Sunday Breakfast

Some pancetta I had laying around fried up. The cure on it does not lend to browning but they were crispy good. Lost bread from some challah I bought at the farmer's market that turned out to be really good and my bowl of cafe au lait made with Community Medium Roast and Chicory. I do a slap breakfast usually on Sunday about 9 or so and do not have to eat until mid-afternoon.

Pitt Grill Iowa

So I was in Iowa checking a new venue to see what progress had been done on it and was hungry. I usually end up at Fausto's but it popped into my head that I had not been to Pitt Grill in a long while. I have never been to the Iowa one at all. So up the road I went. It is part of a gas station/casino complex. You enter though the retail middle and it is on the left. Fairly nice space. It just so happen I came in as almost every one going out. Had a very kind server who made trips to the Soup and Salad bar for me. Below is a nicely composed salad with blue cheese dressing. Quite nice
A cup of seafood gumbo which looked quite promising but turned out to have that mystery spice I loathe. One of these day I will have to give serious consideration as to what it is

Below is my entree. Half shrimp and half catfish with onion rings. Overall good but I made a serious tactical mistake. Ordering this on the day it was on the buffet. Nothing was hot out of the fryer but rather lukewarm from the buffet. The catfish still had some heat to it but the shrimp along with same coating as the catfish were room temperature. The onion rings ( a slim cut) were fine

The bread pudding gotten by my server for me was of the torn bread variety with lots of cinnamon and a caramel glaze. Not bad. I am a sucker for caramel

Hamburger Delight

A couple of weeks ago when I was doing the Link rice recipes I had leftover pork and beef so I made some patties along with dehydrated trinity and garlic, seasoning and crumbled blue cheese. I knew I would not get to them any time soon so I threw them in the freezer. Just recently I got them out and over a few days cooked them. The one below was seared in an iron skillet then steamed. I served it regular hamburger style on a Ciabatta roll.

Below is one grilled on my table top appliance slather in BBQ sauce.

Finally one cooked again in the cast iron skillet (I liked that result) topped with a pineapple mango chipotle salsa from the Pace upscale line. It was great)

I intend on doing Link's meatloaf again as I thought it was great. This time since I have ground beef, pork and goat in the freezer I will use them. Anything left over will be made into burgers like these

Vickie T's

OUT AND ABOUT
Vickie T’s Cafe Connection
1004 Broad St
Lake Charles, LA
337-433-8139
Monday - Saturday 6:00 AM to 12:00 PM $1 to $8
This old gas station has been converted to a donut shop/plate lunch place. At this time the plate lunches are only available three days a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They also stay open an hour later until 1 PM when serving the lunches. I popped by one morning to sample the donuts and some breakfast items they have. I opted for a mixed dozen of their choice for work. I received regular, chocolate glazed and cinnamon rolls. The ones I tasted were above average. A nice venue if you work in the area and like to treat the office. I also got a Jalapeno Cheese Sausage Kolach. They use biscuit dough and bake them. That puts them ahead of the fried ones but behind ones using regular dough in my opinion. The Bacon Egg Cheese Croissant was a disaster. They nuke and it was like rubber by the time I ate it. As a food buyer I recognized every part of this item as coming already made and just slapped together. Not a bad option for a small place like this except they want to nuke it instead of using a oven to heat it up
I passed through on a Monday for the plate lunch. It was Sausage and Red Gravy over rice with yams, green beans, roll and a chocolate eclair. It turned out to be a decent meal. Mid grade sausage and a slightly spicy tomato based sauce on a pile of edible rice. Both the yams and beans came from cans but they doctored them up so they tasted fine. The eclair was a nice surprise. I would suspect they are finding a use for unsold product, not a problem with me. In general this is a convenient establishment for me to whiz through. Helps that they don’t serve terrible food.

http://www.picturetrail.com/sfx/album/view/19303948

Phil & Leona's

Wednesday plate lunch. Braised turkey wing, mac and cheese, and string beans. Not too bad the leg part could have cooked some more but it was flavorful, Good mac and cheese and wonderful beans. Nice and spicy with pork flavor
You also get a butter on top roll. Made a difference.

This is their bread pudding. Very moist with loads of cinammon, raisins, and some nuts. Not bad for $7.

Donald Link Style Black Drum

A run into Beaumont yesterday at Floyd's Cajun Seafood and Texas Steakhouse with a blowout on the interstate and a two hour wait for the tire change left me hot and not wanting to blog. I cannot say too much about the lunch except everyone agreed that it was good enough to go back.
I had some wild caught black drum which I though was skin on so I was going to try the redfish on the half shell recipe. However it was skinned. So using the flavor profile of Chef and a little trick that Joe Heacook (director of Sowela Culinary program) taught me years ago I did my own riff.

Below is the ingredients

I seasoned the pan and not the fish

Since I was using my tabletop appliance that has a light technology component I could not cook skin side down. So I cooked skin side up and put my special salad dressing for a little protection. It is basically made of oil right.

The finished product and it was great. May do this treatment on fish fillet again. Wonderful flavor and cooked just right.

Vickie T's

I am back. I have a backlog of pics that I will whack away at. Below is a plate lunch from the donut shop on Broad. When I started to write the review currently in Lagniappe I realized it would be mega short so I headed out to try another plate lunch. Alas for me and them they were on vacation. When they came back I gave a pass by to see what the plate lunch was. Remember they only do it on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This was a Friday. When I saw shrimp stew I had to have it. It was a decent interpretation although it could have used a little more spicy. The deep rich shrimp and roux flavor was there and the corn had been smothered to almost caramelization. The dessert was a lemon filled donut that I ate on the way home. The only complaint and it is not a serious one is that there is too much rice. It is good rice and I tend to stuff myself on it