With our Mardi Gras decorations up and the king cake a definite, some Cajun, Creole, and/or Southern dishes would go nicely. But two of them are vegetarian, and I’ve never come across vegetarian Cajun food in my life. Hm. I called up several vegetarian Cajun recipes online, and found that they weren’t too different from my existing ones, actually. Simply leaving out the meat and substituting vegetarian ingredients doesn’t always work, as I’ve learned with gravy. (I’ve yet to make a decent vegetarian gravy.) But hey, here’s numerous sources telling me essentially to give that a go with these things. Okay, so I did. I broke my rule of always testing recipes before serving them, because it’s a very friendly group. In the end, I served:

• Red beans and rice – I modified my own recipe slightly for this; it turned out beautifully.
• Gumbo (with rice) – this uses carrots as the main thing instead of meat. I didn’t like it, because carrots go sweet when you cook them like that. I might try it with potatoes at some point in the future.
• Hoppin John – in honor of being so near the new year, I introduced them to this traditional New Year’s Southern dish.
• Cornbread – our recipe has always yielded sweet cornbread, and I wondered how it’d taste with less sugar, so I halved it. It came out far too salty; I’m not sure if I added too much salt by accident, or if less sugar means less salt is needed. It was also more crumbly than usual. I shall keep tinkering with this.
• King Cake – always a favorite. This time I filled it with blueberry and black currant jams. The filling looks a bit lacking – I think it needs the even-spreading texture of something like that cream cheese filling. As luck would have it, I plan to make the next one with lemon curd, which will have that same property, so I can test this theory!

We usually have a starter, then a main course, then a dessert, like civilized people, but I really couldn’t come up with a starter I could do with the time, ingredient, and cuisine constraints, so instead I served all but the cake together, and told them to look at it sort of tapas style: take a little of each, and then take more of whatever they like.

It worked out pretty well! We all got full enough, I think, and enough praise was heaped on the dishes that I think they all found something they liked. Phew! I knew I was going out on a limb with Cajun food in general – we generally stick to much less ethnic food. But I made it all extra mild so the flavors would come through, and it seemed to go over okay. Hooray! So now I’ve given them some education into the ways of the Swamp People.

• General Tso’s Chicken – added some seasonings to this to get a great dish. Yum!
• Egg drop soup – tested making it with vegetable broth instead of chicken broth, for future possibility of serving it to vegetarians. Worked well! They don’t do this soup here – the bog standard British Chinese soup is chicken and sweetcorn, which is good, but it’s not egg drop soup. I’m so glad I found a recipe that’s nice and easy.
• Hashbrown casserole – This was hideous. I’m trying to clear out the cupboard, and found a can of cream of chicken soup (lord knows why I had that). Did a search on food.com for recipes using this, and thought, hey, we love hash browns, can’t go wrong with this, right? Wrong. It felt like sacrilege in the kitchen to put perfectly lovely hash browns into a casserole, and at the table we confirmed it was. Ho hum. Live and learn!
• Pasta bake – This was a decent start. I found this one because I was trying to use the can of tomato soup I found lurking in the back of the cupboard. Mission accomplished! We’ll keep this recipe, and improve it gradually.
• Lemon curd – Chris finished the jar I made him for Christmas ages ago, so I made him another jar. He’s really liking this new cooking spree. 😉

That’s really all that’s worth sharing this week. We’ve just put the turkey in the brine so we’ll have roast turkey tomorrow night – no special occassion, just because they still had turkeys at the store (they’re seasonal here), so I decided we’d have another since we’ve finished most of what we cooked in November (we’d frozen it). On that note, good night!

We had a (mostly) English Roast Dinner on Boxing Day when the in-laws came over. Pulled pork isn’t a usual feature at an English Roast dinner – usually it’s a roast of some sort – but we decided to introduce the in-laws to it since:

1. the timeline for cooking it was convenient for us (we could cook it in advance and then warm it up),
2. we knew we’d have turkey at theirs on Christmas Day and we didn’t want it two days in a row,
3. beef isn’t an option (mother-in-law doesn’t like it), and
4. we have a rule against serving things we’ve never tried before, which limited our options for preparations of large hunks of meat. Clearly this is something I should address before next Boxing Day.

So, we had:

• Pulled pork – always a favorite recipe for us (thanks, wraith!). Instead of mixing it with our usual barbecue sauce or making it into cochinita pibil, we just mixed it with regular gravy, and it was quite good – it was even a hit with the in-laws!
• Roast potatoes – always a favorite.
• Mashed potatoes – I do prefer these ones done with the ricer.
• Carrots, peas, corn, gravy
• Stuffing – this came out okay. I’m still struggling with it.
• Yorkshire puddings – I love these things. On Boxing Day night, they deflated, but I think I’ve cracked it now: using bread flour gives more gluten, yielding a firmer structure that doesn’t deflate as much, and it has a better chew. Definitely doing that from now on. Some crazy people think Yorkshire puds should only be had with beef – I say we should have them all the time, with almost anything!
• Chocolate cake – Hoooray, I have a keeper! I have searched high and low for a good chocolate cake recipe: moist, chocolately, not fudge: apparently it was a tall order. I finally found the cake! Hip hip hooray!
• Red velvet cupcakes – we frosted these with green and white icing, just for the fun of it. Red & green aren’t really Christmas colors here – there’s even a rhyme that says “Red and green should not be seen”, but red and green still means Christmas in this house.
• Mini golden syrup sponges – Yum! We’d tested this the week before and they were absolutely delicious – and reheated well, so we decided they would do nicely. Then when the day came, they took three times as long to bake and never did rise as much or get browned. I finally realized why – the next day. I’d (knowingly) substituted the plain flour for the self-raising, but forgotten to add in the baking powder and salt that you need to do for that substitution. Just too busy in the kitchen that day, and it slipped through the cracks! I’ve rewritten the recipe now to include those (I refuse to buy anymore self-raising flour, since it took me about three years to get through my last bag, and all it is, literally, is plain flour with baking powder and salt added). Amazingly, they were still pretty tasty.

• Pizza – with this crust and this sauce (made without any of the meat), loads of lovely toppings, and a side of salad. I forgot how good pizza could be. That was delicious, and will make a regular appearance on our menu once again.
• Turkey Enchiladas – with this sauce and Mexican rice on the side. I love that Mexican rice recipe. Not only is it tasty, but it freezes and reheats beautifully.
• Alfredo Shrimp Tilapia, broccoli & cheese (the rest of the alfredo), carrots, peas, and rice. This is our traditional New Year’s Eve meal. It is tasty. 🙂
• Hoppin John – it is traditional where I come from to eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day for good luck in the coming year. We’ve finally adopted that tradition. I’m still tinkering with this recipe; first it was too bland, and now I think it’s too seasoned. I’m sure I’ll get there eventually.

That’s really all the interesting stuff we’ve had lately, so I shall close this for now!