World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party

OG: I have to admit that I never get tired of this. It's sad, I guess, especially considering that we've lost 15 of 17 games to the Gators. Hopefully it will be 15/18 after Saturday, but I wouldn't put any money on that. First one to 20 wins, that's how it usually goes. I like our chances this year. Anyway, you could save this post and have it set to come up every year at this time, and it would mean the same. I admit that I scarfed this from other websites...
I guess the real question would be what should I eat/drink during the game?


From: "Don't Sit Under The Grits Tree With Anyone Else But Me" - 1981
God Is a Bulldog

Jacksonville, Fla. - Dorsey Hill, the world's biggest Bulldog fan, left here Sunday afternoon, bound for Auburn, Alabama, where Georgia's undefeated football team next appears.

"I don't think you can get from Jacksonville to Auburn," I had said to him.

"You can change buses in Waycross and Columbus," Dorsey answered.

"You aren't going home first?"

"Home?" He screamed back. "I haven't worked since Texas A&M, and I haven't slept since Clemson. You expect me to go back home when we play Auburn in only six more days?"

I lost my head, I suppose.

A lot of people lost their heads here Saturday afternoon. Georgia played Florida. Georgia won the game, 26-21. It's a lot more complicated than that, however.

Georgia came into the game ranked second in the nation. To continue to compete for its first Big Banana ever, the national championship, Georgia had to continue its winning streak. Florida ( "bunch of swamp lizards and beach bums," according to Dorsey Hill), wanted to step on Georgia's dream.

Dorsey arrived here Thursday afternoon with thousands of others who made the early departure south from various points in Georgia. Many of those individuals were as drunk as five eyed owls by the time they reached the Florida line.

As local wit Rex Edmondson says, the Georgia-Florida game is the "annual celebration of the repeal of prohibition."

Dorsey waited until Friday to get into his serious pre-game drinking, however.

"I stopped at the New Perry Hotel Thursday for lunch and filled up on collards," he said. "It's hard to drink on a belly full of collards."

Agreed.

Now that I have had time to digest all that did eventually happen in college football Saturday, I think I can say without fear of charges of blasphemy that the whole thing was a religious experience. "Deacon Dan" Magill, the "Baptist Bulldog," read a prayer to the Georgia faithful in which he beseeched the Almighty to help the Bulldogs "smite the Florida Philistines."

Then there was the game itself. Georgia behind 21-20, ninety-three yards away, time running out.

"We need a miracle!" screamed Dorsey Hill, now fortified with more than collards.

Georgia got its miracle. Buck Belue to Lindsay Scott, for ninety-three yards and the winning touchdown with only seconds remaining. If that wasn't enough, there was the astounding news from Atlanta. Georgia Tech had tied No.1 Notre Dame. Surely, Georgia will be ranked first in America when the ratings are released.

"A tie was a gift from Heaven," said Dorsey. "Notre Dame gets knocked out of number one but Tech doesn't get a win. God is a Bulldog."

Verily.

I must make one confession here. I did it, and I must suffer the consequences.

I gave up at Jacksonville Saturday afternoon. Florida had the ball. Florida had the lead. There was only three minutes to play. I left the stadium. I was in the street when the miracle came.

"You are a gutless disgrace," Dorsey Hill said to me later.

He detailed my punishment: "We're going to a tattoo parlor in this very town tonight," he began. "And you're going to have '26' tattooed on one of your cheeks in red. And you're going to have '21' tattooed in black on the other cheek. I don't want you to forget what you did."

I won't, but which cheeks is between me and the tattooist.

--Lewis Grizzard
Thanks to K. Daniel for supplying this column! GO DAWGS!!

Brasato di Maiale Nero; Soup au Pistou

The weather's cooling down, and the summer fare is vanishing at the grocery store. More's the pity, I think I'll miss the tomatoes more than anything else (which is almost always the case). So, as many would attest, 'tis the season for soup and stewed meat. Here's a couple of recipes inspired by Bourdain and Battali:

Brasato di Maiale Nero (braised blackened pork tenderloin)

2 cloves garlic

pancetta, 1/3 pound (can sub bacon)

cup of flat parsley, finely diced

olive oil ~3-4 tbsp

pork tenderloin

salt

pepper

6-8 sage leaves

28 oz can crushed tomatoes

red wine (anything here, but bourdeaux, pinot noir, chianti, etc.)

enameled cast iron dutch oven

Good news, this is an easy recipe, takes about 20 min to get started, cooks about 2 hours.

Mise en place: Easy. Chop your parsley, pancetta, and garlic. Be mindful of the raw pork.

Dice the pancetta (or bacon), parsley and garlic into a "paste," and throw into your Dutch oven with the olive oil over medium-high heat. Let it get going a little bit, while you season your pork tenderloin with salt and pepper. Mario's description called for tying the tenderloin with butcher's twine and sticking a few sage leaves (6 or so) under the twine, and I didn't do this. Not sure if it mattered. Next, brown the tenderloin very well. Add the tomatoes and 1/3 of a bottle of wine. Let it boil, drop the temp to low, and braise for about 2 hours. This one's all about temperature control, as with any braising, you have to keep the temp low, and keep things from burning. You can do it on the stovetop, just keep the temp lower than you think it should be. Serve with something green.

Soup au pistou

This is a take on a Bourdain recipe from Les Halles.

Veggies:

2 small zucchini, 2 small squash, roughly chopped, seeded

1 fennel bulb, diced

2 leeks, sliced thin

1 medium yellow onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

Additives:

1 can cannelini beans (or make them from dry)

+/- elbow macaroni or equivalent

1 medium tomato, diced (or can)

32 oz chicken stock

salt

pepper

bouquet garni (couple of thyme sprigs, bay leaf, sprig or parsley)

Pistou:

1 large bunch of basil

6 cloves garlic

~4 oz parmesan (reggiano if you like)

olive oil

Mise en place: There's a lot of big veggies and a lot of chopping. Have your trash can or dispose-all handy, cut your onion and garlic first, and have a big mixing bowl for your other ingredients.

• In your soup pan, get your onion and garlic going, until translucent. Cut your veggies, and once the onions/garlic are good, add the veggies, letting them sweat for a few minutes. Add the chicken stock. 32 oz is the lower limit that you can use here, you may need to add more. Boil, add the bouquet, tomato, and season, reduce to simmer.



• Make your "pistou." Crush basil and garlic in your mortar/pestle or molcajete (if you have one). Add olive oil to get a nice pesto consistency, and then add parmesan. Adjust oil to the right texture. Wait until just before serving to add.
• Back to the soup. Be careful with the past that you add. Honestly, rotini may do better than the elbow macaroni, because those things keep getting bigger and sop up a lot of liquid, so add judiciously. Or, you can leave it out altogether because the beans will be carby enough. If you use canned beans, add them towards the end. If you don't add them as soon as you add liquid, as they will be the rate limiting step. Let this go for a couple of hours, depending on your bean/pasta addition. When you're ready to serve, add the pistou. The longer it sits, the stronger the pistou gets, so eat or freeze within 48 hours.

Goin' out in NOLA

Please don't call it "Nawlins." I guess it's OK to call it the "Big Easy," but even that makes it sound like you've never been there before.

So, CLG and I went to NOLA, left the DOG with his grandparents, and had a little early autumn work vacation. What we found was that there are a lot of great places to eat, andmost of them won't break the bank.

Just a word about New Orleans, post-Katrina. Understand the geography, the closer to the river and French Quarter, the better off it is. The closer to lake, and the further west, the worse. A lot of these restaurants are houses in Uptown and the Garden District that are converted and have limited service availabilty.

Here's where we went:

Classic streetside French Quarter, a little bit of a wait, but everything moves through there pretty quickly. What they do have is char-grilled oysters! Primo, dude. Hard to beat the Po Boys. Solid but not jaw-dropping. Well known for what their name implies.

Apparently the Metairie location has closed. This place is also known for the char-grilled oysters, but they also do a lot of lobster. Prices are reasonable, but it is lobster after all. Highlights were lobster salad, char-grilled oysters with butter and parmesan, stuffed lobster, and whatever combination of fried fish and ditch critters you want.

Classic old New Orleans, went there on a recommendation after everyone and their brother and sister that I talked to said that they were going to August, which was the hot restaurant this fall based on the notariety of the chef on the food network. Galatoire's wasn't what I'd exactly call Creole, although it's possible that I just don't know what I'm talking about. What it was to me was French style versions of the Louisiana seafood/swampfood that we all love. Why did we like it more than anything else we had?

1. The waitstaff. These guys (and they were all guys) knew what they were on about, were confident in their menu (as they should have been), and were spot on with the recommendations. No expert, but read Kitchen Confidential. If the waiter thinks it's good, it probably is, but if he thinks it's bad, then avoid it like the plague.
2. Redfish. Seems to be making a comeback, as there is a limit to what you can catch in the wild. More and more, they're growing them like catfish on farms. Done with a brown butter sauce and covered with fresh crabmeat, it was near perfect.
3. Appetizer with fresh boiled/chilled shellfish. Only qualm was that they included fried oysters, which didn't seem to fit. Again, the crabmeat was awesome, no matter what sauce they served it with.
4. The menu. It looked a little bit overwhelming at first, but then the more you looked at it, it was systematic. There were several meat choices, and they could all be cooked in standard French/Creole fashion. Hard to argue with successful tradition.
5. Desserts. The best thing that they had was a banana bread pudding. Better to me than Foster bananas, but that's just me. More of a comfort dessert.
6. No reservations. Come whenever.

Beard award winner from 2002, this place had a lot of promise. For the most part, it was great. One of the things that struck me about it was the roux and the sauce that they included with a lot of the dishes. The gumbo was some of the best that I’ve ever had, and it started with the roux which was nice and dark. I had sweetbreads for the first time, and I was pleasantly surprised. The way it was explained is that it picks up the flavor of the surrounding sauce, and has a neat texture. Where I went wrong was with the duck. Must admit it was overcooked, and a little bit dry. They tried to get past this by adding the heavy roux sauce. Beef tournedos were great, as was the soft-shell crab. Good wine list. All in all solid, don’t get the duck. Deserts, including the ice cream was fantastic.

Classic, it’s hard to beat a shrimp and oyster Po Boy in the quarter at 11:00 in the morning with Zapp’s Cajun Crawtators.

Final word:
Good food, reasonable price, alcohol everywhere. Hard to go wrong! Sadly, we missed out on the Emeril restaurants and Commander's, but you have to draw the line somewhere. My liver and girlish figure are glad to be home from Vegas and NOLA in the span of 2 weeks. So’s my wallet.

Onion Soup

Woke up Saturday AM, chill in the air, wanted something warm and satisfying. OG called from NOLA a few times and I considered making a Cajun dish, but instead, as I was babysitting Lucy, opted for some onion soup. I have the Bouchon cookbook and Keller uses a whopping 8 lbs of onions for his soup, so I decided to create my take on 8lb onion soup...the rest of the ingredients are not MKs except for the simple satchet...

Ingredients

8 lbs sweet onions

4 oz unsalted butter

1 T salt

1 1/2 T AP flour

Sachet containing 12 peppercorns, 6 sprigs thyme, 2 bay leaves

2-32 oz boxes of Swanson's low sodium beef broth

1-32 oz box Swanson's 99% fat free chicken broth

1 cup red wine, I used a Cab from Sonoma

One baguette

Emmentaler cheese (The BILE-LOW near my house had no Gruyere or Fontina)

Mise en place: For the onions, I sliced off the ends and cut into halves and cut the core with a "V-cut" in the center of each half. Next remove the flat pieces and slice into 1/4 inch strips. For the remainder, I cut radially along the lines of the onion, then pulled apart to ensure there were no large chucks of onion. This is what 8 lbs of sliced onions looks like...

In my La Creuset 5 qt buffet casserole, I began by melting the butter over low heat. I made a diffuser by rolling up some aluminum foil. Then I added the onions and salt, which towered over and out of the casserole, but I was able to contain the huge mound under the lid. I cooked the onions covered stirring every 10 to 15 minutes for ~ 1 1/2 hours, then removed the lid. The onions had reduced by about 1/2 and there was a ton of water in the pan. I then turned the heat to medium-low to bring the liquid to a good bubble, but not boiling. The liquid began to evaporate/reduce, but the onions required stirring about every 10 minutes or the ones in contact with the pan would scorch. I continued cooking this way, while watching bad football on ESPN until the onions were deep brown and had reduced to about 1 1/2 cups. Then I refrigerated overnight.

The next day, I started by warming the onions in my regular dutch oven, and when the solidified butter had melted sifted the flour into the onion mixture. I then added all the liquids and the satchet and adjusted the heat for a brisk simmer. As the mixture cooked I skimmed any scum off the top about every 15 to 20 minutes. After about 1 1/2 hours the soup had reduced by about 1/4th and was finished.

To serve, I sliced the bread into ~ 1/2 inch pieces and baked in a 400 degree oven until cripsy and crouton like. I then filled large ramekins to about 1/2 inch from the top with soup, floated a few of the croutons and topped with a slice of cheese and finished with some grated cheese. It is important not have any of the crouton exposed as this will char under the broiler and taste awful. The ramekins were then placed on a baking sheet and under the broiler until the cheese was browned and bubbling ~ 2 minutes.

I served with a simple salad of bibb lettuce with a champagne vinegar, vinegarette and for a main course, some grouper sauted with slivered almonds and brown butter and simple boiled potatoes.

Of course I burned the hell out of my mouth on this soup, but I have been told by all that it was delicious. The soup was very sweet and I didn't think the store-bought broths affected badly whatsoever. I would make this 100 times over...it was good! Next time, I will just have it with a grilled cheese sandwich and will curtail my hunger until the temperature drops below magma!

Salsa recipes (1)

You'll never need to buy salsa again if you stick with this pretty easy formula, although you know me and my taco bell sauce.


Basically, there are a couple of types of salsa: those that use tomato and those that don't. The trick is deciding what to make based on your peppers. Within the tomato groups, you can do raw or cooked, depending on taste, and a few other factors.

Basic raw red tomato salsa:

1. 23 oz can crushed tomato (not diced or whole, too much liquid)


2. 2-3 jalapeno peppers (3-4 if serrano), lightly seeded, minced


3. 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced


4. 1 bunch of green onions, diced


5. cilantro, 1/4 to 1/3 of a bunch, minced


6. juice of 1/2 lime


7. salt


8. pepper

Save yourself the headache, cut your peppers last, or else the heat will be all over everything. Beware, this stuff is much better eaten within 24-48 hours. The longer it sits, the stronger the flavors of the garlic and onion. My mother doesn't like putting fresh garlic in, instead she opts for garlic powder, and to give a little soupier, but less watery consistency, she'll put tomato juice (like V8). Other possible variations are as follows:

• Roast the peppers first. I really don't think this makes that big of a difference, but Bayless recommends it.


• Roast the garlic. This might make a difference, but I don't do it in the interest of time and because sometimes to salvage a salsa that's been sitting around and wasn't eaten in time, I'll cook it to get it going again.


• Out of green onions? You can use shallots (1-2), white/yellow/red onion (1/2), or onion powder for that matter.


• Short on good peppers? You can sneak a little red cayenne pepper powder and/or red pepper flakes to give a little extra heat.


• Leave more seeds/membranes for extra heat if you're short on peppers.


• Leave out one jalapeno and add a couple of canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. Gives it a nice flavor.


• If you have nice avocado, you can dice one up and mix it in. Eat it soon, though.

Tomatillo sauce:

There're a couple of tricks to this. First is you don't want to pick out tomatillos that are too green. Don't use the canned stuff for this, it does make a difference. Good red tomatoes seem to me to be harder to find which is why I opt for the canned ones. Second, you have to oven roast the tomatillos under the broiler until they are black and half of them have exploded. I've tried to skip that step or to just sautee them, doesn't work, it comes out too watery and raw tomato flavored.

1. 8-12 tomatillos, husked


2. 1 bunch green onion or 1/2 medium white/yellow/red, diced


3. 2 cloves of garlic, minced, which you can oven roast with the tomatillos


4. 2-3 peppers, minced (I use either Serrano or Jalapeno or both)


5. 1/2 lime


6. salt


7. pepper


8. cilantro, 1/4 bunch minced

Broil the tomatoes, take them out and stick them in the blender. Pulse it to reduce it to runny jelly consistency. Add your other stuff, and you've got it. I tend to make this one hotter than others, but you don't have to. I haven't tried too many variations of this one, because I don't want to screw up the tangy taste, and if you anything red to it, it turns it brown and makes look like something you don't want to eat.

Georgia Beats VANDY!!!

From my perspective on the 20 yard line, it looked a little something like this.
Georgia fans made up over half of the stadium. Sadly, I guess there is no such thing as a home game for the 'Dores.

Offense: Again, couldn't get anything going when it seemed like we really needed it. It's so frustrating to watch those boys drop passes that hit them right in the numbers. Sean Bailey and Kris Durham, for example. Those were drive killers. The running game didn't get going until the second half when we had worn them down a little bit. We still come out and run a stubborn offense, but I can see the value of wearing them down for the second half. Line was blocking so-so until second half. Stafford had what I thought was enough time to get rid of the ball, he just seems to hold on to it forever. If it's because the routes are slow developing, then I would like to see us do some stuff that is quick hitting to generate tempo/rhythm. Stafford again makes passes that are jaw-dropping and others that make you take your hat off and slam it on the ground. SLOW feet in the pocket, but ran OK when he kept it on the option. Play-calling actually looks a lot more like Richt than Bobo, unless Bobo has drunk the Richt punch. What happened to the plays that we were running against OSU? The quick hitter passes and let your fast receivers make a play and get some YACs. We still would line up in I-formation, twin receivers and bring one in motion. Used the tight end, Chandler had a great game, and the crowd got fired up for/with him. Knowshon is pretty awesome, hard to say anything bad. Demiko had some great catches. Tony Wilson is just plain lucky, because we almost certainly would have lost the game if the Vandy defender did not kick that ball back to him. We haven't been using the fullback very much this year, such as catching passes on play-action in the flats.
Special teams: I don't know if you saw this, but Coutu was hitting field goals from 60-61 yards in warm-ups. His accuracy was great on the one that counted, but we missed the first one, BONK right off the upright. We are not doing great in kickoffs, and letting them get the ball around the 30-35 everytime. Meanwhile, we haven't been returning all that well, starting 20-25. You would have that with all that practice last week against Tennessee returning kickoffs, that we'd be better. Punting is better than it has been in recent years.
Defense: Couldn't break through their line until the 4th quarter. We just seem to get manhandled up front and I couldn't tell if it was a scheme problem, or that we just come with plain vanilla "Kill The Man With The Ball" and don't stunt and drop back, etc. We would not blitz until the end, and it worked. Pass coverage was average to worse than average. Overpursuit again, seemed to be killing us with the option, which BTW UF runs pretty well with T-bone. We really need some fire out there. We need some big hits, and Kelin needs to keep his head in the game. He roams around and wants to make a play, but a lot of the time just doesn't
Coaching: 12 men on the field always drives you crazy, doesn't it? Offense: line may not have been playing lights out, but I thought they were giving Stafford plenty of time, and I don't know if they just weren't open and that's why he got forced into some bad throws. We seem to run the same plays over and over, but where's the Bobo inspiration? He doesn't look like he's doing anything different than CMR. The most fired up I've ever seen CMR was when he was out there stopping those idiots from jumping up and down on the Vanderbilt V at the 50. He was pissed! Finally!!! Defense :<> Where were they? The adjustment at the half worked great, but we still gave up a huge play that almost cost us the ballgame, and if it hadn't been for punching a ball out, we might easily have lost. I don't know what it is, they just don't play with fire, and look lost out there half the time. CWM, what's going on? Is it just that we have bad players?

Chile Verde