Author Archives: Elsa Hahne

December 29th 2010

Swedish Meatballs Recipe

This is almost unfair, but I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to share my recipe for Swedish meatballs. I’m also going to make a prediction about what’s going to happen to you in 2011. Chances are, you’re going to be eating a lot of Swedish meatballs. What are they, really? Bite-sized meatloaves that allow for quite a bit of improvisation as far as seasonings and condiments are concerned.

I scared colleagues yesterday by dousing my lunchbox in ketchup. Yep, ketchup. No excuses for putting ketchup on meatballs, but that was only because I didn’t have any lingonberry jam, which is my preferred condiment. Lingonberries are like mini-cranberries. If you can’t get lingonberries or lingonberry jam where you live, you should try cranberries. Or black currant (or red currant) jelly—Bonne Maman makes it, and a lot of stores carry Bonne Maman now.

What makes a meatball a Swedish meatball in my mind is pre-frying the onions in butter until they’re sweet, and adding a large amount of undercover anchovy to the mix. You won’t notice the anchovy unless you know it’s there, but it makes all the difference. Roll to it.

4 tbsp butter
2 onions, chopped very fine
1 egg
1 cup half-and-half
3/4 cup plain breadcrumbs
2 tbsp anchovy paste (made by finely chopping anchovy fillets in olive oil and salt)
1 tbsp Meat Magic (Paul Prudhomme’s)
1 tsp Tony Chachere’s salt-free seasoning
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper (or more)
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tbsp light brown sugar
3 lbs ground meat (beef, pork and veal, mixed)

Melt butter in a large skillet and sauté onion until sweet and translucent, let cool. Crack egg into a large mixing bowl. Whisk in half-and-half. Add breadcrumbs, anchovy, Meat Magic, Tony’s, salt, pepper, nutmeg, garlic powder and sugar. Let sit for a few minutes, then add onion. Add meat, mixing well. Let sit for 10 minutes. Form balls (I use a 1 3/8-inch cookie scoop to portion it out, and finish rolling by hand). Place on greased cookie sheets and bake for 10-15 minutes at 350 degrees until centers are done. Cool, pack and freeze.

To serve, take out as many meatballs as desired, defrost and then fry in a little butter in a skillet until browned all around. Serve with boiled potatoes, lingonberry jam and brown gravy. I save the fat and juice from the cookie sheets and add 4 tbsp of flour to this to make a roux, which I brown while whisking constantly for about five minutes. To this I add about 2 cups half-and-half, 1 tablespoon Better Than Bouillon, 1 tsp Tony Chachere’s salt-free seasoning and freshly ground black pepper to taste, plus whatever else comes to mind.

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November 19th 2010

Most Affordable Dining City in the U.S.

Today, Zagat published the results of its latest restaurant survey. New Orleans comes in as the most affordable dining city in the country with an average meal at $28.36 compared to the national average of $35.37. Susan Spicer’s restaurant Bayona ranks first in “Top Food” (ahead of Stella! and Brigtsen’s) while Brigtsen’s offers “Top Service” (ahead of Commander’s Palace and Jamila’s Cafe—go, Jamila’s!). While half of all diners think it’s rude to use a cell phone in a restaurant, as many as 12% use their phone to take pictures of their food. New Orleans food: delicious, affordable and good looking! New Orleans diners show their appreciation by leaving the best tips in the country: 20%.

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September 14th 2010

Paid in Whiskers

My husband is John Boutté’s piano tuner. He’s a darling, Boutté, and he pays well. Cash plus. Last time it was a pound of fresh shrimp that somebody had brought him that morning that he wasn’t going to cook. The shrimp were so fresh you could hang them by the whiskers. We enjoyed them Sunpie style. It’s become difficult for me to cook fresh shrimp any other way since Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes shared his recipe with me last year.

Look at those whiskers!

It’s limey and salty and a little bit smoky (if you do it right) and my kids eat them faster than I can peel them. My two-year-old actually swallows them whole. Our pediatrician said not to worry, but I do—there is flavor going to waste!

I love the trade and in-kind economy here in New Orleans. I enjoy the 11th hour phone call: “I just caught 43 fish. Want some?” The clock starts ticking. Better sharpen that knife, cover the table in newspaper, assemble the cutting board puzzle. We have friends who lived in a trailer in Empire before Katrina. Now they’re in a house in Belle Chasse. He’s an oyster fisherman. There have been times when Snjezana, his wife, has called and asked us if we want some oysters. We always say yes, but this comes with a certain amount of responsibility. Within hours, there’s a sack of oysters on our porch and we might not be able to locate our oyster knife or track down enough friends who can come over immediately. So far, we’ve done well. Nothing’s gone to waste. But we’re going to need another freezer. Very, very soon.

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September 1st 2010

The Gravy: In the Kitchen with Captain Charles

DJ Captain Charles at his Cafe on the Ave
“We’ve been open now three months. I purchased this building in ‘07, and didn’t have a plan what I was going to do with it then. Found out my youngest daughter (Javonda) can cook, ‘Let’s try and open a little restaurant and see what it’ll do.’ In the ‘80s, I had a po-boy shop. Captain Charles’ Po-Boys, it was on Washington and Robertson, right by the Magnolia Projects, and then I had a sno-ball stand between all that, in the ‘80s, ‘90s.

Somehow I wound back up with another restaurant. Somebody kept saying, ‘You know, Javonda is cooking’ and I said, ‘Javonda is cooking? Na-huh.’ During the Super Bowl week, when the Saints was in the playoffs, I said, ‘Let’s try some jambalaya’ so she cooked a jambalaya and I enjoyed it. Everybody enjoyed the jambalaya. After that, I was convinced. We have folks who come here and want to order her gumbo. She does a hell of a gumbo, and sometimes folks come in and ask just for the juice.

What do I cook? I can do a po-boy. I can grill steaks. Thursdays we do steaks, so I’m grilling steaks on the deck out there; I grill steaks for lunch every Thursday for 12 o’clock. I’m pretty good. Rare, medium, get a little red in it. I’m pretty good at getting oatmeal together too. That’s my favorite dish. By me being in the clubs all night and eating a bunch of junk, either I’m eating chicken or grits or pancakes, and it’s not good for you, it’s too fatty, so when I get home I put some fiber in me. Every night when I go home, I put some water on the stove, put my oatmeal, let the oatmeal cook. No salt. Real creamy. It’s a big bowl and I eat it all. I put butter, cream and sugar on it. Sometimes, I cut up some bananas, but I’m not a raisin person. The only way I can eat raisins is the Raisinets with the chocolate. Only way.

Also, I get my toast. I dip my [buttered] toast in the oatmeal. I eat my toast and then I eat the oatmeal. Cream, like canned cream, PET milk, the evaporated milk, I put that in my bowl, stir that in with the sugar until it’s sweet and juicy. It has to be juicy so I can dip my toast. I allow the butter to melt on top. I tear my toast up and dip it, eat it. Never no leftovers. I make just enough. Ask me how, I couldn’t tell you. Luck! But I’ve been eating oatmeal my whole life; my grandmother introduced me to it and I love it. I might have been three. Coming back in those days and being poor, not having food stamps, if you didn’t have nothing else to eat, you’d either eat the oatmeal or the rice and eggs, and that was your meal. Oatmeal, I was raised up on that and I have never gotten away from it. It’s something I love doing.

Here, in the morning, folks come in and ask for rice and eggs. Call it a poor man’s special. Have you ever tried rice and eggs? Good meal. If you want them scrambled, scramble your eggs. If you want fried, fry. Cook your rice, add a little salt and pepper, and mix it up. Like all the Chinese people do it, we’ve been doing that for years. That was like our meal. We fed five people off of that. Some people put hot sauce, but I don’t eat a lot of hot. Folks come in here and ask for eggs and rice because not a lot of people sell it.

My vision was, when I decided to do a cafe, make it simple. But people kind of dictate what they want. So we have to give people what they want. ‘I want to be able to come in and order some red beans and rice.’ Or they’ll come in and order some white beans, smothered chicken, or some macaroni and cheese. I did not have that vision of doing a lunch special every day, but we wound up doing that. Steaks on Thursday, seafood on Friday. I wanted to focus more on a cafe; nachos and wi-fi. But when folks started coming, we had to cater to the crowd. I wanted to do more health foods—salads, grilled stuff, baked chicken, but folks rather fried chicken than baked chicken. Tomorrow they’ll complain about their weight but today, ‘Hey, give me some of that fried chicken!’

We do more better with specials. People like what they like. They love it and they don’t try to change it.

My grandma was the cook in the family. She did all the cooking. You got home from school and she used to cook chitlins. I could never eat it. Back in those days, you bought them and you had to clean them yourself. When I got home, the whole house was stinking, it was terrible. Everybody in my house would eat them, I was the only one who didn’t. I still don’t eat them. I’m a basic person. I like red beans, smothered chops, smothered chicken, candied yams, green peas, creamed corn or whole corn.

I grew up in the Magnolia. I moved out of the Magnolia and my mother moved us to Zion City, right on the other side of this canal, behind the storage place. We used to play football right here by Coca Cola, right here was a toy center, swimming pools. And here on the neutral ground, back in the ‘70s there used to be a police talent show, and the inmates used to be the band, and people in the community would come out and perform. There’s a lot of history in this area. I have a lot of real estate here. This place used to be a gas station.

It gets on my nerves if I don’t have any PET milk when I come home. There was only one Walgreens that’s open 24 hours, on St. Charles—the one on Carrollton just opened—and I get home late at night and then run and get my can of PET milk. If I come home at four in the morning and have no milk or no sugar, we have a problem; I have to go get some. So I walk right out the house and get right back in the car at three in the morning. Go get that milk, or get that sugar. Sometime the butter too. For whatever reason, I guess it’s a mind thing, oatmeal just don’t taste right without that butter.”

 

DJ Captain Charles’ Oatmeal

His favorite meal.

1/2 cup instant oatmeal
1 cup water
4 tablespoons evaporated milk
3 teaspoons sugar
1/2 tablespoon butter
buttered toast

Cook oatmeal in a pot, according to directions on box. Do not add salt. Pour oatmeal into a bowl. Stir in milk and sugar until creamy. Let butter melt on top. Dip toast and eat.

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August 4th 2010

Five Fats Chicken

My husband recently rocked my world (and my heart—literally) with a new dish that’s now become known among our friends as Five Fats Chicken. It’s made with bacon fat, chicken fat, duck fat, vegetable oil, a stick of butter and some other ingredients. The original recipe for it is Tom Fitzmorris’ Chicken Bonne Femme, which does not call for duck fat. We added duck fat because we had lots leftover from the annual July Fig Fest (and duck roast).

Although known as “Poulet Bonne Femme” (Good Woman’s Chicken), this dish could just as well be called “Poulet Bonne Ferme” (Good Farm Chicken) since it’s got bacon and ham and chicken (all the reasons why any farm should be considered good). When our friends Kedren and Craig came over last week (they’d heard about the chicken and wanted to try it—it’s a bit like “Survivor” at our house right now) we made the chicken and served links of steamy hot boudin (from Billy and Ray’s in Opelousas) for appetizer and Swedish Rectory Cookies for dessert. On previous occasions, my husband claims he ate ONE of those cookies and got a hangover (not true—he ate a “semla,” a Swedish Mardi Gras bun with almond paste and whipped cream). Rectory cookies are basically made by wrapping two cookie slivers around a ball of buttercream (nothing like a “semla”). Anyway, we all woke up shiny the next day.

PS. It’s always a good idea to keep a baseball bat by the dining room table. Unless you own an AED.

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May 25th 2010

Burn, Brûlée, Burn!

The best brûlée in town is definitely at Café Degas, but between visits, it’s nice to know that there is temporary relief, such as crème brûlée pie. The pie route is way easier than the portion-size ramekin route, especially for parties. Since I have kids, torches in the house seem like a bad idea, so after the pie is done I just sprinkle some sugar on top and burn it using the regular oven broiler. So far, I’ve tried orange crème brûlée pie and cherry crème brûlée pie. I think the former worked out the best. I made a regular pie crust, adding a quarter teaspoon of orange blossom water to the dough (with the vodka; see recipe in previous blog post). Then I covered the bottom of the pre-cooked crust with a thin layer of marmalade/jam. I used whole, fresh cherries for the cherry pie (the pits give such great almondy flavor to the pie, and I’d rather spit pits than settle for less flavor) and then the same mixture: 3 eggs, 1 pint heavy cream, 1/2 cup whole milk, zest of one orange/lemon and 1/2 cup sugar quickly beaten together until smooth. The pie has to cook for a long time. At 350 degrees it took me between 60 and 90 minutes before the custard settled. The pie should wiggle (no longer slosh) when ready. Cool without covering, then sprinkle 2-3 tablespoons of sugar on top. Cover the edges (the crust, essentially) with aluminum foil before broiling. Broil to the point of fear (“It’s on fi…!”) and you’ll get results. But please don’t burn your house down. You’ll need a place with A/C this summer, and a cool fridge to keep your pies. Best served with a double espresso.

Note: Almost burned the top this time. I was smelling my husband’s head and got distracted.

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May 11th 2010

Buns for Bingham

This weekend, I was hanging out at Piety Street studios with a Swedish band I used to listen to in high school, Bo Kaspers Orkester. I had no idea they were still around. They’re here in New Orleans to record their twelfth or thirteenth album and I just happened to be baking Swedish cinnamon buns when I found out. “We’re zombies,” said Bingham, who’d gone out celebrating with them the night before. The difference between Swedish nice-ness and general zombie-ness is often lost on me, though, so I couldn’t really tell. Bo Kaspers Orkester specialize in nice and reasonable jazz pop, with lyrics full of sand, sun and waiting around. It goes well with coffee—more so than wine. And cinnamon buns, as it turns out. Nice Swedish boys said thank you, thank you, thank you for the dozen, and then I went home, remembering something I’d read about cinnamon buns and their effect on Swedish men and real estate sales. When realtors have open houses in Sweden, they bake (or bake off) cinnamon buns before potential buyers arrive—and the sale price goes up about 10 percent. A study on Swedish men some years ago looked at which smells they found the most arousing. Guess? Cinnamon buns came in as number one. So it could have been an interesting afternoon, if we hadn’t all been so very, very, very nice.

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May 5th 2010

Lemon Lavender Pie

Since last week’s lemon pie was ugly good, I had to do it again. This time with less eggs and a touch of Provence—did you hear my voice turn uppity right there?—with a few drops of pure lavender oil. I mainly use lavender oil on mosquito bites and in dreams (a crunchy Swedish cookie; we baked some for our wedding) but my friend Jacqui uses lavender oil to doctor up her red beans. You can (and should) barely taste it. Lavender oil should be there to perk up the background, like flowery wallpaper.

When it comes to baking, there is magic in numbers. A lot of people are afraid of baking, and consider it chemistry and separate from cooking. I don’t understand why. As long as you have a basic understanding of proportions (liquid to dry), you can improvise. If you know what happens to eggs in heat, and understand how yeast and leavening work, you’ll probably do fine. When I’m working on a new recipe, I try to keep the measurements simple. It usually turns out better. Here, I pretty much stuck with the number four, which was a good idea, as it turns out.

Revised recipe for lemon pie filling:

4 lemons

3/4 cup sugar

4 eggs

4 tablespoons butter

4 tablespoons half-and-half

4 drops lavender oil

Zest and juice lemons. Stir lemon juice and sugar together in a sauce pan. Warm and stir until sugar dissolves. Add butter and let it melt. In a separate bowl, whisk eggs with lemon zest and half-and-half. Add lavender oil. Pour egg mixture into juice mixture in the saucepan and warm while whisking constantly until it starts to thicken. Remove from heat and pour into a pre-baked pie shell immediately. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes until filling is set. Cool, then dust with confectioners’ sugar.

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May 3rd 2010

Stabbed in the Palm

Thank you so much, Alex (OffBeat editor), for showing me the fastest one-step way yet to peel a crawfish, but I think I need a better ointment than yellow crawfish fat… Look at me! The little dot right next to my heart line is actually the remainder of a crawfish splinter. The rest are stab wounds.

Alex’s way: Straighten out the crawfish with the head/body in your right hand and tail in your left hand (with your left thumb about mid-tail). Push tail towards the body so the second or third shell segment on the tail disappears into the segment before it. Pull out, separating tail completely. You should now have a big enough piece of tail meat exposed (what was inside the body and the first tail shell segments) to be able to grab it with your teeth and pull the rest out, while squeezing the end of the tail shell. Let’s call this the pump gun method.

The husband’s way: Sever tail from head/body. Peel off first two tail shell segments, by tearing them up and over, sideways. You should now have a big enough piece of tail meat exposed (what was inside the body and the first couple of tail shell segments) to be able to grab it with your teeth and pull the rest of it out, while squeezing the end of the tail shell.

The Swedish way: Use a nutcracker to crack claws (Swedes only eat big crawfish, so they’re old and tough). Use a toothpick to get all the claw meat out. Tear off all the little legs and suck on those. Suck the underside of the body where the little legs were attached. Gently squeeze and lift body shell up and forward. Lick the fat from the inside of the body, then tear body from tail. Use a toothpick to get all the fat from inside the head. While looking at the underside of the tail, using fingers, break triangular tips of tail shell segments off, exposing entire tail. (Now that took a while, which is why we drink one glass of vodka and sing a song for every crawfish we eat.)

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April 28th 2010

Oh, Tart!

Notes: Thumbs up for the lemon tart at our Treme-watching party last night. Very, very lemony (desired effect) but a bit too puddingy (hello? SIX eggs! what did I expect?). A bit like lemon meringue without the meringue. More American than French. Want French.

So all my life I’ve had a difficult relationship with pie crusts. My stepdad made the best. He was a pastry chef long before he met my mother and me, and never lost the touch. His cheese and ham pies were miracles of fluffy egg and flaky crust. He had enormous hands that could pinch a dough together in seconds.

When I moved to America, I almost stopped making pie crusts. American flour can be like plaster and the butter seemed watery compared to the European butters I grew up with. When I rolled out my pie dough, it would either break or become a sticky mess—never perfect. I eventually settled for the sticky mess, but didn’t bother rolling it out; I just spread and pushed the dough over the pie pan with floured fingers.

This morning, I made a pie crust for a lemon tart that I was fairly happy with. I’ve always made the mistake of not letting the dough rest in the refrigerator long enough. My stepdad would let it rest for at least one hour, wrapped in wax paper, before rolling it out, and then again (for 30 minutes) after “dressing” the pie pan. I learned three other tricks from him: 1. Do not use water; use vodka from the freezer. Since the alcohol evaporates in the oven, you get all the benefits of liquid without compromising the flakiness. 2. Always keep the dough cold. 3. Roll the dough out on wax paper or a pastry sheet so you can easily pick it up and drape it over your pie pan.

This is my recipe:

1 stick salted butter, from the freezer (I’m not a fanatic about unsalted butter. In Sweden, we always used salted butter and were somehow never punished.)

180 grams flour

1 tablespoon confectioners sugar (only for sweet recipes)

4 tablespoons unflavored vodka, from the freezer

Grate frozen/cold butter and mix with flour (and sugar) using a fork. Add vodka, one tablespoon at a time, until the dough starts coming together. Use your hands at the very end, and as little as possible, eliminating butter clumps and shaping the dough into one thick disk. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest in the refrigerator for at least one hour, or overnight. Roll dough out on top of a piece of wax paper or pastry cloth, remembering to flour the rolling pin. Shape into a circle slightly larger than your pie pan. Drape dough over pan, covering pan completely. Cut off excess with a knife, or pinch edge in place. Prick bottom with a fork several times and let rest again, in the refrigerator, for 30 minutes. Bake crust in the oven at 400 degrees for 12 minutes. Fill.

For the lemon tart you’ll also need:

5 lemons

150 grams sugar

6 eggs

2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons half-and-half

Zest and juice lemons. Warm zest and juice in a sauce pan with sugar until sugar dissolves (do not simmer/boil). In another sauce pan, whisk eggs until even, then add half-and-half. Warm slowly (do not simmer/boil) while whisking constantly, then add lemon syrup while continuing to whisk constantly. Whisk and warm this mixture until it begins to thicken. Remove from heat and pour immediately into the pie shell. Bake at 325 degrees for 30-40 minutes. Cool completely. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour. Before serving, dust with confectioners sugar.

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