Hotlanta? Yeah, that’s the name granted this city when it is summer time, but not as of late. Not that I am one to complain about the cold; I mean I am from Philadelphia, but this winter weather here in Atlanta has been the coldest I have ever experienced here. It was like 5 degrees-F last weekend and yesterday it didn’t break 32.

Again, I’m not complaining about the weather. I’m really not. I am whining about what the cold-ass weather can do. You know like kill you car battery, freeze your locks, (hair and car), zap the battery on your iPod, deter your long overdue home-gym-in-the-cold-ass-no-heat-having-garage workout, and just plain make you stay in the warm heated abode.

Well we woke last Saturday to find that there was no hot water, absolutely none! The pipe in the external wall had frozen right at the water heater. Great, I’m thinking. Shortly it’ll be time for them to burst and spew wetness inside the wall where we’ll have to hire a burly, butt-crack revealing, plumber to tear up the laundry room to reveal the purse draining mishap.

But wait. The temperature never reached 30 degrees-F this day, but the sun shining on that particular side of the house for the length of time that it did gave the frozen pipe the opportunity to release my hot water back to us. And it did with no request for a hefty ransom. I was overjoyed. We remembered to let the faucet drip that night. All was well.

But was it?

No, no it wasn’t.

When Beck went to wash dishes. She noticed that the pressure seemed as if I was in the shower. But due to the fact that I was non-showered and standing in front of her, the thought went to maybe I broke character and decided to actually due a load of laundry. Um, nope. So why so little pressure?

Check the wall! Quiet. It’s not running, the wall. Further investigation led us to the guest bathroom where we could hear it. Dammit. The water is running and we can’t catch it.

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Bold flavors in this dish, I’m telling you! I have Creole roots (as opposed to blond) and whenever it comes to anything that includes andouille, crab, hot sauce, and wine, I’m in with all chips.

This adventure began as a meager mission to Whole Foods to grab some dry-aged rib-eyes. Of course, I had to make a quick pass by the seafood section on my way to the cashier, right? How could I not? Here I spot, fresh red grouper. I mean FRESH! As in arrived a few hours ago from the Gulf of Mexico.



I very rarely see red grouper in my local fish monger’s case. For the most part, I can only find red grouper on a menu in a seafood restaurant or in one of the few gourmet food stores and then it’s $25 per pound. You can imagine my lust when I saw the price was a mere $13 per pound on this day.



The red grouper is primarily found in the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic. I asked a buddy of mine who is an avid angler and he told me that the red grouper fishing has a lot of restrictions which is why it is so expensive and allusive.

Nevertheless, it is one helluva tasty beast. It is in the sea bass family, although the taste is closer to red snapper. The flesh flakes like flounder and is very mild thus making it conducive to a vast array of cooking applications. So it was settled, it was panko.

This particular day I was in the Creole spirit and decided to do a Creole/Cajun inspired dish. My first inclination was to simple dredge the fish in flour and saute then smothering it in the crab sauce, but my wife loves most anything with a panko crust because it adds texture and hold up to saucing much better than ordinary bread crumbs.

In most any fish dish that I create, I will always make an excuse to top it with a wine sauce containing either small shrimp (redundant?) or crab meat. And NO! Not crab with a “K". Real honest to goodness crab meat, typically lump. Here the crab meat is seasoned with my blend of Creole spicing. A little of this, a little of that, and lots of cayenne!



The sauce is rounded out with white wine and andouille sausage, but the secret weapon was the Cajun Sunshine.



That’s right. Up a notch, it was kicked!

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First let me say a most gracious thank you to all you who wished me and my peeps well this past holiday season. I truly hope that all of you had a wonderful holiday and I hope that the new year brings much love, luck, prosperity, and of course, great dishes!

How the time flies! January 2nd marked my one year anniversary as a blogger. I have to say, I have thoroughly enjoyed this venture and I plan on giving it my all to “bring-it” in this new year.

I really want to thank all of you who have encouraged me with your comments, inspired me with your blogs, and who have become close virtual friends out here is this vast blogosphere. I really appreciate everything you guys do.

Behold my favorite soup of all time. Well technically it is clam chowder without the corn that is my all time favorite, but this time I had leftover corn so I went crazy with the dish and radically added corn to it.



I may have mentioned a time or two that I am a huge clam lover; most seafood actually, but when you combine bacony lardons, semi firm potatoes, herbs, white pepper, and cream, with clams, well, put on a DVD, ladle me a bowl and pass the oyster crackers, it’s comfort time.



I am not much for the Manhattan style of clam chowder. I mean I like it, but I much prefer the New England syle - creamy over tomato-y. I have the same preference when it comes to linguine and clams; white sauce over the red.



Most every recipe that I have seen for clam chowder uses canned clams. Now I have used canned clams in the past for pasta dishes and the like, but I found a jewel in the frozen variety. The only place that I have seen the frozen shucked clams is at Whole Paychex, although I’d be willing to bet the Trader Joe’s carries something similar. Whole Foods carries them in 14oz containers and they are sweet, succulent, and relatively inexpensive. If you are going to make this, try to locate the frozen clams. You’ll thank me for it.

This is a simple and easy preparation. I got started and within an hour, we were sitting down to enjoy a satisfying lunch and a ball game.

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With them popping up on more and more fine dining menus and all over the blogosphere, short ribs are becoming more and more fashionable. I have used short ribs for years in stews, but I have to say that wine braised is my favorite method for this relatively inexpensive beefy cut.

The first time I had short ribs, I was at a swanky Italian restaurant. The wife and I were curious about this new joint and decide to check it out. We went for the 6 course prix fixe menu with wine pairing. Pretty fancy schmancy. Well, the food was decent, but the quantity left much to be desired. I ended up spending over $250 and we had to stop at micky-D’s on the way home for some nuggets! I was more than miffed at this. I have to say though the menu did list the beef short rib as “beef short rib with potato puree” and it was ONE seriously short rib with maybe 3-4 ounces of meat on it. Tasty, yes, but tiny.

I have made braised short ribs any number of ways from cooking them to death and ending up with fall-apart dry meat to not cooking them enough and having a tough go of it. The technique that I use now is an amalgamation of various approaches that I have used in the past. This process take two days but is well worth it. It can be done in one, but allowing the ribs to sit in the fridge overnight with the wine and aromatics really makes a difference.

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Colorful, ain’t it?

So I’m sitting at work, at my desk, banging out Java code, when I realize, I don’t feel much like cooking tonight. Now I get that feeling from time to time and I simply just don’t cook. Beck will usually fend for herself by eating some cake or a piece of pie. The only problem this time was that I was actually hungry and didn’t feel like cooking. Sure, a quick stop somewhere to get something fast could work, but I had something more dastardly in mind. I remembered the pork shoulder I had in the fridge that had only been partially used for pot stickers a couple of days earlier and then the halogen above my head fully illuminated, “twice cooked pork!", yeah, that’s the ticket! Only, since I really didn’t feel like cooking, I damn sure didn’t feel like cooking something TWICE!

So on the ride home from the grind, I ventured into my favorite cash depository, Whole Foods Paychex, and rounded up the usual suspects for a quick stir-fry. This particular fry was to have some noodles in it though. I haven’t worked to much with noodles in my pseudo, quasi, trying-hard to taste authentic, Asian inspired dishes, but I’d seen one blog (do remind me which one someone, please) with “slurpy udon noodles” and my wife had just gotten some when we ordered in. So having noodle on the brain, more so than usual, I wanted to experiment a bit; ever so slightly expanding my culinary bounds, if you will. Or even if you won’t.

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