Horseradish

This hearty dish, which is a great way to reinvigorate leftover Foster Family’s Pot Roast with Herb-Roasted Vegetables (page 199), is inspired by Southern dishes featuring “low” cuts of meat. With savory layers of potato, roast, and poached eggs finished with the cool heat of the Horseradish Mustard Vinaigrette and brightened with fresh greens, this crowd-pleaser makes for a decadent Sunday brunch, but it can just as comfortably double as the main event at dinner. Serve with warm, crusty toast for a complete meal.

My friend Wendy makes the best Bloody Marys—full of punchy, spicy flavor. Serve them with little dishes of pickles as well as the usual cucumber and celery spears for fun mix-and-match garnishes.

This is a recipe I created to celebrate satsuma season. Satsumas are sweet, juicy tangerines that flourish in Louisiana during the winter. (If you can’t find them in your area, any tangerine will do.) You can certainly make the marmalade in larger quantities—it keeps well and is terrific with any grilled or roasted meat, served hot or cold. Try it with grilled quail, duck breast, or even smoked pork sausage or ham. Brining is a technique that serves many purposes. It tenderizes, flavors, and keeps meat juicy. This brine can be used with chicken, turkey breast (I’d leave the soy out), and pork loin or tenderloin. You can throw in herbs or spices appropriate to the dish, but you’ll want to keep the salt/sugar ratio the same. Green beans with shallots make the perfect accompaniment to this dish.

There are two versions of remoulade. French remoulade means celery root remoulade, a beloved bistro slaw bound in a creamy white mustard-mayo dressing. But in New Orleans, classic remoulade is red and more of a vinaigrette, made with two traditional spices, paprika and cayenne, and balanced with plenty of celery and parsley that provide a fresh, clean crunch. This remoulade is my favorite way to eat chilled, boiled shrimp, crab, or crayfish, but the dressing is also great on crabmeat or on a simple boiled egg, sliced in half and served atop crisp shredded lettuce.

I got the idea for this recipe from a Greek restaurant I worked at. The horseradish sauce is my favorite thing about them because I love that rush of spiciness that clears the sinuses.

My friend Yvonne and I tested my Bloody Mary oyster shooters and got lightly “toasted” at the same time. We kept draining our shot glasses and after each one we figured we needed one more, just to make sure the seasoning was right. And besides, each shot glass contained dinner (an oyster and a vegetable) and a drink (a spot of vodka), so why stop before our appetites waned? Before we knew it we’d moved from testing to party mode. We laughingly dubbed our oyster concoction a “party in a shot glass,” and the name stuck. One thing is sure: start slurping these and you’ve got a party whether it’s for just the two of you or for a crowd of your best buddies.

The origin of the name campechana is a mystery, but just about every Texan I know loves this cool, tomatoey seafood cocktail stocked with plump chunks of ripe avocado and served with a pile of crisp tortilla chips. (I hear it is big in some parts of California, too.) I got stuck on campechana at a place run by legendary Houston restaurateur Jim Goode. He parlayed a small Texas barbecue joint into a homegrown restaurant dynasty that includes a Tex-Mex eatery and two Gulf Coast seafood spots. Campechana is incredibly versatile. As an appetizer, serve in long-stemmed glasses set on plates and surrounded with tortilla chips for dipping. Serve as a main course in a huge bowl, surrounded by chips. Offer individual bowls and let guests ladle up servings themselves. For outdoor or beachside festivities, transport in a large plastic container set in a cooler and serve in clear acrylic stemmed glasses or in disposable plastic glasses. Don’t forget plenty of chips.

This lightly pickled mackerel is “cooked” through by the acid in the vinegar. Use high-quality fish, and keep it refrigerated until you marinate it. Use a glass or ceramic baking dish as metal can interfere with the pickling process. Both Spanish and king mackerel are fished using low-impact methods, and populations in the Atlantic and the U.S. Gulf of Mexico are thriving. They reproduce in high numbers and mature quickly, so mackerel are considered safe from overfishing. Start this recipe the night before serving so the fish has time to marinate.

Rich, buttery potatoes are the perfect foil for pungent, spicy, freshly grated horseradish, a fiery cousin to kale, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. Although bottled horseradish will do in a pinch, there’s nothing like the bite of the freshly grated root. For spectacular results, serve Pepper-crusted Beef with Cognac and Golden Raisins (page 93) or Braised Short Ribs (page 87) on a bed of this.

Normally, you would make these on skewers, but for a party it’s much easier to broil all the meat and then serve them on toothpicks.

Historically, short ribs have been a throwaway piece of meat. But in the restaurant business, part of the job is figuring out how to make the most of every ingredient—which means turning a cheap cut of meat into a super-special meal. However, the secret to braising is out, which means short ribs are no longer an inexpensive cut. Still, with my big brown braising technique, they are totally amazing and well worth splurging on. Be sure to cook these LOW and SLOW—that’s the secret. Take your time getting these lovelies nice and brown, then shoot them in the oven and treat them like a stepchild. Just forget about ’em until they’re tender and crazy delicious!

Agatha Christie said of her grandmother, “Although a completely cheerful person, she always expected the worst of anyone and everything. And with almost frightening accuracy [she was] usually proved right.” Her grandmother would say “I shouldn’t be surprised if so-and-so was going on,” Christie recalled. “And although with no grounds for these assertions, that was exactly what was going on.” Sounds just like my grandmother Elsie. Elsie fancied herself an adept armchair detective. She was thrilled when our neighbor was murdered. Wait—that might lend the wrong impression. She was saddened by the loss of life, certainly, but elated at the chance to do some sleuthing and speculating. She quickly deemed it a love triangle gone wrong, a day before the police figured it out. I can see her now, seated in her floral chintz wingback chair with feet propped on the hearth, reading a good mystery. I must say that on early dark winter evenings I find myself right there in her favorite wingback, set about my guilty pleasure of working my way through The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, all 1,878 pages of it, with a plate of Elsie’s rarebit to sustain me.