 1 tablespoon of butter with oil in a heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add shallots and saute until tender. Add rice and stir for one minute. Add wine and stir until evaporated, about 30 seconds. Add 3/4 cup or so of broth and simmer until absorbed, stirring frequently. Add remaining broth 1/2 cup at a time, allowing broth to be absorbed before adding more. Stir frequently and take your time, until rice is creamy and tender, about 35 minutes. Stir in cheese and remaining tablespoon of butter. Stir in parsley, lemon juice and zest. Season with salt and pepper to taste.