DC Culinarian

August Lowcountry -- Beef Tenderloin With Crawfish

I searched high.

I searched low.

Now I sigh.

"No crab roe." -- Ancient South Carolina rhyme

That's a complete fabrication, I admit it. But it doesn't change the unfortunate fact that the she-crab soup I promised will have to wait.

It turns out that crab roe is exceedingly difficult to come by. I worked the phones mightily trying to find a local market that carried the stuff, but to no avail. I even contemplated buying a whole mess of female crabs and, um, extracting my own. But that presented financial, moral, and constitutional hurdles.

And, in the end, she-crab soup isn't she-crab soup without the roe. That's what puts the "she" in it. Without the eggs, it's just bisque.

So, with crab roe off the table I needed another Lowcountry dish, preferably with an ingredient that I hadn't yet used. Enter crawfish.

Mudbugs! Tiny little freshwater crustaceans that Southerners steam, peel, and eat by the bushel. And, as with their lobster cousins, the crawfish's best attribute is its tail. The sweet morsels of meat, sauteed with tomatoes, leeks, and white wine, make an excellent accompaniment to grilled beef tenderloin.

So while I'm disappointed that the she-crab soup was put off for a little bit, it's hard to complain when crawfish and steak are the fill-in.

Photos and recipe (from Lowcountry Cooking With 82 Queen) after the jump.

August Lowcountry -- He-Shrimp Soup

Transcript of a conversation between The-Soon-To-Be-Mrs. Culinarian and myself:

TSTBMC: This is called "He-Shrimp Soup?"

ME: Yep.

TSTBMC: So "He-Shrimp" is like He-Man for crustaceans?

ME: Yes. Absolutely.

TSTBMC: So I guess his arch-enemy would be Exoskeletor.

ME: [Blank stare of loving appreciation]

This oddly-named recipe comes from Husk restaurant in Charleston, and was brought to my attention by a lobbyist friend (DC represent!) with South Carolina roots. As the story goes, the author of the recipe wanted to create a counterpart to she-crab soup, the famous Lowcountry staple.

As the name makes clear, one is supposed to make it with only male shrimp. I'm hardly an expert in crustacean sexual dimorphism, such as it is, and discerning male shrimp from females is beyond my pay grade. So in the spirit of ignorance and progressive-minded inclusiveness, males and females alike ended up in the pot.

The shrimp flavor came through big-time, complemented by tomatoes, brandy, and loads of fresh parsley. But what really makes this recipe is the addition of feta cheese, which gave it a surprising tanginess on the back end.

It is an excellent soup with an off-beat name, and that makes it appealing enough. But what of its true purpose? Can it really stand up to the famous she-crab soup? Well, there's only one way to find out...

Recipe after the jump.

August Lowcountry -- Southern Coconut Cake

Have I become that which I decry?

After sniping at Paula Deen for her "butter y'all" approach to cookery and tsk-tsking Iowa for deep frying butter, who am I to make this cake? How could I have, in good conscience, set five sticks of butter on my countertop to soften knowing that each one would end up in or around this delightful pastry?

Am I a hypocrite? Am I scum? Does my left hand type without knowing what the right is cooking?

No. Of course not. That's silly. What the hell is wrong with me? It's supposed to have lots of butter and it's supposed to be eaten in moderation. It's not a can of peas or fried on a stick. It's a Southern cake.

And what a cake! It's straight coconut all the way, with coconut milk in the batter, coconut extract in the meringue buttercream, and an external coating of shredded coconut. The frosting is rich without being heavy, and the cake is light, moist, and not as sweet as one might expect.

Note: The frosting requires a little bit of know-how and careful maneuvering, but it's not all that difficult. And if you pull it off, the reward is definitely worth the effort.

Butter, y'all

Photos and recipe (via Rose's Heavenly Cakes) after the jump.

August Lowcountry -- Bourbon Praline Pork Loin

I have a long, complicated history with bourbon. In my college days I played rugby, which is to say that the game of rugby periodically interfered with my stupendous drinking regimen. And the enthusiastic consumption of Jim Beam was a hallowed tradition on our club, resulting in many lost evenings and painful mornings.

Since leaving school, I've developed something of an adverse reaction to bourbon. The mere smell of it makes my throat thicken and my stomach knot. You could call it Pavlovian, that is if Pavlov's dog had ever thrown up in a bush.

But I won't give up on the Kentucky liquor. And August Lowcountry has afforded an opportunity to take rekindle my wildly irresponsible relationship with bourbon. Which brings us to bourbon praline pork loin, and the combustive properties of ethanol.

You see, the recipe calls for some flambé action. And, as the video below demonstrates, lots of bourbon means lots of fire.

Was that perhaps too much bourbon? Might it have been a better idea to let some of the alcohol burn off before igniting? The answers to these questions seem obvious in the cold light of hindsight: no. Fire is awesome.

Photos and recipe (via Lowcountry Cooking with 82 Queen) after the jump.

August Lowcountry -- Country Captain Chicken

I don't like that this is called "country captain chicken." To me, the name evokes a gravy-smeared, grease-soaked, heavily salted fried-chicken-and-mashed-potato disaster of sadness. With corn niblets. And possibly cheese.

The quality of the dish, however, far outpaces the Cracker Barrel-ness of its appellation. Lowcountry cooking is a jumbled stew of many different cultures: French, Spanish, West African, Creole, and so forth. Country captain chicken brings in a whole new influence -- Indian.

The basic ingredients are chicken, onions, and curry powder. This particular recipe, from the Lee brothers of Charleston, incorporates ginger and garam masala, that northern Indian ground spice blend of pepper, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, and coriander.

The flavors are intense and satisfying, with a subtle heat from a dried, toasted chile and the savoriness of bacon. It had that characteristic Southern richness, while bringing back some fond memories of April Indian.

And in the end, it's the flavor that matters, less so the name.

But wow is that a bad name.

Photos and recipe after the jump.

August Lowcountry -- Frogmore Stew

Okra...

My grandmother used to cook okra all the time, but never managed to prepare it well, even by accident. As a result, my childhood was filled with okra horror stories, and in my mind the much-maligned slimy seed pod has loomed large as an avatar of irrational, indomitable dislike. When Lowcountry month came around, I knew okra would be the big hurdle.

So I needed a recipe that contained okra and would allow me to prepare it in such a way as to minimize the goo factor. Enter Frogmore stew.

Named for a small town on a small island off the South Carolina coast, Frogmore stew isn't actually stew. It's a seafood boil. The key ingredients are shrimp, corn on the cob, smoked sausage, and potatoes. You boil them, spice them up, and serve. Easily said and easily done.

But I don't like easy. Easy is for kitchen neophytes and Paula Deen. I wanted to make things needlessly difficult. I wanted to make an actual stew of Frogmore stew.

This recipe makes up a whole mess of tomato-based stew. Bucking tradition, I sliced the potatoes and removed the kernels from the corn cobs. I also kicked in some fried strips of okra. Slicing the okra and quickly frying it in very hot oil takes care of the slime quite nicely, and it adds flavor and texture to the affair.

It's actually a really simple way to get around the goo. Kind of makes me wonder what the hell my grandmother was doing all those years.

Recipes and photos after the jump.

August Lowcountry -- Shrimp And Grits

Late one May evening in 2008, The-Soon-To-Be-Mrs. Culinarian and I stumbled off an Amtrak train at the Charleston railroad station, a squat, two-room building that sits comfortably distant from anywhere you'd want to be. We were in town for a wedding, and acting on a suggestion from the bride and groom we headed immediately into Charleston's French Quarter for dinner at 82 Queen. A bowl of she-crab soup and a vat of seafood bouillabaisse later, and I was a happy boy.

So happy, in fact, that I kept talking about it. To everyone who would listen. Which wasn't many people, but still. And so when my birthday rolled around that year, TSTBM Culinarian surprised me with the official 82 Queen cookbook, a wondrous tome that is beholden neither to health concerns nor flowery prose.

Just about every dish in the book has lots of butter and/or cream in it, and the recipes are so bluntly terse as to be almost comedic (variants of the phrase "cook until done" appear frequently).

Which brings us to this 82 Queen recipe for shrimp and grits: butter and cream, with some Andouille sausage thrown in for additional cardiac distress. The sausage, sauteed in Cajun butter, is piled with leeks and peppers on top of a bed of creamy grits. Some wild-caught, head-on shrimp bring additional richness, as well as a decorative flair.

It is so, so good, and after one plateful all you want to do is sweat and die.

Photos and recipe after the jump.

August Will Be... Lowcountry

I couldn't leave the U.S. completely unrepresented, could I?

The South Carolina Lowcountry, generally defined as the state's easternmost coastal counties (and sometimes encompassing parts of Georgia), boasts some of America's most interesting cuisine. It is a culinary melange with Caribbean, Creole, and African roots, represented famously by South Carolina's Gullah culture.

So that means lots of beans, rice, okra, hominy, and (above all) seafood. The Lowcountry is essentially one big salt marsh teeming with marine life: shrimp, oysters, crayfish, catfish, and crabs. I eat seafood like it's my business.

My first exposure to Lowcountry cooking came a few years back when The-Soon-To-Be-Mrs. Culinarian and I went down to Charleston for a wedding and found ourselves physically incapable of finding any bad food. We've been aficionados ever since.

Also, this month I turn 30. And as the last remaining fragments of my youth slowly, steadily, inexorably slip through the sieve, I'm going to boost my spirits by jamming as much cream, corn, and shrimp into my face as I can.

After all, that's the American way.