Four Years and a Full Time Job Later

It has been almost 4 years since I have posted a recipe. Most of my dreams have come true, and though I don’t have a wrap around porch, I do own a very cute three bedroom two bath in the 7th ward with — a porch — and, most notably, a good kitchen. In theory, my job is amazing: I get paid to take photos of food. However reflecting on the blog when I was actively posting I am in a lot of ways the same place I was before, struggling to make ends meet and struggling to form connections in the real world. Did Covid ruin us all forever? Are we all just so fucked up by our families that we will never be able to form secure attachments with other people? Does any of it matter if the city of New Orleans is going to be overtaken with non potable water in a mater of weeks? Do we just need a really nice drink to distract us from the end times? Here’s my new favorite breakfast cocktail recipe, a strong competitor to a bloody mary, invented by none other than Alia Fawaz.

Our mixologist @alia.ofthe.luck knocked this recipe out of the park people! Cucumber, celery and lemon come together with Cocktail and Sons Ginger and Honey syrup to make this refreshing vegetal summer cocktail that you will want to drink until the end of time!
•2oz Vodka
•3/4 oz ginger honey syrup
•3/4 oz fresh lemon
• 2-3 each coins of cucumber and celery

Muddle 2-3 each celery and cucumber coins in a shaker with vodka (or clear liquor of your choosing). This receipe would work great with a floral gin or a quality tequila like La Gritona! Add 3/4 oz Cocktail and Sons Ginger and Honey Syrup, 3/4 oz lemon juice, and shake with ice. Strain over fresh ice, if desired add a splash of soda water. Pro-tip! Batch this cocktail by muddling the bejesus out of the entire cucumber and a few good stalks of celery, add in the lemon juice and the syrup scaling up as needed and strain into a mason jar. Drink as is over ice with water or club soda as a lemonade or mix with your spirit of choosing!

Silver Palate Hot and Spicy Nuts

These nuts are my favorite part of the holiday season. My mom used to make them every year, and the image of the recipe is actually taken from her copy of The Silver Palate Good Times cookbook. They’re spicy and salty and buttery. They make the best housewarming gifts in mason jars or christmas tins, I used to make them for my professors when I was in school. I made a large bucket of these for someone recently and apparently neglected to let them know that there was almost 3 sticks of butter involved because he has been eating them with frivolity for the past several weeks thinking that they were a healthy late night snack. They’re super easy and insanely tasty. I’d recommend using more cayenne than suggested, and if you can get your hands on Cajun Power Worcestershire Sauce it’s INSANELY good. I’ve been using it everywhere lately, roasted mushrooms with it, using it in soups and stocks and steaks.

Pho!

Work’s been crazy! So many new photography jobs! I’m filling up so quick for family portraits for the holiday season so if you need them get at me sooner than later! I’m doing hour long portrait sessions for $100.00

I had a really rough week two weeks ago, I was sick, and had a ton of events and jobs to go to. I ended up not going to this really great networking event because I knew I was going to be shooting a really prominent New Orleans restaurant the next morning and wanted to be rested since I was feeling under the weather. The long and the short of it was they totally blew me off after I showed up and had set up my equipment and were really unprofessional about it. Things like that are so defeating but I’m lucky to have such an amazing support system of friends that reassure me, and remind me to focus on the good.

I know cooking is exhausting for a lot of people, especially with time consuming recipe’s like pho. I find it lately to be my quiet time, where I can reflect, slow down and really take time to think about what I want and how I might get there.

In my scouring of the internet I was thoroughly unable to find an authentic Pho recipe. I compiled a lot of different recipe’s that I found out in the world, along with my 6 quarts of beef stock that I had made the week before, and some local ingredients that I got. If and when I find a legit pho recipe for ya’ll i’ll throw it out into the world.

Pho Broth (makes about 6 quarts of Pho Broth):
6 quarts of beef stock
1/2 cup Pho Spices (Star Anise, Cardamom, Fennel, Cinnamon, Coriander, Cloves)
Salt
Sugar
1 Cup Dried Mushrooms
Ginger root 1 cup of 1 inch knobs
4 teaspoons of fish oil

If you want to make your own beef stock:
2 lbs Beef Bones
6 Carrot or Carrot Tops
2 Onion cut in half
1 Celery Stalk cut in half
1 Parsley Bunch divided
2 Whole Heads of Garlic cut in half horizontally
4 Bay Leaves (2 per pot)
6 Tablespoon Black Peppercorns (3 per pot)
2 Tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce (1 per pot)
1 Tablespoon Tomato Paste (.5 per pot)

Since this is such a labor intensive broth to make I would recommend making ALOT of it and storing it in mason jars to freeze for later occasions. Last week I made short rib ragu, and my pots were not big enough to contain the meat with the bones still on the short ribs. Since I already was cooking with onion, celery, carrot and parsley I decided to make some beef bone stock with all of the short rib bones I had. I used two 6 qt pots because those are what I have to use and divided my ingredients between the two. With a little olive oil in the bottom of the pan I seared about six short rib bones in each pot, along with the garlic, and onion, until fragrant. I filled both pots with water leaving about an inch of space and added the celery, carrot tops, bay leaves, black peppercorns, Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste, and a generous amount of salt to each pot and brought to a boil. I allowed both pots to simmer for about two hours, and removed from the stove. I strained out all of the bones and vegetables and combined about four quarts of the stock into one pot. Keep the remaining two, you will need them later.

If you skipped making beef stock and bought it from the store (no one blames you):
Bring 4 quarts of stock to a simmer again and then added in pho spices, mushrooms and sugar. For sugar I used palm sugar, which is a hard natural rock sugar that is significantly less sweet than traditional sugar. I used about a tablespoon of palm sugar, if using regular sugar i’d start with a half teaspoon and taste as you go. I found a packet of pho spices at the hong kong market that I think was 5 oz for $2.00, you want to make sure you’re using the spices as the whole spice not ground. I cooked the pho broth for about an hour, adding water as needed to keep the pot full, and then strained out all of the spices, returned to the stove and simmered for another 2-3 hours, alternating between adding beef stock and water. You will likely need to add more salt to your broth. I probably ended up using about 10 quarts of liquid between the 6 quarts of stock and adding extra water, and finished with around 6 in the final product. 6 quarts of finished pho broth was about 12-14 servings. I don’t think there really is too much cook time on this stock, I will say though that I would not boil the spices in the broth for more than an hour and a half because they start to get really overpowering.

Pho “Stuffing”:

Bean Sprouts
Cilantro
Basil
Pea Shoots
Rice Noodles
Scallions
Jalepenos
Lime Wedges
Baby Bok Choy
Marinated Roasted Mushrooms: I made a light dressing out of some really good local Worcestershire sauce, olive oil and salt, tossed my mushrooms in the dressing and threw in about 6 whole garlic cloves and then roasted them for 30 minutes at 350 in the oven.
Jammy Tea Eggs: Bring a pot of water to boil, boil eggs for exactly 6.5 minutes and then put them in an ice bath, carefully peel shells and then submerge in a soy bath (I did about a cup of soy a half cup of warm water and two tablespoons of white sugar) for about 2 hours.
Beef: I used a round roast (3 lbs was about 12 servings), and froze it so that I could slice it paper thin. The whole idea with pho is that the scalding hot broth cooks the paper thin beef.

Serve your fresh herbs and veggies on a big platter for your friends to “dress” their pho accordingly. I left Sriracha, Soy and Hoisin on the tables as well. The important part about serving is that your broth is insanely hot, so that as soon as your pour it over your beef, and noodles it begins to cook your beef.

Secret Sauce Dan Dan Noodles

It’s honestly mind boggling to me the amount of people I have met and become friends with in the last three years in New Orleans. I’m a VERY social person, and I could talk to an actual brick wall, but even then, I’ve met so many amazingly kind and talented people. One of them being Justin Bruhl of Matchbook Kitchen. Currently a pop-up, mainly at Courtyard Brewery, Barrel Proof and Miel, he will be running a new permanent kitchen when Courtyard opens their new larger location. He serves a variety of Asian and Asian inspired dishes, Dan Dan Noodles being one of his specialties and one of my personal favorites. Dan Dan noodles “consist of a spicy sauce usually containing preserved vegetables, chili oil, Sichuan pepper, minced pork, and scallions served over noodles," according to google. Now, I can’t tell you whats in this recipe but I can tell you that this savory, spicy, creamy noodles are SO GOOD. Justin was kind enough to share his recipe with me so I could feed my hungry Tuesday masses, but the rest of you will have to go visit him yourselves. You can find out where he’s popping up on instagram @MatchbookKitchen and on Facebook, Matchbook Kitchen. I toned down the spice in these a little because my friends are babies when it comes to spice, and I added some baby bok choy, where Justin usually serves his with mushrooms. I can tell you that I compared his recipe to most of the Dan Dan Noodle recipe’s out there and he’s definitely doing it differently, maybe that explains why his are so good.

Pizza Pizza Pizza

I’ve always felt a little disconnected from my family heritage. Growing up all of my close friends came from first or second generation american families: Italian, Greek, Russian, Jamaican, you name it, they lived it. Being an only child and not really having a sense of ancestry I felt like I missed out on something. My mom’s family is Greek and Irish, but we’re not close with them. My dad’s family is English and Scottish, but we’ve been in the United States essentially since the mayflower. My mom and I were really interested to see what region of Greece her family is from and I did my Ancestry DNA to see if it could give us more information. It can’t differentiate between your dads side and your moms but we know a decent amount about my dad’s family so we figured the unknowns would mostly be mom’s side. We expected to see a lot of Irish and some Greek. What was super shocking was that my DNA popped up as almost 40% Germanic Europe. Upon further digging into birth, marriage, immigration records on ancestry I located all four of my mom’s grandparents. Turns out her dad’s parents were from Kalabaka, Greece and some Macedonian Greek city that no longer exists. On her mom’s side, her grandparents were Polish, and Irish specifically from Galway. The Greek and Polish ancestry doesn’t have too much information past grandparents but the Irish side dates back to the 1600’s in Galway which is pretty cool, especially since we are going to Galway for Christmas. All of this new family information and I still just want to eat pizza. I should have been Italian.

Pizza is super easy but for some reason I find it to be one of those things thats really tedious because you can only fit so many pizzas in the oven at a time. I usually do a pesto lately i’ve been topping my pesto pizza with artichoke hearts, mozzarella, red onion, pine nuts and then fresh arugula once it comes out of the oven. I also did a roasted garlic and mushroom, and used the roasted garlic as a sauce base for the mozzarella, ricotta, and mushrooms. Typically I will do a classic margherita, and then some kind of simple prosciutto, or salami pizza with red sauce. I roll my dough out really really paper thin so it has a nice crunch. Make sure you line your baking sheet with parchment and generously sprinkle corn meal so that the pizza’s don’t stick to the pan. I get my dough from the bakery counter at the grocery store usually. Rouses sell’s raw baguette dough, you just have to get it in the morning or the day before to let it rise sufficiently. Cook the pizza’s at 400F for about 20 minutes and voila!

Lamb Stew with Polenta

For those of you that are not from Louisiana, it’s been summer here for the last six months. The average daytime temperature since May has been 92 degrees, and don’t get me wrong, I am one of the few humans that adores summer in New Orleans. The heat doesn’t bother me, everyone is dewy and sun kissed and likely wearing too little clothing and I am here for it. That being said, somewhere around the first week of October I couldn’t take it anymore. I mean SIX MONTHS and it’s STILL hotter than the surface of the sun. What really makes me long for cooler weather though is fall and winter time recipes. Having grown up in Massachusetts we ate a lot of stew, chili and roasts. You know what really puts a damper on setting your oven at 350 for five hours? 92 degree weather. Well, we finally got some relief this week in the form of a mild 75 for the past several days. 75 doesn’t exactly scream stew weather but I threw most of my windows open anyway and went for it.

Lamb Stew:
5 lb Lamb Roast
2 Tbsp Rosemary
1 Tbsp Thyme
1 Tbsp Paprika
1 tsp Black Pepper
1 tsp Cinnamon
1 tsp Cumin
3 Carrots cut in 1 inch rounds
1-2 Vidalia Onion finely chopped
8 Cloves Garlic sliced
1/4 inch knob of Ginger sliced
1 28oz can Crushed Tomatoes
1 cup stock
1 juice Satsuma (or 1/2 juiced lemon)
3 bay leaves

Although I left my five pound chunk of lamb on the kitchen counter overnight on Monday to thaw from rock solid, it was still frozen on Tuesday morning. So I took the lamb out of his packaging and bathed him in a luke-warm salt bath while I chopped and prepped the rest of my veggies. After this I cut the lamb into about 10 pieces, and browned the meat on all sides in this hot cast iron pot, setting the browned meat aside for later. I then added about a tablespoon of olive oil, the onion, the garlic, the ginger and the carrot and sautéed that all for about 5 minutes. After this add the rest of the herbs and spices along with the meat and coat the meat in the spices. Add the bay leaves, the can of tomatoes and the cup of stock and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and salt as needed, cooking for 2.5-5 hours. The recipe that I drew inspiration from suggested juicing a lemon into the stew before serving, I already had a Satsuma so I used that as just hint of citrus. I cooked this on the longer side of things, leaving it very low all day so the meat would get very tender. I served it with some parmesan polenta, fresh bread from Honest Foods Co. at the Crescent City Farmers Market, and a really simple arugula salad.

Whole Roasted Red Snapper

It’s only been a two weeks since my last post but it feels like an eternity. Ya’ll, freelancing is HARD. I mean obviously it’s hard or everyone would do it. It’s kind of like falling off a cliff and then theres no ground, you just fall for the rest of eternity. I’ve been working a ton in September which is amazing and I finally feel like I’m starting to figure out what the hell I’m doing. So naturally, I figured I would try something crazy for dinner, that I've definitely never done before. Full disclose a lot of these recipe’s are things I have never done before. So here we go, very simply, whole roasted red snapper.

Brittany with our fish named Wade.

Brit brought me out to the Westwego fish market, it’s 100 West Bank Expressway, it’s out there. But I figured if I was going to find a red snapper big enough for 10 people that would be the place to go. Clearly it was as you can see below he did not fit on my largest sheet tray. I had to wrap the oven rack and cook it directly on there. We got this 7.5 pound red snapper from Amy’s Seafood Stand, she was so sweet and super helpful. Wade was already de-scaled and gutted so all we had to do was bring him home and season him. I completely stole Donald Link’s fish salsa verde that they use for their market fish at Peche, which we used to top the fish once he was cooked. I stuffed him with the parsley and mint stems from the salsa, several crushed garlic cloves, and sliced satsumas that I got from the crescent city farmers market.

DL’s Salsa Verde (Tweaked):
1tsp black pepper
1tsp salt
1tsp chili flakes
1/2 cup mint finely chopped
1 cup parsley finely chopped
4 garlic cloves finely chopeed
1/2 cup olive oil
zest of 1 whole satsuma (reserve fruit for later)

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and save for later. I scored the fish in a criss cross pattern, generously salted, peppered the outside, drizzled olive oil over the fish and then squeezed the juice of one whole satsuma (the one we zested) over the top. I used another satsuma sliced and put that inside the fish with the herb stems and more garlic. Since this fish was so large it needed to cook longer than most fish would. I set the oven to 425F and cooked covered with aluminum foil for 25 minutes and then uncovered for 45. The inside temp on the fish should be between 125 and 140ish, we went for the higher temp just because he was SO large. Served with the salsa verde, as well as pesto cous-cous and asparagus.

3 Day Barbecue Ribs

Shoutout to Regan at the Rouses in mid-city for explaining to me the difference between baby back ribs and spare ribs. Apparently spare ribs have an extra piece of meat attached to them, which Regan explained is one of the best parts of the pig. They also were on sale and were about half the price of the smaller ribs. I will warn ya’ll this is a time consuming one. I did a lot of research and comparison on different rib recipes and since this was my first time doing something like this from start to finish I decided I should go ahead and do the most from the start. I did a 36 hour brine on these ribs. Which sounds like a lot of work but really it just takes up a lot of space in your fridge. Then did a dry rub using Deb Perelmen’s rib rub. I roasted the ribs at 200F for 5 hours and then an additional hour at 300F. We then used my homemade barbecue sauce from my pulled pork recipe to glaze the ribs and broil them for about 10 minutes. We had to do this in batches, because 3 racks of ribs, so we put two sheet trays in the oven to keep the ribs warm while the others were broiling.

36 hour brine:
1 cup of salt
1 cup pineapple juice
1 red onion sliced
3 tablespoons black peppercorns
10 garlic cloves smashed
parsley sprigs
1 gallon water

Combine salt, water and pineapple juice in a large bowl. I found using warm water helped to dissolve the salt, add in all other ingredients. In two large hotel pans arrange your ribs. I cut each rack in half, and fit three halves in each hotel pan. Keep in mind three large racks of ribs fed close to 12 people. Scale recipe down accordingly. Pour your liquids over your ribs, I covered the pans with tin foil and stuck them in the fridge Sunday afternoon, and didn’t look at them again until Tuesday morning, when I drained the brine liquid and preheated the oven to 200F for roasting.

Rib Dry Rub (per 1 rack):
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons paprika
3 tablespoons chili powder
1 tablespoon garlic powder (Deb Uses Onion but I didn’t have any)
1 tablespoon salt (Deb uses more salt, but keep in mind I brined my ribs so they already had a high salt content)
Cayenne to taste
1 tablespoon ground black pepper

Combine dry rub in a bowl. On whatever sheet tray you’ll be using to roast cut off a very large piece of tin foil (enough to contain the rack or half rack). Set the rib rack on the tin foil meaty side down, rub a light amount of the rub on this side of the ribs and flip so the meaty side is up. Use the remainder of the rib rub on the top of the ribs, and close them into the tin foil. Roast in the oven for about 5 hours at 200 and then increase heat to 300 for one hour. While this is happening you can make your barbecue sauce if you don’t just happen to have a jar of it sitting in the fridge from the last time you made pulled pork.

Kat’s Barbecue Sauce:
2 cups sofrito (recipe) or store bought
2 cups pineapple juice
1 cup stock
1 packet of Sazon
1 10oz can of chipotles in adobo

Add all ingredients to a large pot and bring to a light simmer until reduced. Once your ribs are finished roasting you can add the roasting liquid to this pot and reduce again. Puree the sauce in a blender until smooth, remembering to cover the lid of your blender with a towel so you don’t burn yourself on hot pork juice. Use this barbecue sauce to glaze the roasted ribs before broiling. You also could finish your ribs on the grill, I just don’t have a grill.

What would you do for a klondike bar?

How do you really know when a recipe is good? For me it always comes down to sauce. I would sell myself for sauce: tomato sauce, peanut sauce—god I fucking love peanut sauce, remoulade, literally MAYONNAISE. Does mayo count as a sauce? I’m counting it as a sauce. But the best depiction of how you know a really, and I mean REALLY, good sauce: you’re willing to reach out to your ex for the recipe. When my ex and I were in LA two years ago we went to Night + Market Song. Which, if you’re in LA, is the best Thai food I have had in my life. Knowing that we both loved to cook I bought him the Night + Market Song cookbook on our flight home, and we made the Khao Soi paste together. The thing I love about making curry pastes or things like pesto is that they freeze exceedingly well, and due to the oil content it’s pretty easy to dig out a chunk without defrosting the whole mess. Because of this I have only recently run out of Khao Soi paste from the second batch we made over a year ago… Now I know what you’re thinking, Kat, you could just buy the damn cook book. But like I have said previously, I have an amazon wish-list, why isn’t anyone buying me anything?! So being as shameless as I am and knowing that he likely would feel mildly guilty considering I BOUGHT HIM THE COOKBOOK, I asked for the recipe, and he obliged—sending the pictures of the recipe itself and nothing else.

I know that paste technically isn’t sauce, but this recipe, along with coconut milk, some fish sauce and stock make a delicious thick soupy thai curry. I tweaked this recipe from the original and the result was actually better than the paste that’s been sitting in my freezer for over a year.

Khao Soi Paste:
1 cup sliced turmeric
1 cup garlic cloves
6 dried chile’s
1 & 1/3 cup sliced ginger
1 & 1/3 cup sliced red onion or shallot
1 tsp chile powder (save for later)
1/2 cup olive oil

The Night Market Song cookbook wants you to blacken all of the ingredients separately in a dry wok, but I didn’t have much luck with blackening the turmeric and I switched to roasting everything, at 400 degrees in the oven for about a half an hour. I removed the chile’s after about 10 minutes, since they are already dried they roast a lot quicker. I used the garlic as a constant and once it was turning brown/black as you can see in the picture above I pulled out all of the other ingredients. Transfer everything to a food processor with the chile powder and slowly add in the olive oil. It becomes a really thick paste, it shouldn’t be excessively oily just enough to pull the ingredients together. This filled a 16oz mason jar for me, which now will live in my freezer for the indefinite future. I cut back on the chile’s from the cookbook recipe, which allowed me to add more paste to my coconut milk without being crazy hot. It’s still insanely flavorful because of all of the other ingredients but it doesn’t burn your mouth off.

Khao Soi Soup (4 Servings):
1 tb khao soi paste
2 cans high fat coconut milk or cream (i’ve only been able to find good coconut milk at asian markets in new orleans)
1 cup stock (veggie, chicken, beef, whatever)
1 tb fish sauce
linguine-like egg noodles
1 pack fancy mushrooms
3 baby eggplant
1 lb some kind of meat, beef, chicken thighs, shrimp would probably be good
1/2 cup crushed peanuts
shaved red onion
cilantro or microgreens
lime wedges

In a pot add the two cups of coconut milk, using one of the empty coconut milk cans fill with water and add that, as well as the cup of stock. Add two tablespoons of paste and whisk together over low heat. Add the fish sauce and continue to cook on low heat. Coconut milk curdles if it boils (it will get grainy almost) so you want to make sure to keep it hot but not let it come to a full boil. Traditionally Khao Soi is just beef, with shaved onion, cilantro, something crunchy, noodles and the broth itself. I like to roast off my meat with some hearty vegetables like mushrooms and eggplant, and these are two good options if you’d like to make this dish vegetarian. Boil your noodles, add the broth and top with whatever proteins/veggies you’d like, as well as shaved red onion, greens, peanuts, etc.

Soup and The City

A new friend told me this week that when reading my blog she envisions me like Carrie Bradshaw, sitting at my desk writing about some fresh drama, while a montage of me cooking family dinner plays in the background. I should like to think that if I was living some wild Sex and the City lifestyle there might be a more interesting love life connected to it. There is something really magical though about the facade of social media that makes our lives look infinitely more alluring than they actually are. That’s one of the really fun and dangerous things about being a photographer: you also become a curator. I find myself constantly trying to convince strangers that my life is by no means glamorous, while curating my social media presence and telling wild anecdotes about faking my way into fancy parties. The real truth is that I spend most of my days sitting at the Who Dat Coffee Cafe in the Marigny, with a black iced coffee staring at a blank page wondering what to write and who to email so that I can continue to afford to do family dinner, and you know… pay rent. In a similar attempt to fictionalize my life, I took some overly dramatic photos of soup this week.

Tomato Basil Soup (12-14 servings):
4 tablespoons butter
2 yellow onion
8 cloves garlic
2 dried chili peppers
2 cups basil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tsp whole peppercorns
3 28oz cans whole peeled tomatoes
6 cups chicken broth
1 cup white wine

I use an 6 qt pot for this recipe, it nearly fills the pot. Half your onions, and uncase your garlic. Heat up your butter in the pot, and on medium heat sear the onion halves for about three minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another few minutes. Deglaze the pot with the cup of wine. Add in all other ingredients, and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. I cooked this for about an hour and then removed it from heat and ladled the soup into a blender to puree until smooth. I found that I needed a big bowl to transfer the puree to, since you will need to puree in 2 or 3 batches, and then return your soup to the original pot. Add more salt or black pepper if necessary. Bring back to hot when you’re ready to serve. You can add a little heavy cream if you want it to be more bisque-y.

KAT! DO. NOT. MARRY. A. STRANGER. ON. TELEVISION.

“The Secret” is this idea that you can change the course of your life by the power of positive thinking and just willing things into existence. I have been telling everyone that will listen that I want a three bedroom bungalow with a wrap around porch and a good kitchen (really, it’s not too much to ask for). That along with the pipe dream that I could just magically become a housewife, write a lifestyle blog, and take pictures. It’s all very luxurious, the only issue being that there is not one human to marry. That is until a woman reached out to me on instagram inviting me to be on “Married at First Sight.” Now, I know what you’re thinking, KAT! DO. NOT. MARRY. A. STRANGER. ON. TELEVISION, and you’re right and I’m not going to. That being said I looked at the salary and they pay you around $20,000 for the six weeks of filming. Unfortunately I’m not quite that crazy, and I think my mother would die on the spot. Cheers to me for not having the guts to marry a stranger on Lifetime reality tv, here’s some grilled lobsters and my dad’s rum punch recipe:

Once I figured out that you could grill lobster there really wasn’t another option. I have not yet had the guts to stab a lobster through it’s brain and cut it in half, though it seems much more humane than boiling it alive. I made a white wine butter sauce with garlic, basil, dill, and tarragon to baste the lobster with while it was grilling so that it wouldn’t get dried out. They need to grill for 5 ish minutes on each side. We started them on their shell side so that the meat would have a chance to cook in some butter, and also attach to the inside of the shell before we flipped them.

Peter Kimball’s Rum Punch:
6 oz pineapple
1 oz lime
2 oz simple
8 oz Mount Gay rum
fresh grated nutmeg
3 dashes angostura bitters

In a pitcher, combine pineapple, lime, simple, and rum. Throw some ice in a glass and pour mix over, top with a few dashes of angostura and some fresh grated nutmeg. This recipe makes about 4 drinks, you can easily make larger batches. It’s simple and tasty and will get you very drunk.

Mycelium Express' #1 Fan Girl

I need to gush here for a moment about “Mycelium Express.” They are a team of local mushroom growers that sell at the crescent city farmers market, and they’re amazing. Their mushrooms are so unique and allow us to try things that we would never find at the grocery store. They have almost no social media, and they don’t have a website. If someone knows them please let them know I am their #1 fan.

The first time I made this variation on Coq au Vin it was wildly successful and we were literally drinking the sauce. This time around I made too much in too big and too deep of a pot, and cooked it too long, which resulted in it being more like a chicken soup than a chicken stew. It was still very good but it lacked the hearty stewy-ness that I was craving. The recipe bellow is the original dish that I made, I have since scrapped my attempts at altering what I did in January. On the other hand, Deanna’s focaccia was the star of the night. It was perfect, and shockingly easy. Who needs a bread hookup when you can just make it yourself?

Deanna’s Focaccia:
1 & 1/2 cups water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 & 1/2 teaspoon salt
3 & 1/2 cups bread flour
1 tablespoon instant yeast

Combine ingredients in a stand mixer, on high speed for about 1-2 minutes, until the dough combines. Generously oil a sheet tray and transfer your dough, spreading it out to be about an inch in thickness. Let rest for an hour covered. Preheat oven to 400. Once dough has rested give your focaccia some finger dents to hold olive oil and spices. We drizzled the dough with olive oil, thyme, rosemary, and coarse sea salt. Bake for 25-30 minutes. You do want to remove your dough from the sheet tray pretty soon after it’s been baked so that it doesn’t sweat in the pan and become soggy.

Coq au Riesling:
4 oz thick cut pancetta, cut in 1/4 inch cubes
8 bone in chicken thighs
2 carrots
1lb mixed mushrooms
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 shallot, minced
1/2 yellow onion, minced
fresh thyme and parsley
1 bottle of dry riesling
1/2 cup heavy cream, or 1/4 cup creme fraiche

In a large flat skillet, crisp your pancetta, then add in your onion, and shallot and cook until translucent. Add in garlic and cook for another 3-5 minutes. Remove from pan and sear off chicken thighs about 5 minutes on each side, until slightly browned. Add onion, pancetta mix back to the pan along with your chopped carrot and about a teaspoon of fresh chopped thyme. Add as much of the riesling as you can, along with a half a teaspoon of salt. Bring to a boil, and then a simmer. Cook for about a half an hour, or until your chicken is cooked through. In a separate skillet, cook your mushrooms in a little salt and butter, and then add to your chicken. Once the chicken is cooked through and the mushrooms have been added, add in your cream or creme fraiche and cook for another 5-10 minutes to let the flavors combine. Add more salt if necessary. Top with fresh chopped parsley.

If sheer willpower alone had a greek goddess, would it be me?

I was supposed to be born on my mother’s birthday, April 18th. I was a week late, and she was in labor for 24 hours. I’ve never chosen the easy road. Thats been true in choosing my career as a photographer, my sudden move to New Orleans, my complicated friendships and my more than complicated relationships. If the task is easy or uncomplicated I’m usually not interested. And in truth the hardest things are usually the most rewarding. Why would I do the easy thing, when I could forcibly move a mountain, by myself, just to say that I did it? If sheer willpower alone had a greek goddess, would it be me? This pesto recipe has calmed down in the last several years, unlike my ego. When I first started making pesto I remember reading a recipe that said that to truly be someone’s Italian grandmother you HAD to chop your pesto by hand. While I agree (assuming you have the worlds sharpest knife) that hand chopping your basil and adding in your nuts, cheese, and garlic reduces the bruising and creates a more rounded flavor… just put the damn thing in the blender. It saves you about an hour of chop—chop—chopping your life away and no one can tell the difference.

Pesto by hand or in a blender:
4 cups basil
1 cup parmesan cheese
1 cup pine nuts
1/2-1 whole head of garlic
1 cup olive oil

To do this in a blender:
Add all dry ingredients into blender and pulse, slowly adding in olive oil until a paste begins to form. I still like my pesto to look like it has separate ingredients but if you want it to be smooth just keep blending.

To chop pesto by hand:
Get the biggest cutting board you have and the sharpest knife you have. You will likely have to work in batches with the basil, but start with half and just start chopping away. When the basil is in quarter inch widths add in the garlic and keep chopping. Then add in the pine nuts—these are a pain to chop. Once your garlic, basil, and pine nuts are all chopped super fine, mix in your grated parmesan. I like to store my pesto in a mason jar, so transfer to a jar, and pour in enough olive oil to just cover the top of the pesto.

I freeze my pesto because I usually make such a huge batch of it. For any pesto novices out there: DO NOT COOK THE PESTO. Prep your pasta and your veggies or meat or whatever else you’re serving with pesto and add the pesto at the last step. If you cook it, the cheese will turn everything into a big gloopy sticky mess. If you want to do a pesto cream sauce, make the cream sauce and then add the pesto at the end.

Rigatoni with blistered grape tomatoes, pesto, and pine nuts.

Fully Screaming

Set the scene: we’re 9 bottles of wine, several shots of whiskey, and a couple of shots of cold brew concentrate deep. It’s 1:30 in the morning and I go to the fridge in our gorgeous suite, the big one above Rbar, the one with the private balcony, and we’ve run out of wine. I have myself a whole Jonathan Van Ness moment and fully scream. How did we run out of wine already? Whatever will we do it’s not like there a bar downstairs! I am reassured by the fact that oh, yes, there is a bar downstairs and we send JC down to get two more bottles of wine. Besides this tiny hiccough Carolyn’s 25th birthday party went perfectly according to plan, including this pulled pork recipe that I accidentally invented.

Accidentally the best pulled pork you’ve ever had:
4lb pork shoulder
2 cups sofrito (recipe)
2 cups pineapple juice
1 cup stock
1 packet of Sazon
1 10oz can of chipotles in adobo

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Get out your Le Creuset or equivalent cast iron pot big enough to fit your roast, and heat up a few tablespoons of olive oil in the bottom. While thats getting hot, rub down your pork shoulder with Sazon, and then sear it on all sides in the pot. In a large bowl whisk together all of the other ingredients, pour over the pork shoulder and bring the liquids to a boil. Lid the pot, stick it in the oven and forget about it for four hours.

Take the pork out of the oven, poke at the meat, it should be falling apart. Under the assumption that it is in fact falling apart, remove the pork from the liquid and put it in a large bowl. Ladle any fat off of the liquid in the pot and dispose of it, ladle the remaining liquid into a blender and blend until smooth. Pro-tip if you don’t want to shoot hot pork juice all over yourself like I did, cover the top of the blender with a towel. Pour your blended sauce back into your cast iron pot, I added more pineapple juice and more stock to my liquid and brought it back to a boil, salted it and added a little sugar to balance out the heat. Essentially this is some kind of take on barbecue sauce and its delicious. I shredded my pork and added about half of my sauce to the pulled pork, saved the rest of the sauce for another endeavor. We used the pork last week for fajitas and then again this weekend for pulled pork sandwiches.

I actually used the sauce in combination with olive oil to season the potato chips in these pictures. They simply are thinly slivered potato, salted, covered in olive oil and homemade barbecue sauce and spread out on a cookie sheet, baked for 25 minutes at 400 degrees.

Can you get to the point already, Kat?

If you told me three years ago that by August 2019 I would be painfully single, working full time as a photographer, writing a food blog, and cooking for 15 people every week… Well I’d probably believe you honestly. Isn’t that kind of Murphy’s law, anything that can happen will? I never could have imagined that my life would turn out the way that is has, and the people that continuously lift me up and inspire me are by all means not who I would have expected. I would love to name drop everyone and gush about their lives and how they have changed mine but they would probably conspire to murder me at dinner tomorrow if I did. Except for probably Carolyn, she’s fully okay with the entire world knowing that when my ex and I broke up she actually picked me up off of my bedroom floor and carried me to the closest wine bar. “What, if anything, does this have to do with your food blog?” you ask. Nothing. Here’s a recipe for paella in a cast iron skillet:

The first time I made paella this winter I totally fudged the Sofrito, which is the most time consuming but fully the most essential part of this recipe.

Things you will need for Sofrito (this is a double batch, using the rest this week for Fajitas, it’s supposed to be good for two weeks in the fridge):
1 28oz can petit diced tomatoes
2 red bell peppers finely diced
1 Anaheim pepper (it looked fun why the heck not) finely diced
1 onion (red, yellow, whatever) finely diced
6 or so garlic cloves, finely diced
1 loose cup of chopped cilantro
1 cup (chicken, beef, veggie) stock
1 cup white wine

Oil a skillet the onion, peppers, and garlic until the onion is translucent. Add all other ingredients and salt to taste. I cooked this on low for about and hour and a half, it should be the thickness of tomato paste, but add more liquid at your discretion. Its honestly delicious by itself, De and I were eating it hot on tortilla chips. I put the finished product in a mason jar, saved for later in the evening.

Paella Time (this served 8):
2 cups bomba rice
2 cups sofrito
18 ish threads of saffron soaked in 1/4 cup white wine (seen above)
1 tsp paprika
1 onion (red, white, whatever) sliced, julienned, do what you feel
1 red pepper sliced, julienned
1/2 cup fancy mushrooms (what does this even mean kat?) I used small hearty crunchy guys that I found at the hong kong market, something that can hold up to being boiled in broth
1 lb smoked sausage, I used green onion, cut in rounds and then quartered
1 lb chicken thighs, cut in half
1/2 lb shrimp, I used frozen
6 cups (chicken, beef, veggie) stock
salt to taste

The essential things in this recipe are the bomba rice, the sofrito, the saffron, the paprika, and the stock. Put literally whatever else you want in here. Make it vegetarian, make it all meat, get lobster, go crazy.

If you have two skillets use both, the smaller to cook off your proteins and the larger for the paella itself. If you only have the one, plan on cleaning out the skillet after you cook the proteins. Oil your smaller skillet and crisp off your smoked sausage, set aside. In the same skillet cook your chicken thighs: about three minutes on each side on high heat. They will be raw in the middle, set aside. Cook your shrimp about two minutes on each side, also will be raw in the middle, set aside. I used a 12 inch cast iron for the paella, it will be very full, but the great thing about paella is you aren’t really supposed to stir it, so your pan can be full to the brim. Combine the bomba rice, sofrito, saffron soaked in wine, paprika, and raw veggies in the cast iron and combine until the bomba rice is sufficiently covered in sofrito and the saffron-wine has been mixed in. Add in your stock and bring to a boil. Add in all proteins except for fish. Get it all situated in the pan to where you’re comfortable not touching it and bring down to a simmer, it takes about 20-25 minutes to cook the bomba rice. Ideally you want the rice to have a slight bite, but most of the stock to be cooked down. Add your fish to the top of the dish, about five minutes before your rice is done, and nestle into the steam to finish cooking. Serve with bread, salad, wine. Top with more cilantro.

I promise I will try to not speak strictly about pasta from here on out...

But really I can’t make any promises. I love pasta. I bought a pasta machine as a post breakup gift to myself last summer and that moment really is what started family dinner. Since that first pasta night we have done five or six and without fail, no matter when I make the dough or how early I begin shape the pasta, we will not eat before 11pm. I mostly make traditionally Italian if not more specifically Roman pasta dishes that I picked up while living in Rome in 2012: Bucatini all’Amatriciana, Ragu, Carbonara, occasionally delving into Umbrian Penne alla Norcina. I am fully a snob when it comes to pasta, and this leads us to the true hypocrisy of this post: I made meatballs. Quick recap on the meatball: Italians only serve them by themselves if they’re large, and when they’re small they usually go in soup. When the Italians immigrated to America at the turn of the 20th century they were actually spending less of their income on food then they were in Italy and thus eating more meat and the meatball “snowballed” for lack of a better word. I found a recipe for tiny meatballs last week that had tons of herbs and ricotta AND I could make them the day before dinner, so we put all prior rules and feelings about American meatballs in the bathroom.

So these meatballs are a combination of a couple recipes that have all clearly been based off of Marcella Hazan’s recipe from her book Marcella’s Italian Kitchen. Side-note: if anyone would like to purchase this cookbook for me it’s on my amazon wish-list. Combining the things I liked from all of these recipe’s I ended up with:
1/2 cup parsley finely chopped
1/2 cup basil finely chopped
1/2 head of garlic finely chopped
1/2 cup breadcrumbs (I used Italian breadcrumbs that I already had in the cupboard, stale bread works too)
1/2 cup of ricotta
1/2 tsp of nutmeg
4 egg yolks (or 2 whole eggs)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 dried chile, or 1/2 tsp of cayenne/chile flakes
2 lbs Italian sausage
corn starch (if frying)

So I threw my whole peppercorns, dried chile and herbs into my blender to combine them which to be honest didn’t work, don’t do that. Next time I will put the peppercorns and the chile in the spice grinder and finely dice the herbs and combine in a bowl with the breadcrumbs, salt, and nutmeg. “If you don’t have a spice grinder, regular ground pepper and some cayenne or chile flakes are fine” in my best Ina Garten voice. In a much larger bowl, mixing with your hands, combine the uncased sausage with the egg yolks and the ricotta. Then add your herbs, spices, and breadcrumbs. Do a test cook on a dime sized piece of sausage mixture, to test your seasoning and adjust where you wish. On a large sheet tray shape your meatballs, I did mine in maybe the size of a quarter in diameter. I also coated my meatballs in cornstarch and fried them (3-5 minutes in a half inch of oil and then rolled them over for another 3 to 5 minutes) and then kept them overnight to use in my sauce the next day. This made about 110 meatballs, you totally could halve this recipe, this many meatballs was 12-14 servings.

The last time I tried to make pasta sauce Ian yelled at me. It was arguably bad pasta sauce. Bad in the sense that it was fully edible and had anyone but me served it we all would have been more than happy, but it was bland, there was much too much sauce in relation to the amount of meat, the flavors didn’t combine right, it didn’t cook long enough, and we all have come to expect more from me. I was not going to let that happen again so I went back to my recipe hunting for making the perfect marinara sauce. Sourcing back to Marcella Hazan she claims that whole peeled tomatoes, a stick of butter, salt, and an onion, and those four things alone make the perfect sauce. Besides the fact that she’s a best-selling James Beard Award-winning food writer, her meatballs came out really good and I figured i’d give it a shot with my own tweaks. Makes 12-14 servings of sauce. Unless you’re feeding a small army or my friends that have apparently never eaten before, halve recipe or plan on freezing some of it.

Kat’s Marinara Sauce:
2 (28 oz) cans whole peeled tomatoes
1 large Vidalia onion cut in 1/8ths
1 stick of butter
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 head of garlic peeled
2 bay leaves
1 cup beef or chicken broth (I prefer bone broth but like I said — snob)
2 dried chile’s
1 teaspoon peppercorns
A few sprigs of chopped parsley and basil, and 1/4 cup chopped to add later
1/2 bottle of red wine (chianti, montepulciano, light pinot noir, something cheap and drinkable)

In a big (preferably cast iron) pot heat two tablespoons of olive oil and toss in the onion followed by the garlic cloves to release their aromatics, put everything else in the pot, bring it to a boil, reduce to a simmer, cook for two hours stirring occasionally. You will probably need to add more salt. If you want a heartier chunkier sauce you can really just use a wooden spoon to break up the tomatoes and the garlic, if you choose this method I would use cracked pepper instead of whole peppercorns, for a smooth sauce throw the whole cooked down mixture in the blender, make sure you dig out the bay leaves. I added the chopped herbs after pureeing to give my sauce some more color. If you’re serving this with your meatballs add them in to heat the meatballs up again, serve with fettuccini or a big rigatoni and parmesan.

The only tomato caprese you will ever eat again, period.

Family dinner is a dinner party hosted at my home in the 7th ward of New Orleans every Tuesday night at 7pm for anywhere from 6 to 15 close friends and family. The event was born in search of a way to spend time with friends outside of a bar setting, tired of screaming over loud music paying too much money for bad drinks without privacy. My favorite memories with friends and family have always happened in someones mom’s kitchen. We grew up in those kitchens, chastised for eating meatballs out of the pot, or sneaking “the good cheese, reserved for guests,” when we thought mom wasn’t looking, inevitably shooed to the other side of an island or a table with a glass of wine because we were helping wrong or in the way. We would sit back and listen to family go on and on about stories of their youth. Selfishly wanting to be that mom, I began cooking for my friends and family in New Orleans, the only rule being to bring wine. It’s been about a year since I began, and though I have never thought of myself as a writer, I am most certainly a hostess, a story teller and a photographer.

This recipe is so insanely simple I honestly thought that Betsy was lying to me when I begged her for the recipe from Paladar 511 in the Marigny. She swore to me it really was just simply, olive oil, salt and basil on good local tomatoes with burrata. I have done some variation on this many times before for dinner but all have included balsamic which I can tell you now you will not miss.

When I tell you my mother has dropped dead in place reading this blog dedicated to tomatoes I am not exaggerating. I don’t think I ate a single tomato until I moved to New Orleans, granted the addition of creamy burrata cheese and Maggie Scales’ ciabatta that I have stock piled in my freezer definitely helps. The tomatoes in New Orleans in the summer are just better than normal tomatoes. I honestly don’t know how else to put this sudden change of heart that I have had on a food that I wouldn’t even touch for 25 years of my life.

I realize this is less of a recipe and more of a declaration of my new found love of tomatoes. If you’re in the New Orleans area, check out the Crescent City Farmers market for tomatoes and basil, they’re uptown on Broadway on Tuesdays which makes a perfect hop skip to the recently opened Bellegarde bakery for bread and St James for cheese to pair with. I served this last night as a prelude to the tiniest meatballs which I will be writing about soon. I will say though that these tomatoes came back out late in the evening and were completely finished.