Fried chicken legs marinated in a soy and hot sauce blend, dusted with flour and fried.

Marinated Fried Drumsticks

I suppose by now those of y'all who pop by here every so often have probably figured out what my two favorite parts of the bird are. Wings and drumsticks. Love them both, yep I sure do!  Don't get me wrong - I love the rest of the chicken too - those are just my favorites, and drumsticks are a breeze to fry.

This recipe is just a basic fried chicken recipe - yeah, yeah, I know ... it looks like my regular ole Southern Fried Chicken, but I swear it's not! New recipe. New picture. Promise.

Instead of a brine, it is marinated by dipping the drumstick into a mixture of canola and soy sauce, with a bit of hot sauce, seasoned salt and garlic salt for flavor, then dredging it in flour and left to sit in the fridge for awhile. This one was actually inspired by a recipe in Mama Dip's Family Cookbook {affil link}. It adds a nice, delicate flavor and okay, the truth is, it's just another excuse for chowin' down on some fried chicken!

A creamy pie made of peanut butter, cream cheese, cream and brown sugar, prepared in a chocolate cookie crust and garnished with chocolate syrup and chopped peanuts.

Creamy Peanut Butter Pie

It'd be a rare southern cook who didn't have some form of peanut butter pie in his or her dessert repertoire and there are several popular varieties, including a favorite of mine that is what I consider an old-fashioned peanut butter pie.

Made in layers, beginning with a layer of peanut butter crumble, then topped with a layer of homemade custard mixed with peanut butter and topped with more crumble and often meringue. Now that's old school, scratch cookin' and boy is it delicious!

Chocolate sables are a type of French shortbread, though with a bit more chew than the usual shortbread and rich in dark chocolate. Dubbed World Peace Cookies by Dorie Greenspan, they are a roll, chill and slice refrigerator cookie that is rich and delicious.

Chocolate Sables - World Peace Cookies

If you're looking for a great chocolate cookie, this indeed is one.

If you're a food blogger, these are pretty much old news for you.

I, on the other hand, wasn't in that loop, but, I needed some chocolate cookies to use for a crust on my Peanut Butter Pie, and when I received my September issue of Bon Appetit magazine, I ran across these featured lovelies by Dorie Greenspan and thought I'd give them a try!

They apparently made the rounds across the blogosphere early last year during a round of Tuesdays with Dorie - a group of food bloggers who bake something from her cookbook, Baking From My Home to Yours, and then post it on Tuesdays.

Not that I have ever participated in that - if you pop by here with any regularity, you already know that I am not much of a baker, but... having everything on hand, I decided to give these chocolate morsels a go. 

I've been kinda craving chocolate here anyway - the kind that a tiny, foil-wrapped, milk chocolate egg, leftover from Easter won't quite squelch.

Stuffer mushroom caps, filled with a crabmeat stuffing and baked.

Crab Stuffed Mushrooms

Stuffed mushrooms are one of my favorite finger-food party snacks, but for these, I grabbed some stuffer caps - the bigger mushrooms already cleaned and ready to stuff - from my local and most favorite grocery store, Rouse's Market.

You can use any kind of mushroom that can be stuffed of course, just be sure to save the stems and include them in your stuffing mix.

Summer squash, stuffed with bell pepper, onion, tomatoes and pepper jack cheese, and topped with a sprinkle of panko bread crumbs.

Cheesy Stuffed Summer Squash

This is another great recipe to use those prolific summer squash, garden fresh tomatoes and even some of those bell peppers too. I just had to show the image below, which shows the pre-breaded squash because the stuffing is just so fresh looking.

Baking potatoes, halved, toss with olive oil, salt & pepper & cooked on a hot grill.

Grilled Baked Potatoes

One of the easiest ways to grill baked potatoes is to simply wrap them in foil and cook them over direct heat until tender. You can unwrap them the last few minutes to crisp them up, but to me, it still tastes more like a steamed potato, which is good, but is missing that "baked" flavor. I don't wrap my potatoes when I bake them in the oven either - just wash, prick a few times with a fork or knife, and bake directly on the rack.  Course you can also cook them on the grill without wrapping but, either way, it takes about as long as it would in the oven.

Instead, treat them basically as you do other veggies on the grill, by slicing them lengthwise and then grilling them right over direct heat.  You get that baked flavor you want with a smaller time investment and the bonus of grilling so you don't have to heat up the oven. Simple. Delicious!

Chicken and Herb Dressing Casserole

 

Chicken and dressing made with a whole cooked chicken, a homemade herb dressing and homemade gravy.

Chicken and Herb Dressing

Okay. Fair warning. This chicken and dressing is a bread dressing and it has a butter roux - puh-lenty of butter. Like 1 full stick of Paula Deen worthy butter. And this one is made with a combination of chicken and herb dressing, meaning bread dressing and not cornbread, so don't go balking at me.

If you love heat, you're gonna love Shrimp Sauce Piquant. Piquant translated from French means literally "pricking" and that is what this spicy sauce piquant is meant to do, prick the tongue.

Shrimp Sauce Piquant

Most of y'all know that I try to keep the Cajun and Creole recipes I feature here with a slight bite, knowing well that many people will take recipes very literally. It is certainly much easier to increase the heat to taste in a spicy recipe than it is to try to take it away!

So, I try to keep things on the lighter side of spicy here for the general public, and let the reader choose to increase to their own heat level. Sauce piquant is one exception.

Bowtie pasta and peas with bacon, a southernized version of the Italian dish Butterflies and Peas or Farfalle con Piselli.

Bowtie Pasta and Peas with Bacon

This bowtie pasta and peas with bacon dish is a totally un-authentic and highly Southernized version of Butterflies (Bowtie Pasta) and Peas, known as Farfalle con Piselli, a classic Italian pasta dish.

It's a super easy and fast but tasty skillet pasta dish I think you'll really enjoy, well if you enjoy peas like me that is!

Cajun Chicken Fricassee - Smothered Chicken and Gravy

Chicken is first lightly fried, then a gravy is prepared with the seasoned flour and pan drippings, the chicken is dunked right in the gravy and slow stewed or baked.

Cajun Chicken Fricassee

This is not your typical fried chicken with gravy, oh no.

While the chicken does indeed get a quick fry, the purpose of frying the chicken is primarily to season the oil and add body to the gravy, so don't expect a crunchy fried chicken end product here.

Gravy is then made from the seasoned drippings and the chicken is dunked right into the gravy and the whole thing is finished stovetop or slow in the oven. Holy fat grams, it is some kind of delicious y'all.

I love summer tomatoes - there's just nothing like them - and while we southerners would all like to lay claim to our states having the best of the best of them, in my little ole humble opinion, any local tomato freshly plucked from a garden is the best!

12 Ways to Enjoy Summer Tomatoes

I do always lament the passing of summer tomatoes because while tomatoes are available to us the rest of the year, they just have no taste in comparison. They aren't local of course, so they have to travel from far away, they are picked early before they are ripe and then are often shot with things like nitrogen to turn them red and make them appear pretty. While they may look nice on the outside, we all know the insides often reveal a mealy texture and they are often lacking in anything remotely tasting like the tomatoes we are accustomed to out of our own backyards or local markets.

Panzanella salad may not be a traditional southern dish, but it sure fits in with our hot summer days and you don't even have to turn the oven on for homemade croutons - just grill your bread instead!

Panzanella Salad on Romaine

Yeah, yeah... I know. Panzanella salad isn't southern and it usually isn't served with lettuce either, but I like mine that way so that is how I eat it.

I just mix up the panzanella - a salad that was probably originally born out of the need to use up stale bread and whatever else happened to be in abundance in the garden - and then I spoon it over crisp romaine lettuce.

The Absolute Best Homemade Croutons

Garlic infused olive oil is the key to these beautifully crispy and golden brown croutons.

Homemade Croutons

The Absolute Best. Perfect. World's Best. Awesome. I always smile when I see that in a recipe title, because while it may be a bit presumptuous, sometimes we really do think that our whatever-recipe is the best of the best, don't we?

A spicy rub of brown sugar, paprika, chili powder, Cajun seasoning, garlic and onion powder, perfect for grilled or pan seared steaks.

Spicy Sugar Steaks

You don't see much on this site about steaks and it's not because we don't eat them - we certainly do. It's because my favorite steak, hands down, is a rib-eye, and to me they just don't need anything much. A quick dousing of Dale's, Country Bob's, Hoover Sauce from the Delta when I have it or even just plain ole Worcestershire sauce while it comes to room temperature for the grill, and that's about all I ever do most of the time.

I don't even generally add salt or pepper to them, before or after, and no steak sauce or enhancements for this gal.

But my Sugar Steak is one exception.

Review: Grilled Chicken Florentine for Two from Macaroni Grill

Iced tea and iced coffee have been a "hot" ticket beverage item around this house the past few weeks with this extended heat wave.  I am very grateful for my central air conditioning right now and c'mon fall is about all I can say about that!

Well... to celebrate the end of Deep South Dish's 1st birthday week, I thought that I would host another giveaway courtesy of MyBlogspark and Macaroni Grill, that will help to get you out of the kitchen quick!

A squash and tomato casserole, layered in a pan with sweet Vidalia onions, bacon and cheese, and seasonings, topped with panko bread crumbs and garnished with a chiffonade of fresh basil.

Layered Squash and Tomato Casserole

Yes, I know... it's hot out, but if you don't mind turning on the oven, this is a great way to enjoy those fresh summer squash and garden tomatoes.

You could eliminate the bacon if you like (but why would you want to?!), but don't skip the panko if at all possible - it provides a wonderful crunchy contrast to the tender vegetables.

Slow roasted tomatoes make a fantastic accent to a number of dishes or can be used for dipping and as a condiment. They make a great base for a sauce, or left unprocessed, slip the skins off and add them to a Mason jar topped with extra olive oil for sandwiches or as a snack!

Slow Roasted Tomatoes

 Melissa d'Arabian of Food Network's Ten Dollar Dinners, slow roasted some tomatoes on her show last weekend, to use as a dipping sauce for grilled chicken ... which reminded me that I had about a pound of odds and ends tomatoes I need to use up. 

These were from the last round of my summer garden harvest that were sitting in a basket on the counter and starting to get soft. A gal can only eat so many tomato sandwiches y'all!

Eggo Real Fruit Pizzas from Kellogg's

Update: It appears that this product has since been discontinued - As of 12/2011 I cannot find information on either fruit pizza on the Eggo website. Please visit to view the other fabulous Eggo products.

Oh my goodness, you cannot possibly tell me that that doesn't just look yummy!! Thanks to the Foodbuzz Tastemakers program I had the opportunity to give these new Eggo Real Fruit Pizzas a taste test in both the Strawberry Granola and Mixed Berry Granola flavors.

 

Cajun Pork and Shrimp Burgers made with onion, bell pepper and celery, the Trinity of Cajun vegetables, Cajun seasonings and a blend of raw ground shrimp and pork.

Cajun Pork and Shrimp Burgers

Pork rules in the south, that's for certain.

Part of that comes from the fact that back in the day, just about everybody raised their own hogs, and believe you me, every part of that pig was utilized in some form.

These days we pretty much get our pork from the grocery store like most the rest of y'all, but pork still rules down in this part of The South.

New Zatarain's Products Spice Up Kitchens!

Well, it's my party y'all and what could be better than to start the week off with a giveaway?!  Yep. Deep South Dish dedicated recipe site is a year old this week!  Can y'all believe it?

In truth, I owe a gratitude to all of you for encouraging me with your continued support, for being regular readers, and especially for your friendship, your sweet comments, compliments and emails. You have made Deep South Dish a fun project to be involved with, but wow, has time flown by.

I don't know y'all, could it possibly get any hotter?  Lawdy Mercy!!  Well, "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," or at least get out of there faster, I say! It really has been a hot summer and just about everywhere too, even outside of The Deep South. Frankly it's been so darn hot, its hard enough to think about recipe development, never mind to actually get in the kitchen to create anything!  Well, thanks to the great folks at Zatarain's you can minimize that time and still produce an inexpensive, quality meal that'll be welcomed by your family.