Grilled Mexican Red Snapper, Plantain & Peppers with a Kumquat Sidecar

Kumquats, loquats, magnolias, azaleas, sweet olive, dragonflies, and chameleons abounded in the yard of our little house at 921 Azalea Street in Lafayette, Louisiana in 1951. I was afraid of opening the back door without first checking to see where the chameleons were sunning. We went barefoot all summer, which made it easier to climb the trees to harvest kumquats and loquats. But, nothing was more surprisingly unpleasant than stepping on one of these lizards without shoes. Yet, I have never tasted anything so sweet and exotic as the fruit of these trees since those intoxicating days of summer in the backyard. The longing for their taste always triumphed over fear. Those were times spent all day roaming the neighborhood. We drank lemonade, made ‘perfume’ with sweet olive, fashioned clover necklaces and headpieces, ate cracker and jelly sandwiches, and chased down the Popsicle truck with our hands full of nickels when we heard its music. The memory of those unfettered, carefree childhood breaks from school still inspire this cook to suspend judgment and have a go at the kitchen.

Grilled Mexican Red Snapper and Plantain















Grilled Mexican Snapper and Plantain Recipe
2 fresh, dressed, and whole Red Snapper
Seasoning Mix: equal amounts of
salt, dried & ground medium-hot chili peppers, cumin, fresh grated lemon peel, granulated garlic, onion
olive oil
2 Bell Peppers, one red; one green; halved and seeded
Oaxaca Cheese
3 ripe Plantain
1 fresh pineapple sliced in thick rings
Juice of 2 limes
½ cup of fresh cilantro
Dozen fresh Kumquats
1 large banana leaf
Whole mango, chopped
Pickled jalapenos
2 Tablespoons butter
1/4 cup Agave nectar

Rinse and pat fish with paper towels until dry. Make a damp paste with seasoning mix, olive oil, and 2 T fresh lime juice. Rub fish inside and outside until coated well. Set aside for 30 minutes while grill heats. Peel and cut plantain into slanted slices, cover and cook for three minutes in microwave on high. Coat with olive oil while still hot and let stand. Coat peppers in olive oil after halving and seeding. Coat pineapple in olive oil. Cut mango, chop cilantro, then mix with fresh lime juice and jalapenos to taste to make salsa for fish.

Grill whole fish, fresh mixed peppers with a few kumquats, semi-cooked plantain, and fresh pineapple. Heat Oaxaca cheese in pan until thoroughly melted and pour over grilled peppers. Serve on fresh banana leaf with plantain and red snapper. Serve with sides of baked black beans (see recipe below) and rice cooked in ½ chicken broth and unsweetened coconut milk. Garnish fish with cilantro-mango salsa.
Plantain and Pineapple Sauteed in Butter and Agave nectar.










Kumquat Sidecars

Rim a chilled cocktail glass with lemon juice and granulated sugar. Mix equal parts Brandy, Cointreau, lemon juice in a cocktail shaker with crushed ice. Pour into cocktail glass. Squeeze the juice of two kumquats in each cocktail. Cut fresh kumquat ¾ through and hang off edge of sugar-rimmed glass and serve. Garnish with fresh mint and lime twist, if desired.




921 Azalea Street

Crepe de Fraise

Strawberries are plentiful right now and these are particularly easy to make. Make the crepe batter the day before you want to cook them to allow the flour to be absorbed by the liquids for a lighter, more elastic crepe.

Basic Crepe Batter (makes 20 crepes)
3 large eggs
2/3 cup milk
2/3 cup water
¼ teaspoon salt
3 Tablespoons peanut oil
1 cup Wondra flour (finer than all-purpose flours)
Peanut oil to grease crepe pan
Zest of ½ lemon or orange
Allow fruit to sit in sugar and liqueur for at least 30 minutes.

Beat whole eggs, add in liquids, salt, and oil. Beat in flour. Let stand for at least an hour, preferably overnight in refrigerator. Heat crepe pan with a few drops of peanut oil. Ladle batter into pan with small soup ladle, careful to keep batter moving quickly in pan and spread out evenly to fill bottom of pan. Cook on one side; flip to other when toasted. Keep warm in 200 degree oven until all crepes are cooked. Cooked crepes freeze well.

Strawberry Preparation
1 quart of sliced strawberries
¼ cup Cointreau or any triple-orange liqueur
2 Tablespoons granulated sugar

Crepe Filling
1 pint plain Fage Greek yogurt
2 Tablespoons powdered sugar or brown sugar
Zest of ½ lemon
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Crepe Preparation
Fill warmed crepe with 2 heaping Tablespoons of yogurt mixture and spread over crepe, top with berries and juice, sprinkle powdered sugar over closed crepe. Garnish with fresh mint. Serve.

Top Shelf Guacamole and a Blue Moon Martini

If you are lucky enough to have great friends, they will tell you when you’ve ‘lost it. ‘ It hasn’t happened to me yet, which bothers me a lot about my friends. Last night, while bathing an area of my body that my young son called “chestals’ when he was four years old, I arrived upon a foreign object that at first felt like a band-aid. Closer inspection revealed that somehow a produce sticker from the avocados I was lovingly pawing around on at the local green grocer had fallen down the front of my dress and attached itself underneath my left ‘chestal.’ It had ridden around in there all day, suffered through the sweaty peeling of an avocado that was ultimately beaten into submission, resulting in my best guacamole ever. There was lots of tomato, chive, and cilantro chopping, along with much lime squeezing and seasoning shaking. That sticker was thriving and seemed to have no worries under these falling rocks that were gloriously soaking in a hot tub.

My friends won’t find this story a reason to commit me to a safer place. In fact, they will tell you that they don’t know how to determine what will be the right broken moment because this kind of stuff takes place in my life all of the time. I try to be dignified and elegant; it just isn't happening. One gives up when strangers tell you on the street that your skirt is tucked into your stockings. Or that you have toilet paper comets on your shoes. Or worse, they are trailing from beneath the tail of a shirt. Many times I leave the house with one eye lined; the other completely untouched. This is not purposeful behavior. I am an accidental goofball who enjoys the discovery of nearly mated shoes, blue stockings that seemed to match that black dress at home, or eating from a plate only to discover that it belongs to my husband’s client whom I just met. I am the unintended the master of the malaprop.

My mother, on the other hand, is a deliberate scream. When profanity and poor taste jokes tumble out of her, my children who were punished for such things, often reminded her that we had a ‘Cuss Jar’ collecting twenty-five cents apiece for just such infractions. She would cavalierly pull a 20 dollar bill from her purse and coyly reply, “there you go, honey, tell me when that is all used up.” She has been known to throw bras out to the crowd from a runway on which she was modeling the clothing of a ‘fine boutique’ at a charity event. Belting show tunes from the top of a grand piano has become a signature end to evenings with her. But I must say that showing up at her 80th birthday party in nothing but a man’s tux jacket and fishnet hose, took away the breath of even her most faithful friends. Mom was amused. She killed that day. Recent illnesses haven’t snuffed her spark. She ferreted for cookies in the nude in the middle of the night during a recent visit to our home. My husband has learned to ignore “the little noise downstairs.” He now knows that it is not a burglar or a rodent and it’s best to stay tucked in bed rather than risk another detached retina. But, in case you're worried, there is nothing wrong with our Mamo Mame. She just knows how to work her audience. I almost forgot. Here are some other crowd-pleasers:

Top Shelf Guacamole












1 whole avocado
1 whole lime
10 or more small grape fresh tomatoes, chopped
½ teaspoon Tony Chachere Cajun Seasoning
3 Tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
2 Tablespoons chopped chives
2 Tablespoons salsa (hot or mild; it’s your palate)
Mash avocado; squeeze in lime; add all other ingredients. Serve with tortilla chips. Serves 4

Baked Black Bean Dip

















1 can whole Goya black beans
½ cup salsa (hot or mild)
¼ cup chopped cilantro
2 cups blend of four grated cheeses: monterrey jack, cheddar, queso quesadilla, and asadero cheeses
Bake in 425 degree oven for 20 minutes. Dip with tortilla chips. Serves 4


Luna Azul Martini (Blue Moon, pictured above)
Scale ingredients to servings
3 oz vodka
1/2 oz Blue Curacao liqueur
1 dash Angostura bitters
Pour the vodka, curacao and angostura into a cocktail shaker half-filled with cracked ice. Shake well, and strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist and serve.

Blue Inca Martini
Flavored with tequila.
2 oz. Vodka
1 oz. Silver tequila
1 oz. Light rum
1 oz. Blue curacao
Pour all ingredients into mixing glass. Add ice, stir to chill and strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist or edible flower.

Bath Tub Sticker
Shop for avocados by rummaging mindlessly through the produce. Remain unaware and hope for the best.

Jitterbug Juice

My love affair with the Sidecar began as a pesky case of insomnia. This unorthodox way to find the drink of your life came through a sleep doctor’s sleuthing about for reasons why I could only sleep for three hours each night. He discovered the usual sleep apnea and too-late-in-the-afternoon caffeine during a stint at the sleep clinic. But, there was also the revelation of ‘jitterbugness,’ or Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS), those achy legs that have to stay in motion to keep the pain at bay. Upon keeping a journal about the times when the restless legs were the most troublesome, I discovered that certain types of alcohol, particularly tequila, played a role in amplifying the RLS symptoms.

Date Nights with my husband took on the dismal feeling of a member of the den watching the alpha dog eat first from the food bowl. There I sat with my water, wine, or secondarily acceptable beverage while Steve drank Javier’s Top Shelf, the best margarita in the city of Dallas. Chips and salsa just weren’t the same without an icy cold ‘straight up’ margarita, light on the salt. During a Mexican dinner with clients one evening, I remarked over the equivalent of my having drawn a genetic short straw. One of our dinner companions didn’t miss a beat, “you need a Sidecar,” Tom bellowed and told the waiter to bring one over. It turns out that this old Parisian (or London, still a subject of debate) drink was invented during WWI by a good captain who was driven to and from his favorite bar in the sidecar of a motorcycle. The daquiri and margarita are both derivatives of this lovely cocktail. It is my good fortune that neither cognac nor brandy intensify the jitterbug in me. So I give you my version of The Sidecar:

JITTERBUG JUICE (A BLOOD ORANGE SIDECAR)
* One part brandy or Cognac
* One part triple-orange liqueur (Cointreau or GranGala)
* One part citrus juice (2/3 lemon juice; 1/3 blood orange juice)

Served shaken in Martini glass rimmed with sugar, garnish with slice of blood orange and sprig of fresh mint.

Preparation: Mix the ingredients in a shaker half full of ice. Strain and serve in a sugar-rimmed glass. Garnish with a slice of the blood orange and float mint in glass.