Plum Crazy Cornish Game Hens

If you can believe it, we haven't yet told you about all of our New Orleans food adventures. But we'll come back to it. Now that we are home, we've been cooking again and the idea for this recipe was a bunch of beautiful red plums Chris brought home from the market. He had gone out to get produce and when he got home, he laid it all out on the table. It was a hodge-podge of fruits and vegetables, and for some reason, I honed right in on the plums and the red peppers. Weird mix, eh? That's why we're calling this recipe "Plum Crazy Cornish Game Hens."

It was definitely an experiment, roasting the plums, peppers, and some onions right in with the hens in a cast iron pan. We prefer to cook with red bell peppers over green; green peppers seem to take over everything else in a dish with their strong flavor. Anyway, the plums and peppers mixed in with the pan juices to create a side dish that was sweet and sour, soft and crunchy, all at the same time. We weren't really sure how these flavors were going to be together, but we loved it with the game hens. Crazy!

Plum Crazy Cornish Game Hens

Ingredients:

2 Cornish game hens

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 red plums, chopped

1/2 onion, chopped

1 red bell pepper, chopped

1 tablespoon honey

Heat a cast iron pan at 450 degrees for 45 minutes. Splay the game hens and season them, inside and out, with salt and pepper. Carefully add them to the heated pan, breast side up. Drizzle the hens with olive oil and cover the pan with foil. Roast for 30 minutes. Toss the chopped plums, pepper, onion and honey in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Add this mixture to the pan with the hens and stir to coat with the pan juices. Roast for 15 minutes uncovered, or until hens are cooked through. If hens are not brown enough, place pan under broiler for 5 minutes. Remove hens from pan and allow them to rest. In the meantime, over medium-high heat, reduce the plum and pepper mixture to desired consistency. Serve alongside roasted hens.

The Best Fried Chicken We Ever Had (Willie Mae's)

The best we ever had. It sounds hyperbolic, but in this case, it is 100% true. Willie Mae's Scotch House makes the best fried chicken we ever had.

Willie Mae's (the place and its namesake) is a New Orleans institution. It was originally a bar (hence the "Scotch House" in the name) opened by Willie Mae Seaton in the 1950's on Treme Street, in the famed Treme neighborhood of New Orleans. A year later, it moved to its current location at 2401 St. Ann Street in the same neighborhood. All the while, Willie Mae herself cooked her acclaimed Southern-soul cuisine - the now-famous fried chicken, red beans and rice, butter beans, smothered veal, pork chops and more. By 2005, the food was so noteworthy that the place was honored as an American classic by the James Beard Foundation. Then came Katrina.

The restaurant, as well as Willie Mae's adjoining home, was destroyed. A couple of years, plenty of private donations, and lots of help from the Southern Foodways Alliance and its volunteers, and the small corner lunch joint reopened in April 2007. Willie Mae, now in her mid-90's, no longer helms the fryer, but her great-granddaughter Kerry is carrying on her culinary traditions (at least on Mondays through Saturdays for lunch).

We grabbed a cab from the French Quarter and headed to Treme. When we gave the cabbie our destination, his smile widened and he said in his N'awlins drawl, "Now ya'll know what you're doin'!" He continued his praises of Willie Mae's fried chicken for almost the whole ride out, telling us he picks up some for almost every family gathering, and advising us as to which sides we should order. Ten minutes later, he dropped us at an unassuming white-washed cottage on a corner in a residential neighborhood filled with pastel-colored shotgun houses and said, "Ya'll enjoy!"

Our mouths were watering as we entered and smelled the food. There was no wait (a rare occurrence, we've heard) and we were seated in the small front dining room. We each ordered the three-piece fried chicken meal ($10) along with sides of red beans, butter beans and green beans, and a couple of cornbread muffins.

The fried chicken blew our hair back. It was out of this world! An amber-colored crusty coating enveloped each piece. It was perfectly seasoned and so wonderfully crispy that it shattered into brittle pieces as we ate it. The chicken inside was succulent and juicy and just soooo good. It's the perfect dichotomy of textures. We ate every crumb and licked our fingers clean. The sides were also delicious, but our favorites were the creamy butter beans in their velvety garlic gravy and the moist cornbread.

There is a lot of debate about fried chicken, but one bite in, and we are now staunch supporters of Willie Mae's as being absolutely the best we ever had. The juiciest. The crispiest. The flakiest. The Best. It deserves all of the praise it has gotten over the years, and we surely hope we can make it back there sooner rather than later.

To find out more about Willie Mae, her famous restaurant, and the inspiration she has been to the chefs of New Orleans, see this great YouTube video.

Simple Recipes Feature

Our summery cocktail, the Melonshine, is being featured at Simple Recipes this week. Find it here. Simple Recipes is a great blog that features recipes and ideas from bloggers the Fullers as well as other food bloggers they call "Featured Foodies." Stop by and give it a read!

Restaurant R'evolution

Revolution. Coup. Innovation. Metamorphosis. Transformation. Uprising. Who would attempt a culinary "revolution" in the one city in America that takes more pride in its culinary traditions than anywhere else? The answer is Chef John Folse and Chef Rick Tramonto, with their newly opened, and aptly named, Restaurant R'evolution in the Royal Sonesta Hotel in New Orleans. The two are an unlikely pair - Louisiana native Folse is an authority on Cajun and Creole cooking, while Tramonto is an Italian from New York who worked in fine dining restaurants there and in Chicago before announcing the partnership with Folse in 2010. Restaurant R'evolution is their first place together, and while we were in New Orleans, nothing was going to stop us from eating there.

The home base for our stay in New Orleans was best friends' K's and J's home in River Ridge. But we decided to get a couple of rooms in the French Quarter for a night, dress up and find out whether R'evolution can deliver on their promise of a contemporary translation of Cajun and Creole cuisine (it can, and it does).

We were seated at a table within view of the open kitchen, always a plus for us lovers of the Food Network and Cooking Channel. The walls were lined with white-washed cabinets in which hung various meats destined to be thinly sliced and served on charcuterie platters. The chairs were high-backed and comfortable, a good thing, since our dining experience, from amuse bouche to complimentary sweets, lasted close to four hours. The decor was elegant with a touch of whimsy, like scarlet spindles printed onto the chair upholstery and a silhouette of a Southern belle etched into the glass on the ladies' room door.

We settled in with our drinks and shortly after, our server brought an amuse bouche of a shot of carrot and ginger soup with a slightly salted rim. We love the colored cardstock that decorated each plate - a fun and festive look indeed.

Much to our delight, Chef Folse visited the table and asked what we were thinking of ordering. At this point, Amy became her chef-groupie self, staring with wide-eyed wonder and blushing while trying to form a coherent sentence while the rest of the table had a nice conversation with the legendary chef. He was a friendly and gracious host who offered suggestions of his favorites and happily posed for a photo or two.

We took Chef's suggestions under advisement, then the four of us each ordered an appetizer and an entree, along with a couple of side dishes for the table to share. Of course, we also (barely) left room for dessert. Here is a photo gallery of the meal, along with brief descriptions of each dish.

First, the appetizers.

Death by Gumbo - a wonderfully rich, muddy broth poured at the table over a roasted quail with spicy andouille, rice and briny oysters.

Corn and Crab Cappuccino - a soft, velvety soup filled with fresh sweet corn and crabmeat and topped with a little bit of popcorn and a thin sliver of black truffle.

Tomato Salad - a Jackson Pollack-esque plate of heirloom tomatoes drizzled with balsamic and garnished with a scoop of olive oil gelato.

Pig Out Board - a charcuterie "binge" board of various meats, vegetables and relishes.

Next, the entrees.

Gulf Shrimp and Grits "Villages d'Est" - head-on shrimp stir-fried in a spicy ginger and chili sauce and served over cheesy grits that Chef Folse told us are stone-ground at his plantation near Baton Rouge.

Crawfish-Stuffed Flounder Napoleon - one of chef's strong suggestions - flaky flounder with a crawfish dressing served in a tangy artichoke and oyster stew with fried crawfish balls.

Sorghum-Cured Breast of Duck - tender duck in a molasses-flavored lacquer with soy beans, corn, tomatoes and stone-ground grits served with a miso beurre noisette.

Triptych of Quail - quail served three ways: crispy Southern-fried, uniquely Absinthe-glazed, and meaty boudin-stuffed.

For side dishes, we went au gratin, sharing the Artichoke and Mirliton (aka chayote squash) au gratin and the Gruyere potatoes au gratin (the former got the winning vote).

Dessert also offered a "triptych" this time of cheesecakes, which the ladies shared: marscapone with peaches, Creole cream cheese with strawberries, and goat cheese with plums; while the gentlemen enjoyed a chocolate souffle with Grand Marnier creme anglaise. At the end of the meal, our server delivered a gorgeously decorated jewelry box, and in each drawer were sweets - tartlets, truffles, pralines - to finish our meal.

This was, in many ways, among the best dining experiences we've had. Each bite (and yes, we all somehow managed to taste everything that came to the table) resulted in moans of gastronomic pleasure, and there were plenty of bites to go around. Enjoying it with our best of friends made it even better, naturally. There were some problems in the service - it was a bit slow, at times inattentive, and there were a couple of serious fumbles (Amy was given two knives and no fork to eat her duck with, a server splashed J with beer). Still, the food, as it should be, was the star of the show, with each simple Louisiana ingredient being respected while at the same time gently coaxed into a better version of itself.  In this way, one can almost compare it to the city of New Orleans, relying on her foundations not just to rebuild, but to evolve into something better. That is what Chefs Folse and Tramonto are doing here. And it is truly revolutionary. 

Summer Corn and Cockles Pasta

No, we have not forgotten our promise to tell you more about our culinary adventures in New Orleans. We ate and drank our way through the city, took plenty of photos, spent time with wonderful friends, and now that we're home safe and sound, we need some time to organize our thoughts (and those photos!). So we will come back to that.

But having indulged in Southern style cuisine for all that time, for last night's dinner we wanted something lighter than what we've been eating. Chris went out to buy some produce and along with it, a pound of teeny tiny heart-shaped cockles that he thought would be great in a summery pasta dish. We used a garlic-parsley angel hair we bought at the farmers market a few weeks ago and made a tangy sweet sauce with Sicilian lemon vinegar.  Garlic added a much-needed kick and lemon zest boosted the fresh, light flavor. We liked it a lot, but might try it with some red pepper flakes next time. Can't find lemon vinegar? Use white wine vinegar and add a bit of lemon juice. Plain angel hair will work nicely as well.

Summer Corn and Cockles Pasta

(makes a light dinner for two or

four appetizer-sized plates)

Ingredients:

2 nests garlic-parsley angel hair pasta

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 pound cockles in the shell

1 ear of fresh corn, kernels shaved off

1 teaspoon lemon vinegar

1 teaspoon simple syrup

1/4 teaspoon lemon zest

1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro

Prepare the angel hair according to package directions. While pasta is cooking, heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic and cockles and cook, shaking the pan often, until cockles begin to open. Add the corn kernels and vinegar and continue to shake the skillet to incorporate. Gently stir in the simple syrup and lemon zest and give it a couple of last shakes, cooking until all cockles are open. Set aside. Drain pasta and toss in cockles and sauce. Serve garnished with chopped cilantro.