Recipes

As promised...Here are the recipes for the Jambalaya and the Gumbo. No modesty here, they were great!

Shrimp and Crab Gumbo
Ingredients:

4 tbsp of butter
4 tbsp of flour
1large onion, chopped
2 lb sliced okra
1 diced bell pepper
2 celery stalks, chopped
¼ cup of chopped parsley
½ tsp thyme
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp chopped basil
1 and ½ pound of cleaned shrimp
1 lb of crab meat
1 qt of chicken stock
1qt clam broth
1 10 oz. can of diced tomatoes
Salt and pepper
Hot sauce
Cayenne pepper
1 pint cooked rice

In a large pot make a dark roux by combining the flour and butter. Stir the roux and let it darken, being careful not to burn it. In a separate pan sauté the onion, peppers, celery and okra in butter to soften the vegetables, you will add this to the large pot. When the roux has darkened, add the liquids and the crushed tomatoes. Bring this to a slow boil and add the seasonings, then add the shrimp.
You can add cooked rice to the mix or serve the gumbo in a bowl over rice. The rice, okra and roux will serve as thickeners for your gumbo.

Jambalaya

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons of olive oil
½ stick of butter
¼ cup chopped onion
¼ cup chopped pepper
½ jalapeno pepper
¼ cup chopped celery
2 tablespoons of chopped garlic
½ cup diced tomatoes
2 teaspoons of tomato paste
3 bay leaves
A few dashes of Worcestershire sauce
A few dashes of hot sauce
3 cups of chicken broth
¾ cup of uncooked rice
½ pound of medium shrimp (peeled, deveined and cut)
4 oz. cubed chicken
5 oz. Andouille sausage (you can also use a spicy Italian sausage) diced
A few dashes of Cajun spice
Teaspoon of dried thyme or a few fresh thyme branches
Teaspoon on ground cumin
Green onion

Sauté the sausage and chicken in the butter and oil mixture to get a crust on them. Then add the vegetables and sauté for about 5 minutes. You want to soften the vegetables. Now add the garlic, tomatoes, bay leaves, thyme, Cajun spice, Worcestershire and hot sauce. Now add the chicken broth and bring this to a boil. When it reaches a boil, stir in the rice, cover and simmer for about 15-20 minutes. When the rice is tender: remove from heat, stir in the shrimp and put the cover back on for another five minutes.

Now mix in the parsley and serve. Garnish it with the sliced green onion.

Wordless Wednesday (Almost)

A pre-Fat Tuesday demonstration at the Hampton Bays Library. Jambalaya and Crab and Shrimp Gumbo! Recipes to follow...

Tuesday Tips

Don’tcha love it when a simple adjustment can make something so much easier?

Here is one of my favorites:

To prevent your cutting board from sliding along the counter while you chop, dice, mince and slice, place a damp paper towel underneath the board.




Trust me, you will not be able to budge that bad boy. So simple. So good.



What tips do you care to share?

Vineyard Bound

Photo Credit: Boston Globe

BISCo is off to the Vineyard to see Cousin Judy! That ferry ride can’t come soon enough; they have some good ‘chowda on that boat. I wonder how many bowls of ‘chowda I will put away this weekend. I promised my self that I wouldn’t tawk in a New England accent all weekend. Aww shucks…looks like I broke that one.
Stay tuned for some posts from MV!
What are you folks up to for the weekend?

Happy Blogday

Photo Credit: Unknown
It's about our First Birthday, so Happy Birthday BISCo. Blog!!!!! Thanks for reading.

Lobster Roll on a Wordless Wednesday

So it's an almost Wordless Wednesday...

Here's what I'm craving right now. Add a cold bottle of beer and a water view and this would be heaven!

What are you craving most about summer?

Photo Credit: Country Living

Think Summer

Okay so there is a little bit of snow... This will keep you warm.

Lobster Mac and Cheese

Let's face it, it has been freezing here in New York. What better way to fight the cold days and nights than with the warming powers of Mac and Cheese? And what better way to make Mac and Cheese even better? Why, lobster of course.

So here goes my take on two of my favorite foods.

The photo shows the items you'll need... A lobster, small shells, Mascarpone cheese, Romano cheese, Sharp Cheddar cheese, parsley, tarragon, butter, flour, milk, garlic, panko bread crumbs and of course red wine. There is no red wine in the recipe, that's for you to sip on while you cook.

The first thing I did was steam the lobsters and pick the meat from the shell.

While the lobsters were cooking I also cooked the shells and drained them just as they were

al dente. I set the shells aside so they could watch me prepare the cheesy bath I was drawing up for them.

In a strong pot I added about 5 or 6 tablespoons of butter and 5 or 6 tablespoons of flour. I worked this roux for a few minutes and slowly added milk while I kept whisking. I added about 5 cups of fat free milk. I imagine whole milk or even a bit of heavy cream would have been more decadent, but that's all I had in the fridge.

When this white sauce thickened, I started to mix in the Mascarpone cheese, about 6 oz.. This cheese is creamy and smooth. I didn't find it too flavorful, but loved the texture for this dish. Then I added about 5 oz. of Romano cheese. This added a nice flavor and bit of a salty taste. Lastly, I shredded some sharp Cheddar for it's strong flavor and its color. I kept working the cheeses into the white sauce to create the cheese sauce.

Then I cut up the lobster and added it to the sauce with a few tablespoons of fresh chopped parsley, a dash of tarragon and teaspoon of thyme.

Into this cheesy cauldron I put the shells. What a great bath for these shells. Ahh, the power of cheese.

Now, since I didn't plan on baking this dish, but still wanted a crunch, I needed a topper. I sauteed some chopped garlic in olive oil and then added about a half cup of panko bread crumbs and a handful of chopped parsley. This would be my topper and provide the needed crunch.

That's basically how I did it. Got myself down one of Nana's Corning Ware casserole dishes and filled it with some wintry goodness. I recommend trying this one at home. I also recommend running 5 miles right after eating this because it's gonna take a toll on your waistline.

A guest post penned by my sister Moira:

Dan and Moira get the set up and Dan the Clam Man shucks...

After the shuck the chopped clams take an olive oil and garlic bath...The whole clams will be garnish.

The best, the slurp.

A few years back, my brother Craig gave me my very own copy of The Black Dog Summer on the Vineyard Cookbook for my birthday. Along with the cookbook, I was told to select a recipe that I wanted to try for a BISCo tutorial. It came as no surprise that I selected linguine with white clam sauce, my go-to favorite. One winter night, Craig showed me the ropes -- shucking clams, chopping garlic (I still feel oh-so-cool smashing it with my trusty knife and closed fist), and tossing a single sting of linguine against the wall to check its "done-ness." It was a great night of big brother showing little sister how it’s done “BISCo” style.

I'm not a trained chef nor have I ever worked in a kitchen. I'm just a girl who likes to eat. With that said, if I can do it, you most certainly can. So grab a glass of vino, put on an apron, and turn up the MVY Radio, ‘cause we're making linguini with white clam sauce!

In true BISCo form, I am paying that tutorial forward -- first to my husband (and guinea pig) Dan, and now onto you… BISCo blog readers.

If, after reading this, you're left with one thing, let it be this… be organized. Always read a recipe from start to finish before doing anything! You don’t want to be halfway through a recipe when you realize you don’t have a form spring pan or a BBQ. Next up -- have all your ingredients at the ready. AKA, set up a “mies en plas,” which means “putting in place." Basically, it's a fancy way of saying "lay out all ingredients and be prepped to go." For example, if your recipe calls for ½ cup diced onions, dice those suckers up and put them into a little dish so that you can add them with ease -- like a Food Network star -- when the time comes. These two tips may take a few minutes up front, but Lord do they save time (and stress) in the end.

So as I was saying… I was going to teach Dan to make linguine with white clam sauce (LWCS) because anyone knows that you've only really mastered something when you can teach it to someone else. First, we started by setting up our mies en plas. Next, we got to shucking the clams. The recipe calls for 28 littleneck clams, but I only asked for 24 in the fish market, so, while those 4 little fellas will be missed, clams aren’t really something you can borrow from a neighbor. For you first time shuckers (is that a word?), I'll be honest -- shucking a clam isn’t all that easy. Lucky for us, we were using them for clam sauce and not serving them on the half shell. So, what I'm saying is that we could pretty much mangle them up during our journey to get to the good stuff. We were careful to open the clams over a fine strainer to reserve the juice for the sauce. Dan started to get the hang of it with the help of his fancy glove and a little muscle. A few pointers: if a clam is not closed tight, toss it. If a clam is orange or yellow, that's okay.

Once the clams were shucked and minced, we got our water to a boil and tossed in one pound of linguini. While that was cooking, we sautéed the garlic in olive oil and added the clams. Once the clams were cooked through, we added the white wine and the reserved clam juice. We waited a few minutes for this to cook down and then placed four unopened clams into the pan and slapped on the lid. Within a few minutes, these guys opened up on their own… don’tcha love when things are so easy? After straining the pasta, we added half of the clam sauce to the pasta and used the rest to pour on top of our (oversized) servings. Two clams (in shells) were added to each of our plates, making us feel like we were in a restaurant. A loaf of warm, crusty bread and a good glass of white wine brought it all full circle.

Bon Appetit!

P. S. Dan is still in shock that he opened a clam and made an awesome dinner.

:::

Black Dog Linguine with White Clam Sauce

Ingredients:

28 littleneck clams, scrubbed

7 cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

2 small hot chilis (optional)

½ cup dry white wine

freshly ground black pepper to taste

½ cup chopped fresh parsley

¼ cup chopped fresh basil

1 pound linguine

1 tablespoon salt

Directions:

1. Bring six quarts of water to a rolling boil and add salt.

2. Open 24 o f the clams over a bowl with a sieve to strain the clam liquid. Save 4 clams for garnish. Set the stained liquid aside and chop the clams to a mince.

3. Add the linguine to boiling water. The clam sauce should take the same length of time to cook as the linguine.

4. Saute the minced garlic in the olive oil over high heat, being careful not to burn it. Add the minced chilis if you like.

5. Add the minced clams and sauté to heat through, then add the black pepper and white wine. Now add the reserved clam liquid.

6. Open the last four clams (without detaching the clams from their shells) and toss them into the sauce.

7. Add the parsley and basil. Lower the heat to medium.

8. When the linguine is al dente, drain it and toss it with about half of the sauce.

9. Divide the pasta onto four plates, add the remaining sauce, and garnish each plate with one of the whole clams.

Serves 4

Clam Caking

We rely on food for so much. One of the things I rely on food for is to jog my memory to a place or time that makes me smile. Of course one of those places is Block Island. I remember going to Pt. Judith, RI one summer with the family for a few days. We stayed at the Dutch Inn before taking a day trip to the Block. I remember my Uncle Johnny talking about the clam cakes. "You got to have the clam cakes." I recall this stand that sold the cakes through a window and the smell of the oil mixed with the smell of the beach mixed with the smell of sun tan lotion, it's a memory that sticks in my mind. Well Uncle Johnny is no longer with us, but the clam cakes and his memory are.

He was one of those people who made food fun for me. I watched him and my brother work the kitchen together on vacations and I always wanted to be in there with them. When I had my chances to put out a dinner with him for the family I took it as quite a big deal. I remember him coming to Big Pa's apartment in Woodside on Tuesdays to spend time with my grandfather, his father, and those dinners were legendary. UJ, my brothers Matt and Drew would put together fantastic meals for Big Pa and it was just a treat to be at a Boys Club meeting.

Well every now and then I get to have some of the boys over at my place and this week it was Matt and Mark. Matt brought clam cake mix and I had the clams, so as a salute to Uncle Johnny, the Big Kahuna in the sky, we made some clam cakes.

They're fairly easy after you have shucked the clams and chopped them. The flour mixture gets mixed with the chopped clams and clam juice and there's your batter. Next, you need hot oil and your trip to Rhode Island is booked.

Matt mixed up the goodness and my fryer was set to take us on our trip. The cakes get dropped in to the oil and instantly the smell is familiar. When they had puffed up and we hit them with a touch of salt, they were ready. Boy were they great.

Nothing can bring back an old buddy or a day when you were younger. We haven't invented a time machine, but food is the closest thing we got. Here's to you big guy! We had clam cakes and all that was missing was you.