seafood

Jo Russell’s (Not) West Indies Salad (but kinda)

March 29, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com 1 Comment

This Easter my family and I spent the weekend at the beach. Some super generous friends loaned us their condo, so we drove down and spent time together, cooking, eating, and wishing it would stop raining long enough to sneak out to the beach to let Wagner play in the sand. We had some sun at the end and almost 2 hours of clear weather each day, so we “got our beach on” just enough for Wagner to know that the ocean is his favorite thing in the whole world, and somehow I’m still going home with a super attractive knee-sunburn. Geez Louise.

Our beach trips usually revolve around seafood cooking and eating (no suprise) and we get crazy excited when my dad goes to Joe Paddy’s in Pensacola (more on this later).

This time, Daddy brought back jumbo lump crabmeat and made a version of a recipe that his mother made that she got from her best pal, Jo Russel.. and it is so fine, so delicious, so amazing that when Brett had it for the first time he ate his entire plateful in about 2 minutes because he was worried someone else might try to eat it directly off his plate before he could.

Basically, the recipe is kind of a version of the West Indies salad that they serve down on the Gulf coast and in the Florida Keys, but probably better. (also, when I mentioned to my family that it seemed like West Indies Salad to me, I was corrected indignantly). It’s SO simple that the crab meat really shines through, and you just get lost in the perfect texture and flavors. The next time you’re down this way, or get your hands on some jumbo lump crab meat, I hope you’ll give this recipe a whirl. …

Crawfish Elegante’

March 8, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com 3 Comments

I’ve shared so many of my Grandmother’s recipes here that I’m a bit worries my cousins are going to hunt me down for giving away family secrets. Well, I would be worried except that my cousins and I all feel the same way about our Grandmother… that she was the warmest, kindest, most loving woman on the planet and that if we can be just a little bit like her in our lives, we’ll be doing things right.

Somehow she made all of her children and her grandchildren believe that we were her absolute most favorite (and, you know what, I bet we ALL were.) She was forever sewing something for a friend, or cooking something delicious for one of us, or making up something fun for us to do together.

My cousin, Amy, gave us the most wonderful Christmas gift a couple of years ago…she painstakingly typed up and bound all of Grandmother’s recipes into a cookbook of sorts.I use it every week at least once, and I’d bet they do, too (if they haven’t memorized the recipes yet.) Grandmother has some Louisiana roots, which is why a bunch of her best recipes have a creole/New Orleans flair.

Her recipe for Crawfish Elegante’ is a super delicious, very versatile dish that can be made ahead, frozen, and eaten in a variety of ways. It’s perfect for spring when crawfish are in season, but also pretty great whenever as you can get frozen peeled crawfish at the store. Here, I’m sharing it as a dip with toasted New Orleans French Bread, but it’s also great over rice as a main dish OR as a filling for puff pastries. We also had it as a catfish topping this same night, and as my cousin Virginia would say “it didn’t suck.”

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Comeback Sauce & Pan Seared Snapper

February 10, 2016 by biz.w.harris@gmail.com Leave a Comment

My wonderful in-laws came down to the Gulf Coast of Alabama from the North Carolina mountains a couple of weeks ago to get away from the snow and invited us to pop down for a visit. They grew up in the midwest and now live pretty far inland, so fresh seafood isn’t something they eat very often (though they DO like it a lot). We went on a little adventure to Pensacola, Florida to go to the amazing J oe Patti’s Seafood Market, and picked up two meals worth of my favorite fish, Red Snapper. The fish is so light, lovely, and flakey that you really don’t have a do a ton to it to make it delicious… just a little salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a sear in a skillet. Although we didn’t NEED it, I’d had a hankering for Mississippi’s most famous condiment, Comeback Sauce for a couple of weeks, so I made a batch to drizzle on top, too. The spicier cousin of remoulade and thousand island dressing, Comeback Sauce was created by Greek immigrants in Jackson, Mississippi and is still served at the Mayflower Cafe today. What resulted was something just right… fresh, fresh, gorgeous fish with a spicy, light dressing. It was divine.
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seafood

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