So you’re driving through town and there’s a guy by the roundabout with a wheelbarrow full of live lobsters.  You’d stop, right?  Even if you’ve just come from the dock where you bought a load of swordfish straight off the boat.  And your fisherman friend was stopping by later to drop off a wahoo he’d caught that morning.  An embarrassment of briny riches.  Anyway, I firmly believe there’s no such thing as too much fresh seafood.

Of course we had to stop.  Bones and I bought a couple of two-pounders and the fisherman threw in another small one for free.  I’ve been wanting to get my hands on a fresh lobster ever since I saw Lidia Bastianich make a Sardinian lobster salad on her wonderful show, Lidia’s Italy.

You know how a flavor combination gets stuck in your head sometimes, kind of like a silly pop song you heard on the radio?  In this case, it was the pairing of celery leaf and lobster that took hold.  I thought the slightly bitter celery leaves and the rich, sweet lobster would set each other off nicely.  And they did.  Very well indeed, I am happy to report.

Sardinian Lobster Salad

This is my take on Lidia’s lobster salad and it was glorious.  Success depends upon the quality of your tomatoes and perfectly cooked lobster, which is another way of saying don’t use sad supermarket tomatoes and don’t overcook your lobster.  Happily, this is the Caribbean and it’s always tomato season.  And I got the lobster just right.

The potato was added because I had it on hand and because I was feeding the big guy.  Served with good bread and a bottle of Chateau Montelena Chardonnay, it made a lovely, light supper for two.

1 live Caribbean spiny lobster, about 2 pounds
1 large potato, peeled and cut into chunks
2 ripe tomatoes
2 stalks celery, including the leaves
2 hard-boiled eggs, peeled
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, the best you can get your hands on
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
a large pinch of dried hot red pepper flakes
salt
2 tablespoons chopped Italian parsley

First cook the lobster.  Bring a large pot of well-salted water to the boil.  Plunge the lobster head first into the boiling water and cover the pot.  When the water comes back to the boil, cook the lobster until it’s a bright reddish orange color, about 12 minutes for a 2-pound lobster.  Set the lobster aside until cool enough to handle.  Cook the potato in the lobster water until cooked through.  Drain the potato and place in a large bowl.

Slice the celery on a diagonal into 1/2-inch pieces and roughly chop the leaves.  Please the celery and the tomato wedges in the bowl with the potato.  Season with a little salt and stir gently to combine.

Remove the lobster meat from the shell.  In a spiny lobster, most of the meat is in the tail and there’s also a choice morsel right at the base of the antennae.  You can keep the tomalley and roe for the salad or discard it.  None of us love it so I give it to the cat.  This makes him happy and stops him climbing up my leg while I’m cleaning lobster.  Don’t forget to save the shells for making stock.  Cut the lobster meat into large pieces and add to the bowl with the tomato mixture.

Cut the eggs in half and remove the yolks.  Chop the egg whites and add them to the salad.  Put the egg yolks in a bowl and mash them with a fork.  Add the lemon juice and stir to combine.  Slowly whisk in the olive oil, add a generous pinch of hot pepper flakes and season to taste with salt.  Add the dressing and the parsley to the salad and toss gently to combine.  Serves 2.

I’d love to know who gave home cooks the idea that scratch cakes are hard to make.  If you’re new to baking, you might not want to start with génoise or angel food cake, but there’s certainly nothing difficult about devil’s food or that workhorse of the Southern kitchen, the pound cake.  Just follow the instructions carefully and you’ll be fine.  A few things to remember - don’t overbeat the batter, make sure your oven runs true to temperature and don’t open the door while your cake is baking.

Box cakes aren’t that much quicker anyway.  Since you usually still have to add eggs, water and shortening to a cake mix, I figure not having to measure and sift your dry ingredients saves you five minutes, ten minutes tops.  Small savings compared to what you gain in texture and flavor.

And it’s not like box cakes always turn out well, especially if you tinker with them.  The night that I met my husband, Bones, I had the bright idea of inviting him up for tea the next afternoon.  He’s British and I guess I thought it was the posh thing to do.  A rum cake seemed like a good idea at the time.  But I’m not posh, I didn’t have my sister’s recipe with me and I couldn’t find any yellow cake mix.  Thought I’d just wing it and try a chocolate rum cake instead.

This did not work out well.  Rather than substituting rum for a small portion of the water called for, I replaced all of the water with rum.  Whoa doggy!  The cake was only marginally edible but it did classify as hair of the dog, much needed as I recall.

Anyway, if you want an easy starter cake, may I suggest red velvet cupcakes?  Audrey (aged 13) made these all by herself last week for a class bake sale and they were the first thing on the table to sell out.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

I just love community cookbooks.  They’re put out by churches, schools and Junior Leagues all over America and I rarely pass up the chance to pick one up.  The best ones provide an accurate picture of what the local community is cooking at home.  A few, like Charleston Receipts put out by the Charleston Junior League and River Road Recipes from the Junior League of Baton Rouge, are classics.

I adapted this recipe from one in Talk About Good!, another Junior League production from Lafayette, Louisiana.  The recipe was provided by Adeline Stuller from Abbeville, Louisiana and like many recipes from these cookbooks, it’s pretty short on direction so I had some blanks to fill in.  Miss Stuller frosted her cake with a cooked white icing but Audrey prefers the tang of cream cheese frosting and I have to say I agree.

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 ounces red food coloring
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons cocoa
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon distilled white vinegar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Cream cheese frosting (recipe below)
Silver dragées for decorating (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350° and place paper or foil liners into your muffin tins.  You will need about 2 dozen liners.

Put the softened butter in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until the butter is creamy and shiny as a pearl.  Add the sugar and cream until the mixture is soft and fluffy.  Add the eggs and blend well.  Mix in the food coloring and the water.

Sift the cocoa powder, flour, salt, and baking soda together into another bowl.  Mix a third of the flour into the butter mixture and then mix in a third of the buttermilk.   Continue in this manner until all the dry ingredients and buttermilk are mixed into the batter.  Mix just enough to incorporate each ingredient – do not overbeat the batter.  Stir in the vinegar and the vanilla extract.

Fill the lined muffin tins about 3/4 full.  Then hold each tin a few inches from the counter and drop the pan gently but firmly on the counter.  This “spanking” will help get rid of any air bubbles (I forgot to tell Audrey this, hence the holes in the tops of her cupcakes, pictured above).  Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean, about 18-22 minutes.  Let cool for a few minutes in the pan and then remove to a rack to cool completely.  Spread or pipe the frosting onto the cooled cupcakes and top each with a silver dragée if desired.  Makes 22-24 cupcakes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups powdered (10x) sugar

Cream the butter and sugar together until very well mixed, about 2-3 minutes.  Mix in the vanilla, then add the powdered sugar and mix well.  Taste the frosting and add a little more sugar if a sweeter frosting is desired.  You can either use the frosting immediately or refrigerate it until it reaches the proper consistency for piping (it pipes easier if it’s a little colder).

* Recipe updated to reflect correct yield.  Also, I just made another batch of these this morning and the only food coloring I could find was a U.K. “natural” product.  It’s made with beetroot and paprika and I can definitely taste it in the batter.  Truly – they’re in the oven now and my whole kitchen smells of beets.  So unfortunately, I have to recommend that you use one of those chemical concoctions containing coloring agents not found in nature.

It is a truth universally acknowledged* that the best thing about Thanksgiving dinner is the leftovers.  Turkey sandwiches, turkey pie, turkey hash, turkey burritos, turkey tetrazzini, turkey soup.  Turkey, turkey, turkey….until we all beg for mercy and the cook of the house tries to convince the family that a nice leg of lamb would be just the ticket for Christmas dinner.

This year we didn’t have as much turkey left as I’d expected.  It’s amazing how much damage seven people can do to a 15-pound turkey.  But this was not a bad thing since it meant we never achieved the dreaded turkey fatigue.  We did, however, work ourselves up into a severe case of Good Food Overload.  Two full turkey dinners, a birthday party, an anniversary…so many delicious things to eat.  And eat we did.

The answer to all this rich holiday food was a turn to the bright, clean flavors of one of our favorite cuisines – Vietnam.   Borrowing a few tips from the masters of pho, I came up with a turkey soup that was spicy and herbal, deeply flavored but not overly rich.  With that wonderful fish sauce funk that is a hallmark of Vietnamese cuisine and warm notes of star anise and clove, the soup was the perfect antidote to a long weekend of serious indulgence.

As for that Christmas leg of lamb, I was outvoted and we’ll be having turkey again for Christmas.  But I am getting my way on Christmas Eve.  Because one thing my family loves more than turkey is wild boar.  And I’ve got five pounds in the freezer that’s earmarked for an Italian Christmas Eve feast.  Pappardelle al cinghiale anyone?

*With apologies to Jane Austen

Vietnamese Turkey Noodle Soup

If you’ve got some turkey stock still lurking in the freezer, this is the recipe for you.  If it’s too late for your Thanksgiving leftovers, keep it in mind for Christmas.  A good chicken stock would be just fine and I suspect duck stock would be pretty special too.  Sorry, but canned stock is too pale an imitation of the real thing to work here.  This soup is all about the stock and only homemade will do.  Personally, I found the soup, noodles and garnishes to be so flavorful that the turkey meat was kind of an afterthought and not really necessary.

2 quarts turkey stock
1 yellow onion, peeled
a 2-inch piece of ginger
1 stalk lemongrass
6 whole star anise
4 whole cloves
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon Chinese Five Spice powder
1/4 cup Vietnamese fish sauce
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons palm sugar or granulated sugar
a few shiitake mushrooms, stems removed and caps thinly sliced
leftover roast turkey, sliced or shredded
10-12 ounces Vietnamese rice noodles

Garnishes
Fresh herbs – cilantro or culantro (shadon beni), mint, Thai basil
Fresh bean sprouts
Lime wedges
Hot chili peppers, sliced into rings or minced
Sliced scallions and/or thinly sliced onions
Trimmed and sliced snow peas

The first order of business is to char the onion and ginger until they’re browned, over an open flame if possible.  You can do this over a gas burner on the stove or on a barbecue grill.  Just stick a long fork in them and hold them over the open flame until they’re brown and charred in spots, then peel off the outer layer of the onion and the skin of the ginger.  If no flame is available, you could char them in the oven under the broiler. 

Next, put the star anise, cloves and coriander in a small pan and roast them over high heat until they’re fragrant, about 2 minutes.  Make a little spice bag by putting the roasted spices in a piece of cheesecloth and tying it closed with string.  Cut off any roots still attached to the lemongrass and the top green part of the lemongrass stalk so you’re left with a piece of lemongrass about 3-4 inches long.  Use the back of a knife to bruise the lemongrass so it will release its flavor in the stock.

Put the chicken stock, garlic, ginger, spice bag, lemongrass, five spice powder, fish sauce, salt and sugar in a pot and bring just to a simmer.  Let the stock cook at a gentle simmer for an hour.  Remove the spice bag and the onion, garlic, ginger and lemongrass from the stock.  Add the sliced mushrooms and turkey to the the stock to warm up for 5 minutes.

In the meantime, cook the noodles according to the directions on the package.  Drain the noodles and rinse under the tap.  Ladle the soup into large bowls and divide the noodles among the bowls.  Serve the soup with a platter of the garnishes so that each diner can add the fresh herbs and vegetables as desired.  Serves 4-6.

I think it’s time we show the lowly green bean casserole a little love.  Like Mr. Dangerfield, it gets no respect.  Even in our family it’s referred to as White Trash Casserole.  This annoys our father greatly.  Still, those who would sniff and turn their noses up at the simple little side just can’t seem to leave well enough alone.

A quick search of the Food Network website pulls up about 20 different recipes for green bean casserole.  Alton, Fieri,  Guarnaschelli, Chiarello, that nutritionist woman…they all present their updated, homemade, made from scratch versions of the old Thanksgiving standby.  These casseroles are gussied up with roux, cream sauce, gravy, exotic mushrooms, french beans, shallots, sherry, brandy, fresh herbs and frizzled leeks.  Sunny Anderson tops her casserole with potato peels (I’m still trying to get my head around that one).  The humble casserole is Emerilized, Slimmed, Mashed-Up and definitely “Not Your Mama’s” (there are two of those).  It’s Family Fresh!

Interestingly, Sandra Lee is silent on the subject of the green bean casserole, though she does have one recipe using leftover green bean casserole.  And since they’ll have to pry the can opener from her cold, dead hands when she’s gone, I think we can guess where she might weigh in.

In any event, to suggest making green bean casserole from scratch is to entirely miss the point of the dish.  Green bean casserole isn’t a venerable American classic that’s been bastardized by the home cooks of America.  It was invented by Dorcas Reilly in 1955 in the Campbell’s Soup test kitchen.  It is, and always was, all about the cans.   Those who are interested can find the original Campbell’s recipe here.

Look, I’m a big advocate of home-cooked, made from scratch, real food - sometimes to the point of being obnoxious.  I began preparations for my Thanksgiving dinner this weekend with a big pot of turkey stock and some cranberry chutney.  Now it’s on to pie crusts, yeast rolls, cornbread for the stuffing.  I’ll cook my own sweet potatoes and pumpkin, no cans there.  But good Lord, cut a cook some slack.  Amidst the bustle of the turkey roasting,  potato mashing and gravy making, knowing there’s that one dish that requires nothing more than five minutes of prep, four ingredients and one baking dish is a godsend. 

Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  And here’s the thing about all those highfalutin’ made-from-scratch casseroles.  They may taste good.  They may well taste better.  But they wouldn’t taste right.

Ode to the Green Bean Casserole

One can, two cans, three cans, four,
Add a little milk and not much more.
Mix it all together, it’s really no chore,
Make it from scratch, what a great big bore.

And now you know why I’m not a poet.