OK, this doesn't look very appealing, but it was a darned good dinner, inspired by a collection of tasty leftovers and a trip to the farmer's market in Dallas.
I'm amazed to admit that I'm sort of sick of boiled shrimp. So I decided that an oyster po-boy with a mayonnaise-y remoulade would be just the ticket.
We had some good bread because Friday we made a trip to the big city to go to the Farmer's Market and have dinner and drinks. The bread is actually more important than the middle ingredients for a po-boy since the middle protein source will be fried and what's not to love there? But a squishy, full of high fructose corn syrup roll of no character is just not worth the effort to bring it home from the store.
Of course, I didn't expect to find fresh oysters in the shell here in Mayberry, but I had thought I had a chance to find oysters in pint containers. Nope. We only have two stores, and one is the dreaded Wal-Mart that I try not to frequent. It's an ugly store and I always find myself fighting mild depression when I'm in there.
So no oysters meant I had to rethink my plan. At the farmer's market we bought little eggplants, tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, and smoked sausages. We'd had the sausages with grilled onions on some of the good bread last night, but still had a large part of one sausage left over. We also had one (breakfast) pork chop that M had smoked in his propane smoker a few nights ago. And we had some really good lentil salad that I'd made a couple of nights ago.
So dinner in the picture above includes a few slices of sausage, a couple of strips of meat from the one pork chop, lentil salad, marinated eggplants in a mint vinaigrette, tomatoes in a balsamic vinaigrette with fresh basil, some roasted veggies (zucchini, peppers, and the tail end of a red onion), leftover lentil salad, a piece of toasted bread, and slices of avocado with a too big helping of remoulade.
My trip down memory lane this evening had nothing to do with remoulade but with veggies and suppers eaten in Fort Worth at the home of my grandmother, four great aunts, and one great uncle. If my relatives had tried to live alone as single women and men (my grandmother was the only one who ever married and she was widowed when she was barely fifty), they would have lived in poverty, but because they lived together their entire lives and pooled their money, they were able to build a big house with a big kitchen and make a warm home for themselves and for me on my summer visits. No one can imagine living like that now, and it was pretty eccentric even then.
When they were all working (my great aunts were telephone operators and secretaries) and while my great grandmother was still alive, they always had help--usually a woman of color who cleaned and cooked and looked out for my great grandmother, who lived into her nineties. These women were always called by their first names and were always wonderful cooks, cooking the same kinds of foods my great aunts and grandmother cooked and ate: cornbread, greens, green beans cooked with ham or bacon, corn cut from the cob, okra, black eyed peas, pinto beans--you get the idea. As they retired one by one, my great aunts took over the cooking and they no longer had "help." But the meals were identical--Southern cooking at its best. I don't remember one bad meal during the many summer weeks I spent with them.
Suppers were always more vegetables than meat; meat was more of a seasoning than the main event. And leftovers always played a role as the dribs and drabs of previous meals were put on the table until they were eaten. They had all lived through the Depression and wasting food was a sin they couldn't abide.
They also kept a big backyard garden, growing tomatoes, okra, greens, black eyed peas, and pole beans. What couldn't be eaten fresh was frozen or canned. I swear their home grown tomatoes were beyond anything I've eaten since.
It was a healthy way to eat and live; all, except one, lived into their late eighties or early nineties, and their health problems were minimal.
So remoulade definitely played a minor role in tonight's dinner, but it can't be the star every Sunday.
Here's the recipe:
2 cups mayonnaise
1/4 cup Creole mustard
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons Hungarian paprika
1 minced garlic clove
3/4 teaspoon cayenne
Stir everything together to blend then cover and refrigerate for at least an hour.
I backed off on the mayonnaise but left everything else as is. I think I would have liked it even a wee bit hotter and more mustardy.
The recipe comes from Southern Living magazine, but I don't have the date.
This remoulade would be mighty fine on a turkey sandwich, and it's easy.
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