sunday night dinner

It was rainy and cold and dark all weekend, which was perfect for my mood. We pretty much huddled in our apartment for two days straight, playing Madden, watching scary movies, eating takeout, playing darts, and drinking beers. It was, to say the least, very renewing.

So today for Sunday dinner we wanted something along those same lines - something renewing, something hearty, something with a lot of protein, something that would get us prepared for Monday morning. The answer was obvious: one of our favorite dishes, my maternal grandmother’s red beans and rice recipe.

This classic Louisiana Creole dish was traditionally served each Monday night, using the leftover ham from Sunday dinner. It also gave women a break from cooking on Monday, the traditional wash day, since the beans are easy to prepare and made to simmer on the stove throughout the day. Sure, you can always run down to New Orleans, where red beans and rice is usually served as the Monday lunch special at local restaurants, or you could cook some up yourself, whenever you pleased.

I find it to be an awesome, original alternative to chili to make for Sunday and Monday night football game get-togethers - it’s spicy and it sits well all day so that guests can fix a bowl whenever they’re hungry. The best part is that it is both easy to freeze and tastes awesome after being reheated. Oh, and it’s dirt cheap to make, which is probably another reason my mom grew up eating it so often along with her seven brothers and sisters on a little farm in Louisiana.

Red Beans and Rice

1 pound bag of dried kidney beans
3 ribs of celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 bay leaf
1 pound smoked sausage, sliced, or ham hocks or left over ham (I put in both sausage and diced ham, and it is awesome)
1/2 t. black pepper
Cayenne pepper (until it’s as spicy as you’d like)
Salt to taste (The sausage/ham will add salt, so be careful.)

• Rinse and sort red beans; soak for at least a couple of hours.
• Drain beans.
• Sauté celery, onion and garlic in 2 tablespoons of butter (or some extra virgin olive oil)
• Add sausage or ham or both.
• Add about10 cups of water, beans and bay leaf.
• Bring to boil; Simmer for 2 hours or until beans are tender. Add more water if necessary.
• Smash some of the beans against the side of the pot to thicken the beans once they are tender.
• Serve over hot rice.

You can also cook them in a crock pot overnight or during the day while you’re at work. I always make a pan of cornbread to go with it. I also make it healthier by trimming the fat off of the ham, using spicy turkey sausage, and eating it over brown rice.

Go to last week’s Sunday night dinner: steaks and cheesy potatoes.

Sunday dinner didn’t happen this weekend - Ben went to an invitation-only slightly-sketchy MMA fight (less sketchy then bare knuckles and cardboard-covered basement floors, but more sketchy than real, actual sanctioned fights) and I ate my two-pairs-of-chopsticks sushi takeout on the coffee table and watched the Bears-Packers game while focusing on the steely eyes of salt-and-peppery Brett Favre.

But - that doesn’t mean I won’t share a recipe this week. In fact, I’ll break out a biggie - my family’s time-tested down-home bayou-approved recipe for shrimp etouffee. If you’re not familiar with the dish, it’s a Cajun thing, of a stew-like consistency (but don’t ever, ever call it stew out loud), served over white rice. Etoufee means “to smother” in French and I would say that’s all you really need to know to imagine the rich, smooth seafood deliciousness that is this meal.

It’s also the great combination of being 1) pretty easy to make and 2) very fancy and exotic. Break this out at a dinner party, and your name will be sung throughout the ages. Cook this for new significant others, your significant others’ parents, or any other people you’d like to wow and they’ll leave thinking, “Wow, I was really impressed with Sarah - she’s just so… decadent, smooth, and rich.”

The one downside is the butter. There’s a lot of it. We’re talking about a cow’s worth of butter. And I’ve tried cutting back on it, but it just doesn’t taste as good. My advice is to only cook it on special nights (like Sundays) and to never, never tell your guests that you bought out the dairy section put together their meal.

Crawfish or Shrimp Etouffee (serves three)

1. Melt a stick of butter in a large skillet; use medium heat; be careful not to burn.
2. Add 1/2 c. finely chopped celery, 2 smashed garlic cloves, 5-6 chopped green onions. 
3. Sauté on low for about 10 minutes. 
4. Add 3T flour; using a whisk, stir sporadically and cook for 5 minutes on low heat (this is called a roux, which is a Creole sauce base. It is delicious. When you don’t think about the butter).
5. Add 2T parsley (fresh is best) 1t salt, 1/4 t cayenne pepper (or to your taste, but the dish should be spicy), and about 1 1/2 c. water.  Stir with whisk as you add the water.  Mixture should be the consistency of thin gravy. (You may have to increase the amount of water.)
6. Add 1 lb. shrimp or crawfish tails (previously thawed and peeled) and simmer for 15 minutes on low.  Remove from heat and let sit for a few minutes or longer to enhance flavors. 
7. Serve over hot white rice.

Some recipes use regular chopped onions and green peppers in addition to the celery and garlic.  Some recipes add tomato paste, but these are not REAL Cajun etoufee recipes. In fact, if you are ever served etouffee with tomatoes in it, you should push the plate away, scoff, and say something damning about the cook your best Cajun drawl — maybe even something about how it’s like a stew.

Ben and I have always struggled with Sundays - the depression, the sloth, and, many times, the lingering hangover. Sunday is the perfect combination of regret for your wasted weekend and dread for the coming week. A sadly ticking clock.

But - a year or two ago we started Sunday Dinners. On Sunday night, we decided, we would cook, eat, and forget about how we would inevitably feel in the morning. We would relax and celebrate the freedom of the weekend until the minute we went to bed, filled with delicious comfort food.

Cooking is something that I’ve become increasingly interested in as I’ve gotten older. My mother, my aunts, and my grandmother are all accomplished southern cooks bursting with recipes that have been fine-tuned through the generations. And although I try to hold off on the gravy during the week, Sunday is the day to break out the sausage, the flour, the beef, and the butter.

Even the most depressing act of Sunday night, making your Monday work lunch, is transformed into lovingly placing some leftovers in some Tupperware and whispering to yourself, “it’s always better the second day.”

Cooking is also very relaxing for me - a creative outlet that doesn’t, for a change, involve me weeping in front of a keyboard. I get to chop and grind and mix and I get a finished product in a few hours that doesn’t ever get workshopped. Just eaten.

In any case, I thought I’d share with you my recipes each week and see if I can’t start improving Sunday nights everywhere. I’d also love to hear about your favorite recipes. This week I made my mom’s beef stew (Ben made garlic bread and cleaned the kitchen afterward). It’s hard to screw up, cheap, and awesome for the first real week of fall. And - your apartment smells like stew all day (which I think has been proven to have the same effects as Prozac).

BEEF STEW

1.5 pounds beef
2 large potatoes
2 carrots
1 celery stock
1/3 cup of flour
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 capful Kitchen Bouquet  (you can find this old school product in any grocery store, usually in the instant gravy section even though it’s more of a spice)
other veggies (whatever you feel like or have around - green beans, corn, peas)
spices (salt, pepper, bay leaf, parsley, oregano, thyme, rosemary, garlic, whatever you feel like, fresh is always better)

Heat oil and garlic in a large Dutch oven or pot. Cut beef into bite-sized cubes. Dredge cubes in four, salt, and pepper. Add to pot along with chopped onions and finely chopped celery. When the beef is browned but not cooked through, add water until the beef is just covered (add more water if you like a thinner stew). Add the Kitchen Bouquet and spices. Cover and simmer for about an hour. Add diced potatoes, carrots, and any optional veggies. Cook on low for another hour or two - longer if you like it mushy and thick, shorter if you like the potatoes and carrots firm and completely intact. If you like your stew really, really thick, take your spoon and mash some of the potatoes against the side of the pot.

Serve with warm, buttery garlic bread made by your boo. Watch Sunday night football. Whatever you do, don’t check your work email or think about Monday morning.