As a kid we routinely made “whoopie pies” around the holidays. We would make them in big batches and freeze the remainder to be eaten at a later time (usually they only lasted a couple of days though). I had all but forgotten about these until recently and decided to make them this year for Christmas. We had family and friends over for Christmas Day Dinner and these were meant to be the dessert course but with all the other food prep I had going on they were not made till the day after Christmas. I guess in the back of my mind I didn’t want to share  This recipe is based on the one found HERE.

In late July in conjunction with one of my local favorite restaurants, Wine Country Bistro, Chef Landry ,along with Chef Anthony Felan of WCB & Chef Michael Brady of Fresh, did two dinners celebrating the bounty of the Gulf. Through my friendship with the owners of Wine Country Bistro I was invited to hang out in the kitchen and document the first night of the Seafood dinner.

I ended up taking over 300 pictures and tasting some really great seafood dishes. Here is to Louisiana Seafood……enjoy.

Poblano Ranch Dressing :

• 1 small bottle of Ranch dressing
• 1-2 Fresh Poblanos
• 3 tablespoons Lime Juice
• 1 clove of Garlic
• Handful of Fresh Cilantro
• 1 tablespoon Honey
• 3 tablespoons Olive Oil
• salt and pepper

Remove chicken from marinade and season with salt and pepper. Grill over med high heat until done. Remove and place in a shallow pan and cover with foil. Let this rest for about 5 minutes. I also top each breast with a pat of unsalted butter and a squeeze of lemon. Slice chicken and make your salad.

Here is a before & after. It is much easier to eat this way

*by Outcry I mean like 3 people

With that being said, ever since the move my comments have fallen off the map in regards to new posts. Granted every once in a while a post will drum up interest but usually no more than 2 or 3 comments but the bulk of new posts have ZERO comments. I updated my RSS feed, Google re-indexed the old posts to redirect to new site and in the chance you do land on the Typepad site it points you to here so my question is what happened to my readers?

Are there just too many food blogs out there now that CFG fell by the wayside or is it something I said??

There are quite a few old posts from years back that I am quite proud of.  I think every so often I will pick one and put it back up here to give readers a chance to re-discover or new readers a chance to discover some of my older stuff. This post was from July of 2008. Hope you enjoy

Sometimes I like to cook the same things over and over and routinely change up one of the ingredients either by presentation, preparation or texture. I had wanted to do something with chicken and grits and thought I had the idea perfected. Instead of just making a pile of cheesy grits I would turn them into Grit Waffles. Crazy you say? Yes but the idea sounded really tasty, crispy on the outside but with cheesy gooey grits inside.

They sell chicken and waffles so why not make an “upscale” if you will version. I started by making the grits as usual – one part milk to one part chicken stock, add grits, cook ,add cheddar cheese and butter, salt and pepper to taste. For the chicken I chose boneless skinless breasts and marinated them with a mixture of beer, creole mustard, worchestire sauce, garlic, and cayenne pepper. I seared these on a flat top till cooked through.

Sauce wise I went with sweet potato. I juiced about three sweet potatoes and added this to about a cup of milk, crushed garlic and simmered for about 30 minutes. I strained the garlic out before serving. Why juice the sweet potatoes? No particular reason other than I had not done it before and I thought it would give me a lighter cleaner sauce. It did.

I had one sweet potato left over so for a different texture I peeled and cut it into chunks about half the size of a piece of dice. I seared these on the flat top as well with a little salt and pepper.

To cut the richness of the whole dish, I took about a ½ cup of cane syrup and heated it on the stove with about 5 sprigs of rosemary, a shot of worchestire and garlic. I probably heated it too much as when it hit the plate it immediately firmed up like a piece of caramel candy. It still served its purpose though.

Back to the “grit” waffles, they did not work out like I thought they would. Next time I think I will just incorporate a mixture of the finished grits with a waffle batter mixture.

To finish plating the dish I added a “streak” of creole mustard, added a scoop of cheesy grits, the chicken, some sweet potato bits, topped it with sweet potato cream and drizzled the rosemary cane syrup over everything.

For dessert, and please keep an open mind here, I took some french bread slices and toasted them. I then smeared these with Nutella, sprinkled some Maldon Sea Salt and topped with shredded fresh parmesan cheese. It just works……