After fearing the Cottage Food Bill was dead in the House, turns out it’s still gasping for air!  It has actually passed the House, and is in the Senate as bill # SB 81, and has apparently gone round and round a few times already for amendments.  The unfortunate part is that we have less than a week for the Senate to pass it, or the legislative session will end and it’ll really be dead, not to be brought up again for another 2 years.

So, as before, I’m practically begging everyone to call and/or email your Senator and ask that they support SB 81 — specifically supporting it “as is” with the current crop of amendments, as there is little to no time to make any more.  The passing of this bill is the best chance for Sweets to get a legal baking business off the ground without having to scrape up  thousands of dollars in additional fees.  If you would like to help, I ask that you do so very, very soon.

Find out who your Senator is HERE.  More info on the progress of the bill is HERE.

2 C water
½ C apple cider vinegar
½ C dark molasses
½ C stock
1 can tomato paste
1 TBS yellow mustard
2/3 C brown sugar (packed)
1½ TSP liquid smoke
2 TSP salt
2 TSP pepper
1 TBS Worcestershire Sauce
1 TSP chili powder
1 TSP onion powder
1 TSP garlic powder
1 TSP paprika

Combine all of the ingredients for the sauce in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  When it comes to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring often, for 45 to 60 minutes or until sauce is thick.

½ C stock
2 TBS apple cider vinegar
1 TSP Worcestershire sauce
½ TBS honey

Combine all ingredients for the braising liquid and microwave on high for 1 minute.  Stir to combine.  Set aside until needed.

You will use ~¼ C of braising liquid per foil “pouch”.  Adjust the recipe accordingly.

2 TBS paprika
2 TBS kosher salt
3 TBS raw sugar
2 TBS raw brown sugar
1 TBS ground cumin
1 TBS chili powder
1 TBS freshly ground black pepper
1 TSP cayenne pepper
1 TBS onion powder
1 TBS garlic powder
1 TBS celery salt
1 TSP dried oregano
1 TBS coriander

Wash ribs thoroughly and pat dry with paper towels.  Remove membrane from the back of the ribs.

In a bowl, combine all dry ingredients and mix well.  Brush the ribs lightly with oil on all sides.  Sprinkle each side generously with the rub.  Pat the dry rub into the meat.  Refrigerate the ribs for a minimum of 1 hour.

Heat smoker to ~250° and add wood chips.  Place a drip pan under the ribs and fill with approximately ½” of water or beer (add fresh herbs if desired).  Place ribs on a v-rack over indirect heat and close the lid to the smoker.  Allow to smoke at ~250° for two hours.

After two hours on the smoker, individually place the rib racks on a sheet of heavy duty foil and create a “pouch” of foil around each.  If desired, pour approximately ¼ C of braising liquid into each foil packet.  Wrap tightly and place the ribs back on the smoker or in an oven and allow to braise for at least one hour (two is better) at 200° – 250°.

Once cooked through remove the ribs when they are cook through and coat with BBQ sauce.  You’ll want to put them over direct high-heat (grill or broiler) until the sauce is thoroughly cooked in to the meat.

½ large red onion (minced)
6 cloves garlic (minced)
2 serrano chilies (seeded and minced)
2 bottles of dark beer
1 OZ dark brown sugar
2 bay leaves
Salt and freshly ground pepper (to taste)

Place all ingredients in a medium saucepan, season with salt and pepper and cook over medium heat for 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool slightly.

1½ C brown sugar
1½ TBS garlic powder
1 TBS kosher salt
½ TSP cayenne pepper
2 TBS lemon pepper
1½ TSP chili powder
1 TSP black pepper

This is a good all-purpose rub, but is especially well suited to brisket.  Mix, rub thick and let set.  This volume of rub barely covers 1 large full brisket.  If you don’t have the full brisket, this will do fine.

Using this recipe as-is, there is little pepper taste or heat to the meat… adjust as needed.  Also, it tends to be lacking in salt, play with that — get your flavor to taste before adjusting the salt, it should taste too salty but remember that cooks off with the grease.  If you are not brining the meat, you may not need to adjust the salt higher.

Blot the brisket dry, and brush on a light coating of oil before applying the rub.  We don’t usually let the rub set too long, just until it looks moist so it doesn’t fall off.  Also remember to always cook the meat fat side up.

Smoke at 200° – 225° for 10-12 hours, or until the brisket hits an internal temp of 190°.  Take it off the smoker, wrap it tightly in foil, wrap in a towel, and put it in an empty cooler for an hour or two to rest.  It will still be quite warm when you take it out to serve.

1 TBS Canola Oil
½ onion (minced fine)
4 cloves garlic (minced fine)
1 C catsup
¼ C brown sugar
4 TBS Distilled Vinegar (less to taste)
1 TBS Worcestershire sauce
4 OZ molasses
2 TBS chipotle adobo sauce (the sauce in cans of “chipotle peppers packed in adobo sauce”)
Dash Salt

Heat canola oil in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Add onion and garlic, and cook for five minutes or until clear and tender, stirring, being careful not to burn.

Reduce heat to low. Add all remaining ingredients and stir. Allow to simmer 20-30 minutes.  Taste after simmering and adjust whatever ingredient it needs (more spice, more brown sugar to cut the spiciness, salt, etc.)

2 QT boiling water
1 QT cool water
2 QT ice cubes
1½ C blackstrap molasses
24 OZ kosher salt (by weight)

Bring the water to a boil, add the salt and stir until dissolved.  Kill the heat then add the molasses, stirring to combine.  Add the cool water and ice and stir until the ice dissolves.  Add to meat in a large sealed vessel and allow to soak for 10-12 hours.

Having followed one link to another, then another (as one so often does while surfing — this time while reading up on the first episode of Treme season 2),  I stumbled upon The Picayune’s Creole Cook Book.  Published in 1901, by the local New Orleans newspaper The Picayune — which would eventually become the Times Picayune — it is a moment in time captured in amber, one that some might even consider quaint, and makes me a little homesick just reading it.  The book was reprinted a multitude of times from 1901 to 1922, then picked up by a different publisher then put into print again in 1971, and again in 2002, as an “unabridged republication”, which basically means it’s a step up from a photocopy of the original 1901 book.  I think I need to have a copy in my library (even though it is available online for free as the copyright has long since expired and it has become part of the public domain).

The book opens with a manifesto on coffee, specifically Café à la Créole (um… Creole Coffee), and won my little obsessive-compulsive, devil in the details, coffee-loving heart in an instant.   Here is the first chapter in all its coffee-worshiping glory, reformatted for ease of reading.

——————————-

CHAPTER 1

CREOLE COFFEE

Café à la Créole

A good cup of Creole Coffee!

Is there anything in the whole range of food substances to be compared with it?  And is there any city in the world where coffee is so delightfully concocted as in New Orleans?  Travelers the world over unite in praise of Creole Coffee, or “Café à la Créole,” as they are fond of putting it.  The Creole cuisiniéres succeeded far beyond even the famous chefs of France in discovering the secret of good coffee-making, and they have never yielded the palm of victory.  There is no place in the world in which the use of coffee is more general than in the old Creole city of New Orleans, where, from the famous French Market, with its world-renowned coffee stands, to the olden homes on the Bayou St. John, from Lake Pontchatrain to the verge of Southport.  The cup of “Café Noir,” or “Café au Lait,” at morning, at noon and at night, has become a necessary and delightful part of the life of the people, and the wonder and the joy of visitors.

The morning cup of Café Noir is an integral part of the life of a Creole household.  The Creoles hold as a physiological fact that this custom contributes to longevity, and point, day after day, to examples of old men and women of fourscore, and over, who attest to the powerful aid they have received through life from a good, fragrant cup of coffee in the early morning.  The ancient residents hold, too, that, after a hearty meal, a cup of “Café Noir,” or black coffee, will relieve the sense of oppression so apt to he experienced, and enables the stomach to perform its functions with greater facility.  Café Noir is known, too, as one of the best preventives of infectious diseases, and the ancient Creole physicians never used any other deodorizer than passing a chafing dish with burning grains of coffee through the room.  As an antidote for poison, the uses of coffee are too well known to be dilated upon.

Coffee is also the greatest brain food and stimulant known.  Men of science, poets and scholars and journalists, have testified to its beneficial effects.  Coffee supported the old age of Voltaire, and enabled Fountenelle to reach his one hundredth birthday.  Charles Gayarre, the illustrious Louisiana historian, at the advanced age of eighty, paid tribute to the Créole cup of “Café Noir.”  Among advanced scientists it is rapidly taking the place of digitalis in the treatment of certain cardiac affections, and the basis of black coffee, “caffeine,” enters largely into medicinal compositions.  Coffee is now classed by physicians as an auxiliary food substance, as retarding the waste of nerve tissue and acting with peculiarly strengthening effect upon the nervous and vascular system.

How important, then, is the art of making good coffee, entering, as it does, so largely into the daily life of the American people. There is no reason why the secret should be confined to any section or city; but, with a little care and attention, every household in the land may enjoy its morning or after-dinner cup of coffee with as much real pleasure as the Creoles of New Orleans and the thousands of visitors who yearly migrate to this old Franco-Spanish city.

It is, therefore, with pardonable pride that the Picayune begins this Creole Cook Book by introducing its readers into a typical Creole kitchen, where “Tante Zoé,” in the early morning hour, in her quaint, guinea-blue dress and bandana “tignon,“ is carefully concocting the morning cup of…

CAFÉ NOIR.

And first she will tell you, this old Créole Négresse, as she busies herself parching to a beautiful brown the morning portion of green coffee, that the secret of good coffee lies in harvesting…

The Best Ingredients and in the Proper making.

By the best ingredients, she means those delightful coffees grown on well watered mountain slopes, such as the famous Java and Mocha coffees.  It must be of the best quality, the Mocha and Java mixed producing a concoction of a most delightful aroma and stimulating effect.  She will tell you, too, that one of the first essentials is to “Parch the Coffee Grains Just Before Making the Coffee,” because coffee that has been long parched and left standing loses its flavor and strength.  The coffee grains should “Be Roasted to a Rich Brown,” and never allowed to scorch or burn, otherwise the flavor of the coffee is at once affected or destroyed.  Good coffee should never he boiled.  Bear this in mind, that the GOOD CREOLE COOK NEVER BOILS COFFEE; but insists on dripping it, in a covered strainer, slowly, slowly-DRIP, DRIP, DRIP – till all the flavor is extracted.

To reach this desired end, immediately after the coffee has been roasted and allowed to cool in a covered dish, so that none of the flavor will escape, the coffee is ground – neither too fine, for that will make the coffee dreggy; nor too coarse, for that prevents the escape of the full strength of the coffee juice – but a careful medium proportion, which will not allow the hot water pouring to run rapidly through, but which will admit of the water percolating slowly through and through the grounds, extracting every bit of the strength and aroma, and falling steadily with “a drip! drip!”into the coffee pot.

To make good coffee, the water must be “freshly boiled,” and must never be poured upon the grounds until it has reached the good boiling point, otherwise the flavor is destroyed, and subsequent pourings of boiling water can never quite succeed in extracting the superb strength and aroma which distinguish the good cup of coffee.

It is of the greatest importance that “The Coffee Pot Be Kept Perfectly Clean,” and the good cook will bear in mind that absolute cleanliness is as necessary for the “interior” of the coffee pot as for the shining “exterior.”  This fact is one too commonly overlooked, and yet the coffee pot requires more than ordinary care, for the reason that the chemical action of the coffee upon the tin or agate tends to create a substance which collects and clings to every crevice and seam, and, naturally, in the course of time will affect the flavor of the coffee most peculiarly and unpleasantly.  Very often the fact that the coffee tastes bitter or muddy arises from this fact.  The “inside” of the coffee pot should, therefore, be washed as carefully “every day” as the outside.

Having observed these conditions, proceed to make the coffee according to the following unfailing…

Creole Rule.

Have the water heated to a good boil.  Set the coffee pot in front of the stove; never on top, as the coffee will boil, and then the taste is destroyed.

Allow one cup, or the ordinary mill, of coffee to make four good cups of the liquid, ground and put in the strainer, being careful to keep both the strainer and the spout of the coffee pot covered, to prevent the flavor from escaping.  Pour, first, about two tablespoonfuls of the boiling water on the coffee grounds, or, according to the quantity of coffee used, just sufficient to settle the grounds.  Walt about five minutes; then pour a little more water, and allow it to drip slowly through, but never pour water the second time until the grounds have ceased to puff or bubble, as this is an indication that the grounds have settled.  Keep pouring slowly, at intervals, a little boiling water at a time, until the delightful aroma of the coffee begins to escape from the closed spout of the coffee pot.  If the coffee dyes the cup, it is a little too strong; but do not go far beyond this, or the coffee will be too weak.  When you have produced a rich, fragrant concoction, whose delightful aroma, filling the room, is a constant, tempting invitation to taste it, serve in fine china cups, using in preference loaf sugar for sweetening.  You have then a real cup of the famous Creole Café Noir, so extensively used at morning dawn, at breakfast, and as the “after-dinner cup.”

If the coffee appears muddy, or not clear, some of the old Creoles drop a piece of charcoal an inch thick into the water, which settles it and at once makes it clear. Demonstrations prove that strength remains in the coffee grounds.  A matter of economy in making coffee is to save the grounds from the meal or day before, and boil these in a half gallon of water.  Settle the grounds by dropping two or three drops of cold water in, and pour the water over the fresh grounds.  This is a suggestion that rich and poor might heed with profit.

CAFE AU LAIT.

Proceed in the same manner as in the making of “Café Noir,” allowing the usual quantity of boiling water to the amount of coffee used.  When made, pour the coffee into delicate china cups, allowing a half cup of coffee to each cup.  Serve, at the same time, a small pitcher of very sweet and fresh cream, allowing a half cup of cream to a half cup of coffee.  The milk should always be boiled, and the cream very hot.  If the cream is not fresh and sweet, it will curdle the coffee, by reason of the heat.  Café au Lait is a great breakfast drink in New Orleans, while Café Noir is more generally the early morning and the afternoon drink.

Having thus bid its readers “Good morning,” and drank with them a cup of Café Noir, the Picayune will proceed to discuss Creole Cookery in all its forms, from soup “à la Créole” to “pacandes amandes” and “pralines.”