Adult Tartar Sauce

   
     I made this recipe while playing around one day trying to come up with something better than regular old tartar sauce.  I consulted a couple of my old recipe books for ideas and revisited some of the better ingredients in my remoulade  recipe I wrote oh so long ago.  I like remoulade, it's just a pain to make and involves tarragon which goes brown quicker than an avocado in a heat wave.  Dried tarragon has no flavor because it doesn't dry well so it was off to come up with something that has the flavor of remoulade but not the headache.

Cajun Onion Soup

Yesterday when I was trying to come up with something different for dinner I had just 2 requirements, it had to be simple and it had to use the cheese I had in the freezer (yes you can freeze cheese.)  So I hit upon the idea of French Onion soup but decided to give it my own twist and turn it into something nouveau.  What I came up with I dubbed Cajun Onion Soup as it has that Louisiana flare to it.  Now there is another Cajun Onion Soup recipe on the internet and it sounds not so tasty.  It involves a roux which violated my simple requirement and it calls for pasta sauce(WTH?).  It comes from a 1970's recipe book which was an era of regrettable food so I suppose I'll forgive them.  Here's my recipe:

Classic French Quarter Beignets

I lived in New Orleans for 6 months way back in the 90's, sharing an apartment with a friend who lived there full time in the French Quarter.  I developed a love for the city of New Orleans but none so much as my love of chicory coffee and beignets.  Now I've been drinking chicory coffee for some time now but never gave much thought to the little square doughnuts of Jackson Square until my wife and I went into a small deli/diner one morning in search of breakfast.  It was there I rekindled my passion for beignets and inflamed a new one in my wife.  The diner had 2 drawbacks though, they were using boxed Cafe du Monde Beignet Mix and they were expensive, charging $5.99 for an order of 3.  Well, I can do anything I put my mind to and that goes for making my own beignets as well.  For a real beignet experience you need cottonseed oil for frying as it has the most neutral flavor and you need powdered sugar for dusting.  Unfortunately these 2 items are the most compromised ingredients these days as all cottonseed oil is GMO and powdered sugar has a disgustingly off taste from the ever increasing amount of cornstarch (from GMO corn) that they add to prevent caking.  Fortunately I was able to get around both issues.  First the oil needs to be changed to peanut oil and not just any peanut oil but Planters peanut oil.  Their oil has an almost cottonseed oil quality about it in that the flavor is not peanutty or worse an insipid taste of rancid peanuts.  Next, and I don't know if this is distributed everywhere but I can get it here in Florida, for the powdered sugar use Florida Crystals Organic.  Still has cornstarch (organic corn), but it's so small a touch that it doesn't impact the flavor at all.  Speaking of flavor, this powdered sugar is less sweet than what you're used to but has an incredible depth of flavor to it not to be found anywhere else (that I've seen).  So without further fanfare, on to the recipe.  This recipe is cut in half from normal recipes but still yields around 10 servings of 3 beignets each.