When the Gumbo did my infatuation with Pepper Keenan start?

This recipe is in honour of my two favourite things.
Pepper Kennan. Front man and guitarist of Corrosion of Conformity and guitarist in Down, and good down home Southern Louisiana cooking.

(Other things of note which I love are Dolph Lundgren, Columbo, 80's action films, my Viking drinking horn, Mexican wrestling and pork pies. Oh, and vodka).

 To start the story.

I was a young girl, about the age of thirteen/ fourteen, in the bloom of my youth and just starting to get over my Eddie Vedder infatuation.
 I was watching the show Headbangers Ball on MTV which my Granny had kindly videotaped for me (yes, I said videotaped! it was the 90's).
My Gran was deemed posh on the scheme as she was one of the first to get cable.

So there I was watching the likes of Skintrade, Annihilator and Nuclear Assault when a video came on by a band called Corrosion of Conformity. Voting with a bullet to be precise.

There I saw a man.
Not your pretty boy Eddie Vedder type but a MAN!
A big hairy Metal Man by the name of Pepper Keenan.
That was it, my heart was his.




I’d imagine Pepper sitting on an old swing chair on a porch in our run down little shack, basking in the Louisiana sun.
Strumming a tune on his guitar, drinking a cold beer and eating some famous New Orleans (or N’awlins as the locals say) Gumbo that I had cooked for him.

After the gumbo was finished I'd bring him some freshly baked bread pudding which we would share from the same plate, feeding each other while laughing softly.

We’d sip some homemade lemonade laced with bourbon and kiss under the hot moonlit Louisiana sky.
Then he would take my hand and lead me to the bedroom where we would fall into a deep and comforting sleep in each others arms.

My sexual awakening hadn't happened yet. Clearly!

(For the record, I  completely made everything after the "voting with a bullet" video up. Hee hee. But I do write a damn good story don't I? )

You should check out my Mills and Boon tributes on "Jack n coke cupcakes"
http://appetiteofdestructionbook.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/jack-n-coke-cupcakes.html
and "If Mills and Boon wrote recipe reviews".
http://appetiteofdestructionbook.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/if-mills-and-boon-wrote-recipe-reviews.html

I'm seriously considering a career as a Romantic novelist.


Here's something else for you to laugh at.
I call it:

An Ode to Good Ol’ Southern Cookin with Pepper

Oh dearest Pepper Keenan ,
You’re the size of a bear
With your big guitar riffs
And Man Metal hair

Your name goes with salt,
 Not sugar or spice
To share all my meals
With you would be nice

I’d make Turtle soup
And shit loads of crab
With Remoulade sauce
In which shrimps you could dab

I’d like to invite you
To eat Gumbo stew
With rice, shrimp and okra
Just me and you

I’ll fry up some Hush Puppies
To have on the side
And after some beers
We can have a good ride (On the St Charles Streetcar you filthy minded beggars)

I forgot about pudding
Now that wouldn’t do
I’ll make Bananas Foster
Just
Yes especially,
 just for you

As I would have said in the 90’s  “SCHWING"



Ok, Ok, here is the recipe then. I hope it is as authentic as it is in N’awlins.


N’awlins Gumbo

This makes a shit load of Gumbo. You canny make a small pot. It’s just not right. Invite people round, give it to your neighbours, the homeless, whomever and celebrate New Orleans style.

Ingredients:

note: This recipe calls for pepper. As in the spice. Please do not kidnap Pepper Keenan and try to cook him in a big pot of gumbo as this may lead to a spoiled stew and a lengthy prison sentance.

This is my Gumbo. Not a very good photo but damn it was tasty.

This is andouille Gumbo from the Gumbo Shop in New Orleans. This is the colour your Gumbo should be,

Andouille sausage (If you can’t get Andouille then you can use chorizo or merguez ) cut into chunky rings about 2cm thick
500g okra washed and stalks cut off
10 Big fat raw tiger prawns de shelled and de veined. (Oh fuck this. It’s NOT a vain. It’s the prawn’s shite pipe. I have no need of being polite, so de shite pipe the prawns).
150g butter
100g flour
2 Green bell peppers diced
6 stalks Celery diced
2 large onions diced
3 bay leaves
1 teaspoon tomato purée
Teaspoon fresh thyme
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
2litres Chicken stock or one chicken stock cube dissolved in 2 litres of boiling water
Couple splashes hot sauce
Big handful chopped fresh parsley
Salt and pepper

First thing you need is a BIG heavy bottomed pot.
Next you need to make your roux.
Put your pot onto a medium heat and plop in the butter. Once melted and starting to bubble slightly add the flour and stir.
Turn heat down to low and cook the roux, stirring every now and then until it is the colour of peanut butter, This will take about 10 to 15 minutes but be patient. It's worth it. Just keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't burn.
When your roux is ready add the smoked paprika, onion, celery and green peppers.
Cook for about 5 minutes stirring every now and then until softened.
Add the sausage and cook for 5 minutes.
Add the okra and cook for a few minutes.
Add the chicken stock, thyme, bay leaves, hot sauce, tomato purée, salt and pepper.
Stir and bring to a simmer.
Cook slowly for about 40 minutes or until the okra is tender.
Plop in the prawns and cook for about 3 minutes. You don't want the prawns to go like rubber.
Take off the heat and add the chopped parsley.
Serve with boiled rice and nice crusty bread.

No, no. It's OK. You don't have to thank me.

Rock You Like A Hurricane

Hallo, hallo.
Laissez les bons temps rouler.



The Hurricane is the most famous cocktail in New Orleans.
Invented at Pat O'Brien's bar on Bourbon Street in the 1940's.
They had boat loads of rum and needed to get shot of it, and so a wee man fiddled about with some rum and left over juice he had lying around and the limes he had to prevent scurvy. Made a few stinkers, got pished, then came up with the fruity, sweet concoction we have today. (This is my interpretation of events-may not be strictly true). 

I had a Hurricane in a plastic cup  from Laffite's Blacksmith shop In New Orleans (The oldest bar in the US apparently). Don't go there. The bar staff are really rude and the toilets are manky. The Hurricane was pretty strong though. It made the Vampire walking tour much more fun. When our guide asked us what the first settlers of New Orleans were missing? I piped up in my broadest Glaswegian accent "WIMMIN"!. I got a laugh.

There are so many recipes for a Hurricane cocktail that it's difficult to know which is the right one. So here is my closest guess.

Hurricane cocktail serves 2

You need two big tall glasses and crap loads of ice

2 fl oz light rum
2 floz dark rum
6oz orange juice
6oz passion fruit juice or pineapple if you can't get passion fruit juice
1oz grenadine
juice one lime
2 slices of orange
2 cocktail cherries

Fill your glasses with loads of ice, pour half of the rest of the ingredients into each glass, squeeze the juice of half a lime into each glass. Top with a slice of orange and a cherry. Stick in a swizzle stick and mix it all about. Put in more rum, stick on some tacky plastic beads, grope your friends and pretend you're on Bourbon Street.

Ang and Polly's Excellent Adventure. Part one:N'awlins

Hallo Y'all,

Did you miss me? Of course you did.
Well, that's me back from the US of A.  Jet lag over and back to Normal.
Oh what a time we had. How much food we ate. God it was awesome. So I'll tell you guys all about it.
You might want to get yourself a drink and a few munchie snacks as this is gonna be a long one.
Where to start?
OK so first of all I want to thank the lovely people of New Orleans for making our stay most enjoyable and to my very, very good friends Steve and Louise for putting us up and putting up with us in Seattle.

Laissez les bons temps rouler.
 In New Orleans that means "Let the good times roll". And indeed they did.


Our Holiday started off pretty badly. We got stranded in Dallas for the evening due to the incompetence of American Airlines, who I will never use again.

Anyhoo, We stayed in the hotel from the Shining and there was a Denny's right beside us so for breakfast we had french toast, eggs and bacon. I love American Breakfasts.
 If I lived in the USA I would be a big fatty.
Dallas airport is great. They have a Tex Mex place called Papasitos. They do HUGE portions of food. I had a platter with a beef burrito, chicken enchilada and rice and beans.
Pauline had chicken quesadillas. We only made a slight dent in the portions. As the waitress said when we explained that is was very nice but far too much. "Everything's bigger in Texas Y'all".
Damn right. Even the Margaritas were massive. It was quite fun to ride the sky link (The airport monorail link) while pissed. Wheeeeeeeee.

The Shining hotel. REDRUM REDRUM. This is where we stayed in Dallas

Denny's French toast with eggs, bacon and sausage.

Pretty building, French Quarter, New Orleans

Well. On to New Orleans.
We booked a lovely hotel called the Dauphine Orleans right in the heart of the French Quarter.

http://www.dauphineorleans.com/



If you ever go to New Orleans stay at this hotel. The rooms are massive and quiet and so worth the money.
Me and Pauline nearly hyperventilated as soon as the taxi turned into the French Quarter. It's exactly like you see on TV. Beautiful. You feel like you have gone back in time to a place where the woman drink fresh Lemonade and used fans to cool themselves down in the Southern heat before air conditioning was invented. Not that you need air conditioning in Scotland. Ha ha. Just open a bloody window.

The first thing we did was to go for a walk to Jackson Square to see St Louis Cathedral. Then we took a trip up the Mississippi on the Steamboat Natchez.

http://www.steamboatnatchez.com/
There is nothing better than sitting on the deck in the scorching sun, going up the Mississippi River and sipping on frozen Margaritas at 11.30 in the morning. Bliss.
Alltough we did get severe sunburn.
Who would have thought that you would get sun burnt in October. Well, we are both ginger.


So our first experience of food in New Orleans was to go to a wee 24 hour joint down from the hotel called Deja Vu.

http://www.dejavunola.com/

It was a little neighbourhood place that had a good jukebox and served good homemade grub.
Pauline had a huge burger and I had Chicken fried steak with country gravy. God it was good. 

For anyone outside the US. Chicken Fried Steak is basically a pounded steak covered in a crisp batter kinda like the stuff you get on Kentucky fried chicken but way better. And from what I could work out, country gravy is like a Bechamel sauce with loads of pepper in it???? It was good. We soaked it down with a nice cool, crisp Corona with fresh lime. MMMMMMMMMMMMM.

The Vampire ball was the same night.
 I dressed as a Hammer Horror bride of Dracula with a burned crucifix on  my forehead, a floor lengh red chiffon cloak  and a pink nylon nightdress. I couldn't stand anywhere near a naked flame for fear of going up in a puff of smoke.
Pauline was dressed as a very beautiful Victorian style Vampire. Which we found out was called "Steam punk". Yeah, whatever.
The drinks were so strong that I'm smiling in every photo. Not very Vampire like of me. I'm supposed to be dark and broody. Oh well.
I threw my teeth away on Bourbon Street. They cost me a fortune too.

I'm so scary

Have you ever seen such happy vampires?

Next day we went to the French Market and had a Snowball, which is shaved ice with flavoured syrup. Yum yum.
The man who served us was very nice. We gave him a big tip.

Cherry snowball from a very nice man.

Next port of call for food was the Gumbo Shop. Where we had the best meal of our entire lives.

Gumboooooooooooo. Weep.

http://www.gumboshop.com/visit_the_restaurant/visit_the_restaurant.html

To start we had Gumbo. I've been a big fan of gumbo my whole life but never really knew how to make it properly as I had never been to Louisiana.
 My interpretation of Gumbo was like a tomato based stew.
Oh no no no. How wrong I was.
This was more like a thick meaty gravy with chicken, sausage and rice. Oh I nearly weeped into my bowl I was so overjoyed.
Bridget, our waitress was a character herself. Intense, but very nice and very help full. She seemed as overjoyed as ourselves with what were about to savour.
Bridget, your a gem. We wish you were our friend. Maybe one day when myself and Pauline move to New Orleans we can hang with Bridget.

Paulines blackened chicken Poboy. Mmmmmmmmmmmm

Hot roast beef Poboy with gravy. Oh God, oh God, Oh God.

We took the famous St Charles streetcar line up to the Garden district and picked the houses we wanted to live in.

St Charles Street car line

This is where I want to live.

Then we went to Audubon Park and it started to rain. I thought the rain in Scotland was bad. Ooh wee. This was like no rain I had ever seen. 
We made it to the zoo. All the animals were either in hiding or depressed.
There is no sadder sight than a huge orangutan trying to shield from the rain under a tiny soggy cardboard box. Bless.

Aw.

Scary Gator. Good in Gumbo. Mmmmmmmm.

I walked the 3 hour journey back to the hotel wearing a plastic see through poncho. And I wasn't even embarrassed. What a tourist.

 I did get a pumpkin and pecan pie for the road from Tee Eva's. Twas very very good.
http://www.tee-evapralines.com/

Sweet Potato and pecan pie. And Pauline's feet. It's hard to eating, walking and taking a photo at the same time is not easy.

That evening we visited Bubba Gump for dinner before embarking on a Vampire walking tour.

http://www.bubbagump.com/locations/new-orleans/

http://www.hauntedhistorytours.com/

I swear to God the people in Bubba Gump were trying to kill us with the portions of food. My phrase for the whole holiday was "Oh my goodness". Which I said pretty much after every meal.
Collectively we had  shrimp boil, Mussels and clams, bucket of boat trash, Bourbon Street Mahi mahi and cocktails. Oh my goodness!
Our waiter was cool. He made us do a Forest Gump quiz. I even said the line "I got shot in the buttocks" in my best Southern accent. I was not drunk yet.

Bucket of trash. Mmmmmmmmmm

Shrimp boil. Oh My Goodness.

We staggered towards the meeting point for the vampire walking tour feeling quite full.
The tour guides were dressed the part and standing outside Jackson Square waiting for the participants. We waited till other people went up first so we wouldn't look lame.
We were not the only ones doing this.
If you go to New Orleans take at least one of the Haunted History tours.
The guides, along with making the tours fun also know alot about the actual history of the city.
We also took the cemetery tour.
Nicolas Cage has a tomb there. Clearly, he is not dead yet.

City of the Dead. St Louis Cemetary number 2

Next was Cafe Du Monde for the famous Beignets.
 Fried dough dusted with ridiculous amounts of icing sugar. Soooooooooo yummy.
We ate them in Jackson Square. It was sunny. Life was good.

Messy

Very messy

So, onto our last Day. Do you think you could fit two 3 course meals into one day. Well just you wait till you go to New Orleans.
 You'll fit it in God damn it.

First we booked brunch at the famous Brennan's restaurant.

http://www.brennansneworleans.com/
I had Turtle soup to start. It was very nice. Tasted like a mix between chicken and tuna. Pauline had strawberries and cream.
 I said to Pauline while sipping a Mimosa at 10.30 in the morning. " I can't believe people  in Bourbon Street drinking at this time in the morning". Hypocrite. Oh yeah, You can drink in New Orleans 24/7. You can also drink on the street as long as your drink is in a plastic container. There were many places selling "cocktails to go". True!

Turtle soup.

So seconds at Brennan's was  Eggs Shannon. Poached eggs on top of fried trout with creamed spinach. Pure heaven on a plate. Pauline had Eggs Ellen. Poached eggs on top of fresh grilled salmon with Hollandaise sauce. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Eggs Shannon.

We were stuffed to the gunnals but we had allready ordered the three courses so next was Bananas Foster.
A Brennan's origional creation, and now World-Famous.
Bananas sautéed in butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and banana liqueur, then flamed in rum. Served over vanilla ice cream. Scandalously Delicious!

Bananas foster. Hell yeah.

Pauline could hardly finish her Bananas Foster but as soon as I started eating it I couldn't stop.
Sticky sweet lovelyness. My pudding tubes are always empty.

There was a court yard out side the window and we could see people going up to the wee pond and looking at whatever was in it.
 Fish I thought? Oh no, it was turtles.
Ha ha! I ate your pal. Yum yum yum.
Oh my goodness.

We did a little shopping. I bought a pair of really expensive boots. The guy serving me was rubbing the inside of the boot against his ear because it was so soft. Weirdo.

So next was dinner at Antoine's. The oldest French restaurant in the city.

http://www.antoines.com/index.html
It was lovely inside. Proper swanky McSwank. The waiters were dressed like penguins. And they didn't have a drinks list. Scary.

To start I had shrimp with cocktail sauce.
American cocktail sauce is not like ours. It's more like a spicy fresh tomato sauce. It was very good and the shrimp were so fresh and juicy.
 I can't remember what Pauline had to start as I was so engrossed in my own food. Bad friend.

For my main I had Trout with almonds. Again the fish was so super fresh it melted in the mouth. Pauline had  chicken breast grilled and served with Antoine's original Rochambeau sauce and a rich Béarnaise over a slice of baked ham.
We had puffed potatoes and asparagus and broccoli with Hollandaise on the side.

We ordered Antoine's famous baked Alaska for two for dessert.
Our waiter asked us if we were sure as it was really enough for about four people. This was our holiday blow out treat so we said yes!
Oh my goodness. It was HUGE.
Four my arse. It was about enough for eight people. We dug in regardless with our gold spoons. Oh yes, gold spoons. Now that was a good meal.

Baked Alaska for two.

As big as my head.

After Antoine's we popped over to Preservation Hall to see some live Jazz.

http://preservationhall.com/default_original.aspx

We saw the Glen David Andrews band
Check them out. They are amazing. So good they even appeared in an episode of Treme.

I have decided that when I die I want the full New Orleans funeral service with black horse driven hearse and marching Brass band.
God knows what the people of Possil will think with that spectacle going down Saracen main Street.



Well that was New Orleans for you. Part two: Seattle. Coming next.