Fried oysters with a chipotle-lime dipping sauce

I have to admit that I’m not in love with raw oysters. Nope, if I’m going to eat an oyster, I prefer that it be fried.

It all began when I was seven. My family and I were on a trip to New Orleans, and the minute we pulled into town, my dad dragged us to an oyster bar. We lived in Dallas where fresh oysters weren’t always available, and as my dad loves these bivalves—he insisted that eating oysters would be our first order of business.

(Actually, this is a lie—our first order of business was a big bag of beignets and cups of chicory coffee as we waited in the early-morning line for King Tut tickets. But later that day, we did indeed go get oysters.)



In any case, I’d never seen an oyster before, so when my dad’s icy tray arrived, I said, “What is that?” The shell’s pink and white interior was appealing, but the slick blob sitting inside was a bit strange. I was game to try it, however, so I watched my dad dip the shell into his mouth and slurp out the meat. I followed his lead, and felt the oyster slide down my throat. It was creamy and cold, and tasted a little bit like the sea.

Dad says that I made a funny face after I ate the oyster, but I don’t recall it being that unpleasant. Though, as I’d been raised on a steady diet of rice and beans my whole life, I wasn’t convinced eating them was for me. So when dad offered me another, I politely declined.

As I was inducted into eating oysters on the half-shell at such a young age, you’d think that I’d be an old pro at it. But I can count on only two hands the number of times I’ve eaten raw oysters in the following years. Fortunately, however, these few times have been incredible eating experiences.



For instance, the night before a dear friend got married in California, her uncle—who’s a chef—invited a bunch of us to his hotel room, where he shucked and shared oysters that had been harvested outside San Francisco that morning. We topped the oysters with homemade salsas and washed them down with cold, salty beers. Then there was one crisp October afternoon in Paris, where my friends and I combined freshly shucked Breton oysters with squirts of lemon and glasses of dry white wine. But even though most of the raw oysters I've eaten have been memorable, I’m still not convinced that I love them, as most of the time I’d still rather have them battered and fried.

I realize that preferring fried oysters over raw oysters may make me sound like a rube, but when it’s done well, a freshly fried oyster is a thing to savor. The crunchy coating is a welcome contrast to the soft, juicy oyster meat inside. And often, fried oysters are so succulent that no dipping sauce is even necessary.

There are many ways to make fried oysters. I keep mine relatively simple, though I do like to coat them in a combination of both crushed saltines and cornmeal, which I think gives them an excellent texture and flavor. I also like to dip them into chipotle-lime dipping sauce, though any hot sauce or tartar sauce would work, too. And you can serve these fried oysters alone, with fries, wrapped in a tortilla, or nestled into a warm baguette for a po-boy sandwich.



My dad will probably be disappointed by this admission, but there is hope! This weekend, I’m headed to Galveston for the Foodways Texas symposium on Gulf seafood, where I’ll be eating local oysters from the bay. I look forward to this, and perhaps will grow to appreciate raw oysters even more. But in the meantime, please pass me the fried oysters instead.

Fried oysters with chipotle-lime dipping sauce

Ingredients for the fried oysters:
1 pint shucked oysters
1 egg, beaten
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup finely crushed saltines
1/2 cup cornmeal
Salt, black pepper and cayenne to taste
Oil for frying
Sliced limes for serving

Method:
Drain the oysters, reserving 1/4 cup of the liquid. Pat the oysters dry.

In a bowl, mix together the egg, buttermilk and reserved oyster liquid. In another bowl or a plate, stir together the crushed saltines and the cornmeal. Add to both the egg mixture and the breading mixture a sprinkle of salt, black pepper and cayenne, to taste.

In batches, dip the oysters into the breading, then into the eggs and then back into the breading again. Place breaded oysters on a large plate or sheet. Repeat until all the oysters are coated.

In a large, heavy skillet heat 1/2 inch of oil on medium heat until it reaches 350 degrees. Cook the oysters for 2 to 3 minutes, turning once, until the fried oysters are light brown. Depending on the size of your skillet, you will probably have to do in several batches. Drain on paper towels. Serve with chipotle-lime dipping sauce and sliced limes (recipe follows).

Yield: 4 servings

Chipotle-lime dipping sauce

Ingredients for the chipotle-lime dipping sauce:
1/2 or 1 (depending on how hot you like it) canned chipotle in adobo, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon adobo sauce from the chipotle can
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon chopped cilantro
1 teaspoon lime juice
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon lime juice
Salt to taste

Method:
Mix together the finely chopped chipotle, adobo sauce, mayonnaise, cilantro lime juice, and cumin. Taste and add salt, and adjust seasonings.

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Sour cream pound cake with ruby red grapefruit

Christmas Day, you could find my family and me driving along Highway 6 so we could have dinner with cousins in College Station. The view was wonderful, filled with rolling pastures, barbecue joints, and barns painted to reflect either the owner’s love of the Texas state flag or their preference for Aggie football.

We kept stopping so I could take photos of all the Texana, until at last my uncle said, “Hey, can we get there already? I’m hungry!” Of course, he was correct to insist we keep moving, as our potluck dinner comprised of Tex-Mex, Southern and Cajun dishes promised to be a feast.

“I bet there will also be a ton of incredible desserts,” said my mom. And when we walked into the kitchen, her prediction proved true, as the first thing you saw was the buffet lined with cookies, pies and a gorgeous, round cake standing proud and tall. “Is that a pound cake?” I asked my cousin Susan. She replied that indeed it was, adding, “Pound cake is so Southern. The secret to this one is it has sour cream.”



Pound cake—it’s such a simple thing, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten one, nor could I remember the last time I’d even baked one. When we were leaving that evening, I grabbed an extra slice for my plane ride back to New York the next day. But I accidentally left my slice of pound cake in Texas, and have been missing it ever since.

Now, while I also think of pound cakes as being Southern, according to the Food Timeline, its origins have been traced back to 18th century England, with its name coming from the measurements of the original recipe’s ingredients—a pound of flour, a pound of sugar, a pound of butter and a pound of eggs. If you make a pound cake this way, it will be very rich and dense; most modern recipes call for different ratios, and add a bit of flavor, liquid, and a leavening ingredient, too.

Even though pound cake comes from England, this doesn’t mean it doesn’t have deep Southern and Texan roots. For instance, Texan writer J. Frank Dobie in his book Tales of Old-Time Texas shares a story about a Texan settler who eats fried chicken with slices of pound cake that he calls “yaller bread.” (Which, when I think about it, doesn’t sound like a bad combination.)



My family’s been making pound cake for a long time, too, and to reflect this history we have a host of different recipes. There’s one that calls for the classic sugar, butter, flour and eggs combination. There’s also one made with buttermilk, and one recipe inexplicably called German pound cake that uses the very un-German ingredient, Crisco. As I leafed through my files, I thought these all sounded promising, but after much digging I finally discovered what I sought—our family’s recipe for sour-cream pound cake.

Our Christmas cake had orange juice and zest added to it for flavor, but I saw organic Texas ruby red grapefruits at the grocery store (a rare occurrence in New York City), and decided to flavor mine with their sweet and tangy juice instead. It wasn’t until I completed the cake that I realized that I was supposed to mix the yolks and egg whites into the batter separately, but I don’t think the cake suffered for this oversight. Nope, this ruby red grapefruit pound cake had a slightly crisp, sweet crust that yielded to a moist and rich center, lightly brightened with the flavor of our state fruit. I sprinkled mine with powdered sugar, but this pound cake is so luscious, it could definitely be served unadorned.



Between being with my family and all the terrific food, I’d have to say that our Christmas dinner was just about perfect. The only thing missing was my grandma, who had decided to stay at the farm. Since she couldn’t join us on Christmas and enjoy a slice of cake, I’ve decided to dedicate this to her. See, it’s her 85th birthday this week and everyone knows you can’t have a birthday without cake. So happy birthday Grandma, I hope you enjoy your pound cake!

And should you decide to make it, I hope you enjoy it, too!

Sour cream pound cake with ruby red grapefruit
Ingredients:
1 cup butter (2 sticks), room temperature
3 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons ruby red grapefruit zest
1/4 cup ruby red grapefruit juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 eggs, room temperature
3 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1 cup (8 ounces) sour cream
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Powdered sugar

Method:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease and lightly flour a 12-cup tube pan.

Using a stand mixer, cream the butter until smooth, about 2 minutes. Add the sugar, and beat until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add the grapefruit zest, grapefruit juice and vanilla extract and mix until well combined.

Add the eggs to the batter, one at time, mixing each one until it’s well incorporated. Slowly pour in the sifted flour and mix until the batter is smooth and fluffy. Stir together the sour cream, salt and baking soda, and then add to the batter, mixing until well incorporated. Pour batter into the pan and bake for an hour and 30 minutes, or until an inserted knife pulls out clean.

Cool the cake for 15 minutes and then invert onto a platter. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve warm.

Yield: 16-20 servings

Note: This recipe can be divided in half and baked in a loaf pan. You can also flavor this with lemon, orange or lime juice, using the same amounts. For a bit of crunch, you can add to the batter 1/2 cup chopped pecans or 1/4 cup poppy seeds.

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Sopa de lima (Mexican lime soup) recipe

Whenever I get together with my Texan friends in New York, we’ll usually cook our favorite dishes from back home. Enchiladas, chicken-fried steak, brisket and chile con queso all make frequent appearances—the Texan cuisine we serve is comfortable and familiar. I don’t mind this at all.

But on a recent visit to a friend’s house, he served me a flavorful chicken soup that was topped with fried tortilla strips, Monterrey Jack cheese, lime slices and avocado. It was a bit like tortilla soup, but tangier and lighter. “Is this Texan?” I asked. “Sort of,” he said. He then explained that this soup—which is called sopa de lima or Mexican lime soup—originally hails from the Yucatan region of Mexico. But he used to eat it growing up in San Antonio, and it reminded him of home.



I loved that soup, but I didn’t think about it again until I began to feel a tickle in my throat and a heaviness in my chest; if I wasn’t careful, a cold could be coming. Clearly, I needed a quick fix, and I figured that sopa de lima—which is chock full of vitamin C from the lime juice—was what I needed to stave off getting sick.

I asked my friend for the recipe, and he pointed me towards one he’d found in the New York Times. It looked good, but it called for boneless, skinless chicken breasts, which I don’t think add much flavor to a soup. So I decided to tinker with the recipe and make it with a whole chicken, instead.

I made some other changes, too. Besides its use of lime juice, one of the hallmarks of sopa de lima is that it calls for allspice and cinnamon, flavors not often found in a chicken soup. The recipe I saw called for these spices to be briefly introduced at the end, but I decided that throwing them into the pot from the beginning would give the soup more depth of flavor. I also altered the original recipe by adding a mess of garlic and using the zest from the lime, as well.

If, like me, you’re a big fan of limes, you’ll appreciate this bright, refreshing soup. Now, apparently the limes in the Yucatan have a different flavor than the limes we eat in the U.S. But even if this soup isn’t completely authentic to its source material, it has that Tex-Mex flavor that I love. And whether you’re serving it to guests or eating it for its more salubrious effects, I think you’ll love it, too.



I’ve provided two recipes, a long version and a short version, in case you don’t have the time to make the soup from scratch. I’m biased, of course, and think the soup will taste better if you start with a whole chicken, but it’s still delicious if you take a short cut with already-made broth and cooked, perhaps leftover, chicken. Just be sure and top the soup with crisp fried tortillas, shredded cheese and creamy avocados, as those flourishes elevate this soothing soup into something festive and special.

Sopa de lima (Mexican lime soup): the long version
For the broth:
1 3- to 4-pound whole chicken, halved
1 medium yellow onion, quartered
8 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons black peppercorns
4 whole cloves (or 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice)
8 allspice berries (or 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice)
2 cinnamon sticks (or 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon)
1 leafy stem of cilantro
1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste

For the soup:
Oil for frying
4 corn tortillas, cut into strips
1 medium yellow onion, quartered
10 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 cup chopped cilantro, divided
Pinch of cayenne
2 teaspoons lime zest
Salt and black pepper to taste
1/4 cup lime juice
1/2 cup shredded Monterrey Jack (4 ounces)
2 jalapeños, stems and seeds removed, diced
1 avocado, pitted and peeled, cubed
1 lime, cut into slices

Method:
To make the broth, place the chicken in a large pot, along with the onion, garlic, peppercorns, cloves, allspice berries, cinnamon sticks, cilantro and salt. Cover with 10 cups of water, bring to a boil and then turn down the heat and simmer uncovered for 45 minutes.

While the broth is cooking, make the fried tortilla strips. Heat in a heavy skillet 1/4 inch of vegetable oil to 350 degrees. In batches, fry the tortilla strips until lightly browned and crisp, about a minute. Drain on a plate lined with a paper towel.

When the broth is done, remove chicken from pot and turn off the heat. After it’s cooled, remove fat and pick the meat off the bones and either shred or cut into bite-sized pieces. Sprinkle chicken with salt to taste. Meanwhile, strain the cooled broth, throwing out the vegetables. Remove the fat from the broth with a gravy separator. Or alternatively, you can take a quart-sized plastic storage bag and pour some broth into it. Snip a bottom corner of the bag and drain the broth, stopping when you get to the fat layer that is on top. (You will probably have to do this in batches). Pour the strained broth back into the pot. You should have about 2 quarts.

To continue making the soup, place the quartered onion and 10 cloves of garlic under the broiler. Cook until blackened, about 10 minutes, turning once. Place the cooked onion and garlic into the blender, along with 1 cup of the strained broth. Blend until smooth and then pour into the soup pot. Stir into the pot the ground cumin, oregano, 1/2 cup of the chopped cilantro, cayenne, and lime zest. Bring to a boil and then turn down the heat and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes, then add the shredded chicken. Cook for 5 more minutes. Taste and add salt and black pepper to taste. Adjust seasonings, and then stir in the lime juice.

Serve topped with shredded Monterrey Jack, fried tortilla strips, diced jalapeños, remaining 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro, avocado and lime slices.

Yield: 8 servings

Sopa de Lima (Mexican lime soup): the short version

Ingredients:
1 medium yellow onion, quartered
10 cloves garlic
2 quarts of chicken broth
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
Pinch of cayenne
1 cup chopped cilantro, divided
2 teaspoons lime zest
2 cups shredded cooked chicken
Salt and black pepper to taste
1/4 cup lime juice
1/2 cup shredded Monterrey Jack cheese (4 ounces)
Crushed tortilla chips
2 jalapeños, stems and seeds removed, diced
1 avocado, pitted and peeled, cubed
1 lime, cut into slices

Method:
Place the quartered onion and 10 cloves of garlic under the broiler. Cook until blackened, about 10 minutes, turning once. Place the cooked onion and garlic into the blender, along with 1 cup of the broth. Pour into a large pot.

Add the rest of the chicken broth to the pot, and stir in the allspice, cinnamon, oregano, cumin, cayenne, 1/2 cup of the chopped cilantro and lime zest. Bring to a boil and then turn down the heat and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes. Add the shredded chicken and cook for 5 more minutes. Taste and add salt and black pepper to taste. Adjust seasonings, and then stir in the lime juice.

Serve with Monterrey Jack, crushed tortilla chips, diced jalapeños, remaining 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro, avocado and lime slices.

Yield: 8 servings

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Armadillo eggs recipe

Once a year, a reader shoots me an email asking when I’ll be writing about armadillo eggs. At first I said, “Uh, armadillos are mammals—they don’t lay eggs!” But soon I realized that he was talking about a certain jalapeño appetizer. Unfortunately, however, writing about armadillo eggs isn’t as simple as it may appear, as there are several different thoughts about what this finger food should be.

My reader’s interpretation of the dish is that it’s a baked jalapeño that’s been stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon. I’ve seen others label these bacon-wrapped jalapeños as armadillo eggs, too. But I was always taught that the name for this dish was ABT. (I’ll let you discover on your own what the letters stand for, as it’s a bit too colorful for me.) ABTs also can be grilled or smoked, the latter of which makes them a popular snack on the championship barbecue circuit. While you’re waiting for your brisket to become tender, you can keep people happy with a plate of ABTs.

Then there are the cheese-stuffed jalapeños that have been breaded and fried, which are also known as armadillo eggs. I, however, have always thought of that snack as a jalapeño popper.



So what’s my idea of an armadillo egg?

In my experience, it’s always been a whole, halved or quartered jalapeño, which has been stuffed with cheese, rolled in uncooked sausage and then crusted with breadcrumbs before baking or grilling. Though sometimes the breading step will be eliminated with no loss of impact or flavor.

I’ve read in some places that this version was invented in Lubbock at Texas Tech. Though there were similar recipes printed in newspapers back in the 1980s that called for certain brand-name ingredients, which made me wonder if perhaps a food company didn’t create the recipe instead.

That said, the first mention of armadillo eggs I was able to find was from 1972 in a Victoria, Texas Advocate article about an armadillo festival the town was holding. Amongst the festival’s offerings was a group selling armadillo eggs along with dill pickles. I don’t know what their interpretation of the dish was, but if it involved jalapeños, I reckon it was good.

When I make my armadillo eggs, I adapt a recipe created by the Southfork Ranch. (If you’re a fan of the TV show “Dallas,” the ranch is indeed a real place, though I don’t think anyone named J.R. Ewing or Miss Ellie lives there.) Their version is simple—quartered jalapeños stuffed with cheddar, wrapped in sausage and baked. Sure, the cheddar lends a yolk effect to the "eggs" when sliced in half. But I combine softened cream cheese with the cheddar, as I adore how its cool creaminess complements the hot jalapeños.



What do you know as armadillo eggs? Here's my version, which may be different than yours, but they are still outstanding. And even if nobody is certain on what to call them, I can be sure that you won't be able to eat just one.

Armadillo eggs
Ingredients:
4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1/4 cup yellow cheddar cheese, shredded (2 ounces)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon chopped cilantro
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
Salt to taste
6 medium-sized jalapeños
2 pounds breakfast sausage or any other spicy uncooked sausage, removed from its casing

Method:
Preheat the oven to 375 and lightly grease a baking sheet.

Mix together the cream cheese, cheddar cheese, garlic, cilantro and cumin until well blended. Taste and add salt, and adjust seasonings.

Remove the stems from the jalapeños and cut in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds and then cut the sliced jalapeños in half, horizontally.

Place about a teaspoon of the cream cheese filling in each jalapeño quarter. Take about 1/3 cup of the sausage and pat it into a 3-inch circle and place the stuffed jalapeño in the center of the sausage. Wrap the sausage around the stuffed jalapeño until it’s completely covered, and form into an egg shape.

Place sausage-wrapped jalapeños on the sheet, about an inch apart. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the sausage is cooked. For additional browning on top, you can place the sheet under the broiler for 2-5 minutes.

Serve with buttermilk dressing, queso or salsa.

Yield: 24 armadillo eggs

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