BOOK: A Street Car Names Delicious

One thing I get asked time to time is, what cookbooks do I own?  And, what cookbooks do I recommend?  I’ll start posting some of the cookbooks I love to read and look at, one’s I’ve learned valuable tips from, and some I subscribe to.  The end of this month marks the one year anniversary of this blog.  Maybe a few months before I started the blog, is when I really started trying to learn Creole and Cajun cooking.  I started collecting and looking for Creole cookbooks.  I searched websites and magazines.  Book stores and the library.  After one year, I hope I’ve helped someone learn something new about New Orleans and Creole cooking – I’m still learning myself and I love passing that information on.

This is my first entry into my recommendations list, with his newest cookbook coming out in the next few days, titled A TASTE OF TREME, Todd-Michael St. Pierre wrote a cookbook named A STREET CAR NAMED DELICIOUS.  It’s one of many cookbooks by St. Pierre who also writes children’s books.

From St. Pierre’s website:

Todd-Michael St. Pierre, Cajun & Creole Foodie and New Orleans’ native, is the author of popular cookbooks, like Taste of Tremé, A Streetcar Named Delicious, The Mardi Gras Cookbook, Who Dat Cookin’ &  Jambalaya, Crawfish Pie, Filé Gumbo! And of Children’s picture books,  including, A Piece of Sky, Aidan and the Anteater, Who Dat Night Before  Christmas, Fat Tuesday, Nola and Roux & The Crawfish Family Band! He  has served as a judge for The Reading Rainbow Young Writers and  Illustrators Contest & has developed recipes for Cooking Light  magazine.  Todd-Michael’s books have been featured in The San Francisco Chronicle,  The Denver Post & on AOL Food. He also contributes, as a writer, to  elementary & middle-school textbooks published by Oxford University Press.

It’s a nice little cookbook of 144-pages.  It’s packed with recipes from cover-to-cover with little, if any, information on the recipes.  Each recipe, by the way, has a fun name!  How can you go wrong with recipes like “Foot of Canal Street Oyster Po’ Boy”, or “Mardi Gras Indian’s Seafood Jambalaya”, and “After Mass Glazed Crown Roast”!  That’s just to name a few of the well-named recipes.  It’s neatly written with simple, easy to follow instructions.

On Todd-Michael St. Pierre’s website, I posted this review of him and his book:

“Todd-Michael has done so much in promoting the foods of New Orleans by way of his many welling written cookbooks.  ‘A Street Car Named Delicious” is an excellent book filled with many great recipes you’ll be making over and over.  I’m from the Detroit area, and I’ve been learning to cook the Creole New Orleans way and I refer to T-M for many great recipes.  I can’t wait for his upcoming book “Taste of Treme”! 

I highly recommend T-M’s cookbooks.  He allows you to experience New Orleans in your kitchen no matter where you are!”

A couple of the recipes I have made from the cookbook were “Magnolia’s Magnificent Muffuletta” and “Tante Zizi’s Pasta Jambalaya”.

I love the muffuletta.  I have a personal recipe I’ve been making for years, but I love to try something new.  It’s a long list of ingredients with a simple explanation to making one of New Orleans signiture sandwiches.

My wife is more of a fan of pasta noodles then rice.  Go figure, huh?  Jambalaya is with rice, but even once in awhile I’ll make it with noodles, for her.  I was excitied to try this “Tante Zizi’s Pasta Jambalaya”.  She raved about the meal.  It is now one of her favorite meals.  Just wait until you try jambalaya with cheese!  Amazing.

He is truely a talented writer.  On his website, you can search for his books and purchase them there or through Amazon.com.

Muffuletta Sliders

I knew as soon as I made it to New Orleans one of the first stops I wanted to make was the Central Grocery Company on Decatur Street in the French Quarter – you know, the home of the original muffuletta sandwich.  I’ve talked about before how the muffuletta was one of the single greatest things I’ve ever had the previous time I was in New Orleans back in late 2008.  Ever since that one Wednesday afternoon, when I had that one sandwich I never heard of before, I was hooked.  Hooked so much it’s what started me on learning everything I could on New Orleans cooking.

I could see the store up ahead.  The sign hung outside the entrance.  The building was red.  To me, at that point, every other building was a bland blah color and Central Grocery glowed bright red.  My beacon.

Inside, at first it was like a maze to the counters.  You pass through the grocery items that would make an authentic Italian dish authentic.  I’m sure in it’s over one hundred year history, not much has changed.  In the back are a handful of tables and chairs.  It was packed with people, each biting into a muffuletta or grabbing a Zapps Chip, another local food to New Orleans and I’ve yet to find here in the Detroit area.

As I was debating what to buy, I quick scanned a shelf.  In it, was one of the few cookbooks that I purchased while in New Orleans, it was MARIE’S MELTING POT – SICILIAN STYLE COOKING by Marie Lupo Tusa, the daughter of the founder of Central Grocery, Salvatore Lupo.  The books a has a mix of family recipes and recipes from her years of cooking along with the history of the muffuletta.  I was surprised to find the book, I had read before it was out of print, and it was published first in 1980.  But like I said, I’m sure not much has changed.  For $11 it was a steal and a complete surprise for me to find.  But remember, the history of…

I bought my book, along with a handful of Zapps Chips and of course two muffulettas.  Two!  Two can feed about eight people.  There were four of us on the trip.  I ate a half of one.  Everyone else ate a quarter.  Then I had the leftovers.  I had a refrigerator in the hotel – I planned ahead!

As I sat in the hotel room.  I had New Orleans out my window and a muffuletta in my hands.  The bite…

Since my trip in 2008 I love the muffuletta.  I’ve researched it.  I’ve learned the history.  I’ve tried and tried to make my version of it that I love.  All the stories tell of Central Grocery and who all others strive to reach theirs.  For all those years it’s built up.  I’ve always said it’s the first thing I do.  It’s been built up and built up now.  So when I chomped down on that first bite…

I was waiting for the let down… I’m telling you, if you like the olive salad and muffuletta, travel to New Orleans, stop at Central Grocery and buy a muffuletta.  It’s was even greater than what I was expecting.  How this sandwich isn’t so popular is beyond me.  It was worth every penny, it was worth the trip, and it was worth the wait.

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED AT THE OLIVE AISLE AT THE STORE

Two weeks before our trip to New Orleans I was strolling through Krogers.  I just happened to stop at the olives.  I knew Central Grocery was a few weeks coming, maybe I was just preparing.  As I scanned the jars upon jars one suddenly stood out – it was a jar of Boscoli Family New Orleans made Olive Salad.  Now I’m in Michigan.  Just north of Detroit.  I’ve been making my olive salad mix by hand for years now.  Weeks before heading down to New Orleans I find it in a jar?  I bought.

I wondered who the Boscoli Family was.  On their website they are “a manufacturer of fine Italian, gourmet foods.  Boscoli Foods, Inc. was established in 1992 and is located in the greater New Orleans, Louisiana area, the heart of our world-famous New Orleans Creole/Italian cuisine.  Our products are created from time-honored, Old World recipes handed down through generations of Italian families.”  Along with buying products, they offer recipes.  It worth checking out the website.

If you want a quick olive salad, or you don’t like making a batch, this is perfect.  A great olive salad.  I can taste the flavor difference in mine to theirs but it wasn’t bad or anything.  Mine is a bite spicier.  So as we prepared for our trip for New Orleans, I broke open the jar of Boscoli Family olive salad.    I had the meats and cheeses and hamburger buns.  It became muffuletta sliders!

MUFFULETTA SLIDERS

Ingredients:

• 1 jar of Boscoli Olive Salad or a homemade version
• hard salami
• ham
• hot capicola
• swiss cheese
• hamburger buns

Spread the olive oil juice from the jar or container on both sides of the bun.  On the bottom bun, place the salami, then ham, add the cheese, then top with the hot capicola or salami.  Top with as much of the olive salad you want on each sandwich.  Enjoy!

You would think, a slider, you could polish off a few of them, one sandwich may do the trick here though.  This is a cheaper version of the muffuletta.  You don’t need the full amounts of meats and cheeses or the Italian bread.  If you have leftover olive salad and different lunch meats, this is a great way to finish off the perishable foods and it’s also a great way to have somebody sample what a muffuletta is.

I love my olive salad.  I like the Boscoli Olive Salad.  But nothing compares to being at Central Grocery and eating one of their muffulettas!

Parade Sandwich – the French Muffuletta

Mardi Gras is Tuesday.  The parades, the parties, the floats and costumes.  Though Mardi Gras seasons has been going on for a few weeks now, it comes to an end on Tuesday, or Fat Tuesday, or as they call it in Michigan – Paczki Day!  Mardi Gras is New Orleans.  When you think of one, you think of the other, right?

When you think of New Orleans food, you should think of Marcelle Bienvenu, the Queen of Cajun Cooking.  She has written cookbooks on Cajun and Creole cooking including  WHO’S YOUR MAMA, ARE YOU CATHOLIC AND CAN YOU MAKE A ROUX? and CAJUN COOKING FOR BEGINNERS along with writing articles for THE TIMES-PICAYUNE in New Orleans for the “Cooking Creole” article since 1984.  She has co-authored books with Emeril Lagasse and Eula Mae Dore.  Mrs. Bienvenu also contributes to Louisiana Cookin’, Acadian Profile, The Forum, and City Life magazines regularly.  You can get more information on her and her books by clicking here.  I do own a few of them and they are worth it.  She is the Queen of Cajun Cooking!

In the past weeks edition of Louisiana Cookin Magazines weekly newsletter, there was a recipe by Marcelle in it – the Parade Sandwich.  An easy sandwich to prepare for the walks along the parade routes for Mardi Gras.  She also stated, one thing that caught my attention, it’s the French bread version of the Muffuletta.

As you may have read before, I love the Muffuletta – with a passion I may add.  This is similar in a way but… it’s not the Muffuletta.  The main taste of the Muffuletta comes from the green olives, this I think comes from the pickles.

If you run a search on Louisiana Cookin Magazines website on the Parade Sandwich, you can get the recipe.  It confused my at first because of the low ingredient measurements.  It states that it can serve six people, but it lists only four black olives… four?  Then one tablespoon of chopped green peppers.  I added more of everything to beef up the salad.  If you can call it a salad.  The Muffuletta has the green olive salad, so this would be a black olive salad.

You can tinker with the measurements, this is how I did it this time.  I’ll change it around next time I think though.  I found no other recipes for a Parade Sandwich.  The Louisiana Cookin’ recipe by Marcelle Bienvenu was the only one.  Here’s my version:

THE PARADE SANDWICH

Ingredients:

• 1 french bread loaf
• ham, thinly sliced
• hard salami, thinly sliced
• swiss cheese
• 4 dill pickles, chopped
• 1/2 cup black olives, chopped
•  4 green onions, chopped
• 1 jalapeno pepper, chopped
• 1/2 green bell pepper, chopped
• 3/4 cup diced tomatoes
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• salt and pepper
• Dijon Mustard or Creole Mustard

I built this the same way I do the Muffuletta.  Cut the french bread loaf in half, on the bottom spread a little of the black olive salad.  Top with the meats then the cheese.  Spread the remainder of the black olive salad on top.  I added Dijon mustard on top.  The original recipe doesn’t call for it but I like the added taste.  You could also go with Creole Mustard.

I served it with tater tots and tomatoes, okra, and corn soup.  Enjoy!

If you’re in New Orleans and celebrating Mardi Gras, I hope you are having fun and enjoying it.  I wish I could be there.  If not, like me, this is still a great sandwich to share with the family.

Tuna Fish Po’ boy

Not your typical New Orleans po’ boy but… you may think that this is just a sub but it’s not.  What makes a po’ boy a po’ boy is the french bread.  Sandwiches from different deli’s or Subway or ones you may make that are on white bread or a hoagie or sub bun is just a sandwich by another name.  The po’ boy is on a french bread.

My Tuna Fish Po’ boy came out of nothing else to make.  I had the ingredients on hand and thought it’d be clever to make.  It tasted great!  My wife loved it and I loved it.  It’s just one of those things to pass along.  In case your in the mood for a tuna sandwich, it’s just a way to add a twist to it.

On thing I’ve noticed about New Orleans, is that everyone is willing to help out everyone else.  I’ve been to a few concerts here in the Detroit area where brass bands from New Orleans have come to perform.  Not all the original members of the band is there, but there are other musicians filling in and the band doesn’t miss a beat.  I know they are there for a paycheck, but even at the clubs in New Orleans, musicians fill in and sit in for one another just to help out.

I talked to one musician on Facebook and told him my plans to vacation in New Orleans fairly soon.  He gave me his number to call him once I get down there.  I talked to a chef on Facebook, Tommy Centola, who runs an excellent blog the Creole Cajun Chef.  He recently published his book “You can’t keep New Orleans out of the cook” which you can find on his website.  Not knowing me other then the fact that I also like to cook Creole and Cajun foods, he told his Twitter followers to check my blog out.  I thank you Tommy and I encourge all to check his blog and book out.

What I’m trying to say is, is that New Orleans isn’t just a city, New Orleans is a culture.  It’s what I love about it.  My two favorite football teams are the Oakland Raiders and New Orleans Saints (I know, no Detroit Lions).  I love the Raiders for who they are, always will, and I love the Saints for where they are, always will.  When I wear my Raiders hat, no one ever says anything about it.  Who talks about Oakland?   When I wear my Saints hat, I hear stories about New Orleans.  People who love New Orleans, no matter where they are at, or what connection they may have, come together.  There’s a lot to share about New Orleans and everyone loves to talk about it – the food or the music or Bourban Street.

I want to share what I’ve learned of the food and what I’ve heard with the music.  From the muffuletta to Glen David Andrews.  From Tommy Centola’s cookbook to the history of the po’boy.  Like Dr. John sang in “Sweet Home New Orleans”, “…this is what it means to love New Orleans.”

TUNA FISH PO’ BOY

Ingredients:

• 2 cans tuna fish
• french bread
• mayonnaise
• swiss cheese
• lettuce
• tomatoes
• pickles
• creole seasoning
• mustard (or Creole Mustard)

Preheat oven at 350 degrees.  Mix the tuna with the mayonnaise and creole seasoning.  Spread the tuna across the french bread and top with the cheese.  Heat in the oven for about 5 minutes.

Once heated, the french bread will have a crisp top, add the lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and mustard.  You could make the Creole Mustard to use instead of regular mustard.

Eric’s Muffuletta with olive salad

It’s December 23 2008.  50 degrees maybe.  Sunny for sure.  My wife and I step out of our hotel onto Royal Street in the French Quarter.  We stroll up and down the old streets shopping and taking in the buildings, the balconies, the history that’s happened there.  By 11:00am we were tired and starving since we had a late night but wanted an early start to take in as much as we could.   Most restaurants seemed to have been closed at this time of day.  We came across a small cafe.  I forget the name and exactly where it was.  We stepped in, scanned the menu.  My wife went for one of her favorite meals, the chicken salad sandwich.  I stared at the muffuletta.

What’s a muffuletta?  I never heard of it.  The woman said its Italian meats with an olive salad.  So I got it.  It was a half of a muffuletta loaf.  Filled with salami, hams, cheeses and the olive salad.

There may be only a few times in your life when you realize something great just happened.  Something amazing.  Honestly, just being in New Orleans was that for me.  I’ve always liked the city and always wanted to go there, but what did I really know about it without ever being there to really experience it?  Another thing happened after that first bite of the muffuletta.  I was hooked.

Once we got back to the Detroit area, after our vacation, all I could think about was the muffuletta.  I knew it was something I wanted to make.  It’s the one single dish that got me started on wanting to make New Orleans food.  I knew gumbos and jambalayas but it was more Zatarains style straight from a box (and there is nothing wrong with that, I love Zatarains and use it).  There was never a list of ingredients though with what we cooked.  Finding recipes of the muffulettas olive salad found lists of ingredients.  Over the years I’ve tried many different people’s versions and combined some things and tweaked other things coming up with my own version of the olive salad and muffuletta.

If you do go to New Orleans, stop in at The Central Grocery on Decatur Street in the French Quarter, the home of “The Original Muffuletta”.    Their muffuletta is the one standard that all others try to reach.   The Italian market is given credit for inventing the muffuletta back in 1906.  In Marie Lupo Tusa’s cookbook “Marie’s Melting Pot”, she tells the story of the sandwich: 

“One of the most interesting aspects of my father’s grocery is his unique creation, the muffuletta sandwich. the mufuletta was created in the early 1900’s when the Farmers’ Market was in the same area as the grocery. Most of the farmers who sold their produce there were Sicilian. Every day they used to come of my father’s grocery for lunch.

They would order some salami, some ham, a piece of cheese, a little olive salad, and either long braided Italian bread or round muffuletta bread. In typical Sicilian fashion they ate everything separately. The farmers used to sit on crates or barrels and try to eat while precariously balancing their small trays covered with food on their knees. My father suggested that it would be easier for the farmers if he cut the bread and put everything on it like a sandwich; even if it was not typical Sicilian fashion. He experimented and found that the ticker, braided Italian bread was too hard to bite but the softer round muffuletta was ideal for his sandwich. In very little time, the farmers came to merely ask for a “muffuletta” for their lunch.

From Chuck Taggart’s website, The Gumbo Pages, he points out:

It’s also a bit of a lesson to those who think the only cultural and culinary heritage of New Orleans is French, Spanish, African and Creole. You ask folks about the quintessential sandwiches of New Orleans, and many people will immediately reply “po-boy”, but the muffuletta is as New Orleans as any po-boy you’ll ever eat, and there’s nothing Creole about it. This is pure Italian, and pure Sicilian if you want to be specific. New Orleans, in its population and its cuisine, owes much to Italy and especially Sicily; Italians have been coming to the Crescent City since the 1880s. It wasn’t always easy for them — one of the worst lynchings in American history was a massacre perpetrated upon a group of Italians in New Orleans in 1891.  The Italians soon settled in comfortably into New Orleans culture, and we are the richer for it. Their contribution to local culture and cuisine has been immeasurable; in fact, you frequently see “Creole-Italian” referred to as one of the local sub-cuisines. This kind of cooking is epitomized at places like Mandina’s, Liuzza’s, and the many places in the city that serve muffuletta sandwiches.

It is true, for sandwiches most think of the po’ boy as the New Orleans sandwich.  I do love the roast beef po’ boy and make it often but there’s something about the muffuletta.  After having it in the French Quarter, not even from the place that invented it, I absolutely loved it.  How could a sandwich so good not be known outside of New Orleans?  Why isn’t every sandwich shop not making it?

This is my campaign to tell the masses to try the muffuletta!  Go to New Orleans and get a real one!  Make the muffuletta, love it, pass it on, and tell everyone what they are missing.  One of the main reasons I wanted to do this blog was to show off this cuisine.  This type of food out of New Orleans.  I should have named the blog “Muffuletta Eric” but… I didn’t.

The sandwich has been around for over a hundred years.  There are many variations to try.  So many versions in and around New Orleans.  If your lucky you may get one outside of Louisiana.  It may be good or not.  But try it.

In New Orleans it’ll be on the muffuletta loaf.  It’s impossible to get it outside of New Orleans unless you have an Italian bakery that does it but an Italian loaf works just as fine.  There are recipes for the bread but I don’t bake so I don’t have a recipe for that to share.  Here’s my version of the sandwich I love:

MUFFULETTA

Ingredients:

• 1 Italian loaf bread (unless you can get a muffuletta loaf)
• 1 recipe of olive salad
• genoa salami
• hot capicola
• mortadella or ham
• sliced mozzarella
• provolone

The airy Italian bread makes the muffuletta seem huge!

Cut the loaf in half.  Brush both sides with the olive oil from the salad on both sides of the bread.

From the bottom up, layer genoa salami, mortadell/ham, mozzarella cheese, hot capicola, provolone cheese, then more genoa salami.

Top with the olive salad.  Cover with the top of bread.  You may need to cut the sandwich in half.

Eric’s Olive Salad

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups crushed green olives, crushed
• 1/2 cup crushed black calamatta olives, pitted, crushed
• 1 cup gardiniera (picked cauliflower, carrots, celery), chopped
• 1 tbsp capers, chopped
• 1/4 cup roasted red peppers, chopped
• 1/8 cup celery, chopped fine
• 1 tbsp green onion, chopped fine
• 3 1/4 tsp garlic
• 1 tbsp parsley
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 1/2 cups olive oil

Once you start eating the muffuletta, the bread presses down making the sandwich look a little regular.

Crush both green olives and black olives.  I smash them on the cutting board I use to dice everything up with.  Chop all the ingredients that need to be chopped.  Then mix everything together in a bowl.  Pour the olive oil over top.  Cover the bowl and shake to mix.

Once everything is combined and mixed.  Refrigerate for at least 4 hours.  I usually wait 24 hours.

Leftovers can be stored in jars in the refrigerator for months.  They can be used in plenty other recipes.  I’ll pass those on soon.  With all the jar ingredients I buy (olives, gardiniera, caper, roasted red peppers etc), there is usually enough to make two batches.  I keep a lot of it and pass out a lot.

Spoon the olive salad over the meats and you have one of the greatest sandwiches, the Muffuletta. Enjoy and pass it on!

Chicken with Green Olives and Cranberries

There is one dish that I absolutely love and crave.  It’s the meal that I had in New Orleans that made me, once I got home, research and figure out how to make it.  I have my version that I make a few times a year once the craving comes on.  It’s coming soon!  It’s the muffuletta.  I believe it is one of the greatest sandwiches anywhere.  I’ll get more into it at a different time though.

You have to love green olives to love the muffuletta.  One of the main ingredients is the green olive salad.   I start to get that taste for green olives.  I’ll have them with crackers or just on the side of a different meal.  So when I come across a recipe that has green olives in it, well I want to try it.  I usually buy a huge jar of green olives for the muffuletta so I have plenty leftovers to find something to do with.

I found this recipe on Yahoo! somewhere on the main page.  I can’t remember exactly where or what it was for but it looked great so  I wrote the recipe down, filed it away, and now that I have green olives it’s the perfect time to make this.  I’m sorry to who ever out there made this and I can’t reference.

On their recipe, with the green olives, they use prunes and suggested you could also use dried plums instead.  I couldn’t find either at the grocery store so I resorted to dried cranberries.  It still tasted good but I’d make it again with the prunes.  Here it is:

CHICKEN WITH GREEN OLIVES AND CRANBERRIES

Ingredients:

• 1 lbs boneless chicken breasts
• 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup chopped pitted green olives
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries (or dried plums or prunes)
• salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium-high heat.  Add the chicken and cook until it browns.  It should take about 2 minutes for each side.

Add the chicken broth and red wine vinegar.  Stir in to make sure the chicken is not stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Lower heat to a simmer (low) and add in the green olives, cranberries and salt and pepper.

Cover and cook until the chicken is cooked through.  It should be about 15 minutes.

Once finished, place the chicken on a plate and spoon the sauce over it.  Add sides and serve.  Enjoy!

 

If you have a suggestion or an idea for a meal with green olives, I’d love to hear it and possibly try it.  Send me an email at redbeansanderic@gmail.com.