Category: food

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food historic savannah

My First Savannah Visitor: RKB

Rachel and Nichelle

If you have known me for awhile, then you probably also know RKB (AKA Rachel Kramer Bussel). Rachel and I have been friends for over 11 years. We started a blog (Cupcakes Take The Cake) together. We hosted cupcake meetups. We went on a trip to Martha’s Vineyard.

I don’t believe in having only ONE best friend. Instead, I have a second family of people I am not related that I love. Rachel is part of that family.

Over a short three days, we hit some of my favorite haunts here in Savannah. We had tacos at Foxy Loxy, sliders at Sly’s Sliders, and sweets at Back In The Day Bakery. We also went to the Juliette Gordon Low House to learn about the founder of Girl Scouts and had dinner at The Grey.

Rachel and her Fans

I organized a reading for Rachel at Back In The Day Bakery.  Owner Cheryl Day was very generous in letting a small group of Rachel’s avid fans sit and listen to her read.  Three women drove up from Florida and one drove in from Brunswick, Georgia. We listened to erotica and ate tiny cupcakes.  It was a throwback to my live in New York.

P.S. If you want to get a copy and review the upcoming Best Women’s Erotica 2016 edited by Rachel, then sign up using the easy form.

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food home cooking savannah

Recipe: Mac and Cheese With Kale and Roasted Red Peppers

kale with mac-n-cheese

High/low cooking is what I call using local farmer’s market vegetables with store bought stuff. I decided to make macaroni and cheese with kale. I was inspired by a dish I had years ago when Red Rooster opened in Harlem. The mac-and-greens dish is still on the menu, so it must be a favorite.

I bought some shells and cheese to go with the cheddar cheese, kale, onion and red pepper I bought last week at the Forsyth Farmer’s Market. First, I roasted a quarter of an onion and one whole red pepper in the oven with olive oil and seasoning.

In the meantime, I sauteed the kale with chicken stock and garlic. After 10 minutes, I took the kale off the heat and drained the excess chicken stock into another boiler. I used that boiler to cook the pasta. Then I drained the pasta, and added sour cream, cheddar cheese and heavy cream. Then I added in the kale. Lastly, I put the contents of that pot into the same casserole that I roasted the red pepper and onion. I sprinkled a little more cheese and baked for 15 more minutes. It is delicious, and healthy. Marcus Samuelsson, eat your heart out.

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food savannah

Shalom Y’all: There Are Jewish People In Savannah

Latkes

Shalom Y'all Jewish Food Festival

Savannah may be deep South, but Congregation Mickve Israel is Savannah is the third oldest synagogue in the country. Mickve Israel was founded in 1733. There is a history of Jewish people living in Savannah that predates the recent migration south of New Yorkers to the city.

This year marks the 27th annual Jewish Food Festival, which is aptly named, Shalom Y’all. The smells of the food wafting through Forsyth Park on Sunday reminded me of being at Katz’s or 2nd Avenue Deli in New York. Last week, I was reminiscing about Mo Pitkins which was one of the first restaurants to start the revival of Jewish cuisine.Though Mo Pitkins was more of a music and comedy venue, the original menu had an appreciation for Jewish food.

Hebrew National Hot Dogs

 

A few years later, Mile End popped in Brooklyn, and David Sax wrote Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen.  At the Shalom Y’all Jewish Food Festival in Savannah, there was plenty of food. There were latkes, blintzes, challah bread,  matzoh ball soup, sweet kugel, Hebrew National hot dogs, pastrami, Sephardic lamb and more. Potato kugel is the one that wasn’t there that I really wanted, but it was nice to smell the food and heard the sounds of Brooklyn. All of a sudden, people was speaking Yiddish with a Southern drawl. I was half expecting to see Marty Markowitz walking among the crowd.

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home cooking

Hacking An Autumnal Cake Mix

cake mix hack october

I was in the mood for a spice cake but ended up something tropical. I had a package of Duncan Hines Autumn Velvets cake mix. The Autumn Velvet has two different colored cake mixes that combine together to have a layer cake with two autumnal colors, orange and brown. I only used one of the mixes because I wanted to bake a small cake that I would into cut into squares like brownies.

So to give this cake mix some extra flavor, I added one teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg and some freshly grated ginger. My housemate offered some pecans and I add them too. The cake mix instructions call for 1/3 cup of water. Since I had some leftover coconut milk, I used that instead.

After the cake was baked, I drizzled some of Fat Toad Farm Cold Brew Caramel on top. The end result was more of a tropical spice cake. It was kinda like a hummingbird cake but without the banana or pineapple. It’s delicious and it is good with coffee.

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food restaurants

Dinner At The Florence

Beef and Sweet Potato Gratin

Egg Ravioli
Kyle Jacovino is the young Executive Chef at The Florence who is not getting as much press as the Chef Mashama Bailey at The Grey. I am not pitting them against each other; I just want people to know about the other rising culinary star in Savannah. Kyle worked at Hugh Acheson’s Empire State South in Atlanta before becoming the executive chef at The Florence.

beef and sweet potato gratin

The other night I got to sample a lot from The Florence’s menu. A friend of mine was in town, and he and his girlfriend had a reservation. I was already in love with the trout bruschetta, so it was great to try the squid ink bucatini, the egg ravioli, the beef and sweet potato gratin. The food is delicious.  Yesterday, Chef Hugh Acheson was doing a book signing at The Paris Market. I got to meet him and we talked briefly about food, cookbooks and his upcoming projects. His latest cookbook, The Broad Fork, is in bookstores. It is a vegetable-centric cookbook. Speaking of cookbooks, he blurbed my friend Nicole Taylor’s debut cookbook, Up South Cookbook: Chasing Dixie in a Brooklyn Kitchen.

Hugh Acheson, Gelcys and Nichelle

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food savannah

Gospel Dinner Cruise on The Savannah River

Gospel Choir on Dinner Cruise

Soul Food Dinner

On Monday evenings in Savannah, you can be uplifted and filled with the sounds of gospel music and delicious soul food.

During a two-hour dinner cruise on the Savannah River, both tourists and locals can enjoy a spirited evening hosted by Savannah RiverBoat Cruises .

Last Monday, I was invited to go on the dinner cruise and I had a wonderful time.  The ship itself is spacious, so this is a great way for big groups to gather together and eat dinner.

The food is plentiful, so there’s no need to bum rush the chafing dishes. It’s a buffet that will appeal to Southern soul food lovers. Vegans need not apply.  The menu includes macaroni and cheese, greens, fried chicken, candied yams and squash casserole. I especially liked the pulled pork. I went for seconds and ate it with some cole slaw and the cheddar biscuits. Yes, I said “cheddar biscuits”. These are not the ones from Red Lobster, but more like ones your grandmother made with cheese in them.  Yum! For dessert, there’s peach cobbler and banana pudding. The cobbler is worth the calories.

The food is good, but the gospel choir is great.  The Mass Production Ensemble sang familiar gospel songs that are American folk songs like “Amazing Grace” and “How Great Thou Art” as well as contemporary gospel like Hezekiah Walker’s “Every Praise“.  They also sang the “Happy Birthday” song (which is now legal to do) as well as love songs to the couples on board the ship who were celebrating wedding anniversaries. One couple had been married fifty years. Golden!

The season for the weekly riverboat dinner cruises is ending at the end of October, so you have three more weeks to indulge.  At 45.95 per person, the Gospel Dinner cruise is a great value for dinner, music and scenic views of the Savannah River.

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food home cooking savannah

Recipe For Mexican Pulled Chicken And Reducing Food Waste

Mexican Pulled Chicken

Some people hate litter.
Some people hate smokers.
I hate food waste.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, roughly one-third of all food produced for human consumption each year ends up in the trash. How can solve hunger if all that food is wasted?!

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver did a great segment on his show about how food is wasted annually. There’s a new restaurant that just opened in Brooklyn that aims to reduce food waste. Przemek Adolf who I met a few years ago at Dara Furlow’s New Year’s Day brunch, opened his restaurant, Saucy by Nature, with the sole purpose of reducing food waste.

Which brings me to this recipe below. I like a rotisserie chicken from Kroger but I have to have a plan for it or I will end up wasting it. Menu planning is essential to reducing food waste. After eating the dark meat first, there was a lot of chicken left. My first thought was chicken salad, but I didn’t want that. Then I thought of using the slow cooker to make pulled chicken like pulled pork. I went to the store to pick up chicken stock and spotted a can of diced tomatoes with green chiles. My Dad told me that he has been adding tomatoes and green chiles to his famous chili, so I figured it would be good for my dish.

Here the recipe:
Leftover White meat from rotisserie chicken
1/2 of chopped onion
1 small jalapeno pepper
1/2 bell pepper (red, yellow or purple)
1/3 cup of chicken stock
1 can of diced tomatoes with green chiles (Rotel or any brand)
A bag of tortilla chips
Monterey or Pepper jack cheese.

Directions:
I chopped up some onion, a jalapeno and a half a purple pepper that I got from the farmer’s market and added to the slow cooker. Then I added the chicken stock. I was using a knife to the cut pieces of the chicken off the bone, but I got lazy and dump all the leftover chicken in the pot. My laziness was rewarded with a more flavorful chicken.

I had a few options of how to eat this Mexican pulled chicken. I could have paired it with rice, or gotten some potato rolls to make sandwiches or even used tortillas to make tacos. However, I decided to make nachos since that was a great way to share food with roommates and neighbor who stopped by.

Categories
food savannah

Dora Charles And The Rehab of Paula Deen

Dora Charles

Dora Charles

Dora Charles who worked for Paula Deen for over twenty years is finally getting her due with her first cookbook, A Real Southern Cook In Her Savannah Kitchen.

I got a copy of the cookbook and it’s a great primer for real southern/soul food cooking. I was talking about the cookbook last week with Erika who is the Yelp Savannah Community Ambassador, and she said,

“Why does soul food have to be elevated?! It’s from the soul, so it is already elevated.”

I agree. Soul food does not have to elevated. The family recipes in Dora Charles’ cookbook will remind you what your Mudear or Auntie made for Sunday dinners. The book comes out September 8th. The New York Times’ Kim Severson interviewed Dora Charles, and she’s doing press at the Decatur Book Festival this weekend. Hugh Acheson blurbed her book, but I’m not sure how much promotion the book is getting in Savannah.

Savannah is still Paula Deen’s town. Coincidentally Paula Deen has a cookbook coming on September 8th as well, and it was announced that she will be one of the celebrities on Dancing With The Stars. It was ONLY two years ago that Paula Deen got in hot water for saying the “N-word”. More disgraceful is that she grossly underpaid the employees at her restaurant. Dora Charles was reportedly making only $10 an hour. Why is Paula Deen allowed to be on TV? Did she go to racial slur rehab? I don’t know Paula Deen. I don’t know what’s in her heart, but I do know what’s in her wallet-wads of CASH.

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food restaurants savannah

Trout Bruschetta At The Florence

Trout Bruschetta

The Florence, a restaurant owned by noted chef Hugh Acheson, is part of the cuisine scene in Savannah.  The Florence has been open a year and it is a go-to restaurant in the artsy Starland area of Savannah. I am on a budget, so I can’t afford a full meal there. However, I did order the trout bruschetta which was generous and delicious.

The trout bruschetta had radicchio and a tiny potato chip on top. It reminded me of the brandade I would have at Sidecar, a  restaurant in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  The trout bruschetta also reminded me of the  brandade-inspired casserole that I judged at  Emily Farris’ 5th Annual Casserole Cook-off.  I am not sure if it was trout or cod in the casserole, but it potatoes, onions and cheese.

Inspired by the trout bruschetta and memories of brandade, I made a salmon casserole.  I cooked new potatoes with Vidalia onions and shallots in butter in a large ramekin.  Then I added heavy cream and parmesan to the vegetables and let roast for about 30 minutes. Lastly, I drained one can of salmon and dumped the salmon on top of the cheesy veggies and stirred with a spoon to be well combined. Then I put back in the oven for 15 minutes.  It was delicious. I could have added more cheese. Next time, I would also add capers.

 

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food home cooking savannah

Home Cooking: Rustic Sweet Potato Thai Mash

Sweet Potato Thai Mash

What to do with my Local Farm Bag bounty is a cooking challenge that I will gladly accept. This week I got a couple of sweet potatoes and decided to make something savory with one of them.

I love Thai food, but now that I am allergic to peanuts, I try to steer clear of dishes like pad thai. My pantry staples are garlic, coconut milk and ginger. Plus it just so happens that I got some fresh cilantro from the Farmers’ Market.

All the ingredients for Rustic Sweet Potato Thai Mash were right in front of me. I never made this dish before but I knew all the flavors would come together. [Note: This recipe is for one person or two servings. Double the recipe for more people/servings.]

Ingredients:
1 medium sweet potato
1 shallot, chopped
1 tbsp of coconut milk
1/2 of garlic clove
A couple of sprigs of fresh cilantro
A little of freshly grated ginger
dash of black pepper
dash of salt

Instructions:
Peel one medium sized sweet potato and chop into chunks. Put in a sauce pan and cover with water. Boil potato until soft. Drain water. Place potato chunks in a bowl. Use the same pan to cook chopped shallot, garlic, cilantro and coconut milk. Add the chopped potato back into the sauce pan and use a wooden spoon to stir. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mash the potato with the spoon, but not too much. The goal is to make them look a little rustic. Enjoy!