Nutella Crescents with Cinnamon Walnut Crumble

Crescent rolls, spread with Nutella, a little cinnamon sugar and finely minced walnuts. Quick. Easy. Heavenly.

Nutella Crescents

What a wonderful way to indulge in Nutella - wrapped in a sweet crescent. Tasty and really simple too - you will LOVE these!

Grilled spareribs or baby back ribs, get a boost first in the oven and then take a final sear on the grill.

Grilled Pork Spareribs or Baby Back Ribs

Now that the rain has moved outta here and the sun has resurfaced, I was in the mood to hit the grill for dinner today.

So as I write this it's March and I know that some of you are hunkered down inside due to unexpected spring ice storms and snowfall, but maybe this'll give y'all a glimmer of hope that summer is really just around the corner! And, maybe when y'all are relaxing and enjoying your summer, you'll think of us in the Deep South while we are melting right about that same time.

So I figured it'd be a good time to show y'all that other rib recipe I mentioned in my other rib post. Back in a day when I was doing yet another diet, Lisa, one of the gals on the board I was frequenting gave me this method.

Barbecue Sundae

It may seem strange, but this is a great way to use the leftovers from your cookout - a very clever and a great presentation and everybody loves this.

A creamy pasta salad, made with shell pasta, bell pepper, red onion, black olives, cheddar cheese, tomato and bacon and tossed with a mayo, sour cream, vinegar dressing, seasoned with onion powder, garlic salt.

Creamy Pasta Salad

I love pasta salad. Any kind. It is another one of those dishes that I have no loyalty to though, so I love switching it up, different veggies, different dressing bases. This one is a mayonnaise-based pasta salad and my interpretation of one that was once served at a local favorite BBQ joint.

A basic cabbage coleslaw with a creamy vinegar and mayonnaise base.

Basic Creamy Coleslaw

Of course most everybody has a coleslaw recipe they love. I happen to like a variety of them, so I'm not really loyal to any one. This coleslaw is loosely based on LuLu's in Gulf Shores, Alabama, but I added in bread and butter pickles because I liked the extra contrast they provide beyond the usual vinegar and sugar. If you happen to have some - or want to make some up - Fire 'n Ice pickles would be fantastic too.

Classic tuna salad mixture of tuna, hard boiled eggs, green onion, celery, pickles and dressed with mustard and mayonnaise.

Tuna and Egg Salad

Now honestly, I guess I wouldn't generally post about making something as simple as an egg salad, or here, tuna and egg salad. Or, maybe I would {scratches head} dunno... but, it is Lent afterall and I'm tryin' to do my best to stay away from meat on Fridays and so, I wanted some tuna and egg salad for lunch - so I figured what the heck.

Steamed Hard Cooked Eggs

If you've been reading me awhile, you might remember that Santa brought me this fancy, schmancy electronic rice cooker for Christmas, which replaced a very cheapo simple no frills (and not very good) rice cooker I had before.

I admit I was a bit leery about going with one of these types of rice cookers because it was substantially more cost-wise than that cheapo one I had before, but after using it multiple times for rice I have totally fallen in love with it! And the best part is that the one I got is a combination rice cooker, steamer, slow cooker and tofu maker. I've not done the tofu. Yet.

Anyway, when I was flipping through the book that came with it, I saw eggs in the steaming section - well, I had never steamed eggs before! I have always boiled them, and in a very specific way so as not to have that green ring around the yolk. I don't know why that's so important, but it's a goal. (I know what you're thinkin'. Don't even.)

So, I decided I wanted to give my new rice cooker a try at hard cooking some eggs. So easy too, you just put in 1-1/2 cups of water into the steamer bucket and then set the insert tray in there,

...and then stack the eggs in the nice little indentations provided in the insert that makes them stand upright. Isn't that just adorable? (I am so easily entertained these days...)

Close the lid, set it to steam, set the electronic timer, start it and in 23 minutes you have perfectly steamed hard cooked eggs! I still finish them off the same way, in a water bath with a bunch of ice cubes, but look how fantastic they turn out! No green around the edges - great to use for a tuna salad or shrimp salad, yes, but perfect when you're making deviled eggs.

I think this in gonna be my new favorite way to do hard-cooked eggs from now on!



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Easy Semi-Homemade Spaghetti Sauce with Meatballs or Meat Sauce

A great shortcut spaghetti sauce, made with onion, garlic, stewed and Rotel tomatoes, Italian and Cajun seasonings, and a little help from canned sauce, but tastes like you cooked it from scratch.

Easy Semi-Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

In the mood for spaghetti with a homemade taste, but that doesn't have to simmer all day long?

Okay, so yes, you do get a little head start with canned pasta sauce to start with so I guess you can call this "semi-homemade," BUT... once you add in some very simple but transforming enhancements, you will end up with something that tastes as if you made the sauce from scratch and simmered it on the stove for hours.

I've been making my spaghetti sauce like this for years, and The Cajun loves it!

A great, no-frills, meatball that can be used in casseroles, on sandwiches, for spaghetti and meatballs, and of course, our fabulously loved grape jelly meatballs.

Basic Homemade Meatballs

This is my favorite basic meatball recipe that I have been using since I started cooking, and the same one I use when I make my spaghetti with meatballs, and those famous grape jelly meatballs that we southerners are so endeared to.

It is not, nor is it intended to be an "Italian-Style" meatball, though I've included the revisions I make when I'm leaning more toward those flavors. This, rather, is a very basic meatball recipe that you can use for sandwiches and even for casseroles, though you can certainly jazz them up by adding whatever extras you like.

For most meatball recipes, I prefer them simple with very basic seasonings.

Deep fried, crispy strips of catfish, coated in a mixture of corn meal and flour, are a true deep south favorite.

Southern Fried Catfish

Fried catfish is a common dinner in the south, especially during Lent, but we southerners love it anytime, really.

There are catfish houses everywhere down south, where catfish is often all you can eat, coleslaw, hush puppies, and homemade buttermilk biscuits with jelly or honey are served family style, and sweet tea comes most often in Mason jars or icy tin cups, alongside local favorites like fried dill pickles, turnip greens, fried okra, squash casserole, and fried green tomatoes.

Oven Baked Pork Ribs with Sweet and Spicy Homemade Barbecue Sauce

When you don't want to fool with the grill or smoker, these fall off the bone spareribs will satisfy that rib craving. Slow baked in the oven, they'll hit the spot! 

Oven Baked Pork Ribs

Fall off the bone ribs, now that's what I'm talkin' about y'all!
This beautiful weather the past few weeks has had me in the mood to get a garden going for sure, but it's also had me in the mood for barbecue! I have literally been craving it for weeks now.

Deep South Dish Signature Barbecue Sauce

 

 Like all regions of The South, we also have our own style of barbecue sauce, and here in the Deep South it's spicy sweet! Homemade is just so easy y'all, really it is! Give it a try and make this your signature sauce too.

Sweet and Spicy Barbecue Sauce

This is my personal homemade signature recipe for a sweet and spicy barbecue sauce. When I created it, I was trying to duplicate the flavor of a very popular barbecue joint here on the coast.

There are a lot of commercial barbecue sauces on the market today - some good, some fantastic - and I can tell you how to dress up the less expensive stuff, but... if you really want to bump up your barbecue, you really can't beat a good homemade sauce.

Southern seasoned baked beans with chili sauce, mustard, brown sugar, bacon, onion and bell pepper - they're a cookout tradition! Pictured here with grilled ribs, Mama's Southern potato salad and marinated tomatoes.

Classic Southern Style Baked Beans

I have been cooking my baked beans pretty much this same way since the 70s. And all those years I have been doing them in this old Pyrex dish.

Well... that is until one day I dropped it and broke it. This was a wedding gift back then and I can't tell you how many potlucks that little carrier basket has been to over the years! {I told y'all I had some old dishes, though I guess the politically correct way to say that would be "vintage."}

Cabbage, caramelized onion, corned beef and pan fried potatoes make a delicious hash.

Corned Beef and Cabbage Hash

So we made a quick and easy Irish Soda Bread, delicious Creamy Potato Soup, and a slow simmered, flavorful Irish Stew made with tender lamb, onions and potatoes, but what American St. Patrick's Day menu would be complete without some sort of cabbage dish?

 

A hearty stew made with lamb shanks and vegetables, perfect for St. Patrick's Day.

Irish Stew

So just in case you've missed it, I have been cooking up a storm over the weekend for our St. Paddy day series. We first made Irish Soda Bread and then some Creamy Potato Soup and our next dish in the St. Patrick's Day meal line-up is an Irish Stew. Coming up is Corned Beef & Cabbage Hash too!  Click the recipe links to check them all out.

I have no idea of the authenticity of this stew, or any other so-called Irish Stew, since it appears that even the Irish may dispute what exactly is authentic and what is not. It does appear that lamb, onion and potatoes are the 3 main ingredients for an authentic Irish Stew, and here we clearly meet that. Anything else is lagniappe in my opinion!

A nicely seasoned, creamy potato soup, garnished with parsley, cheese and bacon.

Creamy Potato Soup

The next dish of our Irish St. Paddy feast ... soup! Or more specifically, potato soup. With potatoes being a major staple food in Ireland, what could be more appropriate for St. Patrick's Day? Creamy, delicious and just plain ole comforting. What better for a rainy day? And of course, serve that with a slice of Irish Soda Bread, and go ahead, dip it right on in that soup!

Here's how to make it.

Peppered Irish Soda Bread with Bacon

 

Bacon topped Irish soda bread, a traditional St. Patrick's Day recipe, gets a little infusion of freshly cracked black pepper.

Irish Soda Bread

I have been cooking up a storm of my own getting some Irish dishes ready to post for y'all for the St. Patrick's holiday. I bet you can't tell by the picture of that pale woman you've seen that I've actually got Irish roots! Once upon a time I actually had some pretty blond hair but it's gotten progressively darker as I've gotten older and shrunk away from the sun worshiper that I once was back in the day.

So I'm Catholic, and I'm part Irish and I live in the south. Surprise! 

Jill Conner Browne, Sweet Potato Queen and our own Mississippi celebrity, calls this dish Death Corn Five because it's a great funeral food dish. A mixture of packaged Zatarain's yellow rice with Mexican corn and the addition of jalapeno and pepper jack cheese - it's spicy good!

Spicy Rice and Corn Casserole

This spicy rice dish combines yellow rice, Mexican corn, jalapenos and pepper jack cheese making it flavorful and a perfect side for just about any beef, pork, or chicken dish.

If you don't have Zatarain's products (#ad) in your area, there are several other brands of yellow rice, any of which would be an appropriate substitute. There's also a great recipe for a homemade yellow rice in my cookbook (#ad)!

Shrimp in a creamy pasta sauce over pasta.

Creamy Shrimp and Pasta

Mealtime has been pretty simple around here with all the yardwork goin' on, and I need to get to the grocery store too!

The leaves are steady falling out there, which if any of you have to deal with this every spring (or fall, depending on your tree), you understand the frustration. No sooner do you get them up, and sweep your walkway before it looks like you never touched it! But ... if you wait and don't keep at it, well, not only is the job MUCH bigger, but those leaves are smothering that grass up underneath that is trying to sprout and crowd out the weeds!

A simple seasoned and seared chicken breast finished with a cranberry-based barbecue sauce and baked.

Cranberry Chicken Bake

Cranberry chicken is a very simple recipe - a combination of cranberry sauce turned into a barbecue sauce and baked with a lightly seared chicken.

It's a super easy dish, but the combination of the tart cranberry, with the sweetness of the brown sugar, and just a tiny bit of a kick from some Cajun seasoning, produces a super tasty sauce. Be sure to serve some of that sauce on top of the chicken and also on the side.

Stuffed pistolette rolls, baked or deep fried, crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside and filled with a creamy shrimp or crawfish sauce.

Baked Shrimp Stuffed Pistolettes

Lawdy mercy, are those good.

Remember those pistolette rolls that I made the other day? Well, I specifically set aside a couple of them so that I could make some stuffed pistolettes. And I gotta tell ya, those rolls are so darned good, it sure wasn't easy to keep any until I got around to these! When I make a batch of them they never last long. Thank goodness they are so easy to make!

Tip for Melted Chocolate

When you are using melted chocolate for drizzling, to prevent it from seizing up and hardening on you, add a teaspoon of Crisco shortening in with the chips as you melt them.

Can also use this with caramel - but use butter instead of shortening.

Chicken, slow baked over rice and bacon, in a flavorful cream sauce.

No Peek Bacony Chicken and Rice Bake

This chicken and rice dish is one of my personal favorites and a site favorite and it is awesome! Now I know that we've all had the usual condensed soup with rice and chicken bake, but this one is just a bit different. It's loaded with flavor from the bacon and seasonings ...

I'm tellin' ya the rice is just over the top! You really gotta try it.

Homemade Pistolette French Rolls

I am soooooo grieving my sweets.

And I have so many to share with y'all too! Most southern style sweets these days have shortcuts like using boxed cake mixes so they are just super easy breezy to make and, well, they are downright tasty ya gotta admit. But... we'll get back to those after Easter, promise.

But... do you know that I near about also gave up bread for Lent???!!!???? Can you imagine?

What was I thinking? Not doing sweets and desserts has been difficult. Very hard. I miss my sweets!

But if I had to give up bread too at the same time?? Ayiyiyi... I love the Lord, I do .. but I would be SO miserable and you know what they say.

If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!

Anyway, I had a taste for some of my homemade yeast rolls so I whipped up a batch of them. Now yes, I have posted about these before, but I tell ya, they are worth a repost. I can't tell you how many recipes I tried and adapted and tried and adapated before I finally came to this one that I consider the perfect-for-me French roll.

If you arrived here off of a web search I apologize for givin' ya a repost and yet another link to click through, but forgive me cuz if you're looking for a French roll, this is the recipe for you! They really aren't a lot of trouble and they are sooooooo good, like a little mini French bread pistolette roll - those of you from the south know exactly what I'm talkin' about! The rest of y'all can just call them French rolls and that'll be just fine. Make 'em smaller (or don't!) for a great roll for dinner, or just do the larger dozen for sandwich rolls.

These are delicious just plain with a slather of Land O'Lakes pure butter on 'em, they're great for any kind of deli meat, they wrap like pure heaven around some of those leftover boulettes...

...and they are especially perfect to make up some stuffed pistolettes (y'all knew that recipe was coming up didn't ya??!).

However you wanna eat 'em, I sure hope you give 'em a try!!

Cajun Beef and Pork Boulettes with Brown Gravy

Cajun Beef Boulettes, a well seasoned beef and pork meatball, simmered in a roux based gravy, usually include a little surprise of garlic, button mushroom or even an olive tucked up inside.

Mary's Cajun Beef and Pork Boulettes with Brown Gravy

Boulettes is French for pellet or ball, and can be made with just about any type of ground meat or seafood. They are sometimes formed into patties instead of balls. Cajun Beef Boulettes include a little surprise of garlic, button mushroom or even an olive tucked up inside. Many Cajun cooks brown their boulettes in a pan first, then deglaze the pan with wine or stock and create a sauce, adding chunky peppers and onion to the stew.

Others flour and fry their boulettes. I prefer to finely chop up the veggies by hand, because I tend to turn them into mush with the food processor, and then add them in the meat mixture. I also prefer to stew the boulettes slow and long in a roux (what else?!) instead of precooking them. I think both of these produce a very tender and delicious meatball.

Easy Dark Oven Roux

A dark roux is essential to a good southern gumbo, but it's time consuming, you can get burned easily, or worse, burn the roux and have to start over. This easy oven method really simplifies roux making and you can make it ahead and store it!

How to Make an Easy Dark Oven Roux

See that chocolately brown jar of lovely goodness? This, my friends, is pure gold to a southern cook! What is it you say? It is a deep, dark red Cajun roux, and one that is most appropriate for gumbos or meaty stews. It's a roux that is time consuming to achieve on the stove top, taking a great deal of patience, and a lot of attention to get to the right color without burning it or yourself.

Banana Pudding Oatmeal

With this cold weather that has moved in, this morning was a perfect day to add to our series The Oatmeal Chronicles - or How to Make Your Oatmeal More Interesting.

Now since I gave up sweets and desserts for Lent, I did use only one crushed Nilla wafer on top and one to garnish for the sake of the photo, but I personally would recommend at least 3 to 7 crushed wafers for layering and the topping, plus the one whole one wafer for garnish (8 wafers is a serving size of the reduced fat wafers) as I've put in the recipe, in order to achieve the full 'banana pudding' effect.

I considered using some dry sugar free vanilla pudding powder, but decided on the protein powder in order to give the oatmeal a protein boost. I used a vanilla ice cream flavored whey protein powder because that is what I have in the pantry. If you don't happen to have protein powder, you might give the dry pudding a try. In keeping with the vanilla inspiration, I also used a vanilla Splenda Flavors for Coffee tube for sweetening, because, again, I happened to have some in my pantry. You could certainly exchange that for any sugar substitute, table sugar, stevia, honey, or your preferred sweetener.



Banana Pudding Oatmeal
Posted at http://deepsouthdish.com

3/4 cup of Quaker old fashioned oatmeal
Pinch of salt
1-1/2 cups of water
Scoop of vanilla protein powder
1 tube of French vanilla Splenda Flavors for Coffee
3 - 7 Nilla wafers, crushed
1 banana, sliced
1 Nilla wafer for garnish
Heavy cream to drizzle, optional

Combine the oatmeal, salt and water in a large microwave safe bowl, between 2 and 4 quarts to allow for expansion. Stir together well and microwave on high for 3 to 5 minutes, depending on your microwave, or until oatmeal is creamy.

Spoon half of the oatmeal into a serving dish. Top with 1/2 of the sliced bananas and 1/2 of the crushed Nilla wafers. Layer the remaining oatmeal on top, then the rest of the banana. Sprinkle with the rest of the crushed Nilla Wafers and garnish with one whole Nilla wafer. Drizzle with cream around the outside edges, if desired.

A nice change from the usual, sandwich those scrambled eggs between flour tortillas along with some cheese, ham, sausage or bacon, and you have a great breakfast quesadilla.

Breakfast Quesadilla

I don't know why but I had a taste for a quesadilla this morning.

I happened to have some nice deli ham on hand, but these are great with cooked and crumbled sausage or bacon, or deli turkey.

Serve with a side of fruit - I had a banana - and a bit of chunky salsa and a dab of sour cream or Greek yogurt on the side for dipping and this will feed two, or one very hungry adult. One half of it was plenty filling for me.