Scalloped Apples & Sweet Potatoes

     In the realm of sweet potato recipes lives the Southern style marshmallow baked sweet potatoes that seem to occupy space on every holiday table in America... right next to the green bean casserole.  I have fought with this denizen of overindulgence for many a year as I cannot abide this sticky sweet concoction yet I love sweet potatoes and yearned to be able to set them free from a syrupy, gooey, marshmallow laden fate.  At first I tried mashed sweet potatoes with a praline topping, better but equally as sweet and almost akin to an uncrusted sweet potato pie.  Luckily this year, thanks to the Gutenberg Project, I was able to find this recipe.

Oven Roasted Pork Shoulder

     Roasted pork has been around ever since we started killing wild boars in the forest in the dim beginnings of humanity so in that sense this is a "vintage" recipe but for our purposes here this recipe is all my own.  It is based on a Filipino recipe called Lechon sa Hurno which translates into "roasted in the oven".  It's a home based version of the popular party centerpiece Lechon Baboy or roasted pig where a whole pig is gutted and roasted for hours on a spit over an open fire.

Country Captain Southern Chicken Curry

I chose a rather laborious title for this post because most people don't know the Americanized version of chicken curry is rightfully called Country Captain Chicken.  Now the origins of this dish are veiled in the mists of time as it has been around since before the Civil War and quite a few towns make claim to Country Captain as being "their" dish.  After looking at literally dozens of recipes dating from now all the way back to 1822 I can say with a high amount of confidence that this dish is a New Orleans Creole recipe.  You can usually tell the background of a recipe by it's base ingredients and Creole cooking is one of the easier ones to spot as almost all dishes start with at least 2 of the "Trinity", bell peppers, onions and celery.  These ingredients showed up time and again in each recipe I looked at, albeit with some variations as time went forward.  I picked a recipe that was simple and stayed close to the original in terms of ingredients and flavor.

Creole Remulade Sauce

 

I've been doing some housekeeping on the Facebook Page for The Vintage Recipe Blog and in looking at the notes section I found a few recipes that I had posted there in order to cross merchandise the Facebook Page for the blog so to speak.   It's mostly sauce recipes but I feel they need a home here on the blog. 

First up is Remulade Sauce, a Creole version of Tartar Sauce but in reality it's an unfair comparison since Remulade is so much better.  It can be served with most seafoods or used as a condiment for Fried Green Tomatoes. 

Remulade Sauce

3/4C Dukes Mayonnaise
3 Cornichons Chopped Fine
1T Chopped Capers
1T Lemon Juice
1T Guldens Mustard
2tsp Finely Minced Fresh Parsley
1/4tsp Tarragon, minced fine (optional)
2 Dashes Tabasco
1tsp Paprika
pinch of salt

Stir well and refrigerate 1 hour.

The Jolly Moonlight Dance of the Sandwiches

I didn't get home until about 11 last night then ate a rather tasteless dinner of a Publix Turkey Sub.  Take it from me, spend the extra money and get the Boars Head Sub from Publix it's a much better product for picnic baskets.  So the combination of being up late and eating late took it's toll on me.  You know, when you start getting weird dreams of I dunno, flying cats, talking tomatoes and Deli Meats doing their jolly moonlight dance?  I suppose twice a year during the solstice the luncheon meats sneak out of their deli cases for a fairy romp on the beach.  At the end they transform themselves into not just sandwiches but Sandwi(T)ches! 

Easy Recipes for Sweet or Savory Crepes

Crepes have been around for a long time and each country has their own version of the crepe.  They were truly made famous by a French chef who invented Crepes Suzette.  There are 2 ways to make crepes, the sweet way with wheat flour for desserts and the crepes gallette way with buckwheat flour for savory dishes.¹  Most Americans think making crepes is some sort of wizardry, harder than it really is.  If you can make a pancake, you can make crepes.  It is however helpful to have some specialist equipment such as a crepe pan.  Crepe pans are flat with very low sides that make it easier to flip the crepes when they are cooking.  The pans can be found in non-stick and blued steel versions.  I recommend the non-stick for beginners because the blued steel pans require a bit of seasoning before use.  Also helpful is to have a long thin metal spatula called an icing spatula.

Jacksonville Traditional Garlic Shrimp Recipe

Garlic shrimp is a ubiquitous fixture here in Jacksonville and is arguably the food the city is most known for.  Many people argue the origins of the dish saying it's some sort of Caribbean fare but few can look back on the pages of history and realize that is tapas cuisine from Spain.  There is an abundance of shrimp in the waters off the First Coast and so it stands to reason the first Spanish colonists would have used them to make Gabas al Ajillo and this recipe was passed down through the years until it became a part of the consciousness of Jacksonville residents.  This recipe is a distillation of a couple different recipes to make something like the original Spanish settlers would have cooked.  Served over Angel Hair Pasta, it makes a night light dinner bursting with flavor.  As always, you can adjust the ingredients to suit your taste.  This recipe comes out rather spicy so change the spice according to your tastes.

Louisiana Cooking: Jacksonville Mardi Gras King Cake

King cake is a Mardi Gras tradition dating back many years.  Filled with cinnamon sugar, Pecan praline or cream cheese filling it has come to symbolize the whole Mardi Gras experience.  The colors on the cake represent Faith (Purple), Justice (Green) and Power (Gold), meanings they were given in 1872 by "Rex" king of Mardi Gras.  You may be wondering why I decided to name this Jacksonville King Cake... isn't king cake a New Orleans tradition?  Yes, but I decided to give it a twist and replace the lemon peel in the recipe with orange peel.  If you really want to keep it traditional then just stick with lemon peel where I use orange peel.

The Gold Standard

14 hour housewives of 8 hour men need Gold Dust to get them through their work.  Man, it's not easy being a housewife.  Washing, cooking, laundry all would have been done by hand back then and taken a rather large amount of time to complete.  I should know since I lived in the Philippines for 3 years and did my laundry by hand along with helping my wife clean the house. Eventually we hired a maid for the princely sum of $30/month which is what many  people back in the early 1900's did as well.  It was sign of being solidly middle class when you could afford a maid.