Pork Shouler Roast

I injected the piece of meat which was about 4 lbs with a third of a jar of Tony Chachere's Creole Butter. I then liberally sprinkled the outside with Emeril's Rib Rub. It then went the tabletop appliance for 5 hours at about 275. It came out looking like this. It was not tender enough to pull but despite its look it was tender enough to take off the bone and very juicy.

Here is the meat and the bone to prove it

My dinner of peas and mushrooms, sliced pork shoulder and mashed potatoes. I had plenty left over. Enough to give my sister some and I will consume the rest this week this week. I think it could have have gone longer and gotten to the pulled pork stage. I have three more to experiment on. I took this one off because the smell was making me hungry and it was getting late. I will start the next one first thing

Pat's Fisherman's Wharf

My group took a different approach to Black Friday. We sleep in late. Have a late breakfast then head somewhere out of town for a late lunch. This is the first year we have done this but I think I will endeavor to make it a tradition. I had wanted to go to Cafe Vermillionville but they were not doing lunch. I polled my group and asked for suggestions. Our enthusiastic friend suggested Pat's. A cousin of hers loves the crawfish etouffee camp style. I also had been contemplating going here for awhile. I went to the original Pat's years ago and wanted to see what they had done to the new one. The original Pat's burned down a number of years ago. Pat's Wharf had been built before that because Pat Huval's ex-wife had got the original in the divorce settlement. Looks like Pat is trying to build a little village and museum on site. He n0w has a hotel and some out buildings from the area including a syrup mill. Be forewarned the prices here are very high. Below is some onion rings ordered for the table. Light flour coating fried to perfection with a outstanding tarter sauce for dipping


A dinner salad that has to be ordered extra.

I had ordered the crab dinner. This is the cup of crab gumbo that came with it. It had no salt in it at all. After I put salt in it the flavor came up. They must have a base gumbo because the broth had little crab flavor. They added a good amount of backfin crab and some green onions.
They bring the rice on the side which I consider a plus.

I also was craving raw oysters and ordered a half dozen. Very small and virtually tasteless. New members of the group (Towanda and Engineer) who were sitting far down from me ordered a cup of Corn and Crab Bisque and Crawfish Bisque. I got neither a taste or a photo. Not really their fault. If I would have spoken up they would have shared but this was not a review run but a fun run. They both seemed to enjoy the food.

Here is the famous Crawfish Etouffee Camp Style (Mother Huval's recipe) gotten by our enthusicatic friend. She thoroughly enjoyed it. My taste was OK but it seem to lack flavor. Probably better with fresh crawfish

The blurred picture is my sister's Broiled Red Snapper with vegetables. She seemed well pleased with her dish also.

This was our baking friend's Eggplant Casserole with Shrimp and Crab. This was also ordered by Towanda. After my taste I agreed with both of them that the flavor was excellent but the texture left something to be desired. It was very liquid. I made the comment that it would make a great base for eggplant dressing. That was proven when rice was added to it and tasted. Accompanying it were some excellent sweet potato fries. Almost got my hand slap because I was pinching them

The Engineer got Fried Shimp which look fantastic and he ate with enthusiasm. Below is my crab dinner. From left to right a Crab Boulette, Backfin crab with cocktail sauce, Fried Crab Fingers, Stuffed Crab, Soft Shell Crab sitting on the etouffee rice, Crab Pie, Crab Stuffed Bell Pepper, Crab Etouffee. The pie had the etouffee in an undercooked crust. The standouts were the stuffed crab, and the ettouffee. The boulette and bell pepper stuffing was a bit mushy. The soft shell tasted like it had been fried in old oil. Nothing really bad but not excellent.

The other restaurant I have been to in Henderson mine you it was 20 years ago about the same time I went to Pat's is Robins. Robins as I remember was better than Pat's. Maybe next time. Pat's is definitely a tourist destination and while they feature some good bayou cooking the prices are a little rich for repeat visits.

http://patsfishermanswharf.com/index.html

Couche Couche

This is another traditional food that gets misrepresented. I can not tell you how many times I have seen and heard people call cornbread and milk couche-couche. Cornbread and milk is not couche-couche it is cornbread and milk. It is not bad. I grew up on cornbread and milk. It was never called anything else but cornbread and milk. My mother never made couche-couche. I encountered it later in my life and fell in love with it. Only one restaurant in south Louisiana has it on its menu. If anyone knows of another let me know. Cafe des Amis in Breaux Bridge is the one I know. OK now for the technical stuff. Cornbread is a baked product. Couche-couche is fried and steamed on the top of the stove in a cast iron skillet. Below is the skillet heating up with fat (in this case bacon drippings). Heat it on high until almost smoking then bring down to medium.





Below is the mixture of corn meal (stone ground in this case), salt, baking soda, and baking powder with liquid (you can use milk I usually use water). The consistency should be of wet sand. Although it has all the ingredients usually found in cornbread it takes a different course




Now you put the mixture in the skillet and let it fry for a minute or two on medium. At the end of that time you scrape the skillet bring up the crust that has formed and stir into the mixture

I like a lot of crust in my couche-couche so I do this process at least 5 times. Below is the result of that

Then you put the heat on low and cover and steam for 15 minutes.

Into a bowl with milk. The traditional accompaniment is Steen's Cane Syrup but I like preserves also especially fig since that is what I put in my cornbread and milk as a youth. This time I had a sorta of combo of that. A vendor at the local farmer's market was selling jars of syrup left over from canning figs. The best of both worlds.

DeAngelo Express

Louis DeAngelos Express
2740 Country Club Road
Lake Charles, LA
337-478-5781
www.deangelospizzeria.com
Monday - Sunday 11:00 AM to 8:00 PM $1-25
For those who have been missing DeAngelos there is now relief. At this basically take-out venue they cover most of the original menu. They have limited seating but virtual no decor. The plan was always to expand to South Lake Charles but the destruction of the original spot kinda made it mandatory. Construction on the old site should start sometime this month with them shooting for an April opening. This express venue will remain open after that event. So there will be two establishments to get your fix.
I started off with Gamberetti and Pancetta Flat Bread. It is basically a sauceless pizza and in this case they top the crust with grilled shrimp, crisp Italian bacon, fresh spinach, roasted garlic cloves and Asiago cheese. The combo of flavors (sweet shrimp, fatty pork, mellow garlic, sharp cheese, slightly bitter spinach, and warm comforting bread) really hit my palate hard but in a good way.
Next I tried the La Caprese Towers. I received seven double stacks of sliced Roma tomato and sliced fresh mozzarella. Arranged around them were calamata olives, capers, and pepperoncini (semi hot peppers). A chiffonade of basil and in-house vinaigrette topped them. Excellent flavor and very sharable. I ate all of mine with great gusto. Each stack was perfect. It was like having seven perfect caprese salads. The Tuscan Chopped Salad next. I expected a regular steakhouse style salad. This was very good but just not a chopped salad. On a bed of spinach and romaine surrounded by Granny Smith apple slices they heaped on the tomato slices, red onion slices, feta cheese, dried cranberries, and chopped pecans. Adding the grilled Lemon-Basil shrimp I ordered extra and their excellent in house Italian dressing turned this into a feast. I tend to like salads that have no iceberg and combine fruit and nut in delicious ways. The slight bitterness of the greens, sweetness of onion and cranberry, tart sweet apple and full flavored feta with the nuttiness of the pecans makes for a delightful taste. I ended with Toasted Almond Cream Cake. Like Tiramisu but using almond and coconut instead of coffee and chocolate. It was fine but I prefer the original version.
Last foray I got Mozzarella Bread. They use their sandwich loaf and add so much cheese I would have blanded out except for an excellent in-house marinara dipping sauce. The just right sharpness and acidity of it gave the cheese something to partner with. Then I ordered a Whole Wheat Calzone with Meatballs and Italian Sausage with anchovies added. This became an unfortunate mistake. The new guy at the ordering station misunderstood me I think. What I got was Italian sausage with an inordinate amount of anchovies, too much for even me. To compound the style sausage they use here I do not like. It is compact and dense while I like a looser version. The concept of this calzone I love. Using no sauce but offering it as a side with ricotta and mozzarella as the binding agent and cutting big slits for the escaping steam does away with all my objections with this product normally. With a different filling I am sure I would have loved it. Just have to put it down to miscommunication and my personal preferences.

http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/20747774

StewBo ???!!

It has been hectic at work and lots to do at home so I have not posted in awhile. Last Friday I started a gumbo with Oak Grove mix, some Rabideaux sausage, shrimp and chicken. Kinda of a clean out operation. When done it did not have the depth that I was seeking. Therefore I dumped some Tony Chacere Brown Gravy in it. It achieved the depth of flavor I wanted but it also made it thicker than I like. Already having more than enough I did not want to make more by thinning. So I treated it more like a seafood stew hence stewbo. I ate the first round over biscuits. Saturday I did my shopping at Albertson's on Country Club. They are the only grocery I know that carries those little jars of oysters from Amite. I bought one of those and a long sweet potato. While I was baking the sweet potato I brought the stewbo up to a simmer. Dumped the oysters in and then cracked two raw eggs in it and simmered for 15 minutes. The raw egg trick is something my mother use to do on Fridays. She called it egg gravy. A thick brown gravy that she poached raw eggs in. She never did do the boiled egg thing that some people do. The eggs are cooked to a hard yolk and absorb more of the flavor than hard boiled. So after the sweet potato was cooked. I had the stewbo with it in the tradition of Opelousas eating baked sweet potatoes with gumbo instead of potato salad. Over the next couple of days I will have it with rice and fried grits. I am taking the next two days off and have one expedition planned so the blog should see some activity. My brunch this morning will be couche-couche with fig syrup. I hope to get pics of prep and finale.

Famous Food

Thursday I pulled and made up my own plate lunch. I love their smoked turkey wings and this time they had a spicy/sweet rub on it that made even more favorable. I love wings in general because the give a good skin to meat ratio. These turkey wings run about 2 lbs. The excellent rice dressing (dirty rice) and potato salad rounded out the meal

I finished it with a Mrs Johnny's Pie. Operating out of a building just south of Kirkman on Alamo St I am always happy to find her pies. They tend to have more crust than filling but the crust is really excellent. They are more cakey than flaky. It reminds me of my aunt's sweet dough pies.

True Mexican House

They have started doing plate lunches. This is Monday's Meatball in a chipotle and tomato sauce, rice, and black refried. In Spanish these are called albondigas. They are stuffed with rice. I received very little gravy but it was the end of the day. The rice was excellent and mixed with sauce good. Meatballs a little bland on spice but good beef flavor. The refried beans was here usual liquid kind. That is ok with me but what made it for me was the use of black beans which I take over pintos any day. She will change up every month. This month is tues lemon catfish, wed fajitas, thurs, mex meatloaf and friday carne asasda. On Saturdays from 4 to 8 they do some traditional mexican dishes including pastor. During the week they limit the non plate items to tamales, tacos, and enchiladas. I am looking forward to what she comes up with in the future.