Dear Fellow Foodies, I hope all is well and that you are all keeping well.
We’ve been out and about over half-term, going for a trip to the seaside, staying at the delightful Potting Cottage in Hastings. It was lovely, with some bracing walks along the beach, being windswept in driving rain as the waves crashed down around you. All stuff that is good for the soul! The best thing about this though, was then being able to go home and enjoy some fabulous comfort food to help warm ourselves back up. It was also the opportunity to be able to try out a couple of new things as well have something that we’ve not had since last winter. All dishes hit the spot, and some of them you’ll be seeing sooner rather than later.
So what did we cook that was new? We manged to cook Mississippi Pot Roast, Pickled Shrimp, and I dabbled with a southern fried sausage when we got back after Burger Friday. All utterly delicious, and the last two you’ll find on this weeks’ Burger Friday menu! (I’ll talk about these in another blog!)
What I’ve yearned for most though was having Hushpuppies. Ever since my last trip to the south several years ago these delicious morsels of corny goodness have kept me up at night with severe withdrawal symptoms. A disastrous attempt at doing them upon my return scared me for a long long time (far too thin batter!), leaving me bereft on how I was going to get my fix. I’ve been missing them so much! A quiet day found me perusing Rodney Scott’s World of BBQ, and the sweats hit me, hard; I thus gathered the courage to give them another go. And wow, oh wow, I am so glad I did! I can’t believe what I was scared off, as it was so easy and straight forward to make. It must have just been a super-bad recipe that I used last time. The Hushpuppy, for those that don’t know, is essentially a ball of cornmeal dough deepfried and is a quintessential side to BBQ and other southern dishes. When paired with fried catfish & tartare sauce, it is often compared to being southern fish and chips. The unusual name is, like a number of dishes in the South shrouded in mystery, from civil war soldiers or hunters trying to keep quiet in the field; many stories revolve around bits of fried cornmeal being thrown to the dogs to “hush the puppies”. They would certainly have been well-fed dogs what ever the reason! The dough is very similar to cornbread, but perhaps not quite as wet, shaped into ping-pong ball sized rounds and then plunged into hot oil for a couple of minutes leaving you with a crispy exterior and a soft fluffy, pillowy corny centre. Dipped in some hot honey, they were off the scale good! If you like our cornbread you will love these! And I am sure some Jalapeno will be working their way into them soon too.
I’m hoping to do a winter BBQ session at some point between now and Christmas, and when I do these will be most definitely featuring!
This week though we are back to Burger Friday, and as said we’ve added the pickled shrimp, as a tasty appetiser, and southern fried sausage, as an extra or something for the kids, to the menu. So make sure you add them along with your burgers! This could also be our last burger Friday for a few weeks, as we are out at a wedding next week, and a market the week after, as well as having a few other things on the radar; so make sure you get your fix now! As always, please do try to pre-order.
Thanks for your support as ever, and happy eating y’all!
All the best, Rich
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