The Mail Slot {and Risotto Stuffed Tomatoes}

My great grandparents lived in a modest house on two lots in the suburbs of New Orleans.  Rather than a huge house with very little yard like you tend to find now, most of their property was great-grandpa's garden.  The house was very small--smaller than the garden, which overflowed with broccoli, greens, green beans, tomatoes.

There is one feature of their house that stood out for my brothers and me.  The mail slot that was built right into the brick wall.  It wasn't a mail slot in the front door where mail would drop to the floor.  This was a small box built into the wall, accessible from the inside by a little lift-up wooden door.  No one else we knew had such a thing, making it a plaything when we visited.

We would "mail" each other giggles (and sometimes insults) through the outer and inner doors.  Send each other wiggly fingers through the narrow opening spanning inside and not.

Sometimes we were sweet, shipping bouquets of white clover, yellow wood sorrel, violet wood sorrel, and buttercups through the mail slot for great-grandma to discover after we headed home.

Sometimes we were little shits, leaving doodle bugs (pill bugs), worms...or maybe a lizard if we felt really bold.

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Great-grandma prepared whatever came out of the garden.   I suspect without recipes.  And tomatoes were usually served as is.  Maybe with a little salt and pepper.

Packed with garlic, savory with Italian sausage, and summery with fresh basil, when it comes to tomato recipes and doing something with them more than slicing, this is one of my favorites.

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Risotto Stuffed Tomatoes

4 ripe, medium to large tomatoes
2 links Italian sausage, hot or mild, casing removed
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for drizzling
5 large garlic cloves, minced (about 2 Tbsp)
1/2 cup Arborio rice
1/2 cup reserved juices from the tomatoes
1 1/2 cups chicken broth, warmed
1/3 cup loosely packed chopped fresh basil
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
pinch of red pepper flakes

Preheat oven to 400.
Cut off the top third of each tomato and set the tops to the side.  Using a paring knife and/or a spoon, remove the inside of each tomato, being careful not to puncture the walls of the tomatoes.  Reserve the pulp and juices.  Place the tomatoes in a medium greased baking dish.  You may need to prop them against each other so that they stand up.

Add 1 Tbsp of olive oil to a medium skillet.  Saute the sausage over medium heat until it has browned lightly.  Lower the heat and add the garlic, cooking a few minutes more.

While the sausage browns and garlic sautes, break up the tomato pulp into pieces, straining and reserving the juices.

Add the Arborio to the skillet and saute until it is translucent (5-7 minutes).  Add 1/2 cup of the tomato juices and stir until the liquid is almost absorbed.  Add the broth, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring after each addition, until the liquid is almost absorbed. After about 15 minutes, test the rice.  If it is still hard, add a small amount of broth or water and repeat stirring until the liquid is almost absorbed.  If the risotto is chewy, remove from the heat.  Stir in the basil and season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.

Spoon mixture into the tomato shells (there may be some left over).  Place the tomato tops on the stuffed tomatoes.  Drizzle with olive oil and bake until the tomatoes are soft and the rice is tender, about 35-40 minutes. Remove from oven and cool slightly before serving.

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Seeing

There was a time when it would upset me.  Hearing his voice.  Seeing his glasses on a table top.  It took me a while to adjust.

We were tight.  The two of us.  I was the first granchild.  The only girl grandbaby for 18 years.  Seeing that in writing strikes me only now.

He died suddenly in 2001.  For years afterwards, my grandma kept the outgoing message on her answering machine.  His message.  His voice.  The first time I called and heard it after he died, I hung up without leaving a message.  I couldn't speak.

Grandma still keeps his eyeglasses sitting on a table or counter top.  I first noticed a pair in the bedroom where everyone puts their coats.  Then another set on the kitchen counter.  And on the bathroom counter sitting by the sink.  Pretty soon I realized there were pairs in every room in the house.  Folded like crabs waiting to pinch some memory out of me.

My grandpa was involved in the Lion's Club, which is committed to providing glasses to people in need.  He collected old eyeglasses like nobody's business.

He had a passion for his Lion's Club.  Another way he supported the club was by buying copies of their annual fundraiser cookbook and passing them out at Christmas.

This Buttermilk Banana Bread comes from Home Cookin': The Lions Clubs Cookbook, Volume 3, 1999.  I'm not a big banana bread kinda gal, but I do like the use of buttermilk here.  When I bake this, I think of my grandpa.

Notes:
* Call me weird, but I like to bake quick breads in an 8 x 8 pan.  It becomes more of a cake than a bread and seems to bake up evenly moist.  When I bake quick breads in loaf pans, the outside usually ends up overdone.
* I would love to stir in some pecans, but The Boy likes "smooth food."

This week's See Ya In the Gumbo potluck is HERE

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Buttermilk Banana Bread
from Home Cookin': The Lions Clubs Cookbook, Volume 3
1 3/4 c flour
1 1/2 c sugar (I use 1 c)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
3 ripe bananas, mashed (about 1 c)
1/2 c vegetable oil
1/4 c plus 1 tbsp buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
1 c chopped nuts (I omit)

Add ingredients to bowl in order given.  Pour into a 9x5x3" greased loaf pan.  Bake at 325 for about 1 hour and 20 minutes.  I use an 8 x 8 cake pan and watch.

 Check out these parties I'm linking with this week:

 

Catfish Divan "down at da camp"

Every fall my whole family goes "down to da camp" where Louisiana splays her webbed feet into the Gulf.

It's really something to wake up to this.

And end the day with this.

You might remember (if you've been here a while) last year's trip was after the BP spill.  It hurt me to see what I saw.  And the mess and sludge had already been cleaned up by then.  It was more about what I didn't see: life.  Wildlife.  Mainly birds.  So quiet and still and eerie last year.  So different and troubling.

Normally I look forward to this annual trip.  This year I found myself on edge the closer it came.  Almost dreading it.  Not knowing what I'd find.  Or wouldn't, rather.

The pelicans were back!  I couldn't stop taking pictures of them perched on pilings and flying overhead.  Other birds, like egrets and blue herons had returned too (although not in the numbers I saw before BP).

This year we outdid ourselves, throwing in some extra activities.
Like crabbing in Lake Hermitage w/ grandpa.

And a crab boil.

And BB gun mania.

Dahlin', you know you passed a good weekend when
"fun & exhausting"
sum it up.

And no one shot their (or anyone else's) eye out.

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A couple of years before he died, my grandpa gave me From Woodstoves to Microwaves...Cooking with Entergy, a cookbook published in 1997 by the electric company in New Orleans. It's more than a cookbook, it's New Orleans food history. The cookbook is a collection of recipes that Entergy mailed alongside it's customer's bills and used in cooking demonstrations (to show people how to use modern appliances). Recipes that reflect what the people of New Orleans eat and have eaten for many years. The introduction to From Woodstoves to Microwaves explains:
"...this cookbook is a reprint of...many recipes that are, in many respects, the essence of this city. These are as much an archive of New Orleans' culture and community as any work of history or anthropology. And with the history comes a little lagniappe--the opportunity to taste New Orleans."

I love to flip through this book, reminding myself of meals eaten on Sunday afternoons at my great-grandma's house, or dishes my grandpa experimented with.

Today's fish recipe, Catfish Divan, is an adaptation of a recipe found in this book.

I absolutely loved this dish! So much that I made it twice last month. The fish is first poached in white wine and green onions.

Waste not want not...the poaching liquid is used in the sauce. The tasty, tasty sauce.

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Catfish Divan
adapted from From Woodstoves to Microwaves
1 pound catfish fillets
1/2 lemon
3-4 green onions, chopped
1/2 cup white wine
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour
1/2 cup half & half, room temp or warmed
1 tsp salt, divided
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, divided
about 8 oz frozen broccoli spears, thawed (roughly 1 package)
black pepper to taste
1/4 sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 350.

Rub the fish fillets with the cut side of the lemon. Add green onions and wine to a shallow pan large enough for the fish to fit in one layer. Place the fish in the pan. Simmer over low heat, basting occasionally, until the fillets begin to flake.

In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. When the butter bubbles, add the flour and stir. Cook for a few minutes, then stir in the half & half, about 3/4 tsp salt, and 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid. Stir while cooking until the sauce thickens and bubbles, about 4 minutes. Stir in 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese and squeeze the remaining juice from the lemon half into the sauce.

Grease a casserole dish large enough to lay the fish flat in one layer. Place the fish in the casserole and season with the remaining salt (or to taste) and with black pepper. Top with the broccoli. Pour the sauce over the broccoli, sprinkle with remaining Parmesan cheese and the sliced almonds. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes, or until bubbly.

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Cookbook Sundays

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