Red Beans and Rice – The Pride of New Orleans

THE PRIDE OF NEW ORLEANS

This is a big New Orleans type of week for me here in the metro Detroit area.  This past Monday at the Detroit JazzFest, it was the “A Night In Treme” show featuring The Preservation Hall Jazz Band with James “12” Andrews, “Big Chief” Donald Harrison, Christian Scott and an appearance by Terence Blanchard.  By the time they got to the “Treme” song, the crowd already had a second line going.  It went from the “Treme” song into the ReBirth Brass Bands “Do What You Wanna” then back followed by the crowd favorite “When The Saint’s Go Marching In”.  The only “booing” that came from the crowd was when the “Saints” song broke into a “who dat” chant!  It was quickly forgotten though!

On Friday, if you’re in the Detroit area, you can catch The Dirty Dozen Brass Band in Ferndale at the Magic Bag Theatre on Woodward Ave.  It’s the funk, jazz, brass band that has been around since the mid-1970’s.    They are a huge influence on all the brass bands that have followed.  One I’m sure of, is a CD I just received in the mail, the Young Fellaz Brass Band.  They are fairly new.  Young.  Still working the streets.  You can probably catch them at Jackson Square  or somewhere around the French Quarter.  I saw them at Jackson Square when I was there back in April.  They were with another man, a dancer.  A man so proud of New Orleans he does what ever he can to help and promote – it’s Darryl “Dancing Man 504” Young. One of the nicest guys in the “504”.  More often than not, you’re going to get the two together.  Dancing Man 504 getting the crowd going as the Young Fellaz pound out the funky beats of songs from their new CD “Swagger”.  A raw recording of primary cover songs and one original.  It’s good.  It’s a start.  I like them.  But they are not polished quite like the Dirty Dozen.  I missed the Dirty Dozen back when I was in New Orleans due to a chance of rain cancelling their free outdoor gig at Lafayette Square promoting their newest CD, “Twenty Dozen”.  I can’t wait to finally see another pride of New Orleans!

Of course, music isn’t just the pride of New Orleans, the food is just as important to a lot of people.  That’s why your probably like me, you read the recipes and make the food.  You may not be from New Orleans but it has you there in spirit.  The city has sucked me in.  It’s hard to explain.  It’s even harder to write about.  I can’t capture the right words to describe how I feel.  I can’t express that feeling I had the first time I had a muffuletta there in the French Quarter.  The Roast Beef Po’ Boy on Bourbon Street.  When I was staring down at a plate of Jambalaya, Red Beans and Rice, and Shrimp Creole at the Gumbo Shop.  Now that’s a combination plate!  It’s something I try to recreate at my house all the time – that’s my New Orleans kitchen in a Detroit home.

I recently bought the cookbook YOU ARE WHERE YOU EAT by Elsa Hahne.   The book sets out to share stories and recipes from the neighborhoods of New Orleans.  It’s a great cookbook featuring 85 recipes!  The stories from the thirty-three people are a great read themselves beside the recipes.  A great line from the book, when Mrs. Hahne’s talking about what and what not to include while making her decision on what to put in the book, she writes, “…practically everyone in this book makes red beans and rice,  Most of them make gumbo.”  

Isn’t that a thing of pride?  Everyone makes red beans and rice?  Most make a gumbo?  Is it a thing of pride when Professor Longhair has a song called “Red Beans“?  (click the link to hear the song on YouTube)  In the toughest of times, Chef John Besh served red beans and rice to people in need after Katrina and again for first responders helping neighbors after Isaac.  It’s a thing of pride of an area to help and to want to be apart of it so it doesn’t fail or falter, right?

There’s a lot to be proud of about New Orleans.  The national media bashes the city.  People have a misconception of the city.  Others are ignorant of the culture.  New Orleans is important.  Not just for the music.  Not just for the food.  But because of its culture!  The people are some of the nicest I’ve ever met, and people who get it, want to be apart of that “504” number.   Someone like the guest saxaphone player on the Young Fellaz Brass Band CD, the very talented Clarence “Trixzey” Slaughter, who also plays for the Hot 8 Brass Band, who is from Dayton Ohio.  There’s Elsa Hahne, a writer for offBeat magazine and an author of a New Orleans cookbook, who was born and raised in Sweden.  There’s a lot of good in New Orleans, it has a guy in Detroit writing a blog on the food and culture of a city he loves.  I hope I share that properly here.  I hope someone from another part of the country doing a search on pulled pork sandwiches comes across this page and discovers YakaMein and reads about a mention of The Young Fellaz and looks deeper into New Orleans.  I hope someone who is from New Orleans, who reads this, feels proud to be from New Orleans and knows that no matter what ever happens to the city, people from all over the world are there to help keep it moving, and grooving, and cooking, and smiling!

So, with my pride in New Orleans, my favorite recipe (and I promise it’s different then the others), it’s why I chose the name…

 

 

RED BEANS AND ERIC’S RED BEANS AND RICE

Ingredients:

• 1/2-lbs red beans (save water beans soaked in)
• 4 strips of bacon
• 1 cup ham, diced
• 1/2-lbs smoked sausage, chopped into half-moon discs
• 2 onions, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 1 cup celery, diced
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 roma tomatoes, diced
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 tsp Tabasco Sauce
• Rice

Soak the red beans for at least 6 hours.  If you want to do a quick soaking, with the 1/2-pound of beans, place in a pot with 6 cups of water.  Bring the water to a rolling boil.  Wait 2 minutes, then remove from heat and keep covered for 60 minutes.

In a stock pot, over medium-high heat, cook the bacon.  Just before the bacon is hard, add the ham and sausage, brown them.

Add the vegetables, garlic, bay leaf, thyme, salt and pepper.  Stir occasionally until the vegetables become soft.  Make sure to keep scrapping at the brown bits off the bottom of the pot.  Once the vegetables are ready…

Nothing is better then a great pot of red beans cooking…

Add 2 cups of the water the beans soaked in along with the tomatoes, chicken stock, vinegar, and beans.  If you were to use a pork hock, this is the point at which you’d put it in the pot.  Bring the pot to a boil then down to a simmer, uncovered, for 3 hours.

If you need to add more liquid, you can add some of the reserved bean water or more chicken stock in place of regular water.  After the 2 hour mark, I take out about a cup of the beans and mash them down then again after the 3 hour mark once it’s finished.

Garnish with parsley and serve with rice.  As a second main… because of the bacon with this, I also made BLT sandwiches with it.  Enjoy!