Keeping It Dirty
Posted by David | Filed under blog
It’s hot, kids. Steamy hot. “Down by the bayou with a bucket ‘o crawdads” hot (whatever that means; I hope it communicates an added degree of hotness). Yes, summer is upon us, so what do I do? Like a genius I decide to crank up the stove top for an hour of cooking. The only upside to that is that there’s nothing inconsistent with sweating when you’re making something called “Smoked Sausage and Okra Dirty Rice.”
Dirty rice is one of those things that I love but I have never made before, so I decided to give it a shot. To be honest, this is not the “authentic” kind that I remember from childhood and trips to Louisiana. It’s less bold and “dirty”, but as a benefit it would make a more universal side dish. I could imagine it equally at home next to some blackened catfish or ratatouille.
As with most things I cook, I cheated. The recipe (p. 269) calls for one green and one red bell pepper to be chopped up and thrown in. My local house ‘o groceries was waaaaay too proud of their red peppers, so I opted instead for two of the more pedestrian greens, in order to keep costs down. I also used frozen okra (for a similar reason). Both of my cheats seemed to work out just fine, although it might be slightly less colorful than it would have otherwise.
It’s no Lasyone’s, but it was tasty. And even if you don’t break a sweat from the spices here (or lack thereof), the cooking time in the heat of summer should take care of that, I declare!
When last we left you, I teased a new feature/series/focus for the website related to a new cookery book of almost mythic girth. A thousand-page testament to food on paper that we would not only use in exercise by simply picking up, but also something that we would be cooking from. And I’m here to tell you a little bit more about that.
