Ragin' Cajun: Papa Mojo's Roadhouse

I believe one should celebrate his or her birthday for a week, at least, especially for milestones like the 9th year of being 29! So to prolong the merriment my dive buddy took me to dinner. We decided to try Papa Mojo's Roadhouse on highway 55 near RTP (It is in the same strip mall as Sarah's Empanadas, if you know where that is. I recommend Sarah's corn and raisin empanadas for lunch if you work in the Park).

Papa Mojo's Roadhouse, conceived by Mel Melton the "Papa" of the Wicked Mojos band, features down home Cajun cuisine. Mel Melton and the Wicked Mojos play there from time to time. Every Thursday night features a band, and there seems to be a schedule of blues and zydeco music on certain nights of the weekend throughout the month.

Besides his musical talents, Mel knows how to cook. Every year around Mardi Gras he teaches a cooking class at A Southern Season. A friend invited me to the class in 2007, and we learned some great recipes like shrimp and tasso beignets with Jezebel sauce, red bean bisque with cornbread croutons, redfish Rockefeller with Creole mustard cream sauce, and bananas foster bread pudding with caramel sauce.

The menu at Papa Mojo's Roadhouse is a lot simpler. It features Cajun staples like gumbo, crawfish etouffee, and jambalaya. I had the Cajun sampler: etouffee, jambalaya, and red beans with rice. My friend had a big bowl of the jambalaya. I have to say that, of the three on my sample plate, I liked the jambalaya best. It is made with "yard bird" (chicken to you and me), andouille, and "cochon" (pork to the rest of us). I usually like some shrimp in my jambalaya but this was so tasty that I didn't miss it. It needed a little salt and to be doctored up with some of the Louisiana hot sauce sitting on the table, but that's why it's there, right?

The best part of the meal was dessert, of course. My friend was too full on jambalaya to eat dessert so I had to eat a whole piece of buttermilk pie with chantilly cream (sweetened whipped cream w/ a dash of vanilla) and blackberry sauce. I'd not ever had buttermilk pie. I'm not even sure I've seen it on a menu until Papa Mojo's menu. What have I been missing? It's delicious! The textures is kind of like a custard pie but not as eggy tasting thanks to the tartness of the buttermilk. The sweet berry sauce and whipped cream accompanied it very well. Here is the recipe from the restaurant's Web site (I've not yet tried it myself so if you attempt it, let me know how it goes):

Buttermilk Pie with Blackberries

Ingredients:
1 ½ cups sugar
1 Tbsp lemon zest
1 Tbsp flour
4 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1 stick melted butter
1 10-inch pie crust

1 cup blackberries
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp pomegranate juice
1 tsp cornstarch

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a mixing bowl combine sugar flour and zest. Whisk eggs in one at a time. Stir in buttermilk and melted butter. Cook ingredients over low heat until syrupy. Add cornstarch to thicken. Pour into pie shell and bake for approx. thirty minutes.

A treat for girls: The Cafe at Nordstrom

Shockingly enough I'd never been to the Café restaurant on the second floor at Nordstrom although I frequent the store's shoe department and makeup counter often enough.

A friend took my for my birthday. I'm 29 again. We did some restrained shopping, and then headed to the restaurant for lunch. I had a chicken, artichoke, roast red pepper and goat cheese salad with a vinaigrette. The roasted red peppers gave the dish a surprising sweetness. They were perfect little morsels. Sometimes roasted red peppers are just slimy and hardly worth eating. Goat cheese is my favorite food in the world followed by artichokes so I was very happy.

My friend had the Asian chicken salad which had a delicious ginger dressing.

Next time I will try the crab bisque and the pear and Gorgonzola salad or the club sandwich.

So if you ever need a break from strenuous shoe shopping at Nordstrom, head to the Café. It's a lot better than the food court inside the mall!

Sichuan chili sauce

When I was in China and not working or being booted out of Tibet, I was eating. The food there is fantastic! Granted some of it is kind of weird. There is an old Chinese saying, "The Chinese will eat anything with four legs but the table" and it's kind of true! The menus were fascinating. In Beijing and other touristy places where we Westerners might go the menus are usually offered in English. If the translations are somewhat lacking in descriptive value then there are always pictures.

The variety of fungi alone is astonishing. I enjoyed perusing menu items that I would never in a million and one years eat: shark fin soup, turtle, dog and "sinew of beef soup" to name a few. I have a hard time ascertaining what sinew of beef soup might be but it sure sounds gristly.

My colleague and I both especially loved the Sichuan food. I noticed a delicious, hot peppery flavor in several dishes. Finally I figured out that this peppery flavor came from what looked like a peppercorn. I believe these are sold in Asian markets in the US as Sichuan peppercorns. I bought some in the airport at Chongqing (fomerly referred to as Chungking in English) after the Tibet debacle. The label calls them Chinese prickly ash.

I scoured my cookbooks for Sichuan recipes and came up with this sauce that goes great on stir fry. I made it with fish, but perhaps fish is too delicate to stand up to the intensity of the prickly ash peppercorns. Use the peppercorns sparingly otherwise your tongue will go numb!

Here is the recipe from The Quick Recipe, p, 342:

3 T dry sherry
2 T low sodium chicken broth
1 1/2 T soy sauce
1 T Asian sesame oil
1 T Asian chili paste
1 t cornstarch (I suggest omitting it unless you like the thick sauciness it imparts)
1/4 t sugar
1/4 t toasted and ground (in a pepper mill) Sichuan peppercorns (Chinese prickly ash)

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl.

Use this sauce with stir fry: Once you have fried up the meat or veggies, add the sauce. Turn the heat off. Stir the food until it is well-coated with the sauce.

Asian fusion in Cary: An

Last night a colleague and I ventured to Cary for dinner at the restaurant An. The menu features sushi, sashimi, a variety of small plates that lean towards Asian and a dinner menu with main courses like chicken with peanuts, black vinegar, and spicy honey. Their specialty is Kobe beef and the menu describes it as being served with deconstruction ratatouille, cassava cake, miso and ginger sauce. I am not sure what that means and I am too cheap to pay for Kobe beef so I went for the prawns with candied walnuts, heart of palm slaw, and honey cream sauce. The flavors went together very well. I really enjoyed the honey cream sauce. What's not to love about honey and cream?

My friend had the miso sea bass with maple syrup, white miso, shiitake, and ginger soy meunière sauce. It looked good, and she cleaned her plate. I don't yet know her well enough to say, "Excuse me, may I have a bite?" so I didn't get a taste.

The drinks menu and wine list are lengthy. I had a nice full, smooth Burgundy before my dinner because yesterday was too cold for white wine. I needed something to warm my blood and it hit the spot.

I like the atmosphere at An. The tables are decorated with orchids which happen to be my favorite flower. For those of us in RTP it is fairly convenient for dinner or cocktails after work. I plan to go back soon to try their sushi. We have a lot of mediocre sushi in the Triangle. Maybe An will be a pleasant surprise.

Side note: I'm still closely following the crisis in Tibet and the surrounding provinces. I'm worried about the latest round of what is undoubtedly a silly Chinese yarn.